SERMON
Reformation Day, October 31, 2021
The Rev. Maurice C. Frontz III
Nowadays people do interesting things with
grammar. There’s a commercial on the radio for a health care provider with the
slogan, ‘Because life.’ If you were in school when I was or before, and that’s over
90 percent of you, I think, you’re probably asking, ‘Where’s the verb?’ But no,
that’s not the way they roll these days.
But if you need a verb, you can just turn
any noun into a verb. It’s called verbing. Actually, this is an accepted
part of English through the centuries, but it’s still jarring to hear someone
say ‘I have to school today’ or ‘Do you even math?’ Well, people just grammar
differently these days.
And don’t get me started on ‘I did it on
accident.’ It’s ‘by accident.’ Don’t tell me it’s not, because when I learned
it, it was ‘by accident.’ Don’t say that it matches ‘on purpose,’ because we don’t
say, ‘I did it on mistake,’ now do we?
Now half of you are going to be thinking
about ‘by accident’ or ‘on accident’ for the rest of the sermon. Try and put it
aside for a little bit. I introduce grammar as a topic this morning because I
think when we look back at the Reformation of the sixteenth century, we can say
that it was a revolution in grammar. And not just because the Bible was
translated into the different European languages and made available to the
common people to read. What I mean is that theological grammar was changed, or
perhaps, rather, it was emphasized that God is the subject of every active
verb.
Just look at our Scripture readings for
today. God is the one who makes a new covenant, who puts the law in our hearts
and writes it on our minds, forgives our sins and remembers them no more. God
is the one who has put forth his Son as a sacrifice for sin. The Son of God is
the one who makes us free. If you look in the Bible, it is God who is initiating
everything. God is the subject of the active verb. And we become the objects, whether
direct or indirect, of God’s action. It is God who sets us free. We are justified
by God’s action. Our sins are forgiven.
Why is the grammar of God so important?
Well, for Martin Luther, it was entirely the obverse. His religious education
convinced him that he was the subject of most of the verbs. It was his actions
that were important in God’s eyes. If he took the proper actions, cleansing
himself from sin, performing the good works that were necessary to gain
salvation, if he loved God with an active love, he would be saved.
Of course, this is an oversimplification. Certainly
Luther knew that God gave (Third Person Singular Past Active Indicative) his
only Son for the world. But by and large, the emphasis was on him, Luther, as
the acting subject towards God. And this terrified him. He was a completely inadequate
subject to the verbs, ‘cleanse,’ ‘work,’ ‘love.’ To be an inadequate subject is
to not be able to perform the verb of which you are the subject. We do not say
that a stone can actively cleanse, and if we do, it is because some other person
uses the stone to cleanse. But you would never say ‘The stone loves.’ Luther
was taught that he had to love God for God’s own sake, and he knew from
experience that his stony heart was not up to the task.
What happened? In short, a revolution in
grammar. Luther did not discover this by accident. He discovered it because he
was called to be a teacher of Scripture, and in studying the Scripture in order
to teach it he found that God was the subject of the verbs, cleanse, save,
love, and the like. In the words of First John, ‘This is love, not that we
loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the expiation for our
sins.’ In the words of Paul in Romans, ‘God justifies the one who has faith in
Jesus.’ In the words of Jesus himself, ‘You shall know the truth, and the truth
shall make you free.’
To be a Christian, Luther found, was to start
using the grammar of God, to put his faith in what God the subject had actively
done for him, the indirect object, and not the other way around. He was free
from being an inadequate subject because he was not the subject. He became free
to stop worrying about what he could do and could not do and put all his focus
upon what God did and was doing for him.
This should be good news for us, too, and
it is. Many of us labor under a similar misapprehension as did Martin Luther.
We look at ourselves and only see a failing subject who is incapable of the verbs
associated with us. If we adopt the grammar of God, we will refocus our
attention on what God has done for us. We are the objects of God’s saving love.
What could be better news?
But there are other misapprehensions. Some
people will receive the news that God is the actor and we are passive objects with
gladness, because it means that they can be passive. Other people will rightly object that there
are actually many places in Scripture where we are asked to do things. How are
we to be active and passive at the same time?
Towards God we receive righteousness
passively, the objects of God’s love and saving acts. Towards our neighbors, we
are to be active subjects, doing that which God calls us to do for their sake.
And in a way, if God is calling us to do for our neighbors, and equipping us
with energy, resources, and hope for the tasks, is that not God actually still
acting as the subject? He is working good works in us for the sake of the
neighbor.
Finally, this grammar of God should put an
end to the concept of God as an impersonal cosmic force, accessible to every and
any religious conception, staying completely outside of time and indefinite to
the point of complete incomprehensibility. To say that God is a personal God is
simply to say that, like a person, God speaks about himself and God acts. A God
who does not reveal himself and act in a specific way is a God who cannot help
us. For if he does nothing, then we must do it all, and God is at the mercy of
our subjectivity.
But instead, God acts. He is the subject of the verbs, and the verbs we hear today are joyful verbs: forgives, justifies, passes over, frees. We are called to faith in those acts of God: faith, perhaps as a new verb, ‘Faith this, and it shall be yours!’ Why? Because Christ.
MCF +
