Presentation
of Augsburg Confession
Mt
10:26-33
6/25/17
If I asked you what the birthday of
the United States was, I am sure that you would have no problem answering the
question. We all know that the birthday
of our nation will be celebrated in just a little over a week, on July 4th. That was the day that the members of the
Continental congress who had gathered in Philadelphia signed the Declaration of
Independence.
However, prior to today, if I had
asked you what the birthday of the Evangelical Lutheran church was, I doubt
that many of you would have been able to answer correctly. Many of you might have guessed Reformation
Day, October 31 – the day that we associate with Martin Luther’s posting of the
95 theses. That would be a good
guess. However, the truth of the matter
is that in this act even Luther himself did not realize what was about to take
place, and as he tells us in his later writings, at this time the gospel had not yet fully come clear.
No, if we want to find the birthday
of the Lutheran church, we need to look at today, June 25, for on this date in
1530 in Augsburg Germany, the Lutheran confessors presented the Augsburg
Confession to the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V. On this day they presented the confession of
faith that is the foundational confession of the Lutheran Church.
There is a great similarity between
the signing of the Declaration of Independence and the presentation of the
Augsburg Confession. Each event involved
great personal risk for those who took part.
The Americans who signed the Declaration of Independence were committing
treason. As John Adams told his fellow delegates:
“We must hang together, or we will hang apart.”
The confessors at Augsburg faced no
less a threat. They were advocating a
doctrine that the Roman Church had declared in Luther to be heretical, and
Charles V was the instrument that the Roman Church intended to use in the
repression of this teaching. The laymen
who presented the Augsburg Confession were risking their life and property – a
fact that became clear seventeen years later when Charles V attacked and
conquered them.
In the
Gospel lesson for today, Jesus is sending out the twelve apostles. He had instructed them: “And proclaim as you go, saying, ‘The kingdom of heaven is at
hand.’” They were to proclaim that in
Jesus the saving action of God’s reign – his kingdom – had broken into this fallen
world in order to free people from sin, death and the devil. This was God’s
doing, and people were called to faith in Jesus. Faith – trust in Christ – is what Matthew’s
Gospel sets forth as the way that people receive this blessing of God’s saving
reign.
This
was big news! This was good news! And it
had to be shared. It had to be
confessed. Jesus says in our text, “What
I tell you in the dark, say in the light, and what you hear whispered, proclaim
on the housetops.” Throughout chapter
ten, our Lord tells the apostles that they will meet opposition. But he tells them not to fear – not even the
one threatens to kill their body.
Instead, Jesus told them to “fear him who can destroy both soul
and body in hell.” They were to put God first and trust in him because he cared
about them – after all he even knew the number of hairs on their head!
Our
Lord’s words were spoken to the twelve apostles on a particular occasion. However, as we get to the second half of
chapter ten we note that the language becomes more general in nature. It becomes clear that Jesus is saying things
that are going to apply to all Christians who share and confess the faith.
This
joy about the Gospel and the willingness to share and confess it before the
world – even at personal risk – is what shaped the event at Augsburg on June
25, 1530. The confessors at Augsburg declared the freedom of the
Gospel. The Augsburg Confession declared
that salvation is not a matter of our works, but instead it is a gift from God
when it stated about the Lutheran churches, “Likewise, they teach that human beings
cannot be justified before God by their own powers, merits, or works. But they are justified as a gift on account
of Christ through faith when they believe that they are received into grace and
that sins are forgiven on account of Christ.”
In the Augsburg Confession we find
the declaration that through the Gospel we receive the free gift of
salvation. It declares that that we are
justified – put right with God – by God’s grace; on account of Christ’s death
and resurrection; and through faith in Christ.
And then we also learn in the Augsburg
Confession that God has not left the delivery of this gift to chance. Instead, he has provided the Means of Grace:
the Word, Holy Baptism, Holy Absolution and the Lord’s Supper. And he has also provided the Office of the
Holy ministry that administers these Means of Grace in the midst of God’s
people. As the Augsburg Confession
states, “To obtain such faith God instituted the office of preaching, giving
the gospel and the sacraments. Through
these, as through means, he gives the Holy Spirit who produces faith, where and
when he wills, in those who hear the Gospel.”
