Reformation Sunday Reflection

Reformation Sunday for All Saints’ Episcopal and Emmanuel Lutheran, Southern Shores, NC October 27, 2013 Thomas E. Wilson, Rector Jeremiah 31:31-34 Psalm 46 Romans 3:19-28 John 8:31-36

Today we are having a “Lutherpalian” Service. “Lutherpalian” is a neologism, a made-up word, where we squeeze Lutheran and Episcopalian together, and Keith, the Lutheran Pastor, and I, the Episcopal Priest, and our congregations join together for worship. We are using the lessons from the Lutheran Lectionary for Reformation Sunday, which is the last Sunday in October before All Saints Day, November 1^st. In the Episcopal Church and in Lutheran Churches that do not observe Reformation Sunday but observe Reformation Day as October 31^st, the lessons for today would include the Gospel parable from Luke in which the Pharisee and the Tax Collector both show up at the Temple to pray – more about that lesson later.

On October 31, 1517, Martin Luther, an Augustinian Monk and Professor at Wittenberg University, wrote a letter to the regional Archbishop protesting the sale of indulgences. With the letter he included a paper that he had written on the subject, which was later called the 95 Theses. Luther’s followers remember the story that Luther, apparently following local custom for making announcements, nailed the 95 Theses onto the door of All Saints Church. I asked Keith not to nail the 95 Theses to the glass doors of this All Saints’ Church, so we taped them to the doors instead. They are in Latin and if your Latin is rusty, there are a few copies in English for you in the narthex. 

Within weeks Luther’s protest was translated and, thanks to the recent invention of the printing press, was distributed all across Europe. His protest was the spark that ignited the Protestant Reformation. King Henry VIII, the head of the Church in England out of which the Episcopal Church was born, wanting to suck up to the Pope, wrote a book in opposition to Protestants, including Luther. The Pope rewarded him with the title “Defender of the Faith”, which he later revoked but the King kept.

However, the Reformation had its roots long before Luther came to the scene, for it was an era of anxiety when all the world seemed to be falling apart, and basic questions came to the fore, as they always do in times of uncertainty. 

The world had changed in so many ways. Politically the balance of power was unraveling. The Eastern Roman Empire collapsed with the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks, and Europe was open to invasion from the East which was to extend as far as the Siege of Vienna in 1529. The fall of Constantinople was the end of the Middle Ages way of warfare with the extensive use of gunpowder and cannons. New ways of warfare meant the unraveling of the feudal system and changing alliances of power. The end of feudalism gave hope that one could change one’s lot in life and cities grew, but moving from feudalism to trade changed the economic situation, leading to massive inequalities of wealth and an abundance of resentment. The fall of Constantinople led to the mass migration of Greeks to the west, bringing with them their art, ideas, and culture which flowered into the Renaissance. The Fall of Constantinople cut off trade routes to the Orient, causing European powers to start exploring new routes to riches through the Atlantic and expanding the view of the known world. Science was changing. Ideas that the Earth was not the center of the solar system led to expanded thoughts about the universe. Technology was changing with the invention of the printing press and the realization that ideas could be published outside the control of the church and state. The press made it easier for people to discuss ideas in their native languages instead of just Latin. The church in Rome seemed corrupt and far away from people’s lives, and they resented the church for wanting people to just “pray and pay” and keep their opinions to themselves. The indulgences were a way to raise money for the building of St. Peter’s church in Rome and to buy a sinner’s way out of purgatory, or as the sale pitch went, "As soon as the coin in the coffer rings, the soul from purgatory springs."

During Stewardship season, I know a winner of a campaign slogan when I hear one, but if I used that one, I would probably get in trouble with the Lutherans.

Like Luther, we live in a world of change where technology, warfare, political landscape, economic forces, social cohesion, the search for alternate paths, and mistrust of institutions all are, to use the words of Yeats in the first half of his poem The Second Coming:

TURNING and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

When everything is changing, we face the world the Psalmist for today faced when she sang: “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. /Therefore we will not fear, though the earth should change, though the mountains shake in the heart of the sea; / though its waters roar and foam, though the mountains tremble with its tumult.” Yet when we live in a world of change, we ask basic questions, and Luther was interested in one of the most basic questions - “What is the relationship we have with God?” 

