Reformation Red

Holy Spirit, move among us. Help us to hear your word, to understand, to live it out, and to share it with others. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

My favorite liturgical color is red.

Many of you already knew this about me.

But allow me to explain.

Fair warning – this is going to get a little bit church nerdy for a minute.

Each season and festival in the church year has an assigned color. That color is used for the paraments, which means the cloths on the altar and pulpit and the stoles that the pastors wear, and sometimes other decorations in the church building. If you have seen pastors wearing chasubles or copes or other fancy colorful robes, those match the seasonal color too.

Each liturgical color ends up having a different meaning.

White or gold mean Jesus and resurrection. Christmas and Easter are white or gold, as is All Saints’ Sunday, which we’ll celebrate next week. Christ the King and Transfiguration also use white – basically, any time we’re celebrating Jesus or resurrection, white and gold are the colors to use!

In Lent, while we are preparing for Good Friday through a season of repentance and refocusing on God, the color is purple. So purple is for penitence.

Advent is blue. This might be new to you, if you grew up in a church that used purple for Advent. But Advent is for anticipation, not repentance. So purple is used in Lent – only – and blue is the color used for Advent, the season of waiting and anticipating the birth of our savior.  

Green is for ordinary time. Really. That’s what the church calls the long season that stretches through the summer and into the fall, when there are no major church festivals or holidays. It’s also called the season after Pentecost, since that was the most recent major church festival… about 23 weeks ago.

Green is used for the in-between times, for those days that don’t celebrate anything in particular except another wonderful morning to remember our relationship with God.

White, gold, purple, blue, green. The other liturgical color is red.

Red is the color of the Holy Spirit. Red is used on Pentecost and to celebrate saints and martyrs. The color red is reminiscent of the blood of the martyrs, and also of the flames that appeared on the heads of the disciples at Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit was poured out on them.

And red is used on Reformation Sunday.

Once a year, Lutherans and other Protestants remember the courage of those faithful people who stood up to the church in their day and took a stand for the Holy Spirit, and against the institution of established religion.

This means that Reformation Day is a Holy Spirit holiday – it’s a time for us to remember that God continues to move among us, to inspire people, to work for change, and to teach us new things.

Some people treat Reformation Sunday solely as a time to celebrate the European reformers, generally dead white guys who popularized a particular way of interpreting Scripture. To confine Reformation Sunday to history, I think, is to do it a serious injustice.

The point of the Protestant Reformation is to acknowledge that God’s revelation to humankind didn’t stop with the biblical book of Revelation. The Holy Spirit has broken the barrier between human and divine, and continues to do so!

We don’t call this day “Lutheran history celebration” or “1517 revisited” or “feast of the 95 theses.”

We call this day Reformation Sunday because the church continues to be formed and changed and formed again when we pay attention to the leading of the Holy Spirit.

Lutheranism isn’t about commemorating a particular day in the 1500s when some German law student who was afraid of dying in a thunderstorm promised God he’d become a monk if only he made it through the storm.

Lutheranism isn’t about a German priest posting 95 complaints about the church in his day on a public bulletin board, that happened to double as a church door.

Lutheranism isn’t about a priest being excommunicated for his insistence that the pope isn’t the only one who can rightly interpret Scripture.

Lutheranism isn’t about continually exalting our northern European ancestors in the faith, who joined the Reformation either by royal edict or moral conviction, and then proceeded to tie cultural practices to their theological beliefs.

Lutheranism really isn’t primarily about Martin Luther, or about Germans or Norwegians or Swedes, or Jell-O, or even lefse. 

Lutheranism is about the Holy Spirit.

That’s why the altar and the pulpit and the pastor wear red today.

The Reformation is about seeing the activity of God in the world around us – in every culture, in every language, in everyday people – and not just in the priests and professors who make it their life’s work to study religion.

The Holy Spirit can speak just as clearly through you as through the pope. That is what the Reformation was about. 

From a thunderstorm 500 years ago, to letters and papers from a Birmingham jail, Reformation Day proclaims that there’s a sweet, sweet Spirit in this place!

We lean on the everlasting arms of the mighty fortress that is our God, singing with a blessed assurance that Jesus loves you and me!

Through music and writing, rainbows and thunderstorms, protests and worshipping congregations – God is not done with us yet.

The Holy Spirit still has something to tell us about how to know God and how to live in community with one another.

