The title of the story was “10 ways to be perfect.” So…any of you perfect here? Any of you sure you made the right decisions every time? Any of you able to avoid hurting others in your life so far?
If so…I’ll tell you right now…you’re in the wrong place. Perfect people …you’re fine on your own…you can just run along. Because this is a place for those of us who need grace. This is a place for those of us who may have tried our best…but know that others have paid the price for our actions along the way….whether from things we have done…or things we have left undone. This is a place for sinners… for people who are feeling lost…. for people who have been hurt and who have caused hurt. This church isn’t for religious people or good people…it’s for people who desperately need to know that God is gracious and loving.
The Lutheran church is named after a man named Martin Luther….and Martin Luther was brilliant… but, frankly, he was also a hot mess. He was riddled with anxiety and fear. He’d been bullied by the church, and seen others bullied and broken by religious leaders, threatening them with hell and damnation, demanding a standard of “perfection” that no one could attain. He constantly was tormented by thinking he wasn’t good enough…wracked with guilt by all the things he had done wrong….or imagined he had done wrong. Then one day, his mentor encouraged him to read the Bible instead of blindly trusting the church leaders…and he did…and you know what? He found Jesus. He found Jesus…who welcomed ordinary folks, people who screwed up, people who failed one another, people who were hurting like he was….and loved them and wanted only to give them forgiveness and life. Luther read the Bible and discovered grace. He found that God had grace for whatever we’re struggling with. Whatever is making us a hot mess.
We were at the National Youth Gathering a few years ago…and one of the speakers shared his story of coming out as a young teenager. He was rejected by his family…by many of his friends…and he braced himself as he told his pastor…expecting to be preached to…judged…condemned…expecting to be hurt. But his pastor only said…there’s grace for that. There’s grace for that. There’s grace …abundant…reckless… extravagant grace for all of us…whoever we are. Whatever judgment we have received. Whatever pain we have endured. The reckless love of God is for us, adoring us, just as we are. Adoring us all, as we muddle through this life together.
Life is messy. We don’t make it through without being hurt or hurting one another. No matter how hard we are trying to do the right thing. No matter how hard we try to follow those 10 ways to be perfect. Actually, Luther thought that what those rules were best at doing wasn’t making us perfect after all…but rather…they simply made us realize how much we all need grace. He wrote a catechism, explaining those commandments…it’s on pg 1160….in the back of your hymnal. And as he explained each one…he made it clear that no one could possibly keep them fully.
He starts with 1st commandment — You shall have no other gods. That sounds easy…I haven’t worshiped Baal to my recollection. But Luther says what the commandment really means is that we should fear, love and trust God above all things. All things. Oh my heavens…how often do we all fear and love and trust so many other things instead of God? What do we worry about? Care about? Be honest. Money? What other people think? Our political party? Our country? Our Personal freedom? Our family?
No other gods? We have so MANY other gods. We put so many things before God. But, there’s grace for that. There’s grace for us.
Then there’s the 2nd commandment — You shall not make wrongful use of the name of the Lord your God.. And Luther says it means we should never use God’s name to curse, swear or practice magic — lie or deceive. Huh…well, just the use of God’s name for cursing and swearing knocks a good chunk of us out. But he’s also talking about using God’s name to pray for winning games as if God is your personal genie –or claiming God is on “your” side. He’s talking about using God’s name to justify hate…claiming God loves one nation more than another…one people more than another — all of these are also blatant lies and misuses of God’s name. God’s name is twisted in our mouths every time we use it to hurt someone else…but thank God, there’s grace for that.
Or let’s look at the 5th commandment — You shall not kill. Seems like an easy one for most of us to get a pass on … .but Luther says it means we shouldn’t harm or endanger the lives of our neighbors and should help and support them in all their needs. I have to say…none of us, simply because we live in the US,..can say that we don’t harm and endanger the lives of our neighbors. Why? Because we use an outsized percentage of the world’s resources. We may feel like our economy is struggling…but most of the world cannot fathom the wealth we have and what we consume. Every cheap item I buy I know is made by some underpaid worker or child laborer in another country. It’s the way our global economy is skewed…so even though I have no intention of causing harm to my neighbors in far corners of the world…I do. I can’t help it. It is part of the fabric of life. And my taxes are going to weapons of war wielded around the world…and my garbage contributes to landfills and pollution of waters…which hurts the next generation. We are caught in a web of suffering… intertwined and causing harm to our neighbors without intending to — but thank God…there’s grace for that.
How about the 8th commandment? You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor? Luther says we it means we shouldn’t say anything about another person that would hurt them or cause damage to their reputations. In fact…we should come to their defense, speak well of them and interpret their actions in the best possible light. Huh. Basically, Luther is condemning the heartbeat of social media and high school hallways and gossip over coffee or lunch. It staggers the imagination how one could even run a political campaign this way…interpreting what others do in the best possible light? This commandment gets broken in church kitchens and prayer groups, and even in pulpits and bible studies, for crying out loud. But thank God….there’s grace for that.
And we could go on … we could talk about all the rest of the commandments…which we may think we keep…but only keep really to a point. None of us lives perfectly. But hear the good news….There’s grace for that. This is not a place for perfect people. This is the place where Jesus offers us forgiveness. The place where Healing is possible. We don’t have to hang on to the guilt. We don’t have to hang on to the pain. We can let it go. That’s why we’re here, after all.
The ten commandments were God’s covenant with God’s people….a promise God made to be their God and the Israelites made to live as God’s holy people in the world. But they broke that covenant. Over and over and over again. Over and over again, they failed in loving God …and they failed in loving their neighbors. And we break that same covenant…over and over again. But now I want you to remember what we say every Sunday when we take communion….that Jesus says he is the new covenant. And Jesus is God’s promise of forgiveness and grace for us, incarnate in the midst of all our limitations. Jesus is God’s grace for us…when we don’t know what we’re doing, even when we end up nailing people to crosses….hurting people in ways we may not even understand.
Yes, Luther understood God’s grace. Because he needed it. I need to be clear…this church may be called Lutheran, but it’s not because we want to be like Luther or think he was so great. Luther was, as I said before…a hot mess. Luther made horrific antisemitic statements that the Nazis used to justify the horrors of the holocaust.. And his unthinking words condemning the peasants’ revolt in his own time incited the nobles to retaliate with brutal, devastating and deadly violence, killing hundreds of thousands. No, Luther is no saint to be emulated. Rather he is simply one of us… and like Luther, our bigoted or cruel words can cut people to the quick, and our actions can have unintended heartbreaking consequences. But here’s what Luther understood…and the reason we call ourselves Lutheran…. he understood, that despite all we get wrong…..God’s grace is greater. God’s grace is greater. And we are just people who need grace. Who need Jesus.
So this is the place you come as you are. Come to Jesus’ table to receive God’s love and grace. Come to Jesus…warts and all, to be known and loved. And to be reminded that being human is enough…that loving, even imperfectly, is enough. Come and know …that whatever you are going through…there is grace for that. There is grace for you. Thanks be to God. Amen.
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