 

Luther studied to become a lawyer, in deference to his father’s wishes and tuition payments, but he hated law school. On July 2, 1505 Luther was riding on horseback in a thunderstorm, and a lightning bolt struck near him. In fear for his life, he called for heavenly help - “Help, St. Anna! I will become a monk!” The vow was his bargain, and he joined the Augustinian Order where he tried to be the best monk ever. He fasted, he did good works, he prayed, he beat up his body, he confessed, all to extremes. His confessor told him to lighten up, but he continued in his zeal and later said, "I lost touch with Christ the Savior and Comforter, and made of him the jailer and hangman of my poor soul." He was living through a purgatory of his own making, trying to earn God’s grace. His confessor, Johann von Staupitz kept calling Martin back to the love of God and grace. Luther would say of him, “"If it had not been for Dr. Staupitz, I should have sunk in hell."

Luther came to understand that indeed he was a sinner, not because he was a bad man but because he was trying to earn a love that had already been given. The answer to the question “What is our relationship with God?” is based on acceptance of God's gift of love. It is the faith of Christ, the faith that God gives to us when the Divine brings us into Godself. Yes, we are sinners, people who louse up, but Luther called it "Simul justus et peccator", which translated means that we are both Saints - connected to God - and sinners at the same time. Which brings us back to the story of the Pharisee and Tax Collector. The Pharisee, who in his arrogance and his refusal to look into his own soul, presumes union with God because of his good deeds, unlike that Tax Collector sinner who is able to face his brokenness but asks for God’s mercy. Or as Paul says in the passage for today from his letter to the Romans

But now, apart from law, the righteousness of God has been disclosed, and is attested by the law and the prophets, the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction, since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; they are now justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, 

 

Reformation is about being totally honest about ourselves, claiming our brokenness, and being totally open to being united with God on God’s terms of freely given love, instead of lingering in the slavery of the blindness of our own arrogance. Here at All Saints’ there is a Thursday night class about living a life of serenity – letting go and letting God, of breaking free from the bonds of our slavery to people, places, and things which can only come when we accept our shadows and free ourselves from our self-deceptions. A life of serenity comes only with the help of the power greater than ourselves, giving us the strength to make it through each day. 

 

Reformation did not begin and end with Luther 500 hundred years ago. The problem was that it spread far and wide but not deep. The reformation got diverted into creeds, rituals, and lines of authority instead of doing the work of real reforming. Even Luther got side-tracked and instead of following where Christ would lead, the path toward reforming the fullness of our being and learning to love our enemy, Luther stopped focusing on God’s love as the worth of a person and projected his own shadow on others. He made the enemies the sinners who must be destroyed, be they fellow Protestants, or Peasants in the Peasants Revolt, or Jews in their unconversion, or Muslims on the borders, or the Religious Institution in Rome. One of the problems of being free is that, unless we honestly and rigorously live into being free, we substitute another kind of slavery in its place. Luther used the legal skills he was honing in his study of the law as well as his cleverness to win his political, national, and institutional cases for Northern European hegemony against Rome, but he neglected to win his case for God’s love by his mercy. As in all fights, we can be right but miss the point of righteousness. Being right is about winning points; being righteous is about a relationship in which we accept God’s unmerited love and give it unmerited to our neighbor and give mercy unmerited to our enemy.

As I went to sleep a couple nights ago, I was surprised to see a bunch of monsters smiling at me as they walked across the proscenium, welcoming me into my dream. I realized that they were symbols of my shadows of being right and forgetting about the righteousness of relationship. I needed to claim them as part of my brokenness instead of projecting them on to other people. Like Luther and, I suggest, you, I have a lot of work to do in my reformation. 

 

The past is not yet past. It is now the time for reformation. To paraphrase Yeats’ phrase from the end of the second stanza of Second Coming, a “slouching towards Jerusalem to be reborn”, it is time to be reformed - a reformation of our religious, economic, technological, scientific, and political institutions, and a reformation of how we treat one another in our personal lives, all undergirded by a reformation of our relationship with God. Reformation begins today.