Yet it
was not all good news. In fact the
second article was about as negative as it can get. There it says about original sin: “Furthermore,
it is taught among us that since the fall of Adam, all human beings who are
born in the natural way are conceived and born in sin. This means that from
birth they are full of evil lust and inclination and cannot by nature possess
true fear of God and true faith in God. Moreover, this same innate disease and
original sin is truly sin and condemns to God’s eternal wrath all who are not
in turn born anew through baptism and the Holy Spirit.”
In
confessing the truth of God’s Word, the Augsburg Confession destroyed the
medieval notion that we had to make the first move toward God, or that our
doing was in any way part of the reason we are justified and saved. This overturned a massive system built on
these assumptions. It threatened wealth
and power. There would be opposition.
But the
confessors at Augsburg were shaped by the biblical faith. And that included the
words we find at the end of our text: “So everyone who
acknowledges me before men, I also will acknowledge before my Father who is in
heaven, but whoever
denies me before men, I also will deny before my Father who is in heaven.” They
were going to confess, because to confess the doctrine of the Augsburg
Confession was to confess Jesus Christ. And they were going to confess Christ
even before powerful men like the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V.
Today, the Presentation of the
Augsburg Confession, causes us to face the question: “Do we still believe that
it is the truth that must be confessed before all people?” I’m not asking if its ok for us “to have it
on the books.” I am asking whether we
believe that it is the truth, and that contrary understanding is
error. The confessors at Augsburg left
no doubt about where they stood on the issue.
They not only confessed the truth, they also explicitly condemned those
things that were contrary to the truth.
To do so
it is to invite disdain from many. This
response reflects the post-modern age we live in – the time of “tolerance” which
rejects all absolute truth claims. Yet
this attitude is absolutely deadly to the church. As Evangelical Lutherans, the only thing that
we have is the truth of God’s Word – it is our only reason for existence as a
church. And if we lose sight of this
fact – if we marginalize the truth claims of the Augsburg Confession – then we
become just another social club. When we
lose sight of the truth that we confess as Lutherans, we lose our very
existence as a church.
Therefore, today, June 25, the
birthday of the Lutheran Church is an invitation to return to the truth that we
confess. It is an occasion to review
what we confess as Lutherans and ask ourselves whether we still believe
that it is the truth. Remember, those
who confessed the Augsburg Confession were not theologians and pastors. They
were lay men who cared about these things; who knew about these things; who
confessed these things at risk to life and property. Would we do the same?
We have copies of the Augsburg
Confession on our tract rack at the back of the nave and also at the door on
the east end of the building. Take a copy and read it – if we run out we will
order more. Read it so that you know
what this full truth is. And then ask yourself the honest question about
whether you still believe this is the truth.
Each of us must face that question on
our own, for no one can confess the truth for us. The Augsburg Confession say that we are
justified by grace through faith. This
faith is created and sustained by the Means of Grace. The Means of Grace are administered by Christ
through his Office of the Holy Ministry and those who are fed by the Means of
Grace are the Church, for as the Augsburg Confession states, the Church “is the
assembly of all believers among whom the gospel is purely preached and the holy
sacraments are administered according to the Gospel.
Justification by grace through faith;
the Means of Grace; the Office of the Holy Ministry and the Church – this is
the faith that we confess in the Augsburg Confession. This is the truth of God’s Word. This is the truth the Evangelical Lutheran
Church has confessed since its beginning at Augsburg. And on this day when the confessors at
Augsburg took their stand for the truth of Christ, we are invited to again
confess the truth of God’s Word; the truth of the Augsburg Confess; the truth
of the Evangelical Lutheran church.
On this
June 25 may each of us find this truth to be our own confession. And may our Lord sustain each one of us in
this one holy, catholic and apostolic faith until the day of his return – about
which Jesus said: “So everyone who acknowledges me
before men, I also will acknowledge before my Father who is in heaven.”
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