The Undomesticated Preacher: This Is Most Certainly True

Pastor Ryan Cosgrove

Reformation Sunday

I preached this sermon at Trinity Lutheran Church in Burlington, Iowa, on October 26, 2014. Trinity's pastor, Ryan Cosgrove, is a Grand View University alumnus, and we in the Theology and Philosophy Department are extraordinarily proud of him!

Grace to you and peace my friends, from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

One of the best novels I’ve ever read and movies I’ve ever seen is Sophie’s Choice. It’s about a young man named Stingo who’s from the South and who moves to Brooklyn, New York, in the late 1940s to take up his calling as a novelist. He rents a room in a big pink rooming house where he meets another resident named Sophie Zawistoski. Sophie is Polish, and we gradually learn that she has a number tattooed on her wrist and that she somehow managed to come out of the Auschwitz death camp alive. She’s wracked by guilt over what she did to stay alive. Late one night, Stingo tells Sophie to just tell the truth. Sophie responds by saying, “The truth? I don’t know even what is the truth anymore.”

Do you yourself know even what is the truth anymore? I’m pretty sure you don’t if you’ve had your television or radio on lately. What was once a reliable source of information about political ads has become an unreliable mud-slinging contest thanks to the big money infused into the campaigns by super-PACs and anonymous donors. The worst of it for us in Iowa is the battle between our senate candidates. You’ve got a decent attorney from northeast Iowa and a decent member of the National Guard from the western part of the state running against each other. But you wouldn’t know it based on the attack ads coming across our screens. And you can’t tell the truth about their policies either. It’s just one ad hominem attack after the other. “Bruce Braley? You can’t trust a Washington insider.” “Joni Ernst? She’s too extreme for Iowa.” Sophie Zawistowski speaks for us all. “The truth? I don’t know even what is the truth anymore.”

But that’s just the tip of the iceberg, isn’t it? Our whole way of living obscures the truth for us. We’ve come to believe the snake-oil pitch of our culture. We think life is about getting ahead. We’ve fallen for the quip that “if you just believe in yourself enough, you can achieve your dreams.” We think we’ve gotten to where we are because we’ve pulled ourselves up by our own bootstraps and deserve our high status. We see it as evidence of our own moral righteousness and come to suspect the poor as having insufficient grit and gumption. We establish all kinds of measuring rods for assessing others’ eye splinters and allow ourselves to ignore our ocular logs. And we never allow ourselves to see our utter need for the one whose hand flung the stars against the heavens, who holds together the electrical charges within every atom, whose deepest desire is to fill our need, hear our prayers, and sustain us with everything needed for life. We just can’t see our way through to it. “The truth? I don’t know even what is the truth anymore.”

In our gospel reading Jesus lays it out for the religious leaders of Jerusalem who themselves have a bit of a truth problem. Of course, none of them wants what Jesus has to offer, especially not his assessment of where we human beings stand. Jesus tells them they’ve been enslaved. They respond by declaring they’ve never been in bondage. But Jesus is talking about more than simply being owned by another person. Like us and every other human being, the religious leaders are enslaved to themselves. They insist on their autonomy. They want to be self-sufficient. They want to be self-made people. They want to create their own futures through their good choices, intentions, and works. They’re so caught up in the world’s way of operating that it’s impossible for them to see the strength of its grip on them. But Jesus is so bent on providing them with freedom that he tumbles relentlessly and recklessly down the road to a hill out back of the city where he will be condemned to die on account of that very slavery – because of humanity’s willingness to trade his life for their continued much-vaunted control. There are no ears who want to hear Jesus when he says, “The truth will set you free.”

