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On October 31 in 1517, Martin Luther, an unknown professor of theology in the Roman Catholic church in Germany, walked to the Wittenberg Castle Church and nailed a letter to its door. At least that is how the story goes. The letter contained 95 theses that dealt with some problems, as Martin Luther saw them, in the Catholic church. With these 95 theses was a challenge to others to debate him if they so chose, even inviting them to do so by letter if they could not do that in person. He was open for a fight because he believed things needed to change!
Within the historical narrative of the church, this event is credited with launching what became known as the Protestant Reformation. That is why on the last Sunday of October each year churches are encouraged to recognize Reformation Sunday. We are encouraged to remember the difficult road of those who dared to call out the places where the church had sunk into the politics of power, wealth and prestige. Reformers like Martin Luther dared to call the church to invite people to live out of a deep faith that comes from a relationship with God, scriptural truth and the grace and love of Jesus Christ. For this they were often rejected, persecuted, and sometimes even killed. Within just three years of nailing these 95 Theses to the door of the church in Wittenberg, Luther was excommunicated by the Roman Catholic Church and a new church was formed around his teaching. Others soon followed.
We are descendants of this movement! Our Covenant Affirmations read, “While affirming with the reformers the sovereignty of the word of God over all creeds, and the priesthood of all believers, the Covenant Church has placed particular importance on the Reformation emphasis on salvation by grace alone through faith alone—apart from the works of the law.” We continue to seek to live out this truth. However, we as a denomination along with much of the Christian church throughout history has struggled with what it means to be a fellowship of believers dependent on the Holy Spirit, centered in the scriptures, living new life, while living out the whole ministry of the church. We go through various incarnations of just what that looks like with some better than others.
The one thing that we should never forget is that a Reformation church is in just as much risk of calcifying in our ability to live out the truth of the Gospel. We can become far too focused on what the institution of the church has to say rather than encouraging people to live by faith, scripture and grace alone. It is why the phrase “‘Ecclesia reformata, semper reformanda” should be remembered. It means “a church reformed and always being reformed.” We cannot stay put where we are; we cannot allow ourselves to create structures that simply ensure the organizational well being of the church. We must always allow God to reshape us into what God wants us to be so that we can be a part of the renewal of the world (not jut the survival of the church).
Too often we are inundated with ideas and directions on how to grow the church, increase the reach of the church and fine tune the strategies that will produce results. While there is nothing wrong about these things, they become far too much about institutional success rather than scriptural fidelity and missional living. We aren’t nailing 95 Theses about how to fix the church to our doors (right now we are only posting exit and entrance signs on our doors), instead we are posting quick fix blog posts on the internet about 10 ways to increase the rate of visitor return to your church, seven ways that the old ways of church don’t work anymore and 15 ways to increase your giving! We might be doing these things at our own peril.
Reformation Sunday should remind us to be committed to the basics of our faith and to figuring out how to communicate those in love to our life circles, our neighbourhood, and the global village. Our denominations should focus on developing people and structures that are faithful rather than simply successful. We should be building communities not businesses. We should be seeking to be reformed by God not by ideas and victories.
I will let Chris Gherz, one of the co-authors of the book The Pietist Option, bring that home on a deeper level. He wrote in an article in the Covenant Companion, “Churches that are “reformed, and always reforming” don’t offer quick fixes. Instead, we must study God’s word, live out our faith in love, and strive for unity with patience, and in hope. In the end, the Pietist option is to live in active expectation that the God of the resurrection works through people as imperfect as us, to reform his flawed church and, through it, to renew the weary world he loves so much.”
