Advent Lutheran Church

"The Freedom of Accountability (Reformation Sunday)"

   Grace and peace to you from God the Creator and the Lord Jesus.  Amen.

            This morning we mark the traditional celebration of the Reformation, and we also celebrate the more-contemporary Rite of Confirmation for 21 of our young people as they say “yes” to the covenant God established with them in their baptism.  Over the last couple of weeks we’ve heard the Statements of Faith of these confirmands as they’ve stood before us and proclaimed “this I believe” in preparation for this day.  Those statements were, as they always are, compelling in their witness to God’s unconditional love for them, and moving in their own commitment to greater involvement in the church, both locally and beyond these walls.

            But I noticed something different about these particular Statements of Faith, something I hadn’t heard before.  A number of confirmands mentioned, not “confirmation,” but “conformation.”  Now, it might have been a simple spelling error, but in case it wasn’t, we should clear up the misunderstanding.

            To confirm means to verify, to validate.  To conform, on the other hand, means, according to the dictionary, “to behave in a conventional way, especially in accepting customs, traditions and prevailing opinions without question.”  Today, as we celebrate the reforming of the Christian movement, we celebrate the opposite of “conformation.”

            Actually, back in 1505 when Martin Luther entered the monastery to begin his studies to become a priest, he wanted desperately to conform.  He wanted to follow a formula that would lead to a life that would be pleasing to God.  The church of Luther’s day provided such a formula: confess your sins completely, give to the poor, perform other works of charity, thoroughly rid yourself of all impure thoughts and desires, and you stood a good chance of producing a life that God would find acceptable.

            So Luther tried.  In the monastery he attended confession with greater frequency and in greater depth than anyone else.  But he could not shake the questions: “Have I done enough?  Have I confessed everything?  Am I really forgiven?  And how will I know?”  Try as he might, he could not escape the conviction that he had fallen short of God’s requirements.  And to fall short of God’s requirements meant to fall into the hands of an angry, angry God.

            Luther could find no rest.  But finally he found hope.  And he found it in Paul’s Letter to the Romans, part of which formed our Second Lesson this morning.  In particular, Luther found comfort in these verses: “… there is no distinction, since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; they are now justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a sacrifice of atonement by his blood, effective through faith.”

            Luther realized that he was loved by God not because Luther was good enough but because God was gracious enough and loving toward his children.  Good works and obedience were important, but only as a response to God’s acceptance of Luther.  That’s the earthshaking insight that led to the reforming of the Church.

            The Holy Spirit helped Luther understand that he did not have to earn what he already possessed as a gift, and the gift was grace.  That grace led Luther into freedom.  Not what we too often mistake for freedom – an anything-goes, unbridled self-absorption – but real freedom.  We might call it the freedom of accountability.

            The freedom of accountability.  It sounds like a contradiction in terms.  But imagine the scene: A skydiver at 10,000 feet announces that she wants to be completely, totally free.  But when she steps out of the airplane she quickly discovers that the law of gravity has become the most compelling reality in her life; and it’s only when she embraces her life-giving parachute that she can begin to experience the exhilaration of her freedom.

            The grace of God that comes to us as Jesus Christ – that’s the parachute.  And when we embrace that grace, we too experience freedom.  Again, not a false, unlimited self-satisfaction but the freedom to live uniquely as God’s children in this world, accountable to his grace.

            We heard of that radical freedom in the Statements of Faith by our confirmands.  Consider this young woman’s testimony:  “I was born and raised in Johnson County and as I have grown up the people around me are always in fancy clothes or really pretty, so I myself want to look at least a little prettier so I do not look awful compared to them.  But as I have grown up, and even right now, I am realizing that I do not have to have fancy clothes or look really pretty to be seen or heard; I just have to be myself because God wants me to be myself even if I sometimes feel insecure about that.  It is a process of realizing that fancy clothes and looking pretty will not always get you stuff in the future as an adult and knowing that God loves me no matter what I look like because he loves me for who I am, not what I look like or wear.”

            That is a 9^th-grade girl’s declaration of freedom.  We heard similar words of freedom ring through the statement of a young woman who experienced grace in the midst of the chaos of a New Year’s Eve party.  As the party swirled around her, she heard God speak personally to her:  “‘Do you know how much I love you?  I have always loved you and will be here for you no matter what.’”  Her statement continued:  “Whether it would have been a booming voice or nothing but a whisper, I knew that he had found me!  I had found what I was looking for; I found love and everything more.  I knew that there could be no going back to how things used to be. I was a new person with faith that could guide me along a long and enduring journey.  I was another person transformed by the power of God.”

            Scripture shows us, and the life of Jesus makes it even more clear, that we live with two profound realities, unequal in their depths: the reality of human brokenness which we call sin; and the greater, deeper reality of God’s grace revealed in Jesus Christ.  When we fall short of God’s desires for us and of his expectations of us; when we fail to live in ways that honor God, we embrace the stronger reality of grace – the power of God to forgive, to restore, to make new.  That’s the grace that these young people will say “yes” to this morning in the Rite of Confirmation.

            But saying “yes” to grace is something that each of us can do each morning.  It can be as simple as a prayer like, “Lord, as I begin this day I embrace my baptism.”  And when we do that we open ourselves to a power and strength unlike anything we have ever known, a power and strength we surely cannot give ourselves.  It is the power to not become sucked into the values of this world or to be shaped by popular culture; but instead to stand on a foundation that does not shift from circumstance to circumstance, and from that foundation to speak up and act up for God in this world.  To live like that is to be accountable to God’s grace.

            It’s that accountability that encouraged members of this congregation to step up over the last few weeks and commit to sponsoring 70 children born into extreme poverty in the Dominican Republic.  Those are 70 lives that will be changed forever.  The grace of God propels us out into the world, bold with the conviction that our lives are not our own but are gifts to be used in the service of others, as God directs us.

            I encourage you this morning, now, to revisit your own baptism.  Certainly you can’t remember the event, but you can envision the water being poured, you can see the heavens opened, you can hear the voice of God say directly to you, “This is my child, the beloved; with this one I am already well pleased.”

            You see, you are not who people say you are.  You are not even who you say you are.  You are who God has made you, his very own beloved child, and nothing that you have ever done or ever will do will be able to separate you from the love he has for you in Jesus Christ.

            So students, may God bless your confirmation this morning.  And may all of us grow up more and more into the likeness of the one who has saved us, and who calls us every day to live in the radical freedom of accountability to the grace of God.  Amen.