Reformation Ponderings

On this Reformation Sunday, I'm preaching at Faith Lutheran in Bristol, Tennessee.  My mom pointed out the challenge of preaching a Reformation sermon without knowing what they've heard before.  In some ways, it's easier because my Reformation meditation/pondering doesn't change much from year to year, but at least I know this congregation hasn't heard me preach it before.

One thing that I didn't know before this Reformation Sunday is that Martin Luther's 95 theses in 1517 weren't his first venture into this arena.  Shortly before, he had a document with 97 theses, which no one paid any attention to at all.  Imagine his surprise at the response to his 1517 version.

I am thinking of how many of us, particularly Lutherans think of Luther as the only one fomenting for reform.  But Europe at that time was full of reformers—not people who wanted to create something new, exactly, but people who had ideas about how to revitalize the church. The late 1400s can be classified as a time of huge corruption, both in the church and in politics. It was a time of huge geopolitical shifts with the fall of Constantinople that would cut off one half of Christendom from the other half, and leave the way open for new religions, like Islam, to flourish. In the late 1400’s, the economic conditions of the peasant class had worsened. There were calls for a new world order, and deep fears about what that new world order would look like.

It all sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

I am thinking of my seminary which has just as many (more?) students from South Korea and various African nations as from the U.S.  I am thinking of several seminaries which have vacant dorms and apartments, and how, just a few decades ago, there wasn't enough housing to meet the demand.

I am thinking of all the ways that so many of us are trying to be church in different ways.  I learned this week that there are churches in the Virginia synod of the ELCA that are online only.  I am thinking of the Bible study that I led last Saturday with members of my Florida church. Most of them were in Florida, but I was in North Carolina and one of us was in Missouri. How did we do this? By way of Zoom. I’ve been leading Bible studies for years with this church, and we have more consistent attendance with Zoom than we ever did when meeting in person.

Throughout all of Church history—indeed, all of human history—the Holy Spirit moves in interesting ways. God, the restless Creator, always seems to be up to something new. Jesus comes to show us that even at our most broken, there is beauty to be found.  

In this time, when so many seem so intent on breaking the world, the idea that the Holy Spirit is afoot, doing transformative work, that idea offers strength and comfort.