No Masks Needed

October 31, 2021

On Friday night I saw the Broadway musical “Jagged Little Pill,” which is based on Alanis Morrisette’s 1995 album of the same name.  Many of you know that one of our music scholar alums, Adi, has a key role in the musical. It was wonderful to see him bring his character to life so beautifully.  At the heart of the show is the Healey family. The mother, Mary Jane, works hard to present the family’s life as perfect.  The annual Christmas letter, her Instagram feed, her interactions with other moms – they’re all designed to highlight their family’s success, like son Chris’ recent admission to Harvard.  But all of the bright and shiny pictures hide the true story, which is much more complicated.  It includes Mary Jane’s own addiction to opioids, which become the jagged little pills of the show’s title.  We learn more as the musical unfolds about why Mary Jane has turned to drugs, but to avoid spoilers, I’ll simply say that Mary Jane’s story happens far more often than we realize.

It’s a pointed reminder that we don’t just wear masks on Halloween.  Most of us have some kind of mask that we present to the world, especially when what’s going on inside feels too painful to admit.  We don’t want others to see that pain, whether it’s been inflicted upon us or is of our own making.  We’d prefer to be seen as having it together, being on top of everything.  We’d rather people envy us than pity us.

On this Reformation Sunday we remember how desperately people worried about their souls in Martin Luther’s time.  The people then had their own worries about whether they were measuring up.  Were they good enough to achieve eternal life?  The church of the time tried to sell them salvation in the form of something called indulgences.  Pay a certain price, and you could be guaranteed freedom from the fiery pits of hell.  Pay a little more, and you could liberate your dead relatives too.

What troubled Luther most about this approach was that the church was selling people something that they had already received for free.  He’d studied the Bible carefully; he was a professor of the Bible and had taught it for years.  His reading of the book of Romans, including the passage we heard a few minutes ago, convinced him that it is not about earning, deserving, or buying our way to salvation.  It is faith alone that sets us free from the punishment we would otherwise deserve – faith in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.  “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,” we hear in Romans.  All.  Every last one of us.  So if it’s about deserving a reward, then we’re all in trouble.  But that verse continues: “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; they are now justified by God’s grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.”

Justified – made right and whole – by God’s grace as a gift.  There is no striving, scrambling, buying, earning, selling, bargaining, or negotiating necessary.  The saving love of God requires nothing from us other than to trust that it is with us.

This is what Jesus is talking about in the gospel when he says, “You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.”  Jesus is not talking about some abstract truth, something so conceptual that it has no real meaning.  Nor is he talking about an individualistic kind of truth that we mean when we say that someone is “speaking their truth.”  Later in the Gospel of John Jesus will say “I am the way and the truth and the life.”  Jesus himself is the truth. It’s his way of saying, “I have come to set you free from having to measure up.  I love you no matter what, and I want you to live with the freedom to love and care for others – not because you have to, but because you can’t help it.”

There’s a dramatic moment just a few verses before today’s gospel.  A woman has been caught in adultery, and the religious leaders bring her to Jesus.  There are people all around, so it feels like a deliberate attempt to shame the woman and to trap Jesus into saying something that will get him in trouble.  They remind Jesus that the law says the woman must be stoned to death.  They want to know what Jesus says they should do.

Jesus does something strange in that moment.  He bends down and writes something on the ground.  We don’t know exactly what he writes.  I’ve sometimes wondered if he was stalling while he figured out what to say.  But I also wonder what words he might have written there in the dirt.  Grace…truth…freedom.

Eventually Jesus stands up and says to the religious leaders and to everyone gathered there: “Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.”  One by one the people go away until it’s just Jesus and the woman.  Jesus says to her: “Woman, where are they?  Has no one condemned you?”  She replies, “No one, sir.”  He says: “Neither do I condemn you. Go your way, and from now on do not sin again.”

The people who had gathered, stones in hand, ready to punish this woman – they knew the truth.  The truth that we are all captive to sin and cannot free ourselves.  That’s why it’s so easy to get caught up in judgment – because it turns us away from the harm we have done and fixates on the sin of others.  In that moment Jesus reminds them that we all stand in need of that mercy that only God can give.

What if we really lived into the freedom that Jesus promises?  What if we could set aside our judgments – of ourselves and of each other – and replace those judgments with the assurance that God is with us?  When we rest in the promises of God’s forgiveness and love, it makes us more forgiving and loving – which is something that world needs so much right now.  We need hands that reach out in mercy more than fingers that point in judgment.

Jesus promises that each and every time we celebrate Holy Communion, he is here with us.  He is in the bread and wine, under the bread and wine, with the bread and wine so that we can be sure he is truly present.

In First Communion class we’ve talked about how receiving the love of Jesus is a gift.  It does not depend on what we’ve done that week.  We don’t have to have gotten good grades or scored a goal or been the best version of ourselves in order to receive the sacrament.  We don’t have to wear a mask or pretend that everything is OK.  We simply come forward and receive this gift of grace just as we are.

And then, having received such a gift, we go out carrying Jesus in us.  We pray that the presence of Jesus will give us eyes of compassion with which to see ourselves and others, hearts to love the world, and hands to serve those in need.

We pray this prayer from Martin Luther:

Dearest God and Lord,
strengthen and uphold us
in your pure, precious Word
through Jesus Christ our Lord,
and help us to show and live our thanks
with our fruits of faith
to your praise and thanks[i]
forever.
Amen.

S.D.G. – The Rev. Dr. Christa M. Compton, Gloria Dei Lutheran Church, Chatham, NJ

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[i] Martin Luther, translated for A Collection of Prayers from Die Gebete Luthers, #195 as found here: https://acollectionofprayers.com/tag/martin-luther/page/2/