If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth and the truth will set you free. — John 8:31-32

Recently, I came across a list of the 100 most influential people of the last 1,000 years. First on the list is Johannes Gutenberg, inventor of the printing press with moveable type. Following right on his heels and coming in at number three, is one of my all-time faith heroes, a Catholic priest by the name of Martin Luther.1

According to tradition, exactly 500 years ago this Tuesday, on the eve of All Saints Day in 1517, Luther nailed his 95 theses on the door of the university chapel in Wittenberg, Germany. He did so to protest a series of practices in the Roman Catholic Church, particularly the sale of indulgences, money people would pay the church for the forgiveness of sins. Although Luther did not set out to create a new denomination, his efforts, combined with the efforts of Zwingli, Calvin, Knox, Bucer, and others, led to what we have come to call the Protestant Reformation, the monumental changes that took place in religion, society, and politics in sixteenth-century Europe. We celebrate that heritage today!

We remember Luther for many reasons. He was a Catholic priest who married a nun, thereby paving the way for married clergy. He was the author of a number of hymns including the ever popular, “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God.” He was a university professor of theology who taught that salvation is not earned by good works but comes as a free gift of God’s grace through faith in Jesus Christ. He is the namesake of the Lutheran Church, the Protestant denomination that followed in his footsteps. Perhaps most important of all, Luther was an avid translator of the Bible. He believed that the scriptures did not belong exclusively to church professionals, so he translated the Bible from Latin into his local language, German, thereby making the scriptures accessible to anyone who could read. Thanks to Johannes Gutenberg, inventor of the printing press with moveable type, copies of Luther’s Bible translations were printed and then distributed far and wide, setting the stage for dramatic changes in church and society.

Luther held ideas about the Bible that were both unusual and beautiful. According to church historian Martin Marty, Luther …

… held controversial ideas about who wrote Ecclesiastes, Jude, Proverbs, and even parts of Genesis…. As for the book of Revelation, he wrote that his spirit could not make its way into it... Though the brother of Jesus wrote the Letter of James, Luther found it “right strawy,” a book which contradicted the central Pauline teaching that one is saved by grace without the works of the law.2

On the other hand, Luther spoke of the scriptures with beauty and reverence. He called the Bible, “the manger in which Christ lay, the swaddling clothes he wore,” and said that Christ is the “central point of the circle around which everything else in the Bible revolves.”3 Professor Marty tells us that Luther preferred the gospel of John to the other three because John’s gospel helps readers have faith in Christ, while the other gospels tell stories about Christ.4

And that brings us to today’s gospel text from John chapter eight, where Jesus said, “If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth and the truth will set you free.” In this single sentence, John brought together two of the great words of his gospel — word and truth. Let’s consider them one by one.

As you may recall, John began his gospel with the beautiful and soaring words of his prologue, words we often read in church at Christmas:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness and the darkness did not overcome it. — John 1:1-5

A few verses later John adds, “And the Word became flesh and lived among us…” (John 1:14). What an amazing way to talk about Jesus coming into the world. The Word became flesh… and, as Eugene Peterson puts it in his apt paraphrase of the New Testament, “The Word became flesh… and moved into the neighborhood.”

This truth is incredibly important because it helps us to know what God is like. Whenever we ponder the mysterious nature of God:

• when we wonder why bad things happen to good people,
• or think about good and evil in the world,
• or wonder what God would want us to do in a given situation, we can fall back on this verse. “The Word became flesh and lived among us.”

In other words, God has chosen to enter the neighborhood of our world by taking on human flesh in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. This is what we mean when we speak about the doctrine of the Incarnation. God has chosen to live as one of us. Because of this, whenever we look at Jesus — the Word of God Incarnate — his life, teachings, miracles, death, and resurrection, we get a better glimpse of what God is really like.

When Luther summarized the changes that took place in the church at the time of the Reformation, he credited everything to the word. He wrote:

I simply taught, preached, and wrote God’s word; otherwise I did nothing. And while I slept or drank beer with my friends, the word so greatly weakened the papacy that no prince or emperor ever inflicted such losses upon it. I did nothing; the Word did everything.”5

No wonder Luther wrote about “That Word above all earthly powers” in his most famous hymn.

Some years ago, the former president of Princeton Seminary was traveling in Eastern Europe and arrived at the border of Romania. The customs agent asked President Gillespie this unusual series of questions: “Do you have any drugs? Do you have any pornography? Do you have any Bibles?” Although those three things are very different from one another, they do have this in common: Each has the power to disrupt society and turn things upside down, as Martin Luther learned hundreds of years before.

The other great word in the vocabulary of John’s gospel is the word truth. John used this word some twenty times in his gospel story but nowhere more dramatically than in the Upper Room in Jerusalem. Jesus was preparing his disciples for his upcoming glorification on the cross. Within hours he would be arrested, tried, and crucified. He told them what would lay ahead. He said, “In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places… I go to prepare a place for you.” A moment later he added, “And you know the place where I am going.”

“Lord, we do not know where you are going,” said Thomas, one of the twelve, “how can we know the way?”

“I am the way, the truth, and the life,” said Jesus, “no one comes to the Father except through me.”

Contained within that brief phrase is a summary of John’s theology about Jesus. “I am the life,” said Jesus, the only life really worth living.

“I am the way,” he said, in other words, the way to God. And this way is none other than the way of the cross. As early as the first chapter of John’s gospel, John the Baptist pointed to Jesus and said, “Here is the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world” (John 1:29). Later in the gospel Jesus would say, “When I am lifted up (and by this he means lifted up on the cross), when I am lifted up, I will draw all people to myself” (John 12:32-33). He said this, wrote John, to indicate the kind of death he was to die. Clearly, the way of Jesus is the way of the cross. So when he said, “I am the way,” he invited us to follow that way, the way of the cross, in terms of service and self-sacrifice.

Joseph Sittler, who used to teach theology at the University of Chicago, was once attending a conference at a Roman Catholic convent. The convent sisters went to chapel four times each day for prayer and meditation. There they would meditate upon the large crucifix hanging over the altar. Professor Sittler said to himself:

Is there any other image in the history of the world that could survive such constant gazing? What other form could absorb all of the worries and apprehensions heaped upon it? Throughout history, the figure of the crucified one has been at the center of devotional gravity, the center of human pain and torment.6

Then Jesus said what is, perhaps, the most important word of all: “I am the truth.” Please notice that this truth does not find its form in a doctrine or a proposition. Rather, this truth resides in a person! This is the truth about God to which the way of the cross points. I am aware of no other religion in the world that holds up a crucified leader and says

• if you want to know what God is really like, then look at this cross, this symbol for suffering and sacrifice, for here on this cross you will see the truth about God which no other religion captures in the same way.

If you live your life by following Jesus’ example of service and self-sacrifice, then you will know the truth about life and about God, and that truth will set you free.

In one of his books, Professor Tom Long wrote about Mr. and Mrs. Williams, a deeply religious couple, who adopted four children and hoped to adopt at least one more. The types of children the Williams adopted were the type that the adoption agency termed “hard to adopt.” You see, one of their children, a son, is severely retarded; the other three have major birth defects. “Our children are our greatest joy,” said Mrs. Williams. “Caring for them is what we have been put on this earth to do.”7

Not only is Christ the way, the truth, and the life, but if you will permit me this little play on words, he is also “the way to the truth about life.” Knowing this truth will set you free.

Amen.