What do we have to do?

I believe that by my own understanding or strength

I cannot believe in Jesus Christ my Lord or come to him,

but instead the Holy Spirit has

called me through the gospel,

enlightened me with his gifts,

made me holy and kept me in the true faith,

 just as he calls, gathers, enlightens, and makes holy the whole Christian church on earth and

keeps it with Jesus Christ in the one common, true faith.

[Luther’s explanation of the Third Article of the Apostle’s Creed in his Small Catechism]

Dear Friends,

On Sunday, we focused on the story of Mary and Martha. For me, it raises the issue of being and doing. In some sense, this question was at the very heart of Martin Luther’s questioning of the Roman Catholic Church’s practice and teaching 500 years ago. In particular, if we frame the question as, What must I do to be saved?, the Church’s answer back then was a long list of requirements:

·         Go to confession weekly,

·         Go to Mass every week,

·         Obey the laws of the land,

·         Be a good person,

·         Accumulate merits by performing particular tasks or paying money.

If someone did these things, then they might be assured of getting to heaven when they died (or at least spend less time in an in-between place they called Purgatory). Luther called this works righteousness—it was up the individual to work they way up to God and to make oneself good enough (or holy enough) to be able to be in God’s presence after one died. I use the UP ARROW to signify this work of trying to reach God through our own efforts.

 Luther spent much of his life trying to earn this righteousness. It is said that he agonized over being worthy and sinless enough to be able to preside at Holy Communion. He would go to Confession right before presiding and would turn around and go again to Confession because he had had some kind of doubting or impure thought on the way to Mass.

During his daily devotional Bible reading, Luther eventually started noticing the verses in the Bible that talked about God’s grace. In particular, Ephesians 2:8-9:

For by grace you have been saved through faith,

and this is not your own doing;

it is the gift of God—not the result of works, so that no one may boast.

As this notion of God’s grace sunk into his heart, he realized that it was ALL GOD’S WORK that has us be saved. God became human in Jesus and taught, healed, accompanied, suffered and died so that we might know of the depth of God’s love and that whatever needed to be done for us to be made right with God has been accomplished in Jesus! (I use the DOWN ARROW to symbolize this.)

 Gehard Forde, a Lutheran theologian, posed this question in his book Justification by Faith: A Matter of Death and Life:

If there is nothing you have to do to be saved, what then shall you do?

Once we grasp that the God of the universe is for us, then we are freed to respond with lives of love. We are no longer trapped by the anxious and fear driven treadmill of Have I done enough. Instead, we can trust in God’s love and trust that the fulfilled life comes from living the way Jesus told (and tells) us to live.

So, what do we HAVE to do? Nothing.

How then shall we live?

Peace,

Pastor Phil