Black Marks and Gold Stars

One of the dangers of watching too much television as a child is coming to believe TV portrays the truth. Maybe I watched too many episodes of "Car 54 Where are you?" and "Adam-12" in my formative years and came away with a somewhat distorted view of what it's like to be a police officer. So, at the grand old age of 22, I applied for and was accepted as a Fourth Class Constable in the Peel Regional Police Force, just to the west of Toronto.

Unfortunately, my career was neither long nor illustrious.

I need to tell you, I don’t think I was a particularly good police officer. I wasn't very observant. I was perhaps overly sympathetic with most of the people we stopped or arrested. I felt sorry for the people to whom we gave tickets. And I remember when I had my first supervision with my staff sergeant and two other senior officers. I sat down in their office, with these three imposing figures about to judge me, feeling rather uncomfortable.

First of all there was some small talk, "How’s the family?" "How are you enjoying the job?" "How are you getting along with your training officer?"

And then one of them said to me, "We notice you smile a lot on the job." I put a big grin on my face and said, "Well, I guess that's true."

And then he says to me, "Don't … don’t do that … people will think they can take advantage of you."

Being young and impressionable, I instantly curled my lips down from that smile, into the tough look of a hardened cop. On the inside, knowing, in that very moment, "This job is not for me." This is not going to end well …

A little less than a year after I joined the police force, I quit, not knowing exactly what I was going to do with my life.

So, when I felt called to the ministry, a lot of people were shocked at my decision …

"Pretty big jump from cop to minister."

"How do you move from being a police officer to a clergyman?"

"Isn't it a little peculiar to change from one occupation to another so different and unrelated to each other?"

And then this one person says to me, "Well, I guess you're just shifting from enforcing one set of laws to a different set of laws."

And that comment caught me by surprise …

"Is that what I'm doing? Is that what I am? Will that be my function in society? Is that how ministers and priests and pastors are perceived by the world?" God has put us in place, the entire church and the structure and purpose of Christianity, to enforce divine law ... to threaten the violators of God’s law with hellfire and damnation for their transgressions? To take away fun and freedom ... to command subservience to the Will of God, so God may reign as the undisputed Lord of the Universe?

Is that my job?

And that brings us to the year 1511, a young Augustinian monk by the name of Martin Luther was permanently transferred by the Roman Catholic Church to the University of Wittenberg in Germany. There he took his doctoral degree and assumed preaching and administrative responsibilities around the university.

Martin was a sensitive man, tormented by the internal struggle to reconcile himself to God … His big question, “How can we human beings stand in holiness before a righteous and demanding God?”

One evening in 1517, after much study and reflection, Martin Luther launched his challenge against the abuses and doctrinal errors of the Church. On the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg, he posted a document listing his 95 points of debate with the understanding and practice of the Roman Catholic Church.

Luther did not feel, as a priest, that being God’s “police officer” – God’s enforcer - was his job. What Luther came to represent in his life and teaching was a fundamental understanding of God as merciful and gracious, in contrast to the demanding justice of God he had heard as a child growing up in the church.

This was the beginning of the Reformation …

Later on in the 1540’s the Roman Catholic Church held a “reformation council,” and cleaned house for themselves, but “the genie could not be put back in the bottle.”

The Reformation could not be undone, and the face of the Christian church was changed forever.

Today is Reformation Sunday … a time for us to remember the grace, mercy and love of God …

But that’s not always an easy thing to do – the human heart and the broken human spirit often rebel against the idea of a God who is loving and forgiving.

I preach this and I know this, but sometimes I have trouble trusting in it … to trust that God is on my side … because from some dark recess of the human soul, a different and more sinister thought emerges – the fear of a God who’s out to get me.

Oh sure, if we're good and perfect and free from the black stain of sin; if we're good little boys and girls, of course we know, God will love us and watch over us and tenderly care for us, throughout eternity.

But what if we're bad or we think bad thoughts or we have doubts and questions? What if we fail in a moment of weakness? There’s a word for that … sinner! And sinners need to be punished, don’t they?

We’ve all experienced the minister, who while promising the forgiveness of God, is frowning and wagging his finger!

Many people seemed to get a mixed message. While they hear the words, “God forgives sin,” they don’t actually feel forgiven in their hearts.

We worry about punishment in this life or the next, and Dante’s Inferno reminds us of the eternal punishment of the sinners lost in the nine circles of Hell!

Could it be, with some part of our mind, we think of Jesus as an omnipotent police officer in the sky. He sits on his throne in Heaven and watches what each and every one of us is doing all the time.

“He sees you when you’re sleeping … he knows when you’re awake … he knows if you’ve been bad or good, so be good for goodness sake!”

And so what happens when we do something wrong?

