Someone stopped me yesterday as I was walking through campus. She wanted to pitch me the idea of donating to an endeavor to help children with cancer. As a part of her pitch, she asked me what I did. I told her I was a pastor. She asked me what the “mission” of our church was. I know a lot of churches have easy-to-memorize pre-written mission statements, but we don’t at University Lutheran. Instead, fumbled around a little and said, “well, we try to give people the assurance that they are ok so that they can take the focus off themselves and put their energy into helping other people.”
In some ways, that’s the message of the Reformation that we will be celebrating this Sunday. The issue in the Church of the 1500’s was that some bad theology had turned Christians inward. It had made them fear hell, not necessarily for their neighbors, but for themselves. They were putting a lot of energy into things like indulgences and joining religious orders so that they could feel like they got something: assurance. They wanted to be assured that God loved them and that they were going to escape a fiery eternity. All this had turned into a theology of self-preservation. But when you read the Bible, self-preservation doesn’t seem to be that big of a value. If anything, self-preservation seems to get in the way of truly being a part of the Kingdom of God.
So instead, the Reformation brought us back to the truth of God’s Word, that God GIFTS us assurance through His grace. We don’t have to buy indulgences and fill up monasteries to find our assurance. It is right there for us in Jesus’ Cross. We can stop worrying, fretting, and working to find that assurance. It’s right there for us, for free. It is taken off our to-do list. We no longer have to worry about ourselves. He has us covered.
And when we believe that, something amazing happens in us. We realize the amount of nervous energy that we would otherwise put into making sure that we are saved. That energy doesn’t need to go to ourselves anymore. It can go to helping someone else. We are freed up from worrying about ourselves so that we can care about others. So good news, you can stop caring about yourself. God has that covered. And now you are freed up to go care for others with that energy that you would have spent on yourself.