{read st. mark 10.46-52}

You may not know this, but last Sunday was reformation day, or as mid-westerner’s call it, “Lutheran pride day”.

At it’s worst, reformation day will simply commemorate what happened in the long past, a reform movement in the European church.  And at it’s worst, today will be yet another frozen moment in which the Church’s culture becomes crystalized and even further disconnected from the world around her.  But at it’s best, reformation day will lure us into what we are becoming, not the reformed church, but a constantly re-forming church.  This was even at the heart of what the folks who first coined the term “emerging church” meant before those words were bought and sold as a christian commodity. At it’s best today will form and reform our hearts by grace through faith in Christ, as it did in the first century with a beggar named Bartimaeus, and as it did in the 16th century with a professor and pastor named Martin.

Grace Alone.  Faith Alone.  Christ Alone. These are the marks of a beggars revolution that continues to conform us to the Gospel of Jesus.

SOLA GRATIA – Grace Alone

St. Mark, or the evangelist who wrote the Gospel of Mark, wrote this gospel story from within the Church.  He was a part of the community that directly knew Jesus and he tracked down all the stories that people in the community could remember about Jesus in order to pass them on.  So if you’ll notice, he doesn’t generically say, “A blind man”.  He names the blind man.  He calls him Bartimeaus.  What this little fact tells us is that Bartimaeus was likely a part of that poverty stricken early Church in Jerusalem that St. Mark was a part.  So this story is likely Bart’s story – from the horse’s mouth.  This was how he entered the Church and Old Bartimaeus wouldn’t let anyone forget it.  And even though Jesus tells him to, “Go”, the story doesn’t end that way.  Instead it says, “Bartimaeus regained his sight and followed Jesus on the way.”  And where else was he going to go?  His one job, begging, was taken away the moment he was healed.  So he became a part of the traveling community of Jesus, and he continued to tell his story of the grace of Jesus.  His words, “Have mercy on me!  Have mercy on me!” became the lyrics for a song that the early Church sang every Lord’s Day called “Kyrie”, you may have heard it.  And what Bartimaeus holds up for the Church and the world is that God’s grace in Jesus is pure gift.  He couldn’t pay for it, he couldn’t do anything for it.  But he was good at begging and Jesus is good at giving.

I was in Iowa two weeks ago taking a preaching class, the professor asked us to look back over our last thirty sermons. He said, “Everyone basically has one sermon… it’s said a million different ways, but everyone has basically one sermon. So what’s your one sermon?”  I asked Bonnie what she thought my one sermon was, after a bit of thinking she said, “God’s grace in Jesus Christ is for you.”  That was the biggest affirmation that anyone could have given me.  Because, it’s true, I’m totally grace monger.  I can’t get enough of it and I can’t preach enough of it.  Without this fierce grace of Jesus Christ continually reforming us, we immediately turn in upon ourselves, and lose any and all thought for God and neighbor.

Without this fierce grace of Jesus continually reforming us, the Church goes right back to selling tickets out of hell.  Without this fierce grace of Jesus continually reforming us, we just dog-eat-dog under the cover of an innocent smile.  For us, in order for Church of the Beloved to move into this next stage of our life and mission together, to welcome the stranger into our community, to give ourselves away for our neighbors, Christ must perpetually reform our hearts with his fierce grace.  Because without Grace Alone, we’ll be just another country club

disguised as a Christ’s Church.

SOLA FIDE – Faith Alone

Generally, we think of faith is a thing, a characteristic that someone has.  You must possess faith in order to be saved, or healed, or loved by God.  And you know that you have faith if you cry your eyes out, confess that you are a sinner, believe in Jesus and then ‘bam’, you are ‘saved’.  And now that you are saved there are some things that you got to do, like stop hating everyone and read your Bible, and go to church and stuff.  But if this was the criteria for God saving you, it wouldn’t be a grace.  Faith would simply become another work, another thing you got to do.

But faith is not a thing you do.  It’s not a proposition that you reason yourself into, nor a belief that you leap into,

nor a doctrine that you squeeze yourself into to.  You don’t do faith at all.  If anything, you get “faithed”.

Perhaps more accurately, faith is best described as the relationship that exists between Jesus and you. Faith isn’t something you need to go get in order to get the relationship between Jesus and you, it is the relationship.  Another way to say it is, having Jesus as your savior is not the result of having faith, rather having faith is the result of having Jesus as your savior.So there’s no room for trying to compare ourselves to one another and feed the insecurities and competition that comes with comparison.  This is why the apostle Paul says, “I have no room to boast.  It is solely by God’s gift that we are saved, through faith, so really no one has any room to boast.

But if you really want to boast, boast about what God is doing.”  I know that there’s an expectation for a “take home” message.  Something that you can do about it.  But what happens when you get “faithed” by Christ,

is you hear the words, “I love you so much.”  and a relationship is cultivated.  Faith doesn’t give you a take-home word, rather it is the Word who takes you home.

St. Paul tells us in the letter to the Church in Rome, “Faith comes from hearing…”  And this was the case for Bartimaeus, ‘He heard that Jesus was coming” Bartimaeus got “faithed”, and yelled out, “Have mercy!”  Then “He heard that Jesus wanted him to come to him”  Bartimaeus got “faithed”, and said, “Rabbi, I want to see”

It was Christ’s faith in him that made him well.  For us, in order for Church of the Beloved to move into this next stage of life and mission together, to gradually make a hub of ministry in a 100 year old mansion, to raise the support to purchase and renovate it for all the type of outreach that we can imagine, Christ is going to have to seriously “faith” us every step of the way, because without Faith Alone, Church of the Beloved will be

just another do gooder’s club disguised as Christ’s church.

So if “…by Grace through Faith” means that there no longer exists a list of things you “got to do” to be accepted by God, then what, in your freedom, do you “get to do?”  I love what happens in the disciples in this story.  Their first reaction to Bartimaeus is to shush him.  Doesn’t it seem like the disciples are always shushing people? The Church still thinks that being a disciple promotes us to the status of head shusher.  But here is the graceful thing – here’s the faithful thing about Jesus, he invites his disciples to do the calling.  They go from saying, “Be quiet” to saying, “Jesus is calling you.”  I’m really not sure which is a greater miracle in this story - Bartimaeus going from blindness to sight, or the disciples moving from shusher to callers. Jesus still invites us, invites you, to be a people that puts away shushing, listens deeply to one another and says, “Jesus heard your cry and he’s calling you”. God’s voice of choice is yours, Beloved.

I sit with people all the time who are disenchanted with the Church and they cry-out and say, “I don’t feel called to be in the Church.” “I don’t hear the voice of God.” “I don’t think God cares.”  And I know that cry, because it’s my cry too. And I know that we need one another because the voice of Christ in my sister and brother is stronger than the voice of Christ that is in me.  And so I say, “But God has heard you, because I’m here reminding you that God cares about you.  Plus, I care about you, and I’m the Church, just like you are.”

On his death bed reformer Martin Luther spoke these last words, “We are beggars, that is certainly true.”

And we are. We are a revolution of beggars.  Just one beggar telling another beggar where to find bread.  Just one Bartimaeus telling another Bartimaeus where to find grace.  Just one disciple telling another disciple,  “Hey, Jesus heard you crying, and he’s calling you.”

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Spread the Love: , and about this.