Re-formation or Reconciliation?

Reformation Sunday Sermon

Texts: Jeremiah 31:31-34, Romans 3:19-28, John 8:31-16

I have such incredibly fond memories of Reformation Sundays from my youth. At my church growing up, our youth are confirmed on this day and I always loved helping our altar guild blow up red balloons – and then of course suck on the helium after worship and sing the hymns in an Alvin and the chipmunks voice. It was always such a festive day.

As I’ve been thinking about today, though, I’ve been wondering: What’s the deal with reformation? Why do we remember it?

Don’t get me wrong, I know that this is a monumental day in terms of the history of the Lutheran and Protestant churches, but what is the relevance of the reformation to the church today?

I know that some people believe that the Reformation was an event in the past and that’s it: it was monumentally important, but we’ve learned all that we needed from it then. What Luther and his colleagues did was an event in history that changed the church.

Some people wonder whether Luther would have reformed the Catholic Church if he was part of it today – in other words, the Roman Catholic Church has changed quite a bit from what it was in the 1500’s and how it practiced in Luther’s day and many people wonder if Luther would have had the same arguments with the Church today? So, in this case, what is the relevance of continuing to celebrate the Reformation?

Still others think that the reformation is on-going: that the church is constantly being re-formed. I think that I’m more of this camp. Luther’s nailing of the 95 theses ignited a spirit of reformation that has continued to this day. Perhaps not always to the same extent as it did with Luther’s Reformation, but still being formed and re-formed on a daily basis.

In the midst of thinking about the current significance of the Reformation, I read an article on the Huffington Post entitled “Why Christianity is Dying while Spirituality is Thriving.”  Initially, it was the title which grabbed my attention – the church is dying? It is written by a man named Steve McSwain who dubs himself as a voice for the “spiritual but not religious.” Have you heard this term? I hear it a lot from a lot of my peers – they often describe themselves as spiritual but not particularly religious. As you read McSwain’s article, when he says that they church is dying he means the Church with a capital “C” and not necessarily faith or Christianity as a religion. His article makes some interesting observations about this camp of people – the spiritual but not religious – which he says are based on his own observations and those most recently published by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life.

You may have heard about the results of this report because they’ve been all over NPR and some of the other news media outlets. This study’s results grabbed the attention of many Americans because it states that one-fifth of the U.S. public identify as unaffiliated – in terms of religious affiliation – and that’s the highest percentage of people who so identify in Pew Research polling history. It’s a jump from five years ago when the percentage was only 15%.

When this is broken down by age, 32% of 18-29 year olds say that they are religiously unaffiliated, whereas in the 65+ age group, the number is only 9% who consider themselves religiously unaffiliated. I’m not so sure about you, but it wasn’t as surprising to me that these were the numbers the Pew study found – is it surprising to you? I mean, while 20% of the population identify as unaffiliated, this still means that upwards of 80% are affiliated in some way shape or form to a religious practice. That’s a staggeringly high amount of people. But still, this 20% unaffiliated had news outlets and even Mr. McSwain talking about this.

So, I wonder where does this come from? What has brought us to this point? Perhaps the abuse scandals in churches like the Roman Catholic Church and others have contributed to a sense that churches are unsafe. People have been excluded from places of worship for a multitude of reasons, no doubt contributing to a sense of alienation. There was another recent study that polled young people, and the first things they thought of when someone said the word “Christianity” were judgmental, hypocritical, too political, and anti-gay.

No wonder 20% of the population – which the study has dubbed the “nones” – are feeling a bit distant from religion. None of that really sounds all that great, does it?

This scenario really does make me think of our Old Testament lesson this morning from Jeremiah. The people in Jeremiah’s context were feeling quite distant from God. The nation of Judah was in economic disarray and threatened militarily by the larger, more powerful nation of Babylon. Throughout the book of Jeremiah you often hear the people yelling at Jeremiah asking “where is God? Why won’t God do something?” and you often hear Jeremiah telling the people “you’re the ones who strayed from God and so this is why these things are happening!” It’s not the most upbeat of books – but true to the prophetic tradition of the time.

But in the middle of the book of Jeremiah, we get our reading from today – from a selection of chapters often referred to as the “Books of Consolation.” Amidst the finger waving – on both sides – comes this incredibly powerful message from God: “the days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah” God needed to make a new covenant because the older one was broken by the people, “this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people…from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.”

