This sermon followed a conversation regarding how worship has changed during the years, why we did things that way then and why we do them this way now. It was a much more conversational sermon than I normally preach, so if you were at the sermon and you don't remember parts of this one, I went off notes more than normal.
When we do liturgy, all of the parts have meaning and are meant to help us experience the presence of God. Liturgy is contextual, because it helps us experience God; it has to match our experiences. Early Jesuit missionaries used to shift the mass to relate it to the cultures they were trying to reach out to. Some Asian Christians use rice instead of bread for communion because rice is a more normal staple and closer to what the disciples experienced then bread would be.
We’re talking about this on Reformation Sunday, because a big part of what the early Reformers did was change worship so that it was more contextual for the people. It is thanks to the Reformation that we experience worship in our own language. Prior to the Reformation, all services were in Latin, even though none of the people and often not even the priest performing the service spoke Latin. Fun fact for the day: we get the phrase “hocus pocus” from the old Latin mass. It comes from mishearing the latin for “take and eat”, “hoc est, poc est.” The Reformers changed the mass from Latin to German so people could understand what was being said. They added singing so the people could participate in worship. They opened both the bread and the wine to everyone, before only the priests could have the bread.
Since then, we have followed in the footsteps of these early reformers to continue to find ways to have worship be meaningful and relevant to our time. We brought the table away from the wall so the pastor could stand behind it and everyone could see what was happening. In fact, we had the assisting minister and the pastor always face the congregation, instead of turning our backs to you, like Linda did in the opening prayer today. We wrote new hymns that more closely reflect the music styles of their time. We’ve loosened up the language, and stopped talking like something out of a Shakespeare play. We do all of this in the spirit of the early Reformers, to break down the barriers that keep us from experiencing God.
But not just the spirit of the early Reformers. The Reformers took their cue from Jesus, from the freedom they discovered in the scriptures. One of the stories that really helped this freedom to click is this morning’s Gospel text from John. Jesus is talking to some Jews. And remember, Jesus himself is Jewish, so he’s talking to some of his own people, about freedom. And the Jews scoff at him, “we are descendents of Abraham, we’ve never been slaves to anyone. We don’t need your stories about freedom.” Which is really a strange statement for the Jews to be making. One, because Jerusalem during the time of Jesus was a protectorate of the Roman empire so they are basically slaves of the Emperor. But even more importantly, the entire basis of the Jewish faith is the exile story, the story of God’s deliverance of the people from slavery into freedom