In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

One of the big talking points that you hear nowadays, especially if you watch religious content on the internet, is that Martin Luther started a new church. But that actually isn’t true. At least, it’s certainly not how we confessional Lutherans see ourselves. The Protestant Reformation of the 16th century, which we’re celebrating this morning in the service, was never about starting a new church. It was always about the one true Church returning to a right confession of the truth, and getting rid of all those things that had corrupted her teaching.

There might be a lot of different Christian denominations out there, but the Bible says that when you boil everything down, there’s really only one Church. Just like there is only one physical Body of Christ, there is only One Body of believers, who are united with Him by a shared faith. As Saint Paul says so clearly, in Ephesians chapter 4, “There is one body and one spirit – just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call – one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all.”

So, what I’d like to in this morning sermon as we celebrate Reformation Day, is consider two very important questions about the Church. First, what actually makes someone a part of it? And second where is this one true Church really found?

According to God’s Word, there is only one thing that makes someone a part of the one true Church. It’s faith in the Lord Jesus. As Jesus explains to us in our Gospel lesson from John chapter 8, “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” Well, what does it mean to abide in the words of Jesus? It means to hold on to His teaching. It means to listen to the things that Christ tells you in the Scriptures, and to put your trust in them. And what do you call that when you put your trust in God’s Word? You call that having faith.

As Jesus also tells us in John chapter 10, “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me.” Just like a sheep listens to the voice of its shepherd and follows after it, we Christians listen to the voice of our Good Shepherd Jesus and follow after Him. And that’s what makes us part of His flock. That’s what makes us part of the Church.

To this day, the Roman Catholic church asserts that in order to be a part of the One true Church that Jesus founded, you have to submit yourself to the papacy. You have to join a Roman Catholic congregation and follow after the statements and doctrinal assertions made by the man who they claim to be Saint Peter’s successor. But that is not what makes someone part of the Church. It’s not by submitting to one supposed infallible church leader. It is by submitting to the sinless Son of God. Popes can make mistakes. Church councils car err. Groups of Christians can get together and get things wrong. You don’t need to have a doctorate in theology in order to see it.

Remember what that last pope, pope Francis did? He gave his priests permission to bless same sex couples as if their relationship had God’s approval. But it didn’t! And no pope can make it so simply by a papal decree. Or what about what the pope did in the time of Martin Luther? The Roman Catholic Church was selling indulgences that people could buy in order to get their loved ones out of purgatory. Well, where is any of that taught in the Bible? Not just the idea of purgatory, and suffering for your sins after you die before you can get to heaven, but the idea that you could somehow buy your way out of it at all? I don’t know if you know this about the 95 Theses, or if you’ve ever read them, but that was the thing that Luther was most mad about at the time. It wasn’t the idea of purgatory in general, which he only came to reject later on from studying Scripture, but that you could simply buy your way out if it with money. What about repentance? What about faith? What about the blood of Jesus? 

Simply joining a Roman Catholic Church, and listening to the pope, doesn’t make you part of the Church that Jesus founded. And by the way, neither does simply joining a good Lutheran Church and having you name on the roles there either. Don’t you remember Jesus’ parable about the wedding feast? Yes, the people who wouldn’t come at all got destroyed. But so did the guy who tried to show up without wearing the right garment. Simply being in the right place isn’t the same thing as being there for the right reasons. Simply coming to church and having your membership on the books isn’t the same thing as actually believing. To be sure, you should join a good Lutheran Church, and you absolutely do need to attend it, but just attending it is not the same thing as having true faith in Christ. It’s not the same thing as abiding in the words of Jesus and trusting in Him for forgivness and salvation. And that, and that alone, is what makes someone a part of the One true Church. It is having faith in Christ.

So, where then do we find the Church? Since the one true Church made up of all those who have faith in Jesus, but faith isn’t something that we can see, where do we see the Church? The answer to that question is found in our Gospel lesson too. In John chapter 8, Jesus doesn’t just remind us of what makes someone a part of the Church, which again is faith, He tells us how it is that a person comes to faith. Again, what does Jesus say, “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”

The way that we come to faith in Jesus, which makes us part of His Church, is through His Holy Word. As Saint Paul also says in Romans chapter 10, “So faith comes from hearing, and hearing the Word of Christ. 

So, the place where we find the Church, that is, where we find faith, is wherever the pure Word of God is taught. It’s where the gospel is purely proclaimed and the sacraments administered rightly.

