Reformed and Always Reforming

(Scriptures: Isaiah 1:10-18, Psalm 32
2 Thessalonians 1:1-4, 11-12, Luke 19:1-10)

Maybe you remember the song your Sunday School teacher may have taught you when you were little:
Zacchaeus was a wee little man
A wee little man was he
He climbed up in a sycamore tree
For the Lord he wanted to see
And as the Saviour passed that way
He looked up in the tree.
And He said, Zacchaeus, you come down.
For I’m going to your house today.
For I’m going to your house today.

Those who knew Zacchaeus – whose name ironically means “clean” or “innocent” - likely wouldn’t have felt any great desire to sing a song about him. He was a tax collector, and not just a tax collector, but the chief tax collector. We remember, of course, that he would have been a Jew who had thrown in with the Romans for the privilege of collecting taxes from his fellow Jews on behalf of Rome – with, of course, the opportunity to collect a little extra – or maybe more than a little extra - for himself. And since Zacchaeus was a chief tax collector, he may well have had others under him, who were likewise giving him a cut of their overcollections. What a nice guy! Far from being clean or innocent, the guy was a crook! Zacchaeus would not have won a lot of popularity contests. He’d heard that Jesus was in the neighborhood, and wanted to see Jesus – but he was short, and couldn’t see past the crowds. So he climbed a tree – maybe as much to keep distance from the hostile crowds, as to see Jesus. Jesus saw him and called him to come down out of the tree, for Jesus wanted to stay at his house. Not just wanted; the Greek says “it is necessary that I stay at your house.” So Jesus invited himself to dinner at Zaccheus’ home. The crowd grumbled, but Jesus told the crowd that salvation had come to Zacchaeus’ house – because despite all his cozying up to Rome, he was still a son of Abraham. And Jesus’ visit to Zacchaeus changed his life. His was not a “pray a little prayer and go on with my life as I ever have” kind of conversion; but one that turned his life upside down, leading him to give up greed in favor of generosity, to give instead of taking, to repay four times as much as he had gained through his dishonesty. The good news of the Gospel had the power to break through even Zacchaeus’ hardened heart, bringing about his reformation.

Today is Reformation Sunday, when Protestant churches lift up a turbulent era of our church’s history. Earlier in the service, we sang hymns written by two prominent reformers, John Calvin, whose theology informs the teaching and practice of the Presbyterian church, and Martin Luther, whose theology lives on in the Lutheran Church. We may remember other names from our Reformed tradition: Ulrich Zwingli, Heidelberg Catechism creators Zacharius Ursinus and Caspar Olevianus, and others.

These theologians were active at a time when there was widespread dissatisfaction with the Roman Catholic Church. The sale of indulgences – basically “fast track tickets out of purgatory” that the church sold in order to raise funds – was an abuse in its own right, but in a larger sense was just one symptom of a bigger problem - that of a church hierarchy that, many felt, grew rich by promoting and exploiting the spiritual insecurities of its members, was too quick to throw around its economic and political weight, that in its eagerness to become a political power had seemingly lost its connection with much of its own membership, and had grown distant even from God.

It was a time when many agreed that the church had lost its way, but differed on how the church was to find its way back to the right path, or even where that path was or what it looked like. Luther’s theology emphasized the primacy of the God’s grace over and against what he saw as the works-righteousness promoted by the hierarchy, and the priesthood of all believers, whose right and duty it was to encounter Christ not only in the sacraments, but through individual Bible reading and prayer. Our Old Testament reading from Isaiah likely would have resonated with Luther as he considered the Roman church of his day – “trample my courts no more; I cannot endure solemn assemblies with iniquity…your appointed festivals my soul hates; they have become a burden to me and I am weary of bearing them….cease to do evil; learn to do good; seek justice; rescue the oppressed; defend the orphan; plead for the widow. Wash yourselves, make yourselves clean….” The religious establishment of Isaiah’s time, and that of Luther’s time, was called upon to, as we would say, clean up its act.

Luther wished to remain in the Roman Catholic church, but was excommunicated – to this day, the Lutheran order of worship bears the strong imprint of the Roman liturgy from which it emerged. Others advocated more radical measures – for example, doing away with the hierarchy in favor of congregational autonomy - and broke with the Roman church. For its part, the Roman Catholic church, while it opposed those who broke from the church, it also eventually came to realize that some of the Reformers’ ideas had merit, that maintaining the status quo was not a viable option. As I said, it was a turbulent period, and men killed and were killed for religious control of territory in Europe. The winners of these wars established their religious practice by means of state-supported churches. And some of these conflicts have dragged on and on and on even into the present day, such as what were called “the troubles” between Protestants and Catholics in Ireland, who reached some degree of coexistence through the Belfast “Good Friday” agreement of 1998, only a bit over 10 years ago. Many fled to America, in hope that in a new land, religious differences could be resolved by peaceable means, or at least that those of all religious persuasions could find some space in which to practice their beliefs. Many of the colonies were predominantly of one faith – Maryland was predominantly Catholic; Virginia and the Carolinas, Anglican; New York and New Jersey, Dutch Reformed; the New England colonies, Congregationalist. Under the Quaker William Penn, our state, Pennsylvania, was chartered as a sort of “Holy Experiment” where people of many faiths could find a welcome.