The current capital campaign for the ELCA is called “Always Being Made New.” That is what it means to be a church of the Reformation – we believe that God still has more to teach us. Beyond the Scriptures and the witness of the church, the Holy Spirit can speak directly to each and every one of us. God is constantly re-forming the church and making it in to something new!

Consider today’s Gospel story. What would have happened if Zaccheaus had believed that God didn’t speak to humankind any more – that the Scriptures were there, and no additional relationship with God was needed?

He would never have climbed that tree, Jesus would never have seen him, he would never have become the example that he is for us today, and – perhaps most important of all – we would not have that catchy Sunday School song that nearly everyone here could probably still sing by memory!

Zaccheaus was willing to meet Jesus, to welcome him into his home, and to learn something from him about the nature of God, even when it made him uncomfortable.

Our call, as people of a re-forming church, is to be willing to meet God, to welcome the Spirit into our homes, and to learn new things about the nature of God, even when it makes us uncomfortable.

Reform can be a loaded word in today’s society.

Education reform             Healthcare reform

Voting reform                    Political reform

As Lutherans, we are asked to always reform, to continue reshaping every aspect of our lives. We can’t get settled in to “the way it’s always been” – that is the least Lutheran thing imaginable! The Holy Spirit is alive and well, and still speaking to us in new and exciting ways! Every time we learn new information or receive new revelation from God, our Lutheran duty and our responsible response is to reform what we believe and incorporate what is new into an ever-expanding understanding of the world.

All those social reform ideas – they’re important! Nothing should ever be so established that it is unquestionable.

That is the lesson of Reformation Sunday. Nothing – not even our relationship with God – especially not our relationship with the church – nothing should ever be so established that it is unquestionable.

Ask questions! Challenge the status quo! Look for new ways of understanding the world! That is what Martin Luther did.

It got him kicked out of the Roman Catholic Church, but it also opened up a whole new way of seeing the world.

Thanks to Luther, we now allow all worshippers to receive bread and wine at Communion, not just the priests. Everyone is encouraged to read the Bible, in their own language and not in Latin, and discern how to apply it to their lives.

These are reforms that came eventually not just to the church that Luther instigated, but also to the Catholic Church. While Luther may have been excommunicated for his ideas, eventually even the church that defrocked him came to understand the importance of reform.

If we truly do believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and giver of life, who is worshipped and glorified alongside the Father and Son – if we believe that the Spirit has spoken through the prophets and the church – then we must believe that the Spirit continues to speak.

And we must continue to listen and respond.

That is what Reformation Sunday is all about.

That is what it means to be Lutheran.

That is what it means to be Christian.

If God can give a special revelation to some student in Germany in the 1500s, then why not also to you and to me?  

Thanks be to God. Amen.

CEB Women's Bible

I don't like the color pink. I cut my own hair and don't wear makeup or get manicures. There are few things more unpleasant for me than shoe shopping. In general, I shy away from anything marketed specifically to women. But I ordered a Common English Bible about a year ago, and I am greatly enjoying the translation. So when the opportunity arose to preview a copy of the new CEB Women's Bible, I responded with guarded enthusiasm. And after several weeks of studying this Bible and using it for sermon and Bible study prep, my enthusiasm has only grown!

This Bible is much more than your stereotypical “Christian princess” Bible. For starters, the cover is not pink! Not even purple! It is maroon, with gold lettering. The text inside is black, with maroon headings. This color scheme matters greatly to women like me, who are inherently suspicious of anything pink.

On a more substantial note, every woman in the Bible, named and unnamed, is listed in an index along with references to the chapters and verses that tell her story. Many of these women are also described in portraits that show up near the story of the woman in question. These portraits are thoughtful, scholarly, and faithful to history and Scripture. The authors take into account how the women have been described throughout the history of the church (is Mary really “meek and mild”?) and how they have been treated in non-Christian scholarship (Ruth was compared to Abraham in ancient rabbinic scholarship). Descriptions of these women help to bring their stories to life, and can inspire additional themes of study, preaching and teaching. The portraits of biblical women are perhaps the strongest and most unique aspect of this Bible.

The CEB Women’s Bible includes a number of other helpful features. The preface gives important background information about the translation process. The CEB is a very good translation, easy to understand and faithful to the original text, but tends to sound more colloquial and less formal than many familiar translations. This can be both an asset and a drawback. Introductions to each book and chapter provide good summaries of the content to come, though they do include opinions and interpretation, as any summary of Scripture does. This book also includes reading plans for folks looking to read the entire Bible, as well as several full-color maps.

