On Reformation Sunday, we remember the 95 theses, or arguments, that Martin Luther nailed to the church door in Wittenberg, Germany in 1517. We have a picture of a painting of it on the cover of your bulletin. Today that would seem like a pretty radical thing to do, nailing something to a door. But the church door was the bulletin board of the community and it was where many things were posted – notices of community gatherings, sale of property etc. Luther’s theses however were different. First, he was challenging some of the practices of the church that he believed were going against the way of Jesus and were against the teachings of the Bible. He was particularly angered by the practice of selling indulgences – which were basically get of jail free cards --- except they were “Get Out of Hell” cards. And, they were costly, and were impoverishing the peasants and enriching the priests.
The second reason that Luther’s theses were different was that the world was changing. The Guttenberg printing press got a hold of Luther’s theses and printed them. They spread like wildfire. Suddenly, this small town priest in Germany had the attention of the Pope in Rome. And he was not happy. The Pope sent messages for Luther to recant – which means saaying, “just kidding. I didn’t mean what I said.”
This was a serious message. No doubt Luther knew that reformer Jon Huss had been burned at the stake, along with his writings, in 1415, a hundred years earlier. And so, Luther prayed and went back to his Bible. He reread the letter to the Romans, that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”
At that time, the church’s remedy for sin was to buy an indulgence – a Get out of Hell card” for yourself and for your parents and relatives. If you did not, you were condemning them and yourself to the fires of Hell. People were afraid. And so, they bought the indulgences – even though it was pushing them deeper and deeper into poverty.
Luther saw what was happening to his neighbors. He had grown up with this policy but the more that he read in his Bible, the less it looked like Jesus’ command to Love God and love the neighbor as yourself. And so Luther kept reading and rediscovered God’s grace. He read in Romans and in Galatians that it is not our own actions or purchases that will redeem us but rather faith and the grace of God who loves us, forgives us and saves us.
And so, four years later, in 1521, when called to a tribunal called to recant his teachings and writings, Luther famously said, “Here I stand, I can do no other. So help me God.” With those words, Luther was declared a heretic and a price was put on his head.
But the world was changing, and God heard Luther’s prayers. And so, a German prince “kidnapped him” and took him to Wartburg Castle where Luther kept studying and writing and even translated the Bible from Latin, the language of scholars, into ordinary German, the language of his neighbors. It is because of this work, and the ongoing work of other reformers throughout history, that we are able to read and study and follow Jesus regardless of where we live or the language we speak.
The world continues to change. And, we, as the church, need to continue to reform so that we can proclaim God’s Word and the way of Christ to people today. And so, during the pandemic, when we could not gather together, we met in the parking lot, we learned how to stream our worship and we partnered with other churches to do God’s work in this corner of the world. Just like the world was changed with the printing press, and then by radio and then by television and today by the internet and streaming and social media. Our response, as a Church, is to continue to reform so that all people can hear God’s Word and God’s Way and come to believe in Jesus Christ as the one who loves, forgives, saves and gives you the way to live in our world today.
The world changes. But some things do not change. Jesus still proclaims to us today: ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.” These laws that Jesus paired are still ours to follow. And God’s Good News that Luther found in the Bible doesn’t change either. We cling to the grace of God who is our “refuge and our strength,” who has made a covenant with us, and who saves us by God’s grace alone and who gives us the way to live, which is the way of Jesus.
Our challenge, as a church, and as people of God, is to acknowledge and respond to the changing world around us AND to hold on to God’s Law and Gospel. In other words, as we change, we don’t want to “throw out the baby with the bathwater.”
This is why, as we have been exploring becoming a new congregation with the people of first Lutheran and Cross of Glory, we began with the vision, the reason for a new church. We could have looked at this from the perspective of scarcity: the number of people in each of the congregations is shrinking. We have fewer people to do the work and more of the resources are getting spread thinner for staff and building maintenance and for sharing God’s good News with others.
But instead, we began with the Vision – the why -- because God is still at work in our world today. We began by asking: what is God’s vision for God’s church? To explore that, we started worshipping and breaking bread together – and the spirit was joy-filled. We then asked five teams of people from each church about the vision for the ministries of: worship and music; justice and neighboring, lifelong learning, children, youth and family, and hospitality. 70 people participated on these teams and their work was fruitful. We are not done with our work. We still have to work out the logistics of budgets and staffing and space. That is not what we are voting on today. What we are voting on today is a vision for a church that will hold fast to God’s Law and Gospel and proclaim God’s Good News to all our neighbors. It’s not a fake vote. The vision, if it passes, will be the cornerstone that we will build our new church together. Thanks be to God. Amen.