The No Matter Whatness of God

John 8:31-36

Then Jesus said to the Jews who had believed in him, “If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.” They answered him, “We are descendants of Abraham and have never been slaves to anyone. What do you mean by saying, ‘You will be made free’?” Jesus answered them, “Very truly, I tell you, everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin. The slave does not have a permanent place in the household; the son has a place there forever. So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed.

Jeremiah 31:31-34

The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. It will not be like the covenant that I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt—a covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, says the Lord. But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, “Know the Lord,” for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.

So… “How do you get to Carnegie Hall?”  Right!  “Practice, practice, practice!”  It was only when the pandemic locked everything down and Jorge started using our parish hall to practice that I REALLY started to understand the deep truth of that little joke.  Nearly every day, there was Jorge, for hours and hours, practicing the violin.  There weren’t any performances to practice for, but there he was anyway.  Hours of just the basic scales alone!  I was in awe of the commitment.  But it is exactly that level of commitment to the basics that allows him the freedom to fly when it’s time to perform. THAT level of commitment was what God was hoping for from us when God made that covenant on Sinai with God’s people.  “Here are ten of the basics” God said.  Practice, practice, practice them, and in the practicing you will learn to not just live life, but to really fly!  

That was God’s intent, but God is continually more confident in our dedication to practice than we seem able to pull off in real life.  We practice less like Jorge and more like I did in sixth grade and you see the results.  Jorge has played Carnegie Hall, and I... have not!  Clearly our practice of the Law was not going to get all of us living the life God created us to live so God shifted gears and began writing on our hearts!  Now, that doesn’t mean that practicing was no longer important!  It just means that the God of “No matter Whatness” as Gregory Boyle calls it, is simply not content with just “some” of us at God’s Feast!  This God… Our God… is determined to have everyone at the table… no matter what!  

And yet it seems that we continually push away God’s plan of “No Matter Whatness” and dredge back up the god Gregory Boyle calls the God who’s on the lookout for “One False Move”.  That’s what the people gathered before Jesus in today’s Gospel were doing.  Pushing away God.  The God who had brought them out of Egypt NO MATTER WHAT.  That’s what the Church in Luther’s day was doing.  Pushing away God.  The God of grace NO MATTER WHAT.  That’s what Luther himself did.  He pushed away God.  The God in whom all of creation lives and moves and has it’s being… which includes EVEN the Calvinists and Papists!  GASP!  And still to this day… that same thing happens.

This past week a friend posted a picture on Facebook of a sign meant for Halloween trick or treaters.  It said, “Attention Satanic Socialists”  Nice start huh?  Oh it gets better, and by better… I mean horrifically worse! “Attention Satanic Socialists, This is the home of a patriotic christian family.  We work hard and pay taxes.  We do not celebrate satan’s day.  We do not give away free candy to lazy entitled freeloaders.  No Handouts!  Welcome to America!  If you want candy, get a job!  And find Jesus!”

Over and over and throughout the ages, this is what we do!  We cry, “We were never slaves in Egypt!  Jesus never gave away free bread and fish!  God loves us, but could never love YOU!  We push aside the God of “No matter Whatness” and haul back out the god who is always looking for “One False Move.”  And that, my Lutherpalians, is why all of us are always in constant need of reformation.  We needed reformation when we couldn’t seem to practice enough, so God wrote it on our hearts.  We needed reformation when we took God’s Word and skipped over the parts about Grace through Faith.  And we need reformation today and every day as we fail to love our neighbors with the same “No Matter Whatness” with which God has first loved us!  

Recognizing and remembering our need for constant reformation is really what Reformation Sunday is all about.  One Luther’s quotes that I love the most (other than the ones about beer) helps us do just that.  Luther said, “When you wash your face, remember your Baptism.”  It was Luther’s little trick to help us remember our need for daily reformation.  So, when you wake up and wash your face, remember that the shortcomings of yesterday have all been washed away and the wrongs of your past are remembered no more, no matter what.  When you wake up and wash your face, remember that your Baptism has given you everything you need to live into the day ahead with love, compassion, grace, and forgiveness for everyone no matter what.  And when you wake up and wash your face, remember that you… you… just as you are… are fiercely held in the arms of the “No matter whatness” of God’s infinite love and you always, always, always will be.  And then, after you've washed your face take that “No Matter Whatness” that you have first received from God and then pass it on so that they might embrace their own daily reformation too.  Amen.