I'm sure that most, if not all of us are familiar with the story of Martin Luther. In the early decades of the 16th century, an Augustinian monk from Germany became outraged with the laxity and abuses of the Catholic Church hierarchy and with the sale of indulgences to fund Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel. These indulgences promised reduced time in Purgatory, where saved souls go for purification before they are admitted into Heaven, in exchange for money, extorted, such as it was, from already impoverished peasants and belligerent nobles. In 1517, Luther was driven to nail his 95 Theses - a list of reforms - to the cathedral door in Wittenburg. Followed by the publication of many other texts outlining his objections to papal authority and calling the church back to the principles of Christ, grace, faith, Scripture and the Cross, as well as many meetings and trials, Luther was forced to rest upon his conscience and say "here I stand, I can do no other." Against his hopes of reinvigorating and reforming the Church, those who agreed with Luther's insights split from the Catholic Church and formed the Lutheran sect, which spread throughout northern Europe, coming to the New World along with German and Scandinavian immigrants, and leading us to where we are here today in Historic Trinity Lutheran Church in downtown Calgary.

Right on Martin, the original protester, defacing public property with his graffiti, stickin' it to The Man and raging against The Machine. Contrary to what the media of any time has tried to portray it as, there is always a method behind the madness of protest... There's a reason why people become so outraged that they take to the streets and challenge the status quo. There's a reason why we are Protestants (protesters, Protestants, same thing).

If we read between the lines of Luther's writings and sermons, we can get a good idea of where his outrage lay. Looking closely, it can be said that his objection was against any form of religion that gave the appearance of holiness and righteousness and promise of salvation but which didn't involve actual intimacy with God. It is the type of religion which promises that we can get saved, enlightened, wealthy, healthy and sure of the future if we follow the right rules, accept the right doctrines, do the right works and rituals or pay out a certain amount of money, rather than by getting right with God and others through the transformative power of love, repentance, reconciliation, mercy, humility, faith and grace. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the World War II German Lutheran martyr, would later articulate this idea as "cheap grace", being grace that didn't really cost us anything... A few dollars, maybe, but nothing important. Nothing that would lead us to vulnerability and intimacy.

Cheap grace, this salvation without intimacy, may be convenient since it lets us putter around in our day-to-day grinds without having to change. It lets us carouse on Saturday night, get forgiven on Sunday morning, and be a dog eating dogs on Monday. But it isn't good for us or for anyone else. What drove Luther's investigations and protest was the pain of his own conscience and his feelings of inadequacy. He tried every work he could to make himself holy, even going so far as to flagellate and abuse himself, thinking that the sting of the whip could drive out the guilt of his sin. Nothing could do it, though, because in all of it he was lacking what only God could give. Try as we might, we human beings are such small, fragile, insignificant, powerless things... To powerless to purify ourselves of guilt or set ourselves upon the path of reconciliation and righteousness. Our consciences can be a great motivator for good, but most often they simply remind us of our failings and hurt. Nothing Luther could do himself could ease his conscience.

Only intimacy with God can do that. Only tasting God's grace and forgiveness can give us peace and enable us to forgive ourselves. Only by feeling Her love can we know love. Salvation, after all, isn't simply this reward you get after jumping through the appropriate hoops. Salvation is a way of life, born into being by the labor of the Cross, ushering us into it in our Baptisms, inspired by the Holy Spirit, guided by the Son, empowered by the Father, which will endure even after death. One of my favorite affirmations of salvation, my most frequent answer after "I am Baptized" to the question "are you saved" is "I have been saved, I am being saved, I will be saved." Salvation is to be reconciled to God, to be intimate with the Divine.

This grace overflows in our lives to those around us. We are taught over and over again in the New Testament that we cannot love God, Who we have not seen, without also loving our fellow human beings, who we can see. If intimacy with God is salvation, then intimacy with other people is righteousness. When we are vulnerable with our sisters and brothers, something compassionate grows in us... Not undue concern, but long overdue concern... Genuine love in action, the walls of suspicion and selfishness and insecurity torn down, the willingness to live and die for others so that they may know themselves the wonders and joy of intimacy with God. We cannot help but seek to do right by others because God first made us right by Him.

