Christ Lutheran Church
Cleveland, Ohio
October 26, 2025
by: Rev. Dean Kavouras
Reformation 508 Years Later
“And you shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free.” (John 8:32)
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Reformation Sunday is a Lutheran tradition but today let us view it from a different perspective because to reform also means to re-order.
Jesus says in today’s gospel, “You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free.” And today Jesus calls us to re-order our lives in keeping with “truth” which comes from the One True God in the Flesh and Blood of Jesus.
Sad to say we are all born disordered because of the sin we inherit from our parents. Said differently we are born facing the wrong direction; turned away from our God who is the Source of our lives, and his Word which he gave to rightly order our lives.
When a person is turned away from God, or said more properly turned away from this very altar where Jesus is born among us in the Sacrament; when one is so turned or dis-ordered he faces in three deadly directions that dishevel our lives even more.
Our gaze is fixed on our own heart, but you should not trust it when it comes to the things of God because the prophet Jeremiah says, “The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked, who can understand it?” (Jeremiah 17:9). It is fixed on the culture whose underbelly is made plain on social media: which is the sewer system of humanity. And we are held in thrall by the Old Evil Foe as we just sang.
When we turn in any of these three wrong directions they become the measure of all things and the sole the judge of what is good, true and beautiful. And we are paying a king’s ransom of pain & suffering, sorrow, confusion, darkness, hopelessness and utter exhaustion as the price.
And it should come as no surprise that individual disordered lives lead to a collectively disordered world. A dystopia which people mistake for utopia wherein Supreme Court justices don’t know their left hand from their right.
Reformation Sunday, or Reorder Sunday if you will, is meant to reorder our lives; a transformation that can only happen inside the walls of the church, and it comes from the altar.
The world’s right-ordering, began when the Word became Flesh and dwelt among us full of grace and truth. (John 1:14) He is the antidote for dis-order. When God assumed human flesh in the Person of His Son the light broke of a sudden, and re-formation of the world began.
Whatever truth and light we have among us – and it is abundant – comes from our Lord Jesus Christ who IS the Light of the world. His gracious life, his dauntless obedience to the Father to the point of death, even death of the cross; where he hung suspended above hell and cried out to his Father: “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?”
Do you remember the answer he got?
Of course you do not! Because there was none. Only silence. Silence until the third day that is; when he was raised up from the grave by the glory of the Father to indelible life, so that death no longer has dominion over him: nor over anyone who is united with him in this Divine Liturgy.
Now all of this is wonderful in every way, but because the devil knows that his time is short his deepest desire is to destroy the Everlasting Gospel and to keep it out of reach.
He is too late for the first part; to corrupt our Lord though he tried during his 40 day fast in the wilderness. Nor could he persuade Jesus to “save himself” and “come down from the cross,” as Satan’s minions urged him. Quite the contrary we read in the Liturgy of the Hebrews that “for the joy that was set before him he endured the cross and scorned its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the Father.” (12:2)
Yes the cross was his joy because we are his joy. By it he transformed the church into his fetching bride. By reformation that came in the form of New Birth. Birth from above, by holy baptism which washed her clean of all sins, spots, stains, scars, wrinkles and other disfigurements and dis-orders. Until she became the dazzling bride she is in his eyes today. Upon whom the Lord gazes as we open our mouths to receive him.
No, the devil could not change what our God had foreordained before the foundation of the world: the Lord’s incarnation, life, death, resurrection and ascension for our salvation. But he did try and still does try to pervert the “delivery system” of the gospel which is the church; this divine liturgy. And indeed the mediaeval church had become so corrupt that a Reformation was widely desired.
The disorder was manifold. God’s grace had disappeared from the landscape and the forgiveness of sins became a meritocracy. In the world meritocracy is the only ordered way to proceed. But not before God. Rather the remission of sins, life and salvation is a gift bestowed upon us “by grace through Christ.”
Prayer was likewise disordered. People sought solace in the saints and the Blessed Virgin Mary (which are to be venerated and revered) but not invoked. Not when our Lord Jesus Christ invites us to pray, commands us to pray, teaches us the words to pray, and promises that our heavenly Father will hear us. Not because of the intercession of the saints. But because the Father himself loves us; “because we love Jesus and believe that he came from the Father.” (John 16:27)
That said the church of the Reformation must be ever vigilant because error has slipped in among us over the years as well; which means that we too are in need of perpetual reformation and re-ordering. (Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?)
But such vigilance can only occur by a theologically astute laity, which is why today, Reformation 2025, Christ Lutheran Church began a new curriculum for the 9:00 AM pastor’s class, and your pastor urges all our people to attend. So that we can be conversant in the Christian verities which will: create a clean heart within us, and restore the joy of salvation to us. And of over-arching importance we can hand down to the next generation, what was handed down to us. All that we see and hear and experience in this House of God was not devised by us, but handed down to us.
Would any of us willingly give it up? Or would we fight for it with our dying breath as so many have done before us?
Thus we continue to celebrate Reformation 508 years after its birth. Amen.