Re-form

Reformation Sunday/Pentecost 22B, 10/25/15
Mark 10:46-52

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O God, you are our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

It was the evening before All Saints Day – All Hallow’s Eve. The year was 1517.

Martin Luther, a Catholic monk and priest, was discontented with the state of the church. He had written up a long list of complaints against church leadership – 95 theses that both expressed his frustration and offered an alternative vision.

Martin Luther knew that the following day, November 1, All Saints Day, was a holy day of obligation for Catholics, and so the church would be full of worshipers coming for mass. He jumped at the opportunity to get his message out to a large group of people.

On October 31^st, 1517, Martin Luther posted his 95 theses on the door of the church in Wittenberg, Germany, so that his message of repentance to the Catholic church would reach as many people as possible.

Thus began the Reformation – a movement led by Luther and other people who were protesting the current state of the church, who themselves would end up leading various protesting – Protestant – branches of Christianity. 

Because of Martin Luther’s courageous actions on the last day of October, 1517, we as Lutherans now celebrate his call to reform every year on the last Sunday of October, which we call Reformation Sunday.

Martin Luther went on to write more documents about and against the Catholic church in his day. He ended up being defrocked and excommunicated. He continued to write, teach, and preach his message of reform to the church.

And, to his great chagrin, the people who followed him named their movement “Lutheran,” after the man they saw as their founder.

Martin Luther never intended to break from the Roman Catholic Church, which was the only Christian church in Germany in the 1500s. He certainly never expected to have a denomination named after him.

Martin Luther genuinely wanted reform. He wanted the church to do better at proclaiming the Gospel of Jesus.

Unfortunately for Christians, the Gospel of Jesus tends to be controversial and divisive. People never seem to be able to agree on what Jesus is saying, or how to apply it to everyday life.

In an effort to re-focus on the Gospel, Luther helped to create a rift in the church that has yet to be healed, even after 500 years.

The controversy of the Gospel is as true for us today as it was in Martin Luther’s time.

This past week I was involved in a conversation with other Lutheran pastors about the importance of Reformation Sunday in today’s church.

One of those pastors was making the case that Reformation Day is irrelevant and outdated – like Columbus Day, he said.

I disagree.

Here’s the thing. Some churches celebrate Reformation Day by lecturing about Martin Luther, singing hymns that he wrote, reading his favorite Bible passages, and extolling the virtues of the Protestant reformers.

Some churches ignore the fact that the Reformation was also the cause of warfare and suffering among common people, and Luther wrote some things that were blatantly anti-Semitic and have been used to perpetuate discrimination over the centuries.

The Reformation itself was not an inherently good thing. It had some really wonderful results, but it also had a serious dark side, and there were lots of cons to go along with the pros of trying to reform the church.

So, if all you do for Reformation Sunday is read from Romans and sing A Mighty Fortress Is Our God, then that other pastor is right – it is an outdated church festival, and Luther is probably rolling over in his grave to know that there are churches who believe that they are honoring him by doing these things.

Celebrating the Reformation like this misses the entire point of the Reformation – it ignores the challenge of refocusing on the Gospel of Jesus.    

The point of Reformation Sunday isn’t to celebrate Martin Luther. It’s not to memorialize that one moment in time when he nailed his 95 theses to the church door in Wittenberg.

The point of Reformation Sunday is to re-form.

As a congregation, as a denomination, as part of the church universal – the Reformation can teach us that we may not have everything put together as tidily as we would like to believe.

Reformation Day is a call to change.

So on Reformation Sunday, we deck out the church in red on the pulpit, the table and the pastor. Red is the color of these paraments only one other day of the church year, Pentecost, the day we celebrate the coming of the Holy Spirit.

In honor of the reformers who were instrumental in forming this Lutheran church to which we now belong, we set aside one of the Sundays in the year to listen attentively for the voice of the Holy Spirit speaking to us today. 

Where is God leading us?

How can we become better disciples?

What would God have us change?

Those are the important questions of Reformation Sunday. God doesn’t want us to stay the same as we’ve always been. God wants us to change.

My response to that pastor with whom I disagreed was this: Reformation Sunday is about courageously living out your faith and listening carefully for the leading of the Spirit.

If boldly daring to embody the Gospel is the point of remembering the Reformation, then it is certainly not outdated – it is our mission statement!   

And so, on this Reformation Sunday, we are celebrating the work of the Holy Spirit among us by welcoming a young member of our congregation into the adult voting membership of Lake Edge Lutheran Church.

