I delivered the following sermon at a Divine Service commemorating The Presentation of the Augsburg Confession at St. John Lutheran Church in Centerpoint, IA on Saturday, June 25, 2022
Matthew 10:26-33; 1 Timothy 6:11-16; Nehemiah 8:1-2, 5-6, 9-12
In the Name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit.
“I will speak of your testimonies before kings and shall not be put to shame.” Notice that the psalmist doesn’t say “I might speak,” or even “I should speak,” but rather “I will speak.” You will speak too. But what will you speak? You must know that you will speak something, even if you do not speak at all. And what you speak or don’t speak, that is your confession.
The Greek word that is translated confess or acknowledge in our Gospel reading is ὁμολογέω, which literally means “same word.” The Latin confiteri, from which our English word confess is derived, also means “same word.” Thus, to acknowledge or to confess means “to say the same word.” When you confess your sins, for example, you are “saying the same word” that God has said about your thoughts, words, and deeds, that they miss the mark His holy Law demands. However, you also confess your faith, and when you do you “say the same word” that God has said in His Word, in His Son Jesus the Christ. So, whether you confess your sins, or your faith, or remain silent, you are always making a confession, you are always saying something. But are you saying the same word that God has said?
We Lutherans identify as a confessional church. We begin our confession saying, “We believe, teach, and confess,” and then we say the words concerning what we believe, teach, and confess. We say the same word that God has said in His word. We are a confessional church because we say with our mouths, and also with our deeds, what we believe in our hearts, and we teach the same to our children and to each other, and we confess the same before our neighbors, our enemies, the world, even before kings. In so doing we stand with Christians of all times and all places, with John the Baptist, Stephen, Peter, Paul, and all the Apostles; with Polycarp, Perpetua, Felicity, and Ignatius; with Jan Hus and William Tyndale; and with Martin Luther, Philip Melanchthon, John the Steadfast, Frederick the Wise, Martin Chemnitz, and so many others.
Truly, all men are confessional, whether they acknowledge it or not. But what do they confess? Tragically, many do not “say the same word” God has said in His Word, but they deny it, despise it, contort it, and contradict it, and they encourage others to do the same. They say that what God has declared evil, even an abomination, is good, while they call the good things of the LORD and His word evil. They make their confession in words and deeds, and even without words and deeds. Our Lord has said, “Everyone who confesses me before men, I also will confess before my Father who is in heaven, but whoever denies me before men, I also will deny before my Father in heaven.” To confess or to deny, these are the only possibilities. In our corruption, we like to believe that we can stand in some neutral gray area and avoid making a confession, but this is a lie and a deception of the devil who conspires with our sinful flesh and fallen reason. The Lord has also said that “he who is not with me is against me,” and that the neutral and the lukewarm he will spit out of His mouth. When it comes to your confession, what comes out of your mouth and the deeds that you perform before men, there is no gray area and there is no fence-straddling. You will confess. But what will you confess? Will you say the same word that God has said? Or will you say another word.
It would have been easy for our Christian forebearers to remain lukewarm. The Romans were polytheists, they had no problem believing that there were more gods in the pantheon than they were aware of. Like the Greeks before them, they even had altars and temples to the unknown gods, just in case. In this sense the Romans were exceedingly tolerant. What the Romans wouldn’t tolerate, however, was the exclusive confession of the Christians that their God was the only true God, and that the only way to Him was through His Son Jesus Christ, who was also God as a man. Your average Christian could get by if he would only confess perhaps one or two of the Roman gods, or Caesar as a god, by burning some incense before his image, yet countless faithful chose hefty fines, imprisonment, and death rather than go against their confession, their conscience, and their God.