Is there a little black mark placed beside our name in the ledger book of life? And when we do something right, perhaps we will have one of those black marks erased. And if we're really good, and our good actions actually outnumber and outweigh our bad … do we get a little gold star beside our name ... a sort of credit balance of good deeds, that we might need later in case we get in trouble!

But usually when we contemplate God's accounting in that ledger book of life, we get a little nervous. We're a little worried about the record we're running up - the excess of little black marks: "Will we live long enough to balance our account?" And what exactly happens to you, if you die with a negative credit balance ...

Now, this turned out to be quite a useful little worldview when the Roman Catholics needed a great sum of money in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, in order to build the Vatican. They instituted the practice of selling indulgences.

If you were a Christian, who was a little afraid of the number of black marks against your name, you could actually purchase forgiveness for your sins. It was quite a complex system based upon the severity of the sin requiring expiation, and the financial status of the sinner.

But, the underlying principle was this: No matter what the offense, you can buy forgiveness for your sins.

The Pope holds the keys to the Kingdom, and if he says you’re OK, that’s good enough for God!

It was really this abuse of power, and the deception being perpetrated against so many simple followers of Christ, that caused Martin Luther, at the time, an ordinary Roman Catholic priest, to rise up and challenge the teachings and the authority of Rome.

The notion that God has a ledger book to keep track of our good works and our sins was an abomination to Luther. And the further idea of actually being able, with money, to buy forgiveness, seemed to him absolute insanity.

Luther wrote, "All heretics have continually failed in this one point, that they do not rightly understand or know the article of justification. If we simply permit Christ to be our Saviour, then we have won. If we look at the spiritual birth and substance of a true Christian, we shall soon extinguish all rewards of good works; for they serve us to no use, neither to purchase sanctification, nor to deliver us from sin, death, devil or hell ... Little children are saved only by faith, without any good works. Therefore, faith alone justifies. It is a mischievous thing that we miserable, sinful wretches will upbraid God and hit him in the teeth with our good works and think therefore to be justified before him. A true Christian says, "I am justified and saved only by faith in Christ without any works or merit of my own."

As Luther recognized, it would certainly be both frightening and gruesome to feel we had to make sure every single one of our sins and transgressions, shady thoughts and scheming manipulations, had to be made right or somehow balanced before we died. We'd live in constant terror of not quite "making the grade."

And isn’t it true, each one of us is an odd mixture of weakness and strength, maturity and immaturity, truth and lies?

Edward Martin has expressed this predicament in a poem called My Name is Legion. He writes …

"Within my earthly temple there's a crowd;

There's one of us that's humble, one that's proud,

There's one that's broken hearted for his sins,

There's one that unrepentant sits and grins;

There's one that loves his neighbour as himself,

And one that cares for naught but fame and self.

From much corroding care I should be free

If I could once determine … which is me."

And so, thankfully, the Christian faith boldly proclaims, our salvation is not made certain by our good works, or by the purchase of forgiveness, or by a positive balance in the ledger book of black marks and gold stars … we are saved by faith alone.

No one approaches the throne of God in self proclamation of one's virtue and goodness … to stand before God as a right.

We enter the presence of God with a humble, contrite and faithful heart, depending not upon our own goodness, but upon the mercy, grace and love of God.

What Christ offers is a way of escape from feelings of unworthiness and shame, transforming these negative feelings into emotions that may motivate us to move towards the fullness of life, joy and love, God intends for us.

Listen again to the words of Martin Luther, "All men, indeed are not alike strong, so that in some, many faults, weaknesses and offenses are found; but these do not hinder them of sanctification ... and although, now and then, he stumbles and falls into sin, yet it is forgiven him, when he rises again, and holds on to Christ who said, "It is not the will of my Father who is in Heaven that one of these little ones should perish.""

Now, I must admit, I'm sometimes disappointed to think I shall never, during this earthly pilgrimage, get my house in order. I shall never be able to proudly come before God and say, "See Lord, I've made good and perfect that life which you gave me!"

I would dearly love to be able to do just that ... but I know that day shall never come. Instead, I must learn to live in humble submission to God, depending on God to make good my life and my many sins. However, this is the way it is. I am not God, I am only a weak and sinful human being, but one God considers to be a precious and irreplaceable treasure. I am a person – you are a person - whom God loves.

A few more words from Martin Luther, a man who knew himself with brutal honesty, a man who loved God with faith and integrity, a man who, for a time, strove for perfection, but then came to realize all his good works could not overcome the shadow side of his nature.

I close with his words, "The righteousness of works and hypocrisy are the most mischievous diseases born in us, and not easily expelled, especially when they are confirmed and settled upon us by use and practice. For my part, I have so often deceived our Lord God by promising to be upright and good, that I will promise no more, but will only pray for a happy hour, when it shall please God to make me good."

Hear the Good News ... God is with us ... and God is on our side ...