One young woman will be courageously declaring her faith in the triune God this morning, and we as a congregation are going to support her in that declaration of faith.

When Kayla is confirmed in a few minutes, she will become just as important a voice in this congregation as you or me. We recognize that God speaks through priests and monks, but also through young people who have not yet finished high school.

God also speaks to us today through the witness of other denominations, like the Baptist Church, the Moravian Church, the United Methodist Church – our many neighborhood partners in ministry.

God speaks to us today through traditional organ music, through guitars and drums, through 7-stanza hymns and through simple praise choruses.

God speaks to us today through women and men, children and the elderly. God speaks through immigrants and native-born citizens, and through people with skin every color along the spectrum of browns and tans and creams.

God speaks to us in today’s Gospel lesson through the person of Bartimaeus.

Let’s take a moment to pause here. Think of some of the other miracle stories you’ve heard.

Jesus heals ten lepers, the man who is possessed by the demons named Legion, the woman with the issue of blood, the widow’s son, the man born blind, the paralyzed man…

What all of these people have in common is that they are unnamed. Most of the healings that Jesus performs are for people whose names we never learn.

The healing of Bartimaeus must be important, because here we actually have a name for the recipient of the miracle.

Hold that thought, we'll come back to it in a minute.

Bartimaeus calls out to Jesus, and the people try to silence him, just like they tried to keep the children from Jesus in our Gospel reading a few weeks ago.

For some reason, people are always trying to protect Jesus from the very people he came to serve.

But Jesus, thankfully, doesn’t let the people stand in Bartimaeus’ way. He calls the blind man to him, and asks him what he wants.

Notice – Jesus doesn’t assume that he knows what Bartimaeus wants. Sure, restoring his sight is the obvious answer, but maybe this guy wants something different. Maybe he’s hoping that Jesus will forgive his sins, or get rid of his back pain, or just give him a meal.

We could take a page out of Jesus’ book here, on listening to people in need before assuming that we know what they are looking for.

OK, so Jesus calls Bartimaeus to him, asks what he wants, and it turns out that the request was, in fact, the most obvious one. Bartimaeus wants his sight restored.

So Jesus gives him the ability to see.

And then Jesus tells him to “go.”

Your faith has saved you, so go on your way.

But Bartimaeus doesn’t go, he stays. He follows Jesus, who in the very next passage will enter Jerusalem, and within a week after that will be arrested and put to death for his preaching about the kingdom of God.

Here’s the point that I said we’d come back to.

Remember how Bartimaeus is actually named, even though most of the recipients of miracles in the Gospels remain unnamed?

Bartimaeus is remembered by the author of the Gospel of Mark.

There is good reason to assume, then, that Bartimaeus remained a disciple, even in the face of Jesus’ arrest and crucifixion.

Mark names the blind man who Jesus heals because Mark knew the blind man who Jesus healed – he was still a disciple, still someone who was furthering the message of Jesus in the community, years after Jesus had died, had been raised from the dead, and had ascended into heaven.

         It just makes sense.

The Holy Spirit was working through Bartimaeus when he called out to Jesus, and the Holy Spirit was at work when Bartimaeus decided to become a disciple of Jesus.

And the Holy Spirit continued to work through Bartimaeus for the rest of his life as he lived as a disciple of Jesus.

These are the moments that we celebrate on Reformation Sunday.

Yes, Jesus performed a healing, and it was wonderful and miraculous and life-changing.

But just as important is the fact that Bartimaeus listened to the calling of God, and chose to follow Jesus. He joined the ranks of disciples after Jesus healed him, and that became life-changing not just for him, but for everyone else he encountered and shared the Gospel with.

Martin Luther was discontented with the church, and chose to do something about it by calling the church to reform itself and refocus on the Gospel.

Kayla feels a personal faith in God, and has decided to profess that faith in front of this congregation this morning.

Jesus could heal every sick, injured, disabled, oppressed and unhappy person in the world – but the reason we know about and celebrate his work is because of people who are changed and choose to follow Jesus. These people don’t just go back to life as usual, they spend their lives among the ranks of disciples.

On this last Sunday in October, we remember where our denomination came from – we honor the legacy that Martin Luther and the other reformers left us with, while also acknowledging that they weren’t perfect.

So on Reformation Sunday, we look for ways to re-form the church as it is today. What is working? What isn’t? Where is the Spirit leading us today?

And on this festival in the church year, we celebrate the work of the Holy Spirit, which continues to move among us and guide us and teach us how best to follow Jesus.

May that Spirit move among us, and may God give us the grace to listen and follow where it leads.   Amen.