October 26, 2025
Pastor Russ Norris

Reformation Sunday – Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.  Amen.

So, who would have thought the biggest news story last week was that two guys shook hands and had a prayer together.  Of course, one of them was the pope and the other was the king of England.  And the reporters went wild!  One said, it was the first time anything like that had happened in 500 years!  Another said it was the first time since the Reformation!  And they were both right.  It was the first time in 500 years and it was the first time since the Reformation.  How appropriate, then, that this Sunday will be celebrated by churches all around the world as Reformation Sunday.

 And the gospel reading for this day couldn’t more appropriate: “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector.  The Pharisee, standing by himself, was praying like this: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector.  I fast twice a week, I give a tenth of all my income.’  But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even look up to heaven, but was beating his breast and saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner’.”  And Jesus says, “I tell you; this man went down to his home justified rather than the other.”

I couldn’t have picked a better gospel for this Sunday if I tried.  In fact, I would submit to you that the entire Protestant Reformation, in Europe and in England, was just an extended conversation about the meaning of this parable.  This is the heart of the Reformation.  When Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the door of the castle church in Wittenberg, this is what it was all about!

It’s right there, in thesis #1: “When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said ‘repent,’ he intended the entire life of believers to be repentance.”  In the Gospel of Mark – the very first Gospel to be written down – the very first words of Jesus are a call to repent: “Repent and believe, for the Kingdom of God is at hand”.

 That was the focus of all 95 theses – all 95 of those arguments for academic debate: this idea that we are made ‘right with God’ not by our own efforts – not by how good we are, or how religious, or how much we give to the church; but entirely by divine grace ‘through faith’.  See, in Luther’s time, the idea of repentance had degenerated into the medieval sacrament of “penance” – especially the buying and selling of “indulgences”.  An indulgence was sort of a bribe paid to the church in return for forgiveness.  In Luther’s time, the practice had become so crass, that you could even buy forgiveness for sins you hadn’t yet committed!  Think about that!  Such a deal! 

Appealing to the original Greek New Testament, Luther argued that this wasn’t what Jesus meant by “repentance”.  The word for repentance in Greek is metanoia – to change our lives by turning from the path we’re on, and moving in a new direction.  It’s not something you can buy or sell.  It’s a gift – a gift of grace. 

 It has to be!  I mean, when you stop and think about it, most of what we do in life, we do because we want to!  Because we like it!  We enjoy it!  To repent means to stop doing what we really want to do.  And that’s tough.  Think about all those New Year’s Resolutions.  All the good intentions in the world can’t make us do what we really don’t want to do. 

There almost has to be some kind of crisis, some sort of divine intervention, to make change possible, to make that U-turn in life.  There’s an old saying that our adversity is God’s opportunity.  And it often is.  As summed up in the epitaph on a tombstone in a London churchyard:

John Newton, Clerk,
Once an infidel and libertine,
A servant of slaves in Africa,
Was, by the rich mercy of our Lord
And Savior Jesus Christ,
Preserved, restored, pardoned,
And appointed to preach the Faith
He had long labored to destroy…

Most of you, I suspect, know the story of John Newton, who was born in 1725 in London.  At the age of 11 he went to sea with his father, who was a ship captain.  Then he was drafted by the British Navy, but he deserted.  He ended up on a ship bound for Africa, where he became involved with slave traders who held him prisoner and treated him terribly.

Newton finally escaped on a ship bound for England, and along the way he began to read the Bible.  He almost perished when a storm stove in the side of the ship, which would have sunk but the cargo: beeswax and lumber!  The whole traumatic experience led to his conversion.  He quit the slave trade and studied for the ministry.  Then, for more than 40 years, he preached the Gospel.  You know him from one of the many hymns he wrote – a hymn that grew out of his own experience:

Amazing grace, how sweet the sound,
That saved a wretch like me!
I once was lost, but now am found;
Was blind, but now I see.

Amazing grace.  Author Philip Yancey tells the story of a conference on comparative religions where experts from around the world were debating what belief was unique to the Christian faith.  I think this conference must have been at Oxford in the 1930’s or 40’s, because C. S. Lewis happened to walk into the room during the discussion.  He asked what it was all about, and when told it was about the unique contribution of Christianity among all the world’s religions, Lewis said, “Oh, that’s easy!  It’s grace!”

It’s grace!  No other religion puts such a focus on grace.  Human beings are naturally drawn to the idea that you get what you pay for in life.  Because that’s the way the world works.  Like the Pharisee: “God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector.  I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income.” 

 But grace – grace is different.  Grace is the unmerited, undeserved love of God.  Unconditional love!  It’s kind of hard concept to wrap your mind around.  In the words of (believe it or not) Bono, the lead singer of U2, “Grace defies reason and logic.  Love interrupts, if you will, the consequences of our actions.”  Love interrupts the consequences of our actions!  Bono!  Who knew?  Well, maybe the tax collector.  “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!”

This is the heart of the Reformation: There is no forgiveness without genuine repentance.  On the other hand, there is no real repentance until we first come to know the mercy and forgiveness of God.  What we sometimes experience as the wrath of God may only be the footsteps of that great Hound of Heaven, who pursues us down the corridors of time, not in judgment, but in love. 

 I like what Bono says about grace.  It interrupts the consequences of our actions.  It turns us in a new direction, a new path in life.  Some of you may be familiar with David Begnaud, who tells those heartwarming stories for CBS News.  Last week David told the story of a white man who was robbed at gunpoint by a black man, who shot him in the leg and ran away.  The robber was quickly caught by police and sent to prison.  After several years, when the opportunity for parole came up, the white man went to the hearing arguing against it.

When he got home, his wife confronted him with a question: “Are you sure you did the right thing?”  The question gnawed at him.  So did his faith.  He had been called to be a deacon in the Catholic Church.  And he struggled with what Jesus would want him to do.

Finally, he contacted the parole board and offered to work with the man who shot him if he were released.  And he was.  Over time, the two men became close friends, and eventually started a program together working with incarcerated prisoners, to help them rehabilitate, learn a skill, and ultimately become productive members of society.  The two men appeared together with David Begnaud and talked about how their experience had really changed both their lives.  And made them really close friends.

That’s grace.  It interrupts the consequences of our actions and turns our lives in a new direction.  Turn us again, O Lord, that we might walk in your love. 

Amen.