People look for the Church in all kinds of different places. A very popular one nowadays is to look for it in whatever appears old. This is another talking point of the Roman Catholic church as well as Eastern Orthodoxy. Young people in particular, who have become disenfranchised with a constantly changing world around them, just want something that stays the same. And that’s Rome and the East’s main appeal: “Look how ancient we look,” they say. “Look how old our ceremonies are, and how we’ve been doing these things the same for a long time. We must be right.” 

Now, there is some truth to the fact that since God’s Word doesn’t change, there should be a continuity between Christians who lived a long time ago and Christians who live today. The young people are right when they sense that something is wrong with a church that looks radically different from the Church throughout history. And we Lutherans recognize that too. That’s why we don’t throw out the liturgy and get rid of the ancient ceremonies. In fact, in the Augsburg Confession, we say that we retain all the ceremonies that are not in conflict with the Gospel. We keep the vestments. We don’t get rid of the candles. We sing. We chant. We bow. We kneel. We do all the things that Christians have done for thousands of years before us to show that we are united with them. 

But we don’t just do those things because they’re old. And we don’t teach people just to go looking for whatever seems the oldest. We retain the ceremonies because of what they teach us. We keep the good ones that point us to the Word of God. Because again, that’s where you find the Church. You find it where the pure Word of God is proclaimed.

Even if a church body like Rome or the East does ancient looking things, that doesn’t prove that their doctrine is necessarily pure. You have to look at what they actually teach. And when you do, you’ll find a lot of things that disagree with Scripture. I already mentioned some of them before like purgatory and indulgences. Did you know that the Roman Catholic church still issues indulgences? Just a few years ago I read about a special plenary indulgence that you could get by doing a certain number of deeds, and making an offering, which apparently you could apply to your loved ones in purgatory to get them out. And the East has problems too. Their churches are beautiful and filled with incredible images, but they deny even the most basic truths of Scripture. For example, eastern orthodoxy does not accept the fact that Jesus made a payment to God on the cross to forgive the sins of the world. They say that that is a theory, and they reject it. They also teach just like Rome that you should pray to the saints, and that you can even repent for other people after they’ve died. So, it doesn’t matter that they look old. They don’t have the Word. At least, they clouded it with error. And the Word is all that matters.

The other place where lots of people try and find the one true Church, that’s still not right, isn’t where things look old, but where things look new. This is the position of the charismatic churches, and lots of American Evangelicals. Even if they don’t come right out and say it, that’s what they encourage people to think, especially because of their worship practices. They put so much emphasis on the way that you feel in worship that people start to confuse that feeling with presence of the Holy Spirit. What is the argument that we hear from those who go to those kinds of churches when they visit our church? They say that it was boring. They say that they didn’t feel anything. So, then they conclude that the Holy Spirit must not have been there.

But where is the Holy Spirit found and where does He promise to be present? Does He promise to be present simply in our feelings? Does He say that He will be somewhere just because we get excited about something? No! He promises to be present in the Word. He promises to work through the Word alone to bring us to faith in Christ and to keep us in the faith until we die. So, it doesn’t matter how we feel after we leave a church service. That’s doesn’t mean that we were at the One true Church. What matters is whether or not the pure Word was taught there. Did we sing it in the hymns? Did we confess it in the order of service? Did the pastor preach it from the pulpit? Did He read it from the lectern? If that’s what happened, and the pure Word was there, then we know that the Holy Spirit was there. And we know that the Church is there too.

Martin Luther did not start a new church when he nailed his 95 theses to the church door in Wittenberg. God used him, just liked he’s used many faithful Christians throughout history, to keep the one true Church going. What makes someone part of the true Church, is only one thing. It’s having faith in Jesus. And the place where you find the Church, where you find faith, is where the pure Word of God is taught.

The reason why you should be glad to be a confessional Lutheran, and why should want everyone else in your life to be a Lutheran too, is not because only Lutherans go to heaven, but because in the Lutheran Church we have the Word. By God’s grace, and not our own merit, His Word which brings people to faith and saves their souls on the day of judgment, has been preserved among us. You can see it in our doctrine. You can read it in our Catechism. You can sing it in our hymns. And you can witness it in our historic worship services. All that matters is the Word. It is the food that feeds the souls of Christians and keeps them in the faith. It is the water that nourishes the hearts of believers and sustains them in the truth. It is the seed, planted in the ground that causes the Church to spout and grow and bear good fruit. 

Today we thank God for the Word, especially that teaching from His Word that we are saved grace through faith in what Jesus did for us on the cross and not our own works or merit. May the Lord help us to abide in His Word so that we stay part of the Church and keep trusting in Christ forever. In Jesus’ Name. Amen.