The Church Reformed and Always Reforming

The Church Reformed and Always Reforming

The texts for this sermon are Joel 2:23-32, Luke 18:9-14, and Romans 3:19-28

The legend goes like this: It’s a chilly morning in Wittenberg, Germany on October 31st.  Later that day, beggars and children would be seen going about “souling,” or asking for fresh-baked soul-cakes, thought to help release souls from purgatory as they are eaten.  Church bells would be ringing throughout the day and night for all those same souls as church-goers throughout the city went to mass for All Hallow’s Eve to humbly remember all the saints and martyrs who had gone before them and to pray for the release of all the souls currently in purgatory.

But while many still lay warmly cocooned beneath the covers of their beds, one solitary figure moves quietly through the dawn mists that still fill the streets.  He clutches a parchment tightly in one hand and a mallet in the other hand.  He turns a corner and begins to approach the quiet giant of the Castle Church, its massive double doors closed, waiting until later in the day when parishioners will stream through them to fulfill their obligations.

The man steals up to those same doors, steals a furtive glance around himself, then takes a deep breath and unrolls the parchment, flattening it out against the doors.  He takes a nail from somewhere in his monk’s habit, lifts his eyes to the heavens in a moment of prayer, and then takes the mallet and nails the parchment to the doors of the church, setting history in motion and starting a new era of the church.

This legend, of course, is of Martin Luther, who nailed his 95 theses to the door of the church in Wittenberg in 1517 and began what is now known as the Protestant movement.  Up until that day, Luther had led a relatively quiet life - his father had wanted him to be a lawyer and he had received an education toward that point until he was nearly struck by a bolt of lightning in a terrible storm and vowed that if he survived, he would become a monk - when the storm died down, he enrolled in an Augustinian monastery and began his life of service to God.

The church in Luther’s time was a much different church than we know today - and Luther was troubled by it.  He wrestled with the idea of faith, law, and works with his very soul, unable to escape a constant feeling of guilt and a need for forgiveness because of his perception of his complete inability to live up to the demands of the Law of scripture as he understood them.  To make matters worse, even though Luther had turned to the church to find understanding and to dedicate his life to God, he found nothing but ritualism and dead faith wherever he turned, which led him to further despair. 

Nevertheless, he continued to study and to teach - and as he was working through the book of Romans, Paul’s words broke through to him in a profound way.  Luther was particularly fond of the passage in Romans we heard today.  As Luther himself wrote: “I clung to the dear Paul and had a great yearning to know what he meant. Night and day I pondered until I saw the connection between the righteousness of God and the statement that the righteous shall live by faith. Then I grasped that the righteousness of God is that righteousness by which through sheer grace and mercy God justifies us through faith. Thereupon I felt myself to be reborn and to have gone through open doors into paradise. The whole of Scripture took a new meaning, and whereas before the justice of God had filled me with hate, now it became inexpressibly sweet in greater love. This passage of Paul, became to me a gate to heaven.”

And it was through this very revelation that Luther realized the major problems that the church of his day was facing - Christian practice and theology in that time had been completely turned away from faith in Jesus Christ and turned instead toward what Luther called a “works-based righteousness.”  People were threatened with purgatory when they died if they did not live a life that was faithful enough, and the only way to escape purgatory - or to help their lost loved ones to escape it - was to purchase “indulgences,” or certificates stating that certain sins had been forgiven by the church.  Rather than adhering to Scripture and to faith in Christ as the primary means for salvation, the church had begun to place itself in a primary position, abusing its own authority and using it to further its own goals and agendas.  Where Luther heard the calling of the church to be the humble tax-collector, relying upon God for forgiveness and repenting with a true confession to God, Luther saw the church acting more as the Pharisee, proclaiming itself more holy than others and ignoring the fact that its holiness only came from God in the first place.

Martin Luther wanted to change the church, to reform it and help it to become what God intended for it to be once more.  The theses he posted on the doors in Wittenberg weren’t a hateful, venomous diatribe accusing the church of heresy and advocating for all other like-minded people to join him in leaving to form a new denomination - Luther hated the idea of leaving the church and even distanced himself from his predecessors, who saw no other option but to form a new, Protestant church.  Instead, Luther had put these statements up as an invitation to communication and debate, to start a conversation that he had hoped would heal the church and help it to reform itself back to the standard of Christ set in Scripture.  Instead, Luther found himself excommunicated, branded as a heretic, and the father of a movement and a new church that he never fully supported.

Today in many of the churches that formed as a result of Luther’s actions and the actions of those who followed in his footsteps, we celebrate and remember their legacy and call to reformed faith by celebrating Reformation Sunday.  It’s a day to celebrate the history of our church and our tradition - but most importantly, it’s also a day to remember the very foundation of our faith: Jesus Christ and the revelation of him which we receive through the Bible.  A motto that developed later in the Reformed tradition is: Ecclesia Reformata, Semper Reformanda - which translated from Latin means, “The church reformed, always reforming.”  It’s a motto that has been thrown around time and time again, that we use to justify ourselves for each decision that creates conflict and strife in our church.  Churches use it still today to explain why they’re staying in the denomination, why they’re leaving the denomination, why whatever newest decision that is on the table is right or wrong... but there’s an additional part of that phrase that we tend to forget, because it states that we are “a church reformed, always reforming according to the word of God.”  It wasn’t about simply changing things and staying modern, it wasn’t about maintaining things “the way they were,” it was about getting back to the very roots of our faith - the Word of God, and the Word made Flesh in Jesus Christ.  It was about cutting away all the things that distract us from our faith in Christ and the living out of the calling that comes with that faith, and letting Christ, in the power of the Spirit, transform us back into the people and the church that we are meant to be.  So on this Reformation Sunday, may we remember our own heritage, our own roots, and our own calling to be ever reformed by Christ and into fully participating members of Christ’s body.  To God be the Glory.  Amen.