What are we to say about this? For my part, I think it’s hard not to feel some degree of ambiguity. In our reading from 2 Thessalonians, Paul boasted about that church’s endurance of persecution, but I doubt he’d have find much about which to boast regarding Catholic and Protestant churches persecuting one another – though despite these mutual persecutions, the church – “big ‘C’ church”, the universal, worldwide church to which Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox alike belong - has endured, sometimes despite our best efforts to the contrary. Perhaps it is a testimony that, as one of my professors states, we live in a sinful and fallen world, that the Protestant Reformation and the Catholic Counter-Reformation came to bloodshed, that men killed each other in the name of the love of Christ, and that to this day there is suspicion and misunderstanding between Protestant and Catholic, and even between varying stripes of Protestants. On the other hand, the Good News of Christ was carried all over the world by Protestants and Catholics of all stripes, even by those whose motives can at best be charitably described as mixed. And in recent years there have been some convergences of thought and practice – Catholic and Protestant alike affirm the importance of believers’ participating in both individual Bible reading and prayer as well as worship as the gathered body of Christ; many traditionally Catholic spiritual practices such as lectio divina and the prayer of examen are being rediscovered by Protestants, and Catholic and many Protestant churches alike use the Revised Common Lectionary, reading at least some of the same Biblical texts every Sunday, so that, literally as well as figuratively, we are at least in some ways on the same page.

The Reformation was a time when the Holy Spirit broke into what many saw as a calcified tradition, bringing messiness and disorder and even chaos to be sure, but also new life. As the mothers among us know, childbirth is not a neat, tidy process. Just as Zacchaeus’s life was turned around in his encounter with Jesus, becoming a giver instead of a grabber, the life of the institutional church and of individual believers was turned around, and for many believers, what had been dutiful obedience became a love affair with Jesus.

The Reformation is not a one-time, long-ago era of history, but an ongoing process. The Reformers said that the church was semper reformanda – reformed and always reforming – as individual believers, pastors, congregations, and faith traditions encounter Christ anew in the changing circumstances of the day, and the Scriptures yield new insights, speak in new ways – for God is still speaking, and the church is still reforming.

What will the “reformed and always reforming” church of the future look like? That very question was under consideration at our recent meeting of the Philadelphia Association of the United Church of Christ. The youth of our conference were invited to submit essays about how they saw the church of the future, and I handed out three of those essays – as well as an adult submission – during worship for the congregation's consideration. Many of the essays reflect a degree of youthful exuberance and impatience that, at least for me, has been tempered with the passage of time. Some of the comments concerning technology strike me as humorous, make me want to giggle – as I read them, I get pictures in my mind of the old Jetsons cartoon I used to watch as a child. You may remember the opening credits: “Meet George Jetson, his boy Elroy, daughter Judy, Jane his wife…..” as they all climb into little pods and fly off to school or work or wherever, while Rosie the Robot Maid cleans house in their absence. Of course, I go to my day job in a pod that looks a lot like the Reading Railroad and Pennsylvania Railroad and later the SEPTA trains built in the 1960’s and 1970’s, which is also roughly when the Jetsons cartoon was created – so the Jetsons’ vision of the future, at least in the realm of transportation, didn’t quite come to pass. And the visions, dreams – or what we may see as the nightmares – of the Philadelphia Association youth may or may not come to pass. What’s important is not necessarily their answers, but the fact that they gave the question – “what will the church look like in the future” – some serious consideration. It’s a question to which we at Emanuel should give serious consideration as well.

What will the Emanuel church of the future, the United Church of Christ of the future, the Universal Church of the future look like? Or, to use H. G. Wells’ phrase, “What is the shape of things to come?” What is the shape of things to come for Emanuel Church, for the United Church of Christ, for the Church Universal? The thought may seem ominous, marked with a sense of foreboding, of approaching danger – until we remember that we follow Jesus Christ, the good shepherd who gave his life for the sheep. And so the question really becomes “Where will Jesus lead us in the future? Into whose home will Jesus invite himself for dinner. Where will the Holy Spirit give birth to something new. Where will God do a new thing?”

Really, God alone knows. But on this Reformation Sunday, I would invite us to keep our eyes open, to be alert, to watch for the leading of the Savior, to listen for his words saying “Come, follow me.” Where Jesus leads, may we follow. Amen.

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You are invited to follow the Spirit's leading to Emanuel United Church of Christ, Fillmore Street (off Thompson). We worship at 10 a.m. www.emanuelphila.org