{"id":8366,"date":"2022-10-24T12:32:39","date_gmt":"2022-10-24T19:32:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/crossalone.us\/?p=8366"},"modified":"2022-10-24T12:33:20","modified_gmt":"2022-10-24T19:33:20","slug":"the-reformation-one-thing-is-needful","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/crossalone.us\/?p=8366","title":{"rendered":"
The Reformation: One Thing is Needful<\/div>"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Click here for a pdf version.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Luke 10:25-42<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A sermon for Reformation Sunday<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The festival of the Reformation is often not celebrated today because it was long ago and things have changed. It took place in a university and involved complicated and abstract thinking. Now things are different. We are no longer fighting with the Catholics, and the important thing is to look to the future, work ahead, and not be focused on the past. But the \u201cone thing needful\u201d (Luke 10:42) has been lost.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Leader:<\/strong> Love the Lord your God.
\nResponse:<\/strong> We come with love and hope.
\nL:<\/strong> Love your neighbors, too.
\nR:<\/strong> We come with loving hearts.
\nL:<\/strong> Love even yourself.
\nR:<\/strong> We come in humble trust.
\nL:<\/strong> Love and you will live.
\nR:<\/strong> We come to worship that God\u2019s love might live in us.
\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This litany about love is not really Christian. It\u2019s a kind of made-up religion. But the text from Luke includes the famous double command: \u201cLove the Lord your God . . . and your neighbor as yourself\u201d (Luke 10:27). We think we\u2019re supposed to love God and each other, but that\u2019s a distortion of what Christianity is about!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This distortion amounts to is something different from Luke 10:25-42 and different from what the New Testament is about. If you take seriously what it says, Christianity is quite different. We have this made-up religion of love, spelled \u201cLuv.\u201d As the song goes: \u201cLuv, luv, luv, that\u2019s what it\u2019s all about.\u201d Or as someone has said: \u201cGod is nice, we are nice, isn\u2019t that nice.\u201d That\u2019s not what Christianity is about. But it\u2019s easy to see how people get caught in thinking that\u2019s what Christianity is all about.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Matthew, Mark, and Luke it says very simply: \u201cLove the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself\u201d (Matthew 22:34-40; Mark 12:29-31; Luke 10:25-28).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s a sermon by Luther on this text. It\u2019s a whole hour long. It\u2019s tempting to read it to you. He really comes down on what Christianity is about.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the first of the two great Commandments, the word \u201cand\u201d is used three times, but the word \u201call<\/strong>\u201d is used four times. \u201cWith all<\/strong> your heart, all<\/strong> your soul, all<\/strong> your strength, and all<\/strong> your mind.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Luther zeros in on \u201cwith all your heart.\u201d How do we listen to this phrase? When it says \u201cwith all your heart,\u201d we think: \u201cYes Lord, I\u2019m for you. I\u2019m not against you. I like you. I have a positive attitude toward you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And then when it says, \u201cwith all your soul.\u201d We think that probably means the same as \u201cwith all your heart.\u201d What about: \u201cWith all your strength\u201d? I try my best. My intentions are good. I really want to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWith all your mind.\u201d \u201cYes, Lord, I think positively about you. I affirm all your teachings. Whatever it is, I believe, I hold it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Luther then zeros in: What does it mean \u201cwith all your heart\u201d? He points out that means from within us, joyfully, spontaneously. The word that comes to mind is \u201creligiously.\u201d We use \u201creligiously\u201d today in this way. We\u2019ll say of someone who runs five miles every day that he does it \u201creligiously.\u201d He does it because he wants to; he never fails.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Or someone who has a particular thing he does, and we say he does it \u201creligiously,\u201d by which we mean he\u2019s committed to it. He does it freely, from within, and he never fails because it is that important to him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But when a Christian acts this way, taking his faith this seriously, it is said: \u201cHe\u2019s a fanatic.\u201d But what the New Testament says is: With all your heart, spontaneously, joyously. Not because God says you have to, but because you really want to because that\u2019s what Christianity is about. That\u2019s what it says. It doesn\u2019t say: Have good intentions about God. No. It says: You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The second of the two Commandments really goes with the parable of the Good Samaritan. The First Commandment goes with the account of Mary and Martha and it goes like this:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMary sat at the Lord\u2019s feet and listened to his teaching. But Martha was distracted with much serving; and she went to him and said: \u201cLord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Tell her then to help me.\u201d But the Lord answered her: \u201cMartha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things; one thing is needful. Mary has chosen the good portion, which shall not be taken away from her\u201d (Luke 10:38-42).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s what it means to love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your strength, and all your mind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The problem is serving coffee. It\u2019s the problem of saying: \u201cYes, there are all those things about eternity, but who\u2019s going to make coffee?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We remember Luther\u2019s explanation to the Third Commandment in the Small Catechism: \u201cRemember the Sabbath Day to keep it holy.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What does this mean? \u201cWe should fear and love God so we do not despise his Word and the preaching of the same, but deem it holy and gladly hear and learn it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It doesn\u2019t say you are not supposed to work on Sunday. What does it say? It\u2019s the coffee serving problem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Notice what Jesus\u2019 response is: \u201cOne thing is needful\u201d (Luke 10:42). This is parallel to: \u201cYou shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind.\u201d It\u2019s really as if every Sunday every congregation has a million-dollar lottery where everyone wins the grand prize. The churches would be full. What about the coffee? That could be done some other way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What\u2019s really important is what matters eternally. That\u2019s what it\u2019s about. It\u2019s not about working on Sunday, but as a rule of thumb, unless you are so ill that you are in bed, you should go to worship weekly, not necessarily on Sunday, because \u201cone thing is needful.\u201d Mary has chosen the better part, which shall not be taken away from her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then Jesus goes on with the Second Great Commandment: \u201cYou shall love your neighbor as yourself.\u201d It\u2019s important to realize that this Commandment is found in other philosophies and religions. It\u2019s nothing unique. It\u2019s found in Leviticus 19:18 and in Buddhism, Islam, even in Bertrand Russell. It\u2019s a very practical commandment. It\u2019s behind the Seventh Commandment: \u201cThou shall not steal.\u201d Life doesn\u2019t work if we don\u2019t have private property. I have to have my own toothbrush. If my toothbrush is everybody\u2019s toothbrush, life doesn\u2019t work. It\u2019s really a basic, practical point of view of how life works. Love your neighbor. Of course, in Matt 5:44 it says even more: \u201cYou shall love your enemy,\u201d (which is also found outside of the Bible).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the modern world, as in the Litany with which we began, it\u2019s often said that to love your neighbor you must first love yourself. That\u2019s not what the New Testament says. Rather, it says: You know how to love yourself; that tells you how to love others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Loving oneself is big today because of the self-esteem movement. To be sure, this movement lost some steam once it was discovered that the people with the highest self-esteem are in prison, which blows apart the idea that low self-esteem is a major cause of crime.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

