Homily | 🔨 Happy Reformation Day

Reformation Sunday

Readings of the day: Revelation 14:6–7 | Psalm 46 | Romans 3:19–28 | John 8:31–36

Happy Schism Day, everyone!

Reformation Sunday is a strange holiday. We’re celebrating a church split. We sing “A Mighty Fortress” with gusto. If the spirit really catches you, maybe you’ll go home and eat some German food (because, as you know, theological revolution always goes down better with bratwurst).

But here’s what we’re really celebrating today: Luther had the nerve to look at the religious system of his day (the indulgences, the merit-keeping, the “do this (or PAY this) and God might love you”) and said, “This is garbage.” (Well, he used stronger language, but we have kids in our midst here:))

And thank God for Luther. Because I know the damage that bad theology can do. What I picked up from my early religious teachers is that god was angry and distant. God was a Father who felt dangerous. I could never really get close to that idea of god. So, when I could, I walked away from the church for a very long time.

Eventually I found myself in a Lutheran church. Same liturgy I grew up with, same Catholic bones. But the theology was Grace instead of guilt.

I eventually learned that one of Lutheran theology’s key teachings is “forensic justification.” It sounds like we’re in a crime scene, I know. Or on the set of CSI. But what it means is, God justifies us like a judge in a courtroom. This theological construct says: we’re guilty, but God looks at Jesus’ perfect record instead of ours and declares us “not guilty.” All of this theology takes place in a courtroom setting.

This is such a relief if you grew up in a religion of merit—where you were taught you had to earn your way into heaven. But something bothered me about even this and I couldn’t put words to what it was until recently:

If God just declares me righteous but my life is still a wreck... If I still put up walls between myself and the people I love... If I’m still just as afraid, just as self-protective, just as turned-in-on-myself... Isn’t that verdict... hollow?

I walk out of that courtroom the same person who walked in. I mean, maybe I’m a little more relaxed, which is nice. But the only thing that ultimately changed was God’s record-keeping.

But underneath it all... In this courtroom of faith... The deepest problem is that I still feel separated from God. Like he comes out, bangs his gavel, declares me not guilty, then slinks back into his chambers. God remains distant and I remain the same.

Forensic justification doesn’t close the gap between me and God. It just gives me a legal work-around. We’re just legally okay with each other.

That’s seems more like divine probation. Not the gospel.

Luther unleashed something he couldn’t fully control: a reforming spirit that won’t stop reforming, even the Reformation itself. Luther was just carrying on the same reforming spirit that Jesus unleashed in his table-flipping, Sabbath-breaking, outcast-befriending, temple sacrifice-defying, cross-hanging ministry.

So, if we’re re-forming here (thank you, Luther), let’s pose the question... What if the courtroom is the wrong room altogether?

The passage from Romans that we read today changed Luther’s entire paradigm. Look at verse 22. The new updated edition of the NRSV translation finally gets it right: “The righteousness of God through the faithfulness OF Jesus Christ.” Not our faith IN Jesus, but Jesus’s own faithfulness for us. We’re not saved by our faith in Christ. We’re saved by Christ’s faithfulness in us. We have no control over this. This is the heart of Lutheran theology.

This is no abstraction. Christ’s faithfulness is concrete: his going to the cross, his self-giving love that refused to meet violence with violence, his “Father, forgive them” while nails pierced his hands. His going all the way down into death showing that nothing in human experience is outside God’s reach. Even death itself.

When Paul says we’re “in Christ” (and he used this phrase a TON) he means IN. United. Joined. We are in Christ, like the tide is in the ocean, like light is in the sunrise.

This means that the separation we feel (and we all do)... It’s not real. It never was. You were never cut off from God. Sin is living as if the separation is real when it never was. Sin is forgetting the truth and living from separation, fear, and therefore self-obsession, self-protection, becoming a Dodger fan, etc. The stuff we tend to build courtrooms around. Sin is false thinking that lies and says we are independent from God’s movement. Alone outside the garden. Cast out. This is symbolized in the creation poem in Genesis.

We all deal with this as humans. But it’s not the truth. And as Jesus says, the truth will make us free. It is impossible to exist outside the active love that finds its source in the God of the Universe who puts on flesh in Jesus.

This is what Jeremiah was talking about: “I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts.” God doesn’t just give you a new legal status.

God wrote Christ’s faithfulness into your heart when you were knit into your mother’s womb. His self-giving love is the love that flows through you, even on your worst day. You don’t achieve this union by trying really hard. It’s there already. All we can do is awaken to this Truth. Or stay asleep to it. Usually, we go back and forth. But my job is to be your reminder-in-chief. And when you remember... Even though you know how loved you are... It doesn’t leave you as you were... It changes you into who you were designed to be. Beloved. Free. In love with your life, your God, your neighbor, and all of creation.

This Truth is the current you feel pulling at you when you try to swim against it. Anyone who’s been in the ocean here knows: you don’t fight a current. People like me from the Central Valley don’t know this. We show up thinking the ocean is just a really big pool, get caught in a rip tide, panic like cartoon characters, and (if we’re lucky) end up on the evening news being rescued by a teenager on a paddleboard while tourists film the whole thing.

God’s grace is like that… An eternal current stronger than your finite resistance, carrying you toward love.

That’s what Luther calls “justification.” And I think it goes further than just a legal declaration. It points toward divine participation. The light of Christ flooding in, making you who you already are as God crafted you.

This is what God’s love looks like… Not a courtroom verdict, but an eternal relationship that follows us through death itself. This love looks like Jesus nailing himself against every locked door in your heart until it bursts open and you find yourself fully free in the waters of your baptism, which was always God saying: you belong to me. You always have. Always will.

This is the gospel. Not a courtroom acquittal that leaves you unchanged, but a divine current of love so strong it carries you—whether you’re kicking and screaming or finally floating in it—into the life you were always meant for. Your life. Right as it is. Right now.

The doors are bursting open. And you are God’s window. Maybe a little cracked or weathered, sure. But the light is always flooding in.

And it’s bigger… And so much brighter… Than Luther ever dreamed.

And so it is. Amen.