Sunday, October 29, 2017

This Story is About Jesus - Romans 3:19-28


October 29, 2017
Commemoration of the 500th Anniversary of the Reformation
Zion Lutheran Church – Mission Valley, TX
Rev. Jonathan F. Meyer, Pastor



This Story Is About Jesus– Romans 3:19-28

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.



He was a contractor who was hired to do some work at the church. Let’s call him Carl[1]. Carl the AC tech. Carl was working on Monday – my day off – so when I met him at church, I told him I was in the middle of something at home.  I would go home and leave him to do his job and then he could call me when he was finished. 
Four or five hours later, he called and said the job was done; could I come back up to the church and inspect his work and sign off on his work order. So, I brushed the dust off my grubby clothes, wiped the sweat off of my unshaven face and, without changing my shirt, drove up to church. When I got up to the church I discovered he was equally dirty and sweaty – crawling around in a hot attic will do that to you. Carl started explaining what the problem was, what he did to correct and fix it, and then what we needed to do to keep our units functioning better down the road.

As Carl was packing up his tools, he said, “You know…this is the first time I’ve been in a church since I was a kid and went to church with Grannie.” He went on to tell me about Grannie’s love of Jesus, her example of the Christian life to him as a boy, how she read – and wore out – her Bible, and how he used to love to go to church with her to hear her sing next to him. But, as Carl grew up and set out on his own as a young man, he started down a path of living that filled him with regret as he got older. As he described to me his wild lifestyle, I think he hit all of the Ten Commandments to greater and lesser degrees, with a few of them being more thoroughly broken than others, let’s say. Through his narrative, he attitude was contrite; his words were filled with remorse; and his body showed the guilt that the words just couldn’t convey. To cap it all off, he was convinced he was a disappointment to Grannie. “I just wish I could be as good a Christian as Grannie,” he said.

Carl was a prisoner of his sins, convicted by the Law of God. The Law demands holiness. The Law demands perfection. The Law offers neither excuse nor options. If you are not holy, if you are not perfect, you are in opposition to the will of God. And, to those who break God’s Law, the Law stands in full accusatory power, and much like the old Uncle Sam glaring over his pointing finger, points straight at you. The Law condemns, damns, and leaves the sinner terrifyingly alone in the world with nothing to hold onto but his sins and the conscience that condemns.

Carl knew this: he was living it. He didn’t need me to preach it. He knew he was far from God’s command to be holy. He knew he was guilty of that long, laundry list of sins he committed against God, his neighbor, and even against his own conscience. The Law, with all of it’s Divine weight, was crushing this man to the core. Despondent of his sins, terrified of God’s wrath, completely broken by his past lifestyle, and over-loaded with guilt upon guilt, he began to cry. “I can’t fix what I did. I can’t forgive myself. I don’t know what to do anymore,” he said. “I’ll never be as good of a Christian as Grannie..."

As we stood there, I was seeing Jesus’ parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector being partially played out in real life. Here, standing in front of me, was Jesus’ tax collector in the form of an HVAC tech. He couldn’t look up; he stood with his back towards the altar and the cross above it. So, standing there in my sweaty, dusty, dirty shorts and T-shirt, covered in cobwebs, smelling of grass clippings, sawdust and sweat, there was only one thing for me to do.  I told him the message that he used to hear when he was a boy sitting next to Grannie in church. I told him about Jesus.

“Carl, you’ve spent the last decade of your life living outside God’s Law. You have broken God’s Law. And, when the Law is broken, we are to be punished under the Law. We deserve God’s wrath. You know this – the guilt you feel, the sorrow you expressed, the pain in your voice tells me that you recognize you have sinned and you are far from being righteous in God’s eyes. This is true of all of us – you, me, even your Grannie.

“Thank God, He has troubled your conscience with the Law so that you might hear and believe that Someone did something about this problem. God – who is slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love – chose instead to send Jesus into the world to be your Savior. Jesus Christ, who truly was perfect, holy and without sin, was perfectly righteous for you. Jesus took your sins into himself and carried all of them to the cross, this sinless man who was made to die the sinner’s death. At the cross – I gently turned him, pointed to the cross on the wall, and waited for him to look at it – Jesus took your place. Your unrighteousness because His; His righteousness became yours. While, yes, you are a sinner, you have an even greater Savior. His blood was shed for you and covers all of your sins, so that when God look at you, he no longer sees a sin-stained person who deserves condemnation; He sees a beloved son whose sins have been covered by Jesus’ blood. That’s what propitiation means, by the way – blood covering. You have been blood-bought and blood-covered by Jesus. Your sins – and I repeated a few of them for him – all of these sins have been covered by the blood of Jesus. You have done nothing to deserve this; it is all out of God’s Fatherly divine mercy and Jesus’ love for you., This gift is yours, received by faith in Jesus as your Savior. Your Grannie taught you this.

“You know and believe Jesus died for you.” He nodded. “Carl, you have confessed your sins to me. This isn’t about you forgiving yourself. This is about Jesus forgiving you. So that you might know this and believe this…” And, there, in the sanctuary, vested not in alb and stole, but in ratty shorts and a stained T-shirt, I lifted my dirty hands and with my thumb, traced the sign of the cross into the dirt on his forehead as I said, “As a called and ordained servant of Christ, I announce the grace of God unto you, and by the command of Jesus Christ I forgive all of your sins, in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

“You said you want to be as good a Christian as Grannie. Do you know what a “Good Christian” is? A good Christian is someone who knows they are a sinner but they have an even greater Savior. A good Christian trusts the baptismal promise given them by God in Water and Word even when they fall far short of the glory of God. A good Christian comes to the Lord’s Supper – knowing they are unworthy in and of themselves; but worthy in the baptismal washing of Jesus – to receive the medicine for the soul. A good Christian trusts Jesus promises that their sins have been taken away and, even though they wrestle with temptation and falling into sin this side of heaven, they know their eternal reward in the resurrection is certain because Jesus opened the tomb on Easter morning. It’s not about being a “better” Christian – as if you were a fine wine, getting better with age - it’s about being a faithful one. If you want to be a good Christian, Carl, like Grannie, then be faithful, and live in the merciful forgiveness of Christ.

“Now, depart in peace, Carl. Your sins have been forgiven.”



Today is the 500th anniversary of the Reformation and I hope you notice that, so far, I haven’t even mentioned Martin Luther at all from the pulpit. There’s a good reason for that. The Reformation isn’t about Luther, or me or Carl either, for that matter. Author Chad Bird says, “The Reformation is not about 95 theses nailed to the door; it’s about one Man nailed to the cross.[2]” 
Jesus died for sinners like me. In this true story, Carl received what Luther discovered: Jesus died for sinners like him. I have told you this story, today, so that you may know that Jesus died for sinners like you, too.  In Christ, you have the freedom of the Gospel from sin and a guilty conscience. This is what the Church is called to do: preach Christ and Him crucified for the sins of the world; that in Him is forgiveness for our sins.

That’s what the Reformation is about, even 500 years later. It’s not about Luther. It’s still about Jesus.


[1] The name is changed, and the story is conflated to protect a confidence, but the conversation took place as indicated.
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