People today confuse \u201cYou shall love your neighbor as yourself\u201d with the great parable in Matthew 25:31-46 about the Last Judgment, the sheep and the goats. Remember, it says, if you gave a cup of water to someone, if you visited someone in prison, if you helped someone in need, you did the right thing. But the parable about the Last Judgment is not about that at all. It\u2019s about those who are \u201cthe least\u201d (\u201cthe least\u201d in Matthew is a technical term for itinerant Christian preachers). The point of any parable is always in the last verse, not in the details of the story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What about the Good Samaritan? People get all caught up in the narrative. But it\u2019s important to remember in the Gospel of Luke that Luke emphasizes the lepers, the outcasts, the poor, and the Samaritans. He emphasizes the dregs of society. What he\u2019s doing here is sticking it to the Pharisees about the Samaritans. Luke 17:11-18 is the text which is used at Thanksgiving, of the ten lepers who were healed and only one came back to say thank you. And note that it says in Luke 17:16: \u201cNow he was a Samaritan.\u201d Ha! Luke is once again sticking it to the Pharisees: \u201cYou don\u2019t do it. Others do better than you do.\u201d The final point of it all, and it\u2019s already in Deuteronomy 30:6: \u201cYou will love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, that you may live.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But we don\u2019t do it; we can\u2019t do it. As Luther points out: We end up in spiritual pride or spiritual despair. Mostly we end up in spiritual pride: \u201cI did the best I could and I\u2019m better than so and so. I\u2019m okay. But he, he\u2019s a hypocrite,\u201d without looking at the fact that you and I are greater hypocrites because it says: With all your heart, 100%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Very rarely there is someone who ends up in spiritual despair because he faces what it really means and then realizes that we can\u2019t and we don\u2019t.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What is our only hope? In the New Testament and in the Reformation our only hope is in the cross and resurrection because in ourselves we end up either in spiritual pride or spiritual despair. The Lord \u201csnatches us from the jaws of the devil and makes us his own\u201d (Large Catechism, 4:83; Tappert 446; Kolb\/Wengert 466). That the Lord helps us in spite of ourselves is our only hope. But it is our glorious hope, thanks be to God. Amen<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

A sermon for Reformation Sunday<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The festival of the Reformation is often not celebrated today because it was long ago and things have changed. It took place in a university and involved complicated and abstract thinking. Now things are different. We are no longer fighting with the Catholics, and the important thing is to look to the future, work ahead, and not be focused on the past. But the \u201cone thing needful\u201d (Luke 10:42) has been lost.<\/p>\n

Select here<\/a> to read more or here <\/a>for a pdf document.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8366","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/crossalone.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8366","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/crossalone.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/crossalone.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crossalone.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crossalone.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8366"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/crossalone.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8366\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8375,"href":"https:\/\/crossalone.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8366\/revisions\/8375"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/crossalone.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8366"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crossalone.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8366"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crossalone.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8366"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}