On Reformation Sunday we don’t simply celebrate the work of Martin Luther and his fellow reformers during the sixteenth century. We don’t hold high their glorious works and the amazing outflowing of faith that happened in the face of stiff opposition from the established church in Rome. First of all, none of them, starting with Luther, would want us holding them up as heroes. Luther himself objected to his followers being called Lutherans rather than Christians. Second, the whole business of the Reformation was messy, inglorious, and fraught with set-backs, martyrdom, political wrangling that make our senate campaign pale in comparison, the slaughter of a hundred-and-fifty-thousand protesting peasants, the military defeat of the evangelical princes just a couple years after Luther’s death, and the enduring squabbling among his theological adherents for the rest of the century and down to today. What we really celebrate today is the truth that lay as a foundation under all the reformers efforts. They endured the opposition, the threats, and their own infighting for the sake of the truth so much greater than themselves. They had come to understand the truth and been so set free by it that, like Luther before the Holy Roman Emperor at the Diet of Worms, they had to say, “Here I stand. I can do no other. God help me.”

Martin Luther unabashedly pointed to the truth in his little teaching book that many of you had to memorize during your confirmation instruction. In dealing with the Apostles’ Creed, each time Luther explains one of the articles he ends by saying, “This is most certainly true.” It’s such an innocuous phrase. It seems like it’s just a toss-away, something easy to say. “This is most certainly true.” Try saying it with me. “This is most certainly true.” It’s not something we have to think hard about, but maybe we should, especially if we gather in a congregation named Trinity Lutheran Church whose middle name came about because of the proclamation of the truth done at great personal cost by person whose name is on at least five signs and banners around the place we sit. So let’s deal with “This is most certainly true.” Let’s go after it, so it isn’t just a Lutheran catch-phrase. Let’s deal with each of the five words.

First off: true. We tend to think of truth in terms of modern history. For us, true generally means factual. We want front page stories in the newspaper to be factually true. We expect our history books to be factually true in a Dragnet just-the-facts ma’am way. But the truth is more than just the facts. Ancient historians like Tacitus and even our four gospel writers knew that. When Plutarch wrote his account of important historical figures, he had no problem putting words into their mouths, because he was more concerned with truth than with facts. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are no different. They tell their separate accounts of Jesus life, death, and resurrection in their own ways, spinning the facts of the story to be able to open up the truth about Jesus for their readers. Knowing the truth isn’t knowing facts, which are actually subjective. Any lawyer will tell you how difficult it is to bring an eye-witness to the stand. Our memories are highly selective, and the facts an eye-witness brings forward are subjective.

So when we talk about truth, it’s better to go a different route. We ought to talk to carpenters about what’s true. When they’re framing a building they want to true their work. They want it both level and plumb, so the house or clinic or office or tallest skyscraper in Dubai will stand the test of time. They want it strong and firm, so that what’s intended to happen within can actually happen. When we say, “This is most certainly true,” it’s true if what God intends to happen does happen. Are we fruitful and do we know our relational multiplication tables? Do we see God as our God? Do we see ourselves as God’s people? Are our lives measured against God’s will from the foundation of the world? Does this truth blow away the chaff and detritus of our lives? Does it hold strong against all other comers? Is it level and plumb? If so, it’s most certainly true.

Next word: certainly. This has to do with our conviction and with what, as Paul says in Romans 8, we’re persuaded to believe. Is what we’re dealing with sand for building our house on or is it the firm foundation of rock? If it’s built on the ever-changing eddies of our emotions or our checking accounts and investment portfolios or political movements or economic indicators, there can be no certainty. You can’t count on these things to hold true and stand the test of time. We need something more.

Luther said that he was constantly attacked by the devil’s accusation that said, “Who do you think you are, Luther? What gives you the right to battle princes, emperors, and popes? You’re just a piddling, little German friar.” But it was the certainty of the truth Luther had come to see in the church’s proclamation that kept him speaking, writing, and teaching. Luther regarded himself as exactly what the devil said – nothing – but he had the conviction of knowing the certainty of a divine promise made.

When a promise is made, it depends on the one promising to fulfill the promise. If we’re making the promise, all of life inserts itself into the deal as contingencies and exigencies. We can’t count on it. But if it’s God making the promise, then you have certainty. God changes not a whit. Jesus himself is the same yesterday, today, and forever. When the promise is made, you can count on it.

