Thick Like Jello

Text: John 8:31-36
Other texts: Romans 3:19-28

It is an unfortunate fact of life that the older we are the creakier we get. Speed becomes slow. Fresh becomes foul.

This tendency of things flowing and free to thicken up like jello in the refrigerator appears in organizations just as much as it appears in organisms. The brash entrepreneur becomes the timid boss. The upstart competitor becomes the conservative market leader.

And it happens in the church. The counter-culture becomes the establishment. Those who preach poverty become rich. Those who preach humility become powerful. Those who beg God for deliverance become those who hold the keys. Until someone comes along to shake things up again.

If Martin Luther, the man after whom the Lutheran church is named, could look down on us this day, I’m sure he would be dismayed. He never hoped to break the church universal into two, and then many, denominations. Luther never planned to start a new church. He once said, “I ask that men make no reference to my name; let them call themselves Christians, not Lutherans. What is Luther? After all, the teaching is not mine. Neither was I crucified for anyone. St. Paul would not allow the Christians to call themselves Pauline, but Christian. How then should I—poor stinking maggot-fodder that I am—come to have men call the children of Christ by my wretched name? Not so, my dear friends; let us abolish all party names and call ourselves Christians, after him whose teaching we hold.” Yet here we are, sitting in a church called Lutheran.

But Luther perhaps forgot that Jesus would have felt the same way about people calling themselves Christian. Though he spoke a lot about himself and his role, Jesus was not out to start a new church. He was a reformer, a Jew out to fulfill and refresh the law of the Jews.

Both Jesus and Luther lived in a time when the vibrant core of people’s faith and the intimate connection it had with God had become old, tired, and most of all entrenched. Their organized religions had become the main powerful and greedy institutions of their day. These institutions had begun to forget their source in God. And they had begun to forget what their scriptures told them: that they were once the hope of poor and outcast people against the power of the world.

Today is Reformation Sunday. On this day we celebrate the Reformation. It is a little ironic that this day is the only day in the church year in which we focus on an event in church history and not on something in the life and teachings of Jesus. Not even on a theological theme as some other Sundays, like Trinity Sunday, do.

Reformation Day, which is Friday, is the 491st anniversary of the day in which Martin Luther was said to have nailed up 95 arguments, or theses, against the goings-on of the church. And the church in this case means the Church of Rome. Not the only Christian church, but certainly the one that dominated the life of Europe at the time. Luther’s pretty dry words did not start the Reformation, but they did provide the spark that ignited a lot of flammable material that had been accumulating for more than a century.

Luther’s arguments were theological. But the reason we are called Lutherans today is political. If the church had engaged Luther instead of freaking out about him, there probably would be no Protestants now. There might have been instead a slightly different (or even drastically different) Reformed Church of Rome. But the church was old and creaky and set in its comfortable and privileged ways. It did not want to be reformed at that moment. And it certainly did not want some young brash upstart to tell it how to do its business. They did not crucify Luther like they did Jesus (who also really riled up the establishment) but they did put out an order for Luther’s arrest for treason as a heretic and put his life in danger. One of the many charges was that Luther brought “confusion to all the public affairs of our Holy Mother Church.” Which was, I think, the main point.

There is much to be loved about the Reformation, including a theology of radical grace and forgiveness and the emphasis on the power of scripture over the power of tradition and churchly authority. And there is much to be liked about Luther, who could say things like God would welcome us “Even though you were scaly, scabby, stinking, and most filthy.”

But what is not to be loved about the Reformation is our sometimes sense of accomplishment and completion. There is a lot of self-congratulations about this celebration, as if we somehow had missed a close call but all that is mercifully behind us now.

If you have ever changed your ways, if you have ever struggled with some dangerous obsession or been in deathly deep sorrow, you know that being reformed is never a one-time thing. It is an ongoing process that involves vigilance, hope, and gratitude.

Paul writes in his letter to Rome, “Then what becomes of boasting? It is excluded.” This verse, even more than the famous next verse in which he talks about justification, seems to me to be one of the most important things Paul says. There is no boasting allowed. Not because it is prideful, which it is, but because it is stupid.

Our denominational parters, the reformed churches, have a motto. It says “reformed and always reforming.” The purpose of this motto is to remind them that God is still at work in the world and in the church. God did not stop after Moses, Jesus, and Luther. God is constantly messing about with the world and encouraging us to be on the lookout for chances to reform what is stuck, to renew what is decrepit, and to restore what is broken.

Just now we baptized young [child just baptized]. Baptism is a one-time event in the life of Christians, but it is not the last event. Something has happened, but not everything has happened. We have sent [this child] out in mission—even though he is very small—out in mission for the life of the world. By making promises for him, we remind ourselves that God continues to act here, and that we are part of that action. Let your light so shine.

It is great to celebrate the Reformation, the courage and practical intelligence of Martin Luther, the passion of all the reformers, the theological insights that resulted. But we do not celebrate this event because it accomplished something grand and permanent. We celebrate because we have enough trust in God that we might hope for reform again and again.