A
Reflection and Poem for Reformation Sunday October
25, 2015
Emmanuel Lutheran and All Saints’ Episcopal Thomas E.
Wilson, Preacher
Jeremiah
31:31-34 Romans 3: 19-28 John 8:31-36
Tattoo
of the Heart
I was on the road driving to a meeting and I was listening
to an interview with John Hood, a conservative writer who had just come out
with a book called Catalyst about the
governor of North Carolina from 1985 to 1993, Jim Martin, and the Rise of the
Republican Party in our state. In the interest of full disclosure (1) I was not
in North Carolina during that time and have no first-hand experience of that
administration. (2) In my own politics, I consider Bernie Sanders much too
conservative.
In the interview Martin said that there two stages
in the rise of the Republicans: the first stage was to be a wedge of opposition
and to drive a wedge between the Democratic Party and the electorate - which he
said was what Jesse Helms was able to do. The second stage was to be a magnet
and draw people to the Republicans party by showing that they can govern for
the good of all the people - which Martin and Hood posit was what Martin had
done.
Today we have a Luther-palian service, where All
Saints’ Episcopal and Emmanuel Lutheran Churches come together to remember Reformation
Sunday. Last year I presided over the Communion Liturgy and Pastor Keith
preached and this year I preach and Keith presides, and what I want to suggest
to us is that we are, in the spirit of Luther, called to put away our wedges
and become magnets, drawing people to God instead of any particular
denominations.
Today we remember that day on October 31, 1517 when
Luther is reputed to have nailed the 95 theses on the Wittenberg Door to lay
out the abuses of the Church and how they had wandered far away from the ideas
of Jesus. Listen to the beginning of the wedge he posts on the door as an
invitation to a new kind of party:
"The revenues of all Christendom are being
sucked into this insatiable basilica. The Germans laugh at calling this the
common treasure of Christendom. Before long, all the churches, palaces, walls
and bridges of Rome will be built out of our money. First of all, we should
rear living temples, not local churches, and only last of all St. Peter's,
which is not necessary for us. We Germans cannot attend St. Peter's. Better
that it should never be built than that our parochial churches should be
despoiled. ...
Why doesn't the pope build the basilica of St.
Peter's out of his own money? He is richer than Croesus. He would do better to
sell St. Peter's and give the money to the poor folk who are being fleeced by
the hawkers of indulgences."
Strong language, but then he was a college Professor
used to making all sorts of bold statements to challenge undergraduates to
think. He suggested that the sale of indulgences had no Biblical warrant and
therefore the Pope was exceeding his authority, and that the sale of
indulgences undermined the salvation of people by encouraging them to place
their trust in works instead of God. Luther was calling for a German Council to
stand up against the Italian Pope. The Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V, wanted to
dismiss it as a squabble among Monks that had nothing to do with everyday faith
and order. However, the church in Rome saw a threat to its authority, responded
with its full power, and overplayed their already ham-fisted hand in order to
keep control. They responded with wedges of their own and tried to place a
wedge between Luther and fellow worshipers by declaring him a heretic. Most of
our difficulties as institutions come as we pull out wedges to divide when we
want to keep control. If the church had been wise, they would have had an
academic conference rather than a trial which made Luther a martyr to his
conscience; instead they were obsessed with their power. They condemned him and
it backfired and helped turn his protest into a movement. Luther could have taken his place among the
great theologians and routinely quoted by preachers of the church.
The arrogance of the church caused it to boil into a
full scale challenge, and the times were ripe for the dissatisfaction of some
of the German princes with having so much of their tax money go down to Rome.
So both sides in the name of the Prince of Peace started slaughtering each
other and whoever else, especially the peasants, who always happen to get
caught between the opposing forces. As the character, Sancho Panza, says in
Cervantes’ Don Quixote, “Whether the
Pitcher hits the stone or the stone hits the pitcher, it goes ill for the
pitcher. As for the pitcher or the stone even a blind man can see that.”
