At Note-Able Music Therapy Services, my previous employer, there is a band called the Note-Ables which is at the heart of this nonprofit. They perform some 40 gigs a year, which is a lot for any band. But this is a band composed of adults with disabilities, which definitely makes them unique in the area.

The lead guitarist Jeff has been blind from birth and can play his riffs better than anyone I’ve ever met in my life. In fact, Craig Chaquico of Jefferson Starship fame came to visit and jam with the band. Craig was quoted in the paper that Jeff was one of the best guitar players he’s ever gotten to jam with in his career. Jeff asked me to send the article to his mom, which I thought was adorable because Jeff is in his mid-60’s.

Part of the band’s mission is to educate people about disability. In these presentations, I’ve heard Jeff plenty of times he doesn’t feel like he has a disability. He’s never been able to see, so to him there’s no loss ability. He’s living a good life, giving back to the community, and gets to play a lot of guitar. It’s a good life.

So, if Jeff were the man in this gospel story, I doubt he’d ask for his blindness to be cured. Blindness is not Jeff’s problem. He’s human, so he’s got other problems. He has something on his heart to ask Jesus for, no doubt. But, to Jeff, vision isn’t the thing. That’s why this is probably my favorite healing story, because Jesus asks what is needed. There’s no presumption that because he’s blind that this is the biggest issue in this man’s life.

The truth is our biggest problems are almost always hidden from each other and perhaps even from ourselves. Likewise, we may be attempting to hide our biggest problems, largest fears, and deepest wounds from God. We don’t necessarily want to be honest and transparent about the big issues in life.

We live in a world where we are taught to lean into our strengths, to put our best foot forward, and fake it ‘til we make it. We want to look like our lives are just one long parade of mostly effortless winning and that fundamentally everything is just fine.

Well, that’s not real life.

Of course, there are times when we really do have to put on our masks of being fine enough to get through the day. But at some point, we need to be able to take our masks off and be honest about what is so for us, good or bad.

This was the brilliance and the power of Martin Luther, the father of the Reformation we are celebrating today. He was not content to not say the thing that needed to be said, which was the church was dramatically failing its mission of sharing Jesus’ love and caring for the poor.

During this time, most people involved in the church just went along with the status quo. However, there were a few folks, Luther being the loudest and the boldest among them, who spoke the truth about the church despite massive potential consequences. After all, people standing up to the church in previous decades were all put to death, often being burned at the stake. A lot was on the line for Luther.

And yet he was honest and bold, anyway. Not only did he share about his personal struggles with his faith and fears of inadequacy and sin, he also spoke up about the church for the sake of himself and all European Christians … which was pretty much everyone in Europe at the time.

Martin Luther could have chosen another path. He could have focused on doing what he could in the circles in which he had power. He could have lamented about how “someone should do something” while throwing up his hands and just drinking more beer (which he famously loved).

But he did not make these choices.

He’s a challenging figure for us to have at the heart of our church, along with Jesus and all the other truth-telling saints, because so often we don’t want to be honest about what is so.

It’s a tough thing being human. It’s painfully vulnerable to say what is actually true in our lives, in our world, and in our souls. It’s hard because we don’t want to admit our need. It’s hard because we might be wrong about what we think is true. We don’t want to look foolish. It’s hard because naming something that is true might demand our action. The truth we are squelching could upset our whole lives and worldviews.

At the same time, what is true in our hearts will fight to be heard and acknowledged, anyway. It is also hard to not speak the truth.

Indeed, it is hard being human. We can feel so stuck.

Luther was not Lutheran, in the same way Jesus was not Christian. Luther was Catholic. His faith was the center of his life, but he was excommunicated by the church for his truth-telling. Not only that, the church declared he was a manifestation of the devil. (Luther also said the pope was a devil, as well. It went both ways.) And because church power and political power were fused back in the day, these were big stakes. This wasn’t just about his own life, or even just theological debates. It was ultimately about wars, massive movements of wealth and political power, the big ramifications of empowering and educating common folks, and the changing nature of power in the Western world.

These are big stakes!

In our own lives, the stakes may not feel as high. But maybe they do feel that way to you. Our honesty can be the difference between life and death. Honesty about addiction. Honesty about suicide. Honesty about “lives of silent desperation.” Honesty about poverty and abuse.

We also face a world full of hard truths that we do not want to talk about. Truths about war, genocide, economic injustice, ecological devastation, and all the many -isms.

We carry in our hearts, souls, and bodies these big issues that need attention, truth, and expression ranging from the tiniest of aches in our hearts to world shaking events. Yet the loudest voices on most of these issues are not the voices of honesty or vulnerability. We mostly hear the voices supporting the status quo or systems of domination, regardless of how untruthful the message is. Those voices might sometimes be our own, stifling our own truth or the truth of another.

Now, Martin Luther was not a perfect man. Far, far from it. But he was a bold truth-teller. Perhaps his spiritual gift was to call a thing a thing. And so in the spirit of Reformation Sunday, I invite all of us into the difficult waters of truth-telling about ourselves, our lives, and our world.

Afterall, Luther’s truth-telling changed the world. Our truth-telling has the same potential.

The Parable of the Sower, the topic of our youth’s skit today, made me wonder about the nature of good soil. What is it to be good soil? I’ve had thoughts this meant being “good” as a person. Or perhaps being open to learning. Or being trusting.

And maybe it is all those things. However, on this Reformation Sunday, I’m wondering about our truth-telling as being a major ingredient in our good soil. In the 12 Step program, the first step is telling the truth about addiction. Nothing else happens in recovery until Step 1 is done; the truth is told. Once the truth is told, miracles in people’s lives can unfold. Sometimes 30, sometimes 60, sometimes 100 fold!

Regardless of where your focus is in this moment – on yourself, your family, our church, the nation, Gaza, or something else – what truth in you burns to be acknowledged? What truth do you struggle to allow to be expressed or heard? Who needs to hear it besides you? God always needs to hear. But who else? And do you need support to say it?

Our world, if not still the church, needs Reformation. We are in need of truth-telling! And like Luther, we need to tell our truth. Also, like Luther, we could at times get our truths desperately wrong. Luther’s hateful writing against Jewish people was used by the Nazis to justify mass extermination, after all. We do need ways to check our passion and truth, because people do get things wrong. But don’t let that caveat silence you. We need to be able to say what is true for us, in ways that are loving to all involved. We may find that we’ll be occasionally corrected, and that is right and good. We’re not Jesus, after all. None of us are without sin, including Luther.

But he is a model of what courage in the face of silence looks like. He is a model of what it looks like to dig into the heart of the matter, going past the surface level stuff, to say what deeply needs to be said. And without a doubt, the good soil of the Reformation began an explosion of faith, but also eventually democracy and political freedom.

We don’t all need to be societal lighting rods like Luther (thank God!), but our worlds need our truth-telling for healing and restoration. So, with that, I wish you Happy Reformation Day!

AMEN.

AMEN