The Rev. Frank Logue
King of Peace Episcopal Church
Kingsland, Georgia
March 26, 2006

One Simple Truth
Ephesians 2:4-10

“For by grace you have been saved through faith,
and this is not your own doing;
it is the gift of God—not the result of works,
so that no one may boast.” 

Paul writes these words to the Christians in Ephesus and they are startling clear. Salvation comes through faith alone as a gift from God, not due to good works. Such a clear, concise statement would seem to be inarguable. And yet this verse and passages like it became fighting words, for the very statement that we are saved by grace through faith alone was at the heart of the wars and other violence that raged through Europe in the 16^th and 17^th century.  

The bloodshed pitted those faithful to the Pope against those who followed a variety of reformers including Martin Luther, Ulrich Zwingli and John Calvin. Calvin oversaw the burning at the stake of the heretic Servetus, though he had preferred the more humane beheading. Zwingli died in battle. When the Anabaptist movement sprang up Catholics and other Protestants alike renounced them as heretics and the improperly named re-baptizers suffered severe persecution from everyone else.  

This sermon will not name one side as all good and the other as all bad. There were saints and sinners among the Christians in all parts of the Reformation. In all areas of Europe there were those who sought to reform the church for religious reasons while others were pursuing reformation to cut themselves off from the political oversight and aspirations of the papacy as well as its taxation. There were many Christians seeking merely to follow Jesus the best they could and they found themselves among others who were more concerned with their own interest than in matters of faith. 

Now I have jumped headlong into history and seemed to have quickly bypassed our verse on being saved by grace through faith. I do this because the history matters. It is the source of Christianity’s fracture into our present array of denominations. Beyond that the underlying issues, which broke up the church, continue to be live issues for people of faith. A little history helps to put the present into context. 

To understand the immediate cause of the Reformation, we need to consider St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. Pope Leo X (1475-1521) great project was to complete the basilica, which had been begun by his recent predecessors. Leo is said by historians to have been sincerely religious and to have led an exemplary moral life, but he spent money freely and quickly ran through the fortune of his predecessor on art and architecture.  

To fund the building project, Leo authorized a renewed and vigorous campaign to sell indulgences. Indulgences were to be sold in Germany with half the proceeds staying close to home for the Archbishop there and the other half going back to Rome to fund building the basilica. An indulgence meant that the person paying the church would get a less than saintly loved one into heaven faster. 

Leading the German sales force was Johannes Tetzel (1464-1519), a born salesman on par with P.T. Barnum (1810-1891). It was Barnum who much later famously quipped that there is a sucker born every minute. Tetzel knew that fact already. Tetzel’s job was simple; convince nobles and commoners alike to cough up money in exchange for getting their loved ones out of the torment of purgatory and into the bliss of heaven. It didn’t matter that there was no basis in scripture for any of this. It didn’t matter that it was contrary to the life and ministry of Jesus. Just raise the funds. Tetzel excelled at his job. 

Some of what Tetzel claimed was that the cross of the one selling indulgences “has as much power as the cross of Christ.”[1] He also said that the indulgences he sold made the sinner, “cleaner than when coming out of baptism” and “cleaner than Adam before the fall.” And his most famous selling point promised, “as soon as the coin in the coffer rings, the soul from purgatory springs.” 

Please do not hear this as an anti-Catholic sermon. This is nothing of the kind. The idea that you could buy a way into heaven for persons who had died not being in a state of grace, was not official theology then or now. There were many Roman Catholics at the time who opposed the sales and the sale techniques. And there are no Christians in the world today who would profess this theology that those who die not in a state of grace can buy their way into heaven. Tetzel was just plain wrong. His actions were not defensible by the prevailing theology of his day, much less the beliefs and practices of any denomination today, or the New Testament. I am pointing to the lengths we fallen humans will go to and this can and does happen within any corner of the church when we are not faithful to Jesus’ life and teachings. 

One opponent at the time was the Roman Catholic monk, Martin Luther (1483-1546). Luther countered Tetzel by arguing that if what the salesman said were true, then the Pope should use his power out of love, not out of a desire to build an impressive church building. Luther went on to say that Pope Leo should give to the poor, even if it meant selling off St. Peter’s Basilica rather than building it up.[2] 

Luther, and his fellow professors of scripture and theology, knew that all Christians are saved by grace through faith alone. We are not saved by works, no matter how good those deeds may be. And we are certainly not able to buy our way into heaven. Luther could say this authoritatively because of verses like our passage from Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, which states clearly that salvation is through God’s grace by faith alone. 

I bring all of this up, not for a history lesson, though I do love history. I bring up Tetzel and the problems building St. Peter’s Basilica created because the same theology is rampant in our world today. Yes, we are long past the point where someone would even attempt to make the claims Tetzel made. The problem is more subtle today. 

Today, it sounds more like, “If you are a basically good person, you will get into heaven.” That’s a nice thought. But it’s not found in the Bible and it is not Christian teaching. 

Another way of living into this way of thinking about God is to emphasize the work of the church. And there is a lot of good Christians do. From a soup kitchen or clothes closet, to rebuilding homes on the Gulf Coast, or something as simple as driving someone to a doctors appointment. All of these are important ways Christians live out there faith. 

But we can get things out of order and that leads to error. We could decide that these actions—these ministries and other good deeds—earn God’s favor. The idea is then that we get on God’s good side by doing saintly stuff. That is of course to put the cart before the horse, which never got anyone anywhere. 

We can’t and don’t earn God’s love and favor. That comes for free. We are to recognize the love God has shown us through his son Jesus Christ and then respond to that love. The Bible calls us to respond to the love of God, not by being basically good people or even perfectly good people. We are to respond by asking Jesus to become the Lord of our life. That is an act of faith alone.  

Then the good stuff we do is animated by our love for God and the love God has shown us. That’s the right order. For salvation is a gift of God and is not of our own doing. The good stuff we do is not something to brag about. It’s just a response to the greater love God has already shown us. 

In a society that holds “No one gets something for nothing.” And “You get what you pay for.” The love of God is counter intuitive. Counter intuitive that is until you realize that it really is love and real love is a gift. You know that there are people in your life who love you in spite of the way you act sometimes. You get it all wrong and they love you anyway. This love you can experience is just a glimpse at the great love God has always had for you.  

Jesus showed us this love in his own life, death and resurrection. Jesus showed us his love in proclaiming from the cross, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” That same love continued through the wars in the wake of the Reformation and it continues today. As Paul wrote to the Ephesians, that Jesus would in the ages to come “show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us.” It’s an immeasurable store of riches that is not available at any price, but faith. 

Throughout history, there have been people who just couldn’t understand this straightforward fact that faith alone, and not good works, brings salvation. Christian history, like human history, is littered with embarrassing episodes like Tetzel’s sales techniques. But Christian history is also populated with an amazing array of ordinary people who were transformed by a simple act of faith.  

Sometimes we want to complicate things. We try to make life more difficult than it has to be. In Christianity, there are a lot of beliefs and doctrines on which people of faith argue. There is much that divides us. But the thing that draws us together is despite our differences, through faith in Jesus Christ we come into a relationship with God. And though we Christians can’t ever seem to show it in our lives, we are all one, because we worship the same one Lord, Jesus.  

And no matter which denomination it takes place in, one becomes a Christian by putting their trust in Jesus. It’s that simple. So simple Paul would write that it, “is not your own doing; it is the gift of God—not the result of works, so that no one may boast.” 

Amen.