After all the bodies are buried and institutions get
different names and different styles comes the hard part of building magnets of
trust. However, after that first series of wedges between Luther and the
church, a pattern of wedge-driving continued as further wedges were employed by
both sides with further splits between different factions in the Reformation.
Every side claimed that they were right, and the song of the Gospel got drowned
out by the noise of doctrine. Four hundred and ninety eight years later, by
this service we make an outward and visible sign of the rebuilding of magnets
of trust, and this is the work that continues and in which both All Saints and
Emmanuel are involved in on the Outer Banks. This year is the 20th
Year of All Saints’ Church, which started meeting in Kitty Hawk School and
struggled to find its ministry just as Emmanuel Lutheran has been struggling
for 8 years. Our struggles are not over, and on this side of the grave they will
never be over. We are different institutions, but the call to ministry is the
same.
We are to be part of God’s Magnetic field of
Christ’s work reconciling the world to God’s self. We are involved in what
Luther called us to do - “to rear living Temples, not local churches”. We start
that by allowing ourselves to be open to God’s Holy Spirit to write the Law of
God in our hearts as Jeremiah writes in the first lesson. The law of God that
is spiritually tattooed on our hearts is that we are loved. If we comprehend that
we are loved by God from before we were born, then we can love ourselves
without waiting to prove that we have deserved that love. If we love ourselves
without seeing it as a reward, then we can love others without necessarily granting
approval. If we can dispense with the sale of love for approval, then we can
love our enemies. It all begins with God’s unmerited love.
I don’t think that God really cares about our
liturgies, our doctrines, our habits, our structure, or our budgets. I think that
we are called to love. Love does not begin at home; it begins before we come
into this earthly home, and it grows there and continues to grow outside the
walls of our homes and churches. Neither Emmanuel nor All Saints is where we
are called to be for we often fall short in our love of God, ourselves, and
others, but remember this is not a contest. Luther reminds us that we are still
on our paths:
“This life therefore is
not righteousness, but growth in righteousness, not health, but healing, not
being but becoming, not rest but exercise. We are not yet what we shall be, but
we are growing toward it, the process is not yet finished, but it is going on,
this is not the end, but it is the road. All does not yet gleam in glory, but
all is being purified.”
Tattoo of the Heart
Beat Beat Beat Beat Beat Beat
Ruarch, Pneuma, Breath, Come
breathe with me
Come into my lungs and through
the capillaries
to my heart where stenciled on
aorta is the word
“YOU”. Then starting on left and
then right atrium
tattooed the present, not
conditional, verb of being,
by Being very self “ARE “. Then
continuing across
left and right ventricles is
placed word “LOVED!”.
Beat Beat Beat Beat Beat Beat
“YOU ARE LOVED!” the tattoo
beating into life
with ever spirit breath. At least
60 beat per minute
the tattoo shutters that message
to every body cell
from toe to brain.
It
does not matter when the blood
meets the beat and word is first
to start; for YOU is
never only singular but always is
plural connecting
for “you” means all of you, even
meaning shadows
and neighbor and enemy: “YOU ARE
LOVED”:
Beat Beat Beat Beat Beat Beat
“ARE YOU LOVED! is not question
but in awe
an exclamation! “LOVED YOU ARE!”
is plainly
fact not tenuous hope.
I’m
not aware of every beat
and hear 60 times per minute for
I have all those
things which draw me from being
aware of God’s
living breath. But, suppose I
stopped once in sixty
saying “YOU ARE LOVED!” out loud
what every
cell already knows in every
minute.
What
if I remind
my self not every minute but
every hour, 24 times a
day?
Or
only once each day?
Or
once each week? Or
once each month?
Or
once each year? It won’t change
the beat, or the message, or
tattoo which remains true?
Beat Beat Beat Beat Beat Beat
Come breathe with me and hear the
drumming tattoo.
Hearing but also saying that
tattoo with one another as
new shepherd, “Come breathe with
me and be my love.”
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