Quick Summary:

We’re marking the 500th anniversary of the Reformation movement over the next four Sundays by building worship around themes and texts and music from the Lutheran World Federation Global Assembly in Windhoek, Namibia, last May. The central theme of that gathering, and this series, is: LIBERATED BY GOD’S GRACE. The three sub-themes are: humans are not for sale; creation is not for sale; salvation is not for sale.

Three years after posting his95 theses on the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg, Luther wrote a little essay entitled: ON CHRISTIAN LIBERTY, in which he states his thesis in two seemingly contradictory sentences:
A Christian is a perfectly free lord of all, subject to none.
A Christian is a perfectly dutiful servant of all, subject to all.

The Freedom we receive in Christ is both a FREEDOM FROM...all that would bind us and keep us captive, and a FREEDOM FOR...looking beyond ourselves and our needs to the need of the neighbor. As we grapple as a nation with violent rhetoric and actions, this paradoxical framework offered by Luther can guide us to common ground.