John 8:31-36
Katharina von Bora was born in 1499 in Germany. As a young girl she was sent to a convent to be educated and lived with her aunt who was nun. She didn’t have much choice in the matter, but as soon as she was old enough, she made her religious vows and became a nun herself at age 16. Like many young women in medieval Europe, she wasn’t too happy about living life as a cloistered nun. After years of living as a nun, she grew more and more dissatisfied. Kathrina’s community heard the news about Luther and the Reformation, read his writings, and kept up on was happening outside the convent. And when she was 24, Katharina and her friends sent word to Martin Luther that they wanted to escape. It was a dangerous thing for the women to do; if caught they risked imprisonment and even torture. Luther and the nuns formed a plan and enlisted a sympathetic merchant who made food deliveries to the convent to assist in their escape.
And so it was that on Holy Saturday, the eve of Easter, 1523, after the normal delivery of fish in barrels was brought into the convent on a covered wagon, twelve nuns climbed inside the fish barrels and hid until the wagon took them into town. There, Luther and his allies helped the nuns integrate into life outside the monastery. Luther set out to find the women husbands. The other nuns were very pleased with the arrangement. Katharina, however, declined several proposals from potential suitors, and said the man she really wanted to marry was Martin Luther himself. Martin considered this, prayed about this, and finally agreed to this. Martin’s associates said he was being “reckless!” with this decision. But Martin argued that he was simply putting Reformation theology into practice. Luther said their marriage would please his father, spite the pope, make the angels laugh and the devils weep.
Katharina, affectionately known as Katie Luther, experienced freedom in the famous fish barrel escape. And bold young woman that she was, experienced freedom in choosing who she wanted to marry. Katie was inspired by what Martin called the freedom of the Gospel. The freedom to trust herself and be who she was created to be. The freedom that led her to take risks and follow the Spirit’s lead. Living into this freedom, she became a valuable part of the Reformation and an important historical figure in her own right.
That freedom exemplified in the story of the fish barrel escape and in the lives of Katie and Marty Luther is the same freedom Jesus talked about in the Gospel reading we heard read this morning. Jesus was teaching the people about what real freedom is. His listeners seem to be thinking only of outer freedom from physical slavery, which is obviously very important. But what Jesus was talking about was an even deeper, inner freedom from sin: freedom to be our truest selves, free from sin and selfishness, free to be the children of God we were created to be.
It’s common to think of freedom as getting to do whatever you want all the time. But real freedom is not doing whatever your instincts and desires demand of you. That’s actually being enslaved to our biological and psychological programming. It’s needing to do whatever you want. That’s addiction, not freedom. That’s why Jesus says, “anyone who commits sin is a slave to sin.” True freedom is being freed from needing to do whatever our desires demand us to.
And it’s very clear when we look around the world that humanity is trapped in this reality of sin. A reality of selfishness and fear. A reality of scarcity and oppression. A reality of war and violence. The world is enslaved to sin because so many of us are controlled by our wants, regardless of the will of God or our neighbors.
And the hard truth of the Law- the Law Paul talks about in our first reading today- is that we are all trapped in that reality, trapped in sin. None of us can follow the Law of God perfectly. None of us can get ourselves out of it. And that is precisely why we need Jesus. Jesus Christ came to free us from the power of sin. To shift our reality into one of freedom. Jesus Christ, the Sinless One, suffered the consequences of sin fully and died on the cross. And because of Him we are redeemed and freed from sin’s power over us. Because of him, we are freed from needing to save ourselves. We are freed from needing to earn our forgiveness or salvation. We are freed from the consequences of sin through the redemption and salvation we have in Christ. And we are freed from the power of sin to influence us through the sanctification of the Holy Spirit, through the ongoing transformative power of the Spirit at work in each of us.
It is this freedom from sin and humanity’s reconciliation with God that we celebrate on Reformation Sunday. The Good News that the early church knew so well, and that Luther rediscovered is that Jesus Christ freed the world from sin and that is a free gift of God’s grace and love. This freedom isn’t anything we have to earn or work for. God has released the world from the cosmic grip of sin through Jesus Christ. Regardless of whether we do anything to earn it or not. Regardless of whether we sin or not. Regardless of anything we have to live up to on our end, Jesus Christ has reconciled the world with God.
It is this freedom that Luther called the freedom of a Christian. It’s the freedom where we don’t have to do anything, but we get to live into the fullness of who we are. I remember as a kid asking my pastor if we have to go to church. And he said, “You don’t have to, you get to!” And I think that summarizes this freedom of a Christian so perfectly. Now, because of Christ, instead of spending our lives trying to save ourselves or make ourselves worthy of God’s love, we get to do what free people do. We get to spend our lives doing whatever we feel called to do, living into who God created us to be, embracing the fullness of our truest selves. We get to manifest God’s love and goodness in the world. We get to love and serve God and neighbor. We get to let our light shine.
Now of course we don’t have to do this. We don’t have to grow and mature and live life more fully. We don’t have to live into our freedom. God still loves us either way. But it’s not a burden to live a free life; it’s a gift to live in alignment with the divine. It is a gift and a privilege to experience freedom and life in all its fullness.
Now in addition to today being Reformation Sunday, today is also Stewardship Sunday. The Sunday each year we invite you to make a commitment to financially support the ministry of this congregation. For the past eight weeks we’ve been doing ministry spotlights, highlighting the various ministries of our congregation. Today we heard from Debbie about the finance and stewardship ministries of St. Matthew, and we’ll learn more during adult forum about finance committee, stewardship committee, offering counters, auditors, Thrivent action teams, and other important ways of supporting the ministry of St. Matthew through legacy gifts or endowment contributions. In a few moments during our usual time for the Offering, we’ll invite you to offer your pledge cards at the altar rail and/or your ministry opportunity interest forms. We also invite you to grab a Thrivent “Live Generously” shirt on your way out of worship today. We hope you will prayerfully consider the ways in which God is calling you to support the ministry we do together in Christ’s name.
Now it’s important to say in regard to all the ministries we’ve highlighted and perhaps especially with finance and stewardship—that you don’t have to join a new ministry in order to win points with God. You don’t have to make a pledge for God to love you. You don’t have to do anything to receive the free gift of God’s love and grace. But in the midst of that freedom, we invite you to prayerfully discern how God is calling you to live into your freedom supporting God’s mission in the world and in this congregation.
Cultivating generous hearts is part of the spiritual growth we get to do. As we grow more fully into the freedom we have in Christ, we bear the fruits of the Spirit and live more generous lives. We support God’s mission in the world in whatever ways we can. And so we invite you to support the ministry we do together, and we thank you for whatever you can do.
Let us join together in thanking God for the gift of freedom we have in Christ. And let us respond to that freedom with generosity of spirit and an eagerness to live our lives as free and redeemed people, dedicated to the good news of Jesus. Thanks be to God.
Pastor Brian Rajcok | October 27, 2024 | Reformation Sunday
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