Though it should have been, it really wasn’t all that different for the Reformers of the 16th century. The chief difference was that it wasn’t polytheists and pagans that were pressuring our Lutheran forebearers to compromise their confession, but the temptation and the threat came from within the Church itself. There was no argument concerning how many gods there were. The Apostle’s, Nicene, and Athanasian Creeds had locked down the worship of the “Trinity in Unity and Unity in Trinity” over a thousand years earlier. What was at stake for the Reformers was not the Trinity or the two natures of Christ, but the very heart of the Christian faith, that men are justified freely by God’s grace alone, apart from works, through faith in Jesus Christ.
October 31, 1517 was not the beginning of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, but it certainly got the attention of the Church of Rome. Luther’s Ninety-Five Theses Against Indulgences wasn’t a problem for Rome because of its doctrine, but because of its practical effects. Countless variant teachings were permitted by Rome and were accepted as quaint, provincial eccentricities, but to raise doubt concerning the buying of indulgences hit the Roman church in a place it couldn’t ignore, the treasury. Luther was debated for a while, but when his teachings caught on with the laity and with dukes, princes, and electors, Luther was excommunicated, and the Pope demanded that he recant. In 1521 before the Imperial Diet at Worms Luther made his confession, “Unless I am convinced by Scripture and plain reason - I do not accept the authority of the popes and councils, for they have contradicted each other - my conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and I will not recant anything for to go against conscience is neither right nor safe. God help me. Amen.” Luther said the same word that God had said before the king and emperor. Then he was stolen away by men under orders of Frederick the Wise and was kept and protected at the Wartburg castle near Eisenach.
Even this was still not the beginning of the Evangelical Lutheran Church. That would come roughly nine years later on June 25, 1530 at an event we commemorate this day, when the German electors, princes, and estates presented a written and spoken confession of their faith to the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V in Augsburg. It was an irenic confession intended to demonstrate that what was believed, taught, and confessed in their territories was only that which the Christian Church had always believed, taught, and confessed. From the Preface: “It shows, from the Holy Scriptures and God’s pure Word, what has been up to this time presented in our lands, dukedoms, dominions, and cities, and taught in our churches.” They made their confession before the king and emperor, and it still stands, “a confession that will even prevail against the gates of hell, with the grace and help of God.” They were right, for their confession was nothing more than the same words God has said in His word.
“[You and I] will speak of [God’s] testimonies before kings and shall not be put to shame.” If you say the same word that God has said in His word, then you are guaranteed of at least two things: First, your confession is true and immovable, and you have nothing to fear. Second, your confession will be opposed – perhaps fiercely so – by men, the world, and Satan. But you will speak. You will confess, even if you say nothing at all. The list of things you will confess is lengthy: That there is one God who is the creator and sustainer of all things. That He created all things by the power of His eternal Word. That He created each kind and species of life unique and distinct, able to reproduce its own kind, and that He created human beings in His image, male and female, and joined them in marriage and blessed them to be fruitful and multiply. That all men are conceived and born bearing the stain of original sin and belong to the devil until God claims them as His own in Holy Baptism and the blood of Jesus. That God is the giver of all life and that all life is sacred from conception in the womb to burial in the tomb. These truths you will confess in word and deed, and for your confession you will be opposed by men, the world, and Satan.
The early church and the 16th century were alike, and also very different, in a number of ways. They were alike in that Christians had to confess what they truly believed before kings and emperors at risk of their livelihoods and life itself. They were different in that the pressure came from the government in the early church, and from the church itself in the 16th century. Today you will confess before kings and emperors once again, but this time the pressure to compromise your confession comes from both the government and the church. You will make your confession at the risk of your livelihoods and life itself. You will lose friends and make enemies. Your families will be divided. You may lose your license, your job, or your business. You may become a social pariah and have horrible epithets flung at you destroying your good name and reputation. You may be fined or imprisoned. Mobs may seek to vandalize your home, your church, your business, and harm your family. “Have no fear of them,” says our Lord Jesus, “and do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell.” “What I tell you in the dark, say in the light, and what you hear whispered, proclaim on the housetops.” That is to say, if you believe, you must confess. And your Lord Jesus will confess you before His Father in heaven.
In the + Name of Jesus. Amen.
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