The sidebar articles throughout the book address timely topics that are relevant to Christians today, particularly to women. For example, topics of the articles in 1 Corinthians include love and spiritual gifts, and also head coverings and singleness. An article on race in Esther seems to give a nod to the Black Lives Matter movement. The sidebars are helpful for anyone looking for more information about particular topics and passages, and an index lists them all for anyone seeking what the Bible might say on a particular topic.

One appendix includes a discussion question for each week in the Revised Common Lectionary cycle. These questions are good for personal reflection, or as a conversation starter. They are not substantial enough to be the basis of a full Bible study, but the questions provide a good resource for people who attend churches that follow the RCL to tie their personal study of Scripture more directly to what they experience in worship.

The CEB Women’s Bile has many great aspects, but of course it cannot be all things to all people. If you are the kind of person who likes to write notes in the margins of your Bible, this book is probably not the best choice for you. If you are hoping to study any of the books from the Apocrypha, you won’t find them in this Bible. There are other versions of the CEB that could meet these needs, but they would be missing the valuable biographies of biblical women, and the topical articles and discussion questions. Overall, this version of the Bible is refreshing. If you can live without space for margin notes, and you are looking for some progressive interpretations of the women of the Bible, this book is definitely worth checking out. I hope you enjoy it as I have!  

Waters of Destruction and New Life

Water is powerful.

Anyone who has caught even a glimpse of the news of recent storms has learned something about the destructive power of water.

As the southeast coast of the US recovers from hurricane Matthew, we have seen flooding and power outages, destruction of property and casualties. The damage experienced on the mainland, however, is minimal compared to the devastation of island communities. Nearly 900 are confirmed dead in Haiti, and communities there will take years to rebuild – this is the poorest nation in the western hemisphere, which has been struck by disaster after disaster in recent years.

Yes, water is powerful.

That power can be used for destruction.

And that power can also be used for restoration.

What Haiti actually needs most right now is more water – clean water for drinking and washing, to prevent the spread of disease.

Water can hurt, and water can heal.

During dry seasons, all that is needed is a light rain to turn the grass from brown to green, and to save the crops that can feed a family.

Water brings life.

It can restore what is close to death.

When firefighters are called to respond to a burning building, powerful streams of water gush out from hydrants and hoses to extinguish the fires.

            Water saves life and property.

            It restores safety to a community.

In the movie Hotel Rwanda, there is a scene right when the fighting begins to break out in the community, between the Hutus and the Tutsis. A young boy, the son of the main character, is found hiding in the bushes, covered in blood. The family panics, carries him inside, washes him off and gets ready to bandage his wounds.

That’s when they discover that the blood isn’t his.

The water reveals a physically whole child, in need not of first aid, but of kind human touch and comfort.

Water washed away the fear and brought hope.

In the church, we believe that water can do amazing things. The waters of baptism can bring about forgiveness of sins, redeem from death and the devil, and give eternal salvation (from Martin Luther’s Small Catechism). The sacrament of baptism is incredibly powerful.

In his Small Catechism, Martin Luther asks, “how can water do such great things?”

Here’s the answer:

“Clearly the water does not do it, but the word of God, which is with and alongside the water, and faith, which trusts this word of God in the water. For without the word of God the water is plain water and not a baptism, but with the word of God it is a baptism, that is, a grace-filled water of life.”

Water is powerful.

And the Word of God is even more powerful.

Naaman, the Aramean army general suffering from leprosy, discovered the power of water and of the Word of God. As a military foe of Israel, Naaman had an Israelite slave girl serving his household, who had been captured as a prisoner of war. When she learned of his leprosy, she shared her certainty that the prophet Elisha could heal him. The whole story can be found in 2 Kings 5:1-19 – but the short version is that Naaman’s leprosy is healed once he is convinced to wash seven times in the River Jordan, per a message from Elisha.

The waters of the rivers of Aram were powerful, beautiful, and life-giving. By comparison, the River Jordan was a muddy stream.

But thanks to the word of God, spoken by Elisha, and conveyed through a servant, the waters of the Jordan gained miraculous power and cured Naaman from his leprosy.

Water healed Naaman.

As did the words of Elisha’s servant.

Water and word.

Just like a baptism, ordinary water has the power to heal and restore. God speaks to us in many ways. Even when we are reeling from the effects of destructive waters, it is worth remembering that God can also use water to create life. The story of Naaman, and our own baptism, assure of us of the healing that awaits all those who trust in God, and the promise of new life that God can bring through water and the Word.