Historic First Lutheran Church of Pasadena

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.

“To hell and back.” That’s the title of the sermon this morning.

“To hell and back.” Some of you will remember that’s also the name of a 1955 war film, an account of the experiences of Audie Murphy as a soldier in the U.S. Army during World War II. The seventh of 12 children of poor Texas sharecroppers, Audie Murphy was deserted by his father and orphaned a year later by his mother, being left responsible for the care of his younger brothers and sisters. Though he appeared too young and too small and was rejected by the Marines and the Navy, the Army reluctantly accepted him as a ordinary infantryman. Murphy proved himself in battle, first in North Africa, then in Italy and finally in France. While in France, his company was forced to retreat, but Murphy stayed behind to direct artillery fire upon the advancing army. He single-handedly turned back the German attack, thereby saving his company and earning him the “Medal of Honor.” From his humble, challenging beginnings, he is today known as the “Most Decorated WWII Combat Soldier,” having earned every decoration for valor his country had to offer, plus 5 decorations presented him by France and Belgium.

“To hell and back.” That sounds like a good summary of my week this past week. Last Sunday I told you that my chronic pain had returned. I had an idea what it was, but I was hoping that wasn’t the case, but sadly it was again the case. A major infection was attacking my body, causing constant, excruciating pain whenever I did anything: when I sat, when I stood, when I moved, when I stayed still, when I did anything. By last Sunday afternoon, when I touched my head, my hair hurt. I saw my doctor on three consecutive days. I was given double doses of three major antibiotics. I was threatened with hospitalization in order to receive even higher doses of antibiotic by intravenous feeding. But, thanks be to God, I’ve made it again to hell and back. I am here today and I am feeling well!

“To hell and back.” That’s a good summary for the life of Dr. Martin Luther. Religion in early 16th Century Europe was all about making people feel bad. Remember that most people were fairly illiterate. Most of their education was provided by the Church. And when you’d walk into those massive churches and see the gilded beauty and opulence and then see the simple ugliness of your own life, you came to think of God as someone totally separated from you, someone with whom you could have no direct contact, someone worthy of your fear. The paintings, the murals, the stained glass windows all told the story of a better life, but a better life that seemed unattainable to most people. When you would go to visit the priest, you’d leave feeling worse, not better. You’d leave with a list of things to do, with a heavy burden of money to pay in order to supposedly feel better. But most people never finished that list of things to do, never paid enough to fully satisfy the cost of their sins. You could say they were simply living in hell.

Any of you who know anything about Martin Luther know that as a young man, he trained for a career in the law, but as he was walking home from school one day he was caught in a tremendous lightning and thunderstorm and was certain his life was over. In a moment of sheer terror – one of those “hell” moments of life – he made a deal with God: “Save me and I will become a monk.” The storm passed and he was accepted into a monastery. He was certain that his actions would please the angry God that he envisioned in his mind, but things only got worse as he seemed to grow even further away from God, even more certain of his own unworthiness, even more certain of God’s anger directed against him, even more certain that he could never spend eternity in the presence of the holy, living God. For Martin Luther – and he knew that was also for many others also - that only left an eternity in hell.

But something happened. Martin Luther had in his own mind tried everything else, so he finally resorted to a constant, all-exhaustive study of God’s Word. Funny how that so often happens – when we’re at our wits ends, when we’d tried everything else, then we turn to God’s Word. And thank God that Martin Luther did because there he learned how to “get back” from the hell in which he was living because in God’s Word, Luther discovered passages like our Second Reading [Romans 3:19-28] today, passages that told him that the Church of his day would never get people back from hell because the Church was basing its entire teaching upon an incorrect initial assumption that human beings can make themselves acceptable to God. But that’s not what St. Paul said. That’s not what any of the early apostles said. That’s not what the early Church taught. And that’s not what Jesus taught.

No, instead what Luther uncovered when the Church failed him and he was left to search for himself for the freedom and forgiveness that he and so many others desired, was that trying to base eternal life upon a strict adherence to the law would always prove futile and leave people in hell. But that God, in His great mercy, sent His Son Jesus to receive the total punishment of all our sins – making Him a totally just God – and to present to us a perfect righteousness otherwise unattainable – making Him a totally gracious God.

How else can that be said? Jesus went to hell and back for us. He, the perfect, sinless Son of God, already enjoying the joy and bliss of eternal life in Heaven, left that perfection to enter our world, to surround Himself with our flesh, to carry our every burden and, through the shedding of His own perfect Blood, to bring each of us back from our self-imposed hells, our own self-imposed separation from God.

That was the joyous message that Martin Luther discovered! It was the teaching of God – from the very first word to the very last word of the Bible – that God is a God of grace and mercy and that human beings must divest themselves of everything but the Blood of Jesus in order to receive that freedom and that relief [John 8:31-36] that only Jesus can bring.

I hope and pray this is an “old, old message” to all of you, but an “old, old message” in which you can again rejoice, knowing that God so loved you that He sent Jesus that you might not perish in your own works and ways but instead, by the power of His Holy Spirit, hold to His teaching and be set free for eternity [John 3:16].

But if this is a new message for you – or a message that maybe has piqued your interest in a way that it has never before done – I encourage you to meet me here at the Vila Fountain after worship so that I may pray for our great Savior Jesus to carry you to hell and back with Him and then that you feel His loving embrace for all time and for all eternity.

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.

Pastor Christopher Schaar
Historic First Lutheran Church of Pasadena