Mark 2,23-28. 20. Trinity -- Reformation Sunday

 Mark 2,23-28   5720

20. Sonntag nach Trinitatis 065

Dorcas (Tabitha), Lydia, and Phoebe. Faithful women

Chrysanthus and Daria, Martyrs at Rome 257

25. Oktober 2020

1. O Heavenly Father, our Providence; we yield ourselves to You and commit our souls into Your keeping, so You fill our hearts with your Holy Spirit and the good impulses He creates in us.  Amen. (Starck 13 ¶ 1) 

2. »One Sabbath Jesus was going through the grainfields, and as they made their way, His disciples began to pluck heads of grain. And the Pharisees were saying to him: „Behold, why are they doing what is not lawful on the Sabbath?“ And He answered them: „Have you never read what David did, when he was in need and was hungry, he and those who were with him: how he entered the house of God, in the time of Abiathar the high priest, and ate the bread of the Presence, which it is not lawful for any but the priests to eat, and also gave it to those who were with him?“ And He said to them: „The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. So the Son of Man is lord even of the Sabbath.“« 

3. Some of Martin Luther’s most memorable comments occurred at the dinner table. One time he told his guests in regards to Romans 1,17: „The words righteousness and righteousness of God struck my conscience like lightning. When I heard them I was exceedingly terrified. If God is righteous I thought, then He must punish. But when by God’s grace I pondered, in the tower and heated room of this building, over the words, he who through faith is righteous will live [Romans 1,17] and the righteousness of God [Romans 3,21], I soon came to the conclusion that if we, as righteous people, ought to live from faith and if the righteousness of God should contribute to the salvation of all who believe, then salvation won’t be our merit but God’s mercy. My spirit was thereby cheered. For it’s by the righteousness of God that we’re justified and saved through Christ. These words which had before terrified me now became more pleasing to me. The Holy Spirit unveiled the Scriptures for me in this tower“ (AE 54,193-4). The tower experience he is referring to here probably occurred in the Fall of 1518 as he was preparing for a second course of lectures at Wittenberg University on the Psalms. 

4. In 1543 Luther wrote: „All of Scripture … is pure Christ.… Everything is focused on this Son.… To him who has the Son Scripture is an open book; and the stronger his faith in Christ becomes, the more brightly will the light of Scripture shine for him“ (AE 15,339). Luther went from despair of righteousness to the joy of righteousness. The Scriptures hadn’t changed, only the proper understanding of them had. We see this in Mark 2. The commandment is clear: no work on the Sabbath. The Pharisees interpreted that to mean, among other prohibitions, no pulling grain from the field to eat. Jesus however interpreted it to mean such work is allowed if there is necessity for it. Jesus then harvested grain or healed on the Sabbath if there was need for it. One of my seminary professors put it this way: necessity knows no law; if something needs to be done, then let the gospel.  

5. »The Sabbath made for man, not man for the Sabbath. So the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath.« Likewise, the law was made for man, not man for the law. Earlier in his life Luther read Romans 1, 17 through the lens of the law. „If God is righteous, then He must punish“ is to interpret that text by the law. Of course Luther, and many in his day, was terrified of God because their sins needed to be paid for. That is what indulgences provided: Christ paid for the eternal punishment of your sins, but you must pay for the temporal punishment for them. Thus penance had become to be viewed this way: your good works, alms, prayers, etc. were done to pay off the temporal debt your sins have accrued. Purgatory was for anything you were still indebted to, so either pay down now or do so with thousands of years in purgatory. Either way you were paying off the temporal consequences of your sins, and that is to merit righteousness by the law. Luther saw this to be works righteousness already in 1517.  

6. Thus he writes in his 76. thesis: papal pardons [indulgences] are not able to remove the very least of venial sins, so far as guilt is concerned. And again in the 78. thesis: any pope has greater graces at his disposal [than indulgences]; to wit, the gospel. Luther points to that gospel in his 93. and 94. theses: blessed be all those prophets who say to the people of Christ: Cross, Cross! Christians are to be exhorted that they be diligent in following Christ. The gospel prevails in Christ who was crucified for us in our place as the full payment for all our sins. There is no doubt, for Christ has credited our account paid in full. We are righteous because of Christ.  

7. Righteousness is merited by Christ who gives it to us as a gift, thus righteousness is by the gospel and faith receives it. This is why Paul writes: »The righteous will live by faith« (Romans 1,17). Luther writes a wonderful paragraph about Christ in 1543: „Thanks and praise be to God in all eternity that we Christians know that Messiah is God’s one eternal Son, whom He sent into the world to take our sins upon Himself, to die for us and to vanquish death for us. Thus Isaiah 53,6.10 says very clearly: All we like sheep have gone astray … and the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all … He made Himself an offering for sin, etc. Therefore we exult and rejoice that God’s Son, the one true God together with the Father and the Holy Spirit, became man, a servant, a sinner, a worm for us; that God died, and bore our sins on the cross in His own body; that God redeemed us through His own blood“ (AE 15,343). 

8. Thus Luther preached in 1519: „Now there are three things in the holy sacrament of penance [confession]. The first is absolution. These are the words of the pastor which show, tell and proclaim to you that you are free and that your sins are forgiven you by God according to and by virtue of the words of Christ to Saint Peter [Whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven Matthew 16,19]. The second is grace, the forgiveness of sins, the peace and comfort of the conscience, as the words declare. This is why it is called a sacrament, a holy sign, because in it one hears the words externally that signify spiritual gifts within, gifts by which the heart is comforted and set at peace. The third is faith, which firmly believes that the absolution and the words of the pastor are true, by the power of Christ’s words, whatever you loose … will be loosed, etc. Everything, then, depends on this faith, which alone makes the sacraments accomplish that which they signify, and everything that the pastor says come true. For as you believe, so it is done for you“ (AE 35,11). This is the gospel that Luther and the Reformers began to restore and proclaim.  Amen.

9. Let us pray. O Lord, who pours out mercy; teach us the way of the gospel, so that we believe it to the end.  Amen.  

To God alone be the Glory 

Soli Deo Gloria

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All Scriptural quotations are translations done by The Rev. Peter A. Bauernfeind using the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia, 4. Edition © 1990 by the Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, Stuttgart, and the Novum Testamentum Graece, Nestle-Aland 28. Revised Edition © 2012 by Deutsch Bibelgesellschaft, Stuttgart. 

ELKB. Evangelisch-Lutherische Kirche in Bayern. www.bayern-evangelisch.de/www/index.php. Copyright © 2019 Evangelisch-Lutherische Kirche in Bayern. 

VELKD. Vereinigte Evangelisch-Lutherische Kirche Deutschlands. www.velkd.de. Copyright © 2020 Vereinigte Evangelisch-Lutherische Kirche Deutschlands. 

Luther, Martin. Luther’s Works, Vol. 15. Copyright © 1972 Concordia Publishing House.

Luther, Martin. Luther’s Works, Vol. 35. Copyright © 1960 Muhlenberg Press. 

  Luther, Martin. Luther’s Works, Vol. 54. Copyright © 1967 Fortress Press.