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Showing posts with the label Reformation Day

Sermon - Trinity IX, 2026 - Luke 16:1-13

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The Parable of the Unjust Steward , Marinus van Reymerswaele, 1540 Christian Wisdom Seeks Eternal Dwellings Wisdom is forward thinking and focused on the goal Christian wisdom employs every treasure, heavenly and worldly, for the sake of reaching the goal If there is a hardest parable, it might be this one; throws people off every time. The parable presents a rich man with a steward who was found wasting the rich man’s possessions. The job of a steward is to be faithful with someone else’s possessions, and this guy wasn’t cutting it. So obviously, he got fired. What’s crazy is the rich man lets the steward hand in the books, and he doesn’t hunt them down and take them from him immediately. The steward does exactly what you don’t want the steward to do, which is why normally the books get taken from the steward: the steward cooks the books. He meets some of the rich man’s debtors, probably tenant farmers, and in order to ingratiate himself with the debtors he adjusts how much they owe, ...
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Sermon - Reformation Day 2025 - Matthew 11:12-19

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Luther Before the Diet of Worms , Anton von Werner, 1877 Be wise before this generation The Reformation is about the bravery to confess the Gospel before this violent generation The issue of the Reformation was Justification The issues today are our own, but we must wisely be brave to confess the Gospel before this violent generation A blessed feast of the Reformation to you, dear christians! Properly understood, this can be a phenomenal holiday, delightfully encouraging and immensely insightful for our modern era. To some Reformation Day is merely a celebration in German culture like a Luther Oktoberfest, which is fine, I love German stuff, my ancestry is mostly German, but that misses the point of this holiday. It’s fine to drink beer, wear lederhosen, and eat bratwurst and sauerkraut, in fact it’s good fun and I think it’d very pleasant if we did that kind of thing more. But Reformation Day is not just a German thing, rather it’s more broadly a Christian thing. The Reformation is ab...
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Sermon - Reformation Day 2023 - Matthew 11:12-19

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Triumph of Faith - Christian Martyrs in the Time of Nero , Eugene Thirion, 19th Century Faithfulness in our own day Reformation Day isn’t about the past, but about our own unique battles The spirit of the age is like children calling out for this or that We are called to faithfulness, against the spirit of the age, by being faithful to the Word of God God promises to preserve His church through His Word, against the world’s violence Why are we celebrating Reformation Day today? Is today just about a historical lesson? Or maybe today is all about Lutheran pride, that we beat the pope and we’re not Roman Catholics, is that it? Or perhaps today is about celebrating that God has preserved the truth of the Gospel, that we are saved by grace alone through faith in Christ alone, as revealed in the scriptures alone? Well, that is part of it. This is why our hymn of the day is Salvation Unto us Has Come , and we’re singing some of the stanzas before the sermon and some after. Indeed, it’s worth...
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Sermon - Reformation Day 2022 - Romans 3:19-28

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Crucifixion,  Pietro Perugino, ~1506 The Righteousness of Faith The world demands righteousness by works. Christ reckons us righteous on account of His blood as a gift. Therefore we receive Christ’s righteousness through faith. A blessed festival of the Reformation to you dear friends in Christ! Sometimes Reformation Day gets equated with little more than a day to celebrate German culture, which is a fine thing to do; sometimes it gets equated with celebrating Martin Luther, which is okay. But today isn’t about anything so small as German culture or Martin Luther, rather today is about the gospel, it’s about justification, it’s about the righteousness of faith in Christ! In Luther’s day, and still today, the world demands righteousness by works. But today we rejoice that Christ reckons us righteous on account of His blood, as a gift. We therefore receive Christ’s righteousness not by works, but through faith. Indeed, the world does in fact demand righteousness by works. We live in ...
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Sermon - Reformation Day 2021 - Matthew 11:12-19

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Saint John the Baptist in Prison Visited by Two Disciples , Giovanni di Paolo, 1460 Before we reach the joys of paradise, we must first endure the violence of reformation. Tomorrow is the feast of All Saints, and we’ll observe it next Sunday. All Saints Day is a happy, joyful, glorious, comforting day in which we rejoice with all the saints who are in heaven waiting for the resurrection! We sing those tear-jerking hymns, like For All the Saints and Behold a Host! It’s a great day!  But before we can get to All Saints Day we have to go through Reformation Day. Skipping Reformation Day and going straight to All Saints is like sleeping 364 days and waking up on New Year’s Eve to celebrate the close of the past year and the coming of the new year; it makes for an empty celebration if you didn’t actually experience the past year with all of its ups and downs. Don’t get me wrong, Reformation Day is joyful and celebratory! It acknowledges the victory of the eternal Gospel over sin and dea...
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Sermon - Reformation Day 2020 - Hymn Meditation: Salvation unto Us Has Come

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Stanzas 1-4 1 Salvation unto us has come By God's free grace and favor; Good works cannot avert our doom, They help and save us never. Faith looks to Jesus Christ alone, Who did for all the world atone; He is our one Redeemer. 2 What God did in His Law demand And none to Him could render Caused wrath and woe on ev'ry hand For man, the vile offender. Our flesh has not those pure desires The spirit of the Law requires, And lost is our condition. 3 It was a false, misleading dream That God His Law had given That sinners could themselves redeem And by their works gain heaven. The Law is but a mirror bright To bring the inbred sin to light That lurks within our nature. 4 From sin our flesh could not abstain, Sin held its sway unceasing; The task was useless and in vain, Our guilt was e'er increasing. None can remove sin's poisoned dart Or purify our guileful heart-- So deep is our corruption. Homily 1: The central message of the Lutheran Reformation, both 503 years ago and t...
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