The Church Hears and Stands
Matthew 11:12-15
In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit.
St. Matthew 11:15 “He who has ears to hear, let him hear!”
Dear fellow redeemed in Christ our Lord… Today we’re celebrating the unique festival of the Reformation. But it’s not unique in a way that you might think. It is unique in that it is the only festival in the entire Church Year that was added to our liturgical calendar of festivals; it is the only “new” festival in well over a thousand years. Celebrated already in the 1560’s in some parts of Germany for good reason, the festival of the Reformation has become an annual celebration for Lutherans worldwide pretty much ever since.
But we must ask, what are we celebrating? Well, as we do each and every Lord’s Day, we are celebrating the clear proclamation of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. But specifically, today and every Reformation Day we celebrate how that Gospel was proclaimed by a man who believed the Word of God and stood tall and strong in the face of evil and falsehood; and we are celebrating a church that hears the Word of God and still stands tall and strong in the face of evil and falsehood.
But before we go any further with those thoughts, let us consider the words of today’s Gospel from Matthew 11 and see how they apply to this celebration.
In this part of Matthew’s Gospel, John the Baptist was in prison for preaching God’s Word. And while he was in prison, he had sent some of his disciples to Jesus to ask Him if He was the Christ who was to come. We’ll look at that part of Matthew 11 in just a few weeks, during the season of Advent.
John, you will recall, had been a forceful preacher of repentance. He stood against the Jewish religious leaders who had strayed from the right understanding of the Law of Moses. He stood against and called out King Herod for marrying his brother’s wife while his brother was still alive. He stood against his own disciples when they wanted him to keep his popularity even after Christ came on the scene. He stood, not on human reason, not on the decrees of any councils, but solely on God’s Word. He said what needed to be said, no matter what consequences he would have to endure.
In our Gospel, Jesus says, “If you are willing to receive it, he – referring to John – is Elijah who is to come.” And there are obvious similarities between John and Elijah. Like John Elijah was also a forceful preacher of repentance. He stood against the idolatry of the northern kingdom of Israel. He stood against the powerful rulers of his day – wicked King Ahab and his wicked wife Jezebel. He stood against the prophets of Baal on Mt. Carmel as the lone preacher of Yahweh, the God of Israel.
But what does Jesus mean when he says that John is “Elijah who is to come”? Here we recall the prophecy at the end of the book of Malachi (4:5-6): “Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet Before the coming of the great and dreadful day Yahweh. And he will turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers, lest I come and strike the earth with a curse.” Through Malachi God had promised to send “Elijah” before the coming of the day of Yahweh. Many of the Jews thought that God would literally send the man Elijah from heaven back down to earth, back from the dead; even some townsfolk wondered if Jesus was Elijah come back from the dead.
But Jesus here explained that “Elijah” was to be understood figuratively, and that name now referred to a man who would come and preach like Elijah once preached, a man who would stand like Elijah once stood. John was the promised man who stood for the true God in the face of much opposition, just as Elijah had once done.
And you recall, Elijah eventually had to flee for his life as Jezebel sought to destroy him. He ran away to a mountain where God spoke to him and comforted him, much as Jesus did with John in the words just before our Gospel. And there on the mountain, God revealed to Elijah that, for as alone as he felt, God had preserved a remnant – 7,000 in Israel – whose knees had not bowed to the false god Baal (I Kings 19:18).
In the same way, partially through John’s preaching, God had preserved a remnant in Israel at the time of Jesus. He had turned the hearts of the fathers to the children and the hearts of the children to their fathers, as Malachi had prophesied. Many people in Israel were repenting, many were being baptized, and many were turning to Christ.
Hear again what Jesus said in today’s Gospel: “From the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and the violent take it by force.” “Suffers violence” is a possible translation. But here I tend to favor the old NIV translation: “From the days of John the Baptist the kingdom of heaven has been forcefully advancing, and forceful men lay hold of it.” In other words, through John’s forceful stand for the truth, God had raised up forceful men who were laying hold of that truth and rushing into the kingdom of heaven, daring to confess their sins, daring to be baptized, daring to put their faith in Jesus as the Christ, daring to stake their soul’s eternal salvation not on human reason, not on the popular teachings of the Church at that time, but solely on the Word of God which centers on God’s mercy in Christ. God was raising up for Himself a Church that stood on the Gospel.
Now, how does all that apply to this celebration of the Reformation of the Church? It is not hard to see the connection.
Lutherans have chosen October 31st as the actual date for celebrating the Reformation because of what Luther did on that day in 1517, nailing his now infamous 95 Theses to the church door in Wittenberg, Germany. But it is not the Theses themselves that we celebrate. Don’t get me wrong; they were good and well-reasoned and they challenged indulgences as well as the power and authority of the papacy. Those 95 Theses addressed important questions that would affect the Church for centuries to come: questions like: How far does papal authority actually reach? Does it reach beyond the city of Rome, or all the way to Germany, or all the way to purgatory? What good are the indulgences that the pope signs? How can he claim to forgive the penalties imposed by others? And probably most egregious, how can the pope charge money for the forgiveness of sins and reconciliation with God? To this day Rome still has a hangover from being drunk on that kind of perceived power.