This is a serious game changer in the lives of the Israelites. God is covenanting – making a promise – with the Israelites that God will be their God and they will be God’s people, which is not actually a new covenant, it’s the same covenant that we hear in the earlier books of the Bible. But, this covenant will be written in their hearts – not on a paper, not on tablets, not in some book that some have the authority to read while others must merely follow. God’s love is written on the hearts of the least to the greatest – no middlemen and no institutions necessary: just a divine relationship untarnished by authorities and power.

For a people as torn up by what was happening around them and feeling so alone – how incredible, that at their time of greatest need, God acknowledges that the relationship between the Divine and humans is so incredibly intimate that not just are we God’s people on paper, God’s love is in our hearts – our hearts!

I can’t help but think of those “nones” again. I’m not trying to put words in their mouths, but I think there is still a stinging pang in the hearts of some of those folks where the covenant from God abides. Another Pew study, along with PBS, found that that 20% unaffiliated, while less religious than the public at large, are still religious or spiritual in some way. Two-thirds of them believe in God, more than half feel a deep connection with nature and the earth, and one-in-five say that they pray every day.

That’s quite a different picture than what was initially painted isn’t it? Again, I don’t mean to put words in other people’s mouths – this was not part of the study – but I have to wonder about that covenant that God put in the hearts of the Israelites all those many years ago. Figuratively or literally, there is an intimacy with our God that doesn’t just go away so easily.

I even wonder if at times I would have identified with this unaffiliated group. I’ve always identified as Lutheran and attended a Lutheran church, but my piety, my spiritual practices sound close to what those unaffiliated describe.

In fact, I wonder if most of us could identify a time when we felt somewhat distant from the church: maybe because there was a lot happening in our personal lives that seemed to taking up a lot of our time and there just wasn’t room for church then; or maybe we lost someone too young, too quickly, or too painfully and we’ve questioned God’s presence and role in our lives. There’s bad, hard, difficult, troubling things that happen in our lives and sometimes it is hard to feel very connected.

But, we have good news! It’s not new news, it’s gospel – gospel comes from a term that means good news! It comes in the form of a prophet who, amidst pain and fear, tells us that God has written a covenant on our hearts. And, it most certainly comes in the form of a man named Jesus, who was the Son of God, and who lived so that we might live, but who died so that we may have everlasting life.

The story of our relationship with God and with Christ isn’t always so great and it isn’t always so easy. Luther’s 95th thesis – on that sheet that he nailed to the door almost 500 years ago – said “and thus be confident of entering into heaven through many tribulations rather than through the false security of peace.” It may not sound like the most comforting message initially, but I like it because it doesn’t dance around the idea that being a Christian is hard. That being a Christian doesn’t mean that life is always going to be easy or perfect. No, being a Christian, being human, is going to be hard; but, God’s covenant is in our hearts.

As Christians, are we listening for the good news? As the church, are we telling the stories of good news with passion and enthusiasm? Perhaps, on this Reformation Sunday we should think not just about how the church forms and is re-formed daily – I’m sure we could think of ways we could re-form the church to be different – perhaps, instead, we should think about reformation as reconciliation. Reconcile ourselves to our stories of good news. Reconcile ourselves to our relationship with a God who puts God’s love intimately in our hearts.

In our gospel today, in the good news, Jesus is having a conversation with people who believed in him but who were questioning him – a boat many of us have been in. And Jesus assures them that if they continue in his word then they will know the truth and the truth will set them free. When they ask from what they’re being freed, Jesus tells them that they are slaves to sin.

This is sometimes the language that gets uncomfortable for folks – we are slaves to sin – it doesn’t really sound like good news, but what does it mean? If we only ever think of sin as being the seriously bad things we do, then we may not think we are slaves to that kind of behavior…just maybe slip every once in a while. But, that’s not how the gospels describe sin, that’s not how the Bible describes sin: sin is all the things that distance us from God. Well, then, if that’s the case, I can kind of see how I might be caught in that web.

Jesus goes on to say that those caught up in sin are troubled, but those who are caught up in him are free – the actual word in the lesson is most closely translated to “abide.” Those who abide in sin are stuck, but those who abide in Christ are free. Abide in Christ – walk with Christ – be near to Christ – engage with Christ – and be free. That is good news.

What we do with that freedom – well, perhaps that’s a sermon for another day. But today, reconcile yourself to hearing the good news and being set free by it. Reconcile yourself to the covenant from God that is in your heart. Abide in Jesus and be willing to take the journey.

Amen.