Reflection by David for October 30, 2011

October 30, 2011
Re-Formation Sunday

If you had lived 500 years ago, what would you be doing? In England, you might be planning to go to Shakespeare's romantic comedy Tempest, performed for the 1st time. You might have heard the word "telescope" used for the very first time. You might have been planning to attend a university in the Philippines, the oldest existing university in Asia. If you were with Henry Hudson, bad news, I'm afraid you'd have been set adrift in Hudson Bay by mutineers. You might have been at the inauguration of Gustaaf the II in Sweden. If you were in China, you might have been at the crowing of a new Emperor. The Protestant Reformation was already 100 years old; Lutheranism was ensconced in a good part of Germany and Scandinavia while Calvinism was in Switzerland and the Anabaptists—the radical reformers—were scattered here and there. Anglicanism had already been established in what was then Elizabethan England, and Presbyterianism was established in Scotland.

One can only imagine what life was like in 1611. We likely didn't live much past the age of 40; women, in Western cultures, had few rights; this was different in other indigenous cultures—Polynesia and elsewhere in the world, including some 1^st Nations peoples in Noth America where women were leaders alongside men. It was a pretty difficult world; the social strata you were born into was the world you knew—it was virtually impossible to break out of your societal position.

I offer this reductionist historical snapshot because tomorrow is Reformation Day, the other holiday opposite Halloween! It was the day Luther nailed his theses on the Wittenberg door as a challenge that began the Protestant Reformation.

Phyllis Tickle, an Anglican Church historian in the US, has put forth the idea that the Church has what she has called a giant rummage sale every 500 years or so. Luther's beginning falls into this 500 year pattern: Christianity's birth around the year 50, a Gregorian re-formation 500 years later, significant changes through the end of the 1^st Millennium and then the Protestant Reformation in the 16^th Century. This "rummage sale" is the same process as we go through in our homes: every now and then we decide that we have too much stuff and we need to downsize. Or we want to move. We need to let go of some once cherished mementos that we have outgrown. We are different today than we were some years ago and we need to let go of some things. We are constantly reforming and being re-formed.

And really, that's as it should be! I've never bought the idea that people don't like change—well, maybe we don't LIKE change, but we are constantly changing. The world around us is changing. We are homo sapiens, and in a biological sense, we are highly adaptive and have changed substantially in an evolutionary sense. I understand the concept that change can be disruptive, but I do believe that we learn to adjust, what psychologists call the "new normal" of our lives.

And because "the world is a'changin'", the problem arises when we want things to remain the same. Problems arise when we want everything to be exactly as it was 2 hours ago, or 2 days ago, or 2 months or 2 years. And they aren't. The world is different even over these past couple of hours spent together.

I have a hunch that Jesus was getting at this issue of some people wanting to stay the same in his encounters with the Pharisees and the Sadducees. Even though 1^st Century Palestine was changing rapidly, they wanted to hang on to the religious tradition as they knew it, as their mothers and fathers knew it, as their grandfathers and grandmothers knew it. It was the only thing that provided any sanity in their world. The Romans were cruel taskmasters and how do you hold the centre together? One theory is that you keep everything exactly the same as it has been for generations.

But is it realistic to hold things exactly as they have been? Again, our own experience today would say no. We are adaptive creatures and need to seek new ways of doing things. The Church today has moved in a short time from being a centre-piece of community life to being on the side-lines. It has moved from being a place where you found your friends and made your business contacts to a place where you seek a religious community and people seeking a spiritual journey in the Christian tradition. Science has challenged some of our notions about theology. Contact with different cultures has challenged the notion that there is only one way to be a Christian in the world. Because we are adaptive creatures, are we in the midst of another re-formation?

Dietrich Bonhoeffer thought so in the midst of 1930's Germany. He was a remarkable leader of the Christian Church who talked about a costly Christianity. Our Christian living costs us something. If we take our Christian beliefs seriously, it means standing up to injustice and oppression, speaking about ethics openly and honestly, and challenging the status quo when the status quo is killing people around you. It was costly to Bonhoeffer for he was murdered by the Nazis a mere month before the end of the Second World War in Europe! A year before he was murdered, Bonhoeffer said this in a letter to his nephew:

"Our church, which has been fighting in these years only for its self-preservation, as though that were an end in itself, is incapable of taking the word of reconciliation and redemption to humankind and the world. Our earlier words are therefore bound to lose their force and cease, and our being Christians will be limited to two things: prayer and righteous action... All Christian thinking, speaking and organising must be born anew out of this prayer and action... any attempt to help the church prematurely to a new expansion of its organisation will merely delay its conversion and purification. It is not for us to prophesy the day (though the day will come) when people will once more be called so to utter the word of God that the world will be changed and renewed by it. It will be a new language, perhaps quite non-religious, but liberating and redeeming - as was Jesus' language; it will shock people yet overcome them by its power; it will be the language of a new righteousness and truth, proclaiming God's peace with people and the coming of the kingdom."

This sounds to me like the same message that Jesus preached. It is the same idea that service to others is the way of life and love. It is the same idea that those who exalt themselves will be humbled and those who are humble will be exalted. Jesus was outspoken in his critique of the Pharisees and Sadducees who aligned themselves with power and who sometimes colluded in the oppression of their own people.

Jesus was a reformer who continually found news ways to proclaim the gospel of life and love. He re-formed the message of love because in the midst of change and shifting ground, the one thing that doesn't change is the call to love and to know that we are loved. Our God is the One who steadfastly loves us into life, who works through us and others by the Spirit to create justice and peace in the world.

We are in the midst of a new re-formation, I believe. Our new structure, based on some new concepts from the Emerging Church movement, will help us live out the gospel more fully. The trappings of Church life are not nearly as important as living the message of love—loving others and knowing that we are loved. The essence of our life together isn't about gathering for the sake of gathering; it is to hear that love is the power that can change us and change the world. We long to hear more clearly that love is the power that can mend the world and lead us into a greater sense of community and togetherness. This is the Re-formation of which Luther and Calvin dreamed; this is the new Re-formation of which many today dream. Ultimately, this is the Re-formation, which Jesus embodied and lived and because of that, we know that we can, too.

Amen.