Day of the Church Year: Reformation Sunday
Scripture Passage: John 8:31-38
In the 15 years I have served as a pastor, I have been hesitant to encourage people to tell the truth. Perhaps you think this strange because, of course, people who value integrity generally consider truth telling a key strategy for integrity. I do. But telling the truth, knowing the truth, hearing the truth can be quite hard, and sometimes, we don’t want to live with the consequences of the truth. There is practical truth: this happened, he said this, she said this, on this day and time. Especially in this present moment, when we gather such truth from social media and news articles and opinion pieces—whose rigor in verifying information varies, shall we say, this type of truth can be difficult to discern. There is scientific truth: over the course of decades or even centuries, we come to learn through experiment and study our best understanding of the laws of the universe—and expect that, as our knowledge grows, scientific truth will change. There is emotional truth: how we feel, why we do what we do, truth that changes sometimes moment to moment. There is theological truth: who and what God is, truth that is deep and wide, truth we cannot fully comprehend. Telling the truth, knowing the truth, hearing the truth seems simple, but so many of us don’t like hearing the truth if the truth doesn’t square with the story we’ve been telling ourselves—about our childhoods, about why we made the choices we did, about whose fault or responsibility something really is. Most of us would probably defend not telling the truth if it involves information we believe would hurt other people. Instead, we tell so-called white lies to avoid hurting others, because we assume others can’t handle the truth, or maybe just because we don’t want to be uncomfortable. We may even avoid certain truths and keep them hidden long-term, afraid of what would happen if we spoke of them.
Years ago, I sat with a large family at a long table in a restaurant on a day of celebration. The men in the family sat at one end of the table, the women at the other. Gathered at my end of the table were several sisters, all in their late 40s to early 60s, along with their daughters. I don’t recall what started the conversation, but at one point, one of the sisters commented about how their father had assaulted her. And one by one, these women turned to each other saying: You too? Yeah, me too. You were assaulted? I watched and listened in awe as these sisters spoke the truth they had been silently carrying with them since their childhood, three or four or even five decades before. They had never spoken of these offenses before, even to each other, until that moment. Each of these sisters knew the truth of her own assault, but until they shared it, none of these sisters knew the larger truth: that the assault was not their fault, that their father’s actions could not take away their dignity, that they did not deserve or in any way provoke such acts. Most of all, telling the truth revealed to them that, all along, they had not been alone.
Truth is tricky. In the case of this family, telling the truth about the acts of their father brought deeper connection and freedom to these women, but of course, we could probably all tell stories of truth told awry. How and when we tell, the reason we tell, who we tell...these are not insignificant details. Thus, why I have hesitated encouraging people to tell the truth.
Yet every Reformation Sunday, we hear Jesus’ words from the gospel of John: If you continue in my word, you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free. Jesus shares these words with the Jewish leaders, and they are flummoxed. They quite humorously respond: We are descendants of Abraham and have never been slaves to anyone. What do you mean by saying, ‘You will be made free’?” Remember that the Jewish people were literally enslaved by the Pharaoh of Egypt for 400 years during the time of the biblical book Exodus, and the Jewish people were held captive hundreds of years later by the Babylonians. Responding to Jesus this way, it seems that the Jewish leaders no longer spoke amongst themselves of these difficult eras in their common history. Perhaps they didn’t want to remember the shame of their ancestors’ enslavement even though it was no fault of their ancestors. Perhaps speaking of themselves as descendants of slaves didn’t square with the stories they told themselves about who they were. Perhaps they felt uneasy about how the ancient Jewish people began intermarrying with the enemy Babylonians, so they avoided the subject altogether. Whatever their reason, the Jewish leaders apparently don’t recall that their ancestors had indeed been enslaved, and Jesus implies that they still are--enslaved. For they don’t remember their enslavement—or how God freed them in the Exodus and comforted them at the end of the Babylonian Exile. The truth, no matter how complex, Jesus says, makes you free.
In 1517 when Martin Luther posted his 95 Theses on the door of the Wittenberg castle church, he had decided to tell the truth. As a monk in the Roman Catholic Church, Luther had devoted himself to the traditions of the church, to the scriptures, to the pope. Perhaps we imagine Luther a gleeful reformer, joyously pointing out the indiscretions of his colleagues and superiors, proclaiming the truth of corruption with full confidence. That would come later, actually; Luther became quite verbose and vivid in his critique of the Roman Catholic Church. But prior to 1517, Luther was sad. He couldn’t make sense of his church telling lies in order to exploit the common people of Germany, in order to make money for the building of St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. The truth Luther uncovered in a sadly corrupt church brought freedom for him—to praise God for God’s grace in his sins, to preach and lead worship and read Scripture in German, instead of in Latin, to sing God’s praise joyously in hymnody, to serve God’s people humbly. Luther’s discovery of the truth of God’s grace freed the people too, the people who had been enslaved to notions of purgatory and indulgences, people who had feared eternal damnation if they failed in their religious requirements, people who trembled at the consequences of their sins. Luther’s discovery of the truth of God’s grace brought freedom even to the Roman Catholic Church itself. One part of the Reformation story we Lutherans rarely tell is that, eventually, the Roman Catholic Church went through its own reformation.
Truth is tricky. Telling the truth sometimes leads to reformation, sometimes to pain, but Jesus teaches: If you continue in my word, you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free. Thanks be to God! Amen.