Next word: most. Not moist. That’s the most hated word in the English language. I’m talking about most. This certain truth is beyond anything else in heaven and on earth. The word “most” slices everything in two. There’s this thing at the pinnacle and then there’s everything else. Only this thing is the truth to be certain of. It’s categorical, like Jesus himself, the King of Kings and Lord of Lords (which means he’s the most kingly of kings and the most lordly of lords). There’s Jesus who alone has the power and means to save you, and there’s everything else. Even all the good things in life like morality, good works, and religion are not the most. There’s only Jesus, and him crucified. He’s the one who makes God left-handed by sitting on his right hand. He’s the one who is the Word from the very beginning of things. Jesus, the Christ, the Son of God, is the hinge of all history and the turning point of all creation. He’s the most, baby, and for sinners at the limit of their own reason and strength he’s as beautiful as they come. That’s most certainly true.

Now an odd word to think about: is. If something is, then it’s not just an idea or concept. Back in Ancient Greece the philosopher Plato tried to tell us that the world around us isn’t really real. We can easily see that everything changes. Rivers flow. The makeup of Congress shifts. Mountains wear down. And one day our tired old bodies will rot away, food for bacteria. So Plato said ideas are real. Even if all dogs where to disappear, still the idea of dog would last. The idea of numbers lasts. Two plus two will always equal four. But Plato conveniently ignored the certain truth. The world around us does exist. And when we say “This is most certainly true,” we’re saying it actually exists.

This truth isn’t some mere idea. It is. It exists. It does things. The word of truth is a living word. It changes lives. It’s what linguists call “first-order discourse.” It is because it’s language that changes the person who hears it. It changes the relationship between the person speaking it and the one who hears. It’s like the words we speak from our hearts to each other, words like “I love you,” “I take you to be my husband,” and “Come over here, sweetie, and kiss me quick.” The trust exists, it is, because it comes into the world and changes everything by its presence. As the gospel writer John says, Jesus is the Word that came into the world. And, boy howdy, did he ever change things. Because of your Lord, the entire ground has shifted. The Law is over with. The new day has begun. We’ll leave the pie-in-the-sky hope for a future transformation into becoming our own gods to the Mormons. Give us the true God born of the Father from eternity and true human being born of the Virgin Mary, God in the flesh, Immanuel, who was, who is, and who will be. Give us the God who says his name is “I am who I am.” Give us the God who’s come to us and who is at work in the world right now.

And then there’s “this.” What is this “this” that we speak of that is, that is the most, that is certain, and that is true? Now we’re at the core of the Reformation and the very center of what this time and space are dedicated to week after week, year after year. Now we’re at the reason you have my beloved Ryan as your pastor. We’re at the certain thing that drives our proclamation. And it is the promise I just alluded to. God comes to you in a way that you might become his own.

The “this” is the very Word of God that was spoken to create the heavens and human creatures. The “this” is the promise that cleansed Naaman of his leprosy. It’s the power that went out of Jesus at the touch of his hem that cured the woman with the twelve-year flow of blood. It’s what raised both Lazarus and the son of the widow of Nain. It’s what calmed the storm and banished demons. It’s the “this” that forgives sins, delivers from sin, death, and the devil, and makes a new you out of sinful, dying flesh. It’s the “this” that swirls through the galaxies and through your veins. When the crowds hear Jesus teaching, they ask “What is this?” That “this” is a Word that has taken me out of my death. And you, too. It’s the Word that makes you such a new person that not even death can change you.

This “this” comes in all sorts of ways. Luther and the reformers knew it and spoke it. We set apart women and men who have this “this” on their lips, so there’s always a place to come when the world bears down, beats down, and betters you, so there’s always a place you can be most certain you can hear the truth. The “this” is what we come for, isn’t it? And to that end, the only way to have you be able to say “This is most certainly true” is to give you “this.” The only way for the truth to be able to set you free is to actually speak “this” and free you. So I challenge Pastor Cosgrove to start speaking it to you with me. When we speak the “this,” your response each time will be Luther’s words from the catechism: “This is most certainly true.” Let’s try it.

Jesus has come to be your Lord.