Reformed FOR the World

Go!  Go!  Go!  Keep going!  Keep going!  Don’t quit!  Don’t stop!  You’re not done yet.  And now; now you can pump the breaks, slow it down, and rest.  Seriously these are usually the final thoughts going through my mind and body as I am finishing a run.  As everything in your body screams at you to quit, to just surrender and let your body crash (so to speak); it takes everything within you to not just stumble and drop.  Do you ever have moments like that in your life?  Times when you feel like you’re just going and going and going until you just can’t.  Or do you just feel like you’re going and want to just collapse now?

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So, what do we do?  Do we just collapse?  Do we push on?  Do we recover?  Do we rest? Or, can we be revived?  Renewed?  Maybe Reformed?

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If you look at church history, and you could extend this back to the story of God’s people, there are periods in which God is experienced and sought after a bit more.  As the Jewish narrative places its greatest emphasis on Exodus, we could consider that as the first of these events.  God’s people found survival from famine in Egypt, yet wound up in slavery to the Egyptians.  Then in the Exodus, God liberates the people of Israel (their eponymous ancestor’s descendants) from that slavery and gifts unto them a law as a model of life for how to show the rest of the world what the LORD Almighty is like.  Then, comes their deliverance into the promised land along with trial and error in living out that law’s heart; in which the people try and fail, and so do their earthly kings.  God’s judgement for their waywardness is the Exile in which their primary connection to their faith is the LORD himself and living the law.  Upon their return from their exile, they seek to continue that; yet earthly empires bring testing times of what it means to be devoted to God’s heart ways.

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Then comes Christ, who brings a renewal to God’s people (and his followers) who emphasize the heart and spirit of God enacted/lived out by the Messiah.  After Jesus’ death, resurrection and ascension comes the time of waiting and remaining faithful in the midst of the empire that killed him; persecutions of the body and from society put the strain on believers to be true to Christ.  Then comes the dual situation in which the church isn’t illegal anymore; in fact, we might say it has become the fashion to be.  With the legal and preferred status however comes the temptation to relax; however, some seek the wilderness to give up all and live only for God, as is attested to in Scripture.

From there, divisions arise as church leaders face differences in settings both locally and on the larger world stage.  However, it ultimately (and ironically seems to Biblically mirror the division of the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah) ends the unification of one holy catholic and apostolic church (to borrow the phrase from the Nicene Creed).  While the Orthodox/Eastern Churches face their faithfulness amongst the expansion of Islam (which was relatively tolerant), the church foci-ed in Rome drifts into power to the church; yet little life fully lived among the people.

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Then come people and groups who sought the true word of God to shine not just for the clergy and elite; yet for all humanity.  They translate, and see God reform the church from within and from without.  It is important to remember that what we call the Reformation was not just happening within new protestant movements (so called because they protested for the freedom to practice their expressions of faith against Rome’s dominance).  Yet, within the Roman church reformers seek revival and renewal from within to pursue the dream of those first monastics.

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All along the way Christians have struggled to understand and know what it means to be faithful to Christ.  They all faced situations in which the going was hard, life still needed to be lived, and they were asked if they keep going in their journey in one way or another in the same way; or be invited to God to be renewed and reformed in God’s image of what the church needed to be!  So, the same comes for us!  With daily stresses, with the ordinary and in the extraordinariness that we now live; how is God calling us to the renewal and reforming of the church, the Body of Christ, to what the world needs and the ways God is still seeking to manifest the kingdom of God here and now!

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This weekend we will celebrate, or rather be challenged to consider God’s reforming we need to have.  It’s traditional to wear red on Reformation Sunday!  However, in the spirit of reforming, I want us to consider what it would like to reform that tradition for our own.  So, wear red; yet, feel free to wear orange and yellow too.  Might we in our dress as a community consider what it means to have God reform the fire of our faith in our lives.