Reformation Sunday
Rev. Laura J. Collins
September 26, 2003
Today is known as Reformation Sunday. Once a year we Protestants remember the pioneers of a new kind of faith, a new kind of church, started in Europe over 500 years ago and continuing here today. During those early years of the Reformation, the printing press was invented, the Enlightenment was underway, people began to translate the Scriptures into their native tongues, Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the door of a Wittenberg church and everything changed.
The Reformation happened during a time of intellectual and political unrest, a time when many institutions were being questioned. There were many reasons for the Reformation and many leaders along the way. But what was the point, really?
At least one of the key points of the Reformation was to point people towards a direct relationship with God, unmediated by Church or State or priests or liturgy. A personal spirituality that came from one's own reading of Scripture, one's own practice of prayer and one's own experience of grace. A personal spirituality, but not a private one. A spirituality forged in each person, but with far-reaching ramifications for society and for this community we call the church.
In the Presbyterian branch of the Reformation tree, we say we are the "Church Reformed and Always Reforming." We don't believe that the work begun in the middle of the last millennia ended then. We believe that the call of the Reformation is an on-going one. A call to continually seek out the God of Grace through study of Scripture, prayer and personal experience in God's world. And we believe that we can manage those tasks better in a community than all by ourselves.
So rather than focus today on the people who led the Reformation long ago, let's think about ourselves: how are we children of that Reformation? Are we still being Reformed? Are we still seeking to understand God and know God for ourselves? Or have we reverted to a pre-Reformation expectation that God will be mediated through the church? Leave the Bible study to the scholars, leave the liturgy to the pastor, leave the service to the social workers and counselors and politicians ... let us just come in and have it fed to us.
In today's Scripture, Jesus offers us a picture of Reformation thinking. He is confronted by a Scribe, that is a religious scholar, one who knows the Scriptures inside and out. Jesus has just been debating Scripture with the Sadducees, another group of established religious leaders. They had thrown him a trick question about relationships in the afterlife and he had come back at them with a challenge to their faith. Were they playing games with the Scriptures or were they seeking to know the Living God? Jesus had no time for cerebral Bible games. He was more interested in living transformation.
Apparently this Scribe is impressed by the way Jesus answers and so throws him another curve. Which is the greatest commandment? Jesus begins by answering with what would probably be the safest answer, quoting the Shema from Deuteronomy, "Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one; and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength." He probably could have stopped there and the answer would have satisfied many listeners, but he added without pause, "And the second is this, 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no other commandment greater than these."
The Scribe decides this is a good answer and feeds it back to Jesus with his own little tag line, "To love God ... and neighbor ... is much more than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices." Jesus approves of this little twist and declares, "You are not far from the kingdom of God."
Now, what has happened in this little interchange is that a representative of the established religious authority (in the person of the Scribe) and a reformer (Jesus) have shared in a dialogue of Biblical interpretation. There were other possible ways of answering the question, but Jesus answers, from his own grounding in Scripture and relationship with God, and the Scribe, out of his own grounding in Scripture and relationship with God, responds in kind. They are able to meet on the common grounds of Holy text and personal faith. If either of them had lacked experience in one area or the other, the ability to speak to each other about God would have been muted.
It is only possible to reform a tradition with which one is familiar. And one only reforms something that seems worth reforming. Otherwise, why bother? As the Anglican church world-wide struggles with the questions of unity in the heat of the controversy over the election of an openly gay bishop, we see this question being played out in new ways. From the gay community, there are many people who ask, "Why bother? Why bother with an institution that is determined to consider us second-rate or worse?" From the Christian community who do not approve of the ordination of gay/lesbian/bisexual people, similar questions arise: "Why don't they just go away? Can't they see this isn't the place for them?"
But for Gay Christians, this is their tradition. They are standing on the same Scriptures and the same personal faith and are willing to meet these questions head on, because, as Martin Luther said during that other reformation, "Here I stand. I can do no other."
If you are sitting here today, then I'm going to make an assumption that you have decided that this is an institution which is worth the bother. Or, at least, you are willing to entertain the notion that it might be. But perhaps you have serious questions about the faith. Questions about who Jesus was, about the nature of God's power, about what you can expect from a relationship with God, about how to read Scripture, about the role of the church in one's faith or the role of one's faith in the world. Good questions. I commend you for having them.
Then, let us take these questions and let them lead us deeper into the heart of the tradition. Not because the tradition is the be-all or end-all of the faith. But because in understanding the tradition - the Scriptures, the Sacraments, the theology of the church - we can understand more fully what it is we believe and, consequently, how we are to live.
Today's gospel message is an excellent place to start. It all boils down to this: Love God with all your heart, your mind, your soul and your strength and love your neighbor as you love yourself. The call is to an intimacy with the Divine that is emotionally satisfying, intellectually stimulating, life-giving, and empowering. And from this all-encompassing intimacy grows a more just and compassionate relationship with the world.
Maybe you have tasted this kind of love of God in your life. And if you have, you know why Jesus refers to himself as the Bread of Life, the Water that quenches thirst, the Light in the Darkness. There is nothing else like it. Once you've tasted it, you hunger for more. Even if you're like me, and you spend more time stumbling around the edges of real faith than immersing yourself in its wondrous depths, you know that there is a fountain that flows deep and wide, there is a balm in Gilead, there is a peace that passes understanding, and you long to go there again.
But maybe you haven't really tasted that love. Maybe you've only said these words in church and when you're honest with yourself, you really have no idea what it means to fall head over heels in love with a non-material being. How do you love the creative energy of the universe, after all?
Julian of Norwich declared, "The fullness of joy is to behold God in everything." Love of God is a different kind of love than what we experience in our personal interactions, and it is grounded in awe and gratitude. Such love is not something I can describe in a sermon. It is better expressed in music, poetry, dance, silence. Gregory of Nyssa proclaimed, "Concepts create idols, only wonder grasps anything." Jesus told us to approach God with childlike grace and trust and wonder.
It is my personal belief that the Church of Jesus Christ is in dire need of another period of reformation and that, in fact, we may already have entered such a period. If we are to be children of the reformation, perhaps even leaders of it, it will begin with this sense of wonder; this childlike trust that reaches out to the Holy Parent with open, loving arms; this deep-rooted peace that sinks down into the Ground of all Being; this mindful self that opens to grace and learns compassion.
The Church Reformed and Always Reforming is us. We are the ones being called to allow our hearts and minds to be reformed by God's compassionate presence. We are the ones being called to live the great commandments. "The first is, 'Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One; you shall love the Lord with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.' The second is this, 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no other commandment greater than these."
That is the long and the short of it. There is no other commandment greater than these.
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