Intimate with God and intimate with others, we are finally made capable of intimacy with ourselves. If salvation is intimacy with God, and righteousness is intimacy with other people, then we may say that holiness is intimacy with ourselves... Conscience at ease and motivated to treat our sisters and brothers with love and dignity, we are finally made able to treat ourselves with love and dignity. We can finally be at peace with ourselves, no longer looking to use and abuse others to fill up whatever vacant holes there are in our souls, to span an illusory bridge between ourselves and what we are alienated from. We'll no longer have to find a surrogate for meaning in our lives through money or sex or possessions or productivity. We will be able to put away our self-flagellating whips and whisper to our consciences that we are free, Baptized, born again.

These are not the demands that God makes of us, but the gift that God gives us! When, through the prophet, She says "I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams and the fat of fed beasts; I do not delight in the blood of bulls, or of lambs, or of goats", God is not condemning us, but freeing us... Freeing us from the cycle of alienation and falsity, freeing us from religion that gives the appearance of righteousness and holiness and the promise of salvation without intimacy. When Jesus warns us to be ready servants at the house when the master returns, it is not to threaten us, but to invite us to be blessed.

Jesus is freeing us when He teaches us to "Make purses for yourselves that do not wear out... For where your treasure is, your heart is also." True wealth lies not in what we carry outside ourselves, storing in barns and purses and stock portfolios. The real treasure is in intimacy and vulnerability, true peace to be found in readiness. "Do not be afraid," He tells us, for in this intimacy lies the Kingdom of God. It may seem frighteningly absurd to sell our possessions, that is, to be so vulnerable and intimate that we can be truly sacrificial in our concern for our fellow human beings and even Creation itself. But we really gain nothing by jealously holding to these things, which we can lose at the hands of robbers and time. Live for the only way of life that will endure into eternity.

By intimacy we can have supreme trust in God and God's benevolence because we have experienced it first hand. And this trust is faith. Faith is not blind acceptance of doctrinal propositions about Jesus, but rather a deep and abiding trust in Jesus. Faith is not found in books of theology, or even The Book, in epic historical films or sublime statuary, or in solemn assemblies, new moons, appointed festivals, Sabbaths and convocations, incense and offerings. These may be insurmountably helpful in our faiths, but in themselves they are nothing. They are only the appearance of righteousness and holiness and an empty promise of salvation by things we do and dogmas we believe. Trust is a relationship, and relationships can only be held between living beings. You can't have faith in a book, but you can in the people who wrote it. You can't have faith in a sermon, but you can in the one delivering it. But most of all we are to have faith in the One Who inspires books and preachers and Who ushers us into intimacy and vulnerability that allows us to trust.

"Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen." It is ultimate trust in God to lead us to a better land. It was trust that compelled Abraham to follow God's lead, which wasn't merely to a new plot of land, but to a promise of a new way of being. We follow Abraham not to the Zion which is the centre of so much strife and bloodshed, but to the heavenly Zion wherein there will be justice, rescue for the oppressed, defense for the orphan and pleading for the widow. In this heavenly city, which like salvation is something we experience here and now which carries on to eternity, there will be only goodness... No evil, nothing born of alienation and hardheartedness, no surrogate attempts to fill the emptiness in our souls in ways that only cause death and destruction. There we will not be devoured by the sword as the natural consequence of our fear towards and hatred of one another. Together, in this new society, the City of God, we will all eat together of the goodness of the land, in fairness, justice, equity, solidarity... In vulnerability and intimacy.

Let us have courage. Let God's love and grace and mercy call and compel us. Let the waters of Baptism birth us into the Body of Christ. Let us seek the heavenly city and religion that is, as James said, pure and undefiled before the Lord. No longer settle, or hide behind, rules and dogmas and works that are meant to give only the appearance of true religion. Release; be vulnerable and intimate with yourselves, which is holiness and which produces dignity. Be vulnerable and intimate with others, which is righteousness and which produces justice. And be vulnerable and intimate with God, which is salvation and which produces faith.

Amen.