But it wasn’t so much the issues discussed in the 95 Theses that were so striking as it was the simple fact that a lowly priest in that 16th century environment – an environment not unlike that of John the Baptist in early first century Israel – should question the status quo or even try to discuss doctrinal inconsistencies in the Catholic Church. The pope and the leading men of the Roman Church were to be supported and they were to be believed. And they were not to be questioned, and certainly not publicly questioned or even doubted.
But there stood Luther, defying the pope and defying the emperor, and insisting that the Holy Scriptures must be the source and the arbiter of all doctrine. There stood Luther, convinced by Holy Scripture that the penalty for all sin had been paid by Christ on the cross, a penalty that is the only price of mankind’s redemption and reconciliation with God. There stood Luther, pointing to Jesus as the one Mediator between God and man. There stood Luther insisting that God justifies all sinners by faith alone in Christ.
We can and should thank God for what He accomplished for His Church through Martin Luther, as through a divinely sent messenger or “angel,” like the one we heard about in today’s reading from Revelation 14, whom many Lutheran theologians have applied to Luther himself: “an angel flying in the midst of heaven, having the everlasting gospel to preach to those who dwell on the earth to every nation, tribe, tongue, and people—saying with a loud voice, “Fear God and give glory to Him, for the hour of His judgment has come; and worship Him who made heaven and earth, the sea and springs of water.”
Now, if Martin Luther had stood alone all by himself on the truth of God’s Word, then the world might still be filled with nothing but the deviant and twisted version of Christianity which was being foisted on the Church by Rome in the 16th century, with countless souls still cowering in fear before the righteous God. It is quite possible that all people might still be putting their hope in the Virgin Mary and in the other saints, still living in fear of purgatory, still following the superstitions of monkery and relics and manmade forms of worship.
But because God gave Luther the ability to stand, God was able to use him to bring the light of the Gospel to countless others, to free them from the superstitions of Rome, to put the Bible into the peoples’ hands so that they could read it for themselves in their own language and allow the Scriptures to interpret the Scriptures instead of relying only on the pope to interpret it for them. Forceful men laid hold of the kingdom of God, refusing to be bullied by Rome or by the emperor, refusing to be silenced by those who claimed to be wise, but whose opinions were built on nothing but human doctrine. And so, although the Roman Church continued to oppose Luther until and beyond the day he died, the Holy Catholic Church – the Church universal – stood by him and stands by him still.
That’s what we celebrate today. The man who stood on God’s Word, and the Church that stands on it, too. Not that we give the glory or the credit to Luther or even to the Church. No, to God alone be the glory. But Christians through the ages who have stood firm on the Gospel of Christ have been God’s tools and instruments to bring the Gospel to us, pure and untainted by the doctrines of men.
So, what will you do with it? What will you do with this gift of the pure Gospel of Christ, handed down by the apostles, preached in the Church throughout the ages, obscured by human errors and abuses but then magnificently restored through Luther and men like him? We have seen the pure Gospel obscured time and again since Luther’s time, both by Protestant groups and sadly by many who claim the Lutheran title. We have seen people abandon the Lutheran confession of the faith for the sake of apathy, or pride, or convenience, or persecution and ridicule, or love of this life and the trappings of the bigger church.
What will you do with the Gospel? Will you be meek with it? Will you be timid? Will you treat it as of minor importance in your life? Will you be ashamed of it? Will you toss it away when the weight of the cross becomes heavier than you want to bear? Far be it from you who have been cleansed, far be it from you who have been washed in Christ’s blood, far be it from you who have received, from the pure grace of God, the everlasting Gospel in the purest form in which it exists on earth! Far be it from you to be intimidated by those who mix truth with error or by those who don’t know the truth at all! Far be it from you who are truly faith-ful, to behave as those who live by sight and not by faith!
Instead, recognize the treasure you have been given, the comfort of a faith founded on the immovable rock of Holy Scripture, on the sure and certain Means of Grace, the Gospel in Word and Sacraments, on the actual, historical, apostolic faith once delivered to the saints. Recognize and be thankful for God’s forgiveness poured into you by Christ’s real body and blood in His Sacrament. Recognize and be thankful for the fact that Christ has paid for all your sins in His own horrible suffering and death, a suffering and death that you deserved but that was suffered in your stead by Jesus. Give thanks for it! Treasure it! And then stand! Stand on the truth of Christ! Stand on it against the devil, against the world, and against your sinful flesh. Stand on it in the face of error. Stand on it in the face of despair. Stand on it in such a way that the world around you knows where you stand and why.
Stand on it, dear fellow redeemed, as you are strengthened to stand by Christ working in you through his Gospel preached and His Sacraments rightly administered – those divine gifts whereby God gives you His forgiveness, life, salvation, and strength.
Stand on that truth together with the one Holy, Catholic, and apostolic Church of all times. Stand on it with Luther, and let his words before Emperor Charles V at the Diet of Worms become your own words when he said: “Unless I am convinced by the testimony of the Scriptures or by clear reason (for I do not trust either in the pope or in councils alone, since it is well known that they have often erred and contradicted themselves), I am bound by the Scriptures I have quoted and my conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and I will not retract anything, since it is neither safe nor right to go against conscience. I cannot do otherwise, here I stand, may God help me. Amen.”
