As I have mentioned many times before, I grew up Lutheran. Leaving the Lutheran church to go to a Covenant Seminary and join the ministerium of the Covenant Church was not an easy decision, nor was it one I took lightly. People have asked me why I left the Lutheran church and I have had to explain that it was not a repudiation of Lutheran theology. I believe much the same as I did when I was Lutheran. It was not a repudiation of Lutheran worship, either, at least mostly.
My deep dark secret is that I love Lutheran liturgy. When you listen to what is being said through the worship, the praise of God, the confession of sins, the statement of belief; there is power there. I love the fact that on a weekly basis, in the Lutheran liturgy, we are asked to confess our sins in a group and we are reminded of God’s love and forgiveness, and we are encouraged to turn from those sins. This is something that I feel is lacking in much contemporary worship, and in many non-liturgical settings.
And yet I always felt that people were rattling off the words of the liturgy and saying what it said without allowing the words to truly mean anything to them and inhabit them. This is not a problem that is only found in liturgical settings, though. It is just as possible and just as much a problem in contemporary worship; that we have great worship songs with powerful meaning and powerful words, and the people never allow themselves to connect with what they are saying.
No, the real reason I left the Lutheran church and joined the Covenant was that in Covenant theology and in Covenant practice I found a more real connection to the Lutheran theology and practice that I loved, and I found a separation from some of the dangers that I saw inherent in Lutheran theology and practice.
One of the dangers that I saw in Lutheran practice is a danger that is found in many faiths. It is the danger of believing that you can inherit your Christian faith; that it can be handed down from father to son, from mother to daughter. But we believe that faith is something that you need to have for yourself. It is a personal, not private but personal, relationship with God through his Son, Jesus. Lutheran theology says the same thing, and yet growing up I found people believing that their faith was something they inherited from their parents, something that was more a part of their culture than a part of them. And I found this sad and difficult.
I. Preaching to the Jews
A couple weeks ago I talked about how the gospel message had to be spoken in the language of the people hearing it. I shared the story of Paul preaching in Athens and using the very idols that he despised to bring the people of Athens to a place where they could hear about the God who created the whole world. Paul spoke in the language of the people to bring them to an understanding of the gospel. When Paul shared the gospel with the Greeks he needed to use things that mattered to them and talk a language that made sense to them. He couldn’t start with where he wanted them to be, he needed to start with where they were and allow them to be moved to where they needed to go.
Preaching to the Greeks can be difficult, and yet it can sometimes even be more difficult to preach to the Jews. You see, sometimes we need to preach to the religious. Sometimes we need to tell the people that are going through the motions that they need something more. Sometimes we need to remind each other that going to church is not enough, that faith isn’t something that you’ve inherited but rather something that needs to grab you and hold you and change you. Sometimes we need to reach out to the church-goers and tell them that there is something more.
This is the message that Jesus found himself having to share again and again. You see, Paul reached out to the heathens to tell them of the gospel, but Jesus was reaching out to the faithful, and Jesus often found that this was even more difficult. Jesus discovered that the sinners and the outcast found it easier to repent because they were better able to see their own sins. But the religious people, the ones who did their best to follow the commandments thought they were going the right way. And in today’s scripture we see Jesus bluntly challenge them on this. He goes farther after where we quit reading. He actually refers to them as children of the devil, though they believe that they are children of Abraham.
II. Children of Abraham
The religious people that Jesus is talking to believe that their ancestry gives them what they need. They believe that the faith of their fathers and mothers and great grandfathers and great great grandmothers will earn them salvation. They believe that because they are descended from Abraham, because of what their forefathers, the patriarchs, did, they are freed from sins. This is not a Biblical understanding of the world that they have. It does not fit with reality. Throughout the Old Testament God is always, again and again, calling his people back to him and hoping that they will learn to follow him on their own instead of relying on the faith that has gone before. And yet the people seemed to never truly get this message.
And here, in today’s scripture, Jesus tells us that we are called not just to be descendants of the faithful or children of Abraham, but his disciples. And Jesus tells us how to be his disciples as well, and it isn’t necessarily what we’d expect. “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth and the truth will set you free.”
If we hold to Jesus’ teachings, if we follow what it is that he calls us to do, how it is that he calls us to live, then we will know the truth and be his disciples. And if we know the truth we will be set free.
It is interesting what the response to this is by the faithful. Their response was that they were children of Abraham. They were already free. They hadn’t ever been slaves and they didn’t need to be set free. This, to me, epitomizes the false security held by many who are religious, who are comfortable, who have accepted their faith without question from their parents and grandparents. I am a Christian; I am the child of a Christian; I grew up going to church; I don’t need to be saved from anything.
Don’t misunderstand me here. I’m not putting this on Lutherans. I know people of every stripe and every faith who allow their faith to be cultural, allow it to seep down to them from their parents, who never make their faith their own. One thing that shocked me was when I discovered that this wasn’t only true of Christians, but of other religions as well.
We have heard so much about militant Muslims in the last years that we don’t always realize that there are also cultural Muslims. When I lived in Chicago and worked with developmentally disabled adults, we had a large group of men and women from Nigeria who worked for us. Many of them were Muslim. And yet they did not follow their faith terribly well. I heard about their parties, and I know they ignored the command to avoid alcohol that the Muslim faith requires. And I remember talking with one lady who had just completed Hajj, her trip to Mecca that is required of every Muslim at least once in their life, if at all possible. I was asking her what the experience was like and it didn’t seem to be much of a religious experience for her, rather a social and cultural one. I asked her how serious about her faith she was and she said she was pretty committed to it, “but if I found a good Christian man, I’d convert to Christianity so that I could marry him.” She was just one example of a whole group who were Muslim because that was what they were raised to be and not because that was what they necessarily believed. And I realized that there are many of all faiths and religions that go to church and go through the motions not because they believe, but because it is what is culturally expected of them, because it is what is easiest. They believe that because of what their parents and grandparents believed, they need to believe the same thing in the same way and thus they are saved.
III. Set Free
But Jesus has a different message: a message that tells us that being the children of Christians is not enough; a message that tells us that we cannot inherit salvation. Jesus tells us that we are all slaves. Unfortunately, this is what we have inherited from Adam and Eve. And we cannot blame this only on inheritance, either, for we each have sinned and therefore are slaves to sin. But we don’t need to live as slaves. If we follow Jesus’ teachings we will be his disciples and we will know the truth and the truth will set us free.
I find it kind of ironic that I am preaching about this today on Mothers’ Day. Mothers’ Day is the day we remember the mothers who have gone before us, and for many of us it is our mothers who so aptly and strongly encouraged us in the faith. And here I am, saying that this is not enough. Here I am saying that relying on our mother’s faith is not going to get us anywhere, that we need our own faith.
But I think that what I am saying this morning, what Jesus says in today’s scripture, actually does honor our mothers and the faith that they have brought us. You see, those who have gone before us don’t want us to just follow their faith blindly. They don’t want us to inherit a faith that is not our own. Rather they want us to make the faith that they brought us up in our own. They want to give us the chance to own it for ourselves, to accept it and believe it and live it in our lives. When we do this, when we allow the faith to inhabit our lives completely, then we discover that we too are Jesus’ disciples and we are living the life he called us to. And as the truth has set our mothers free it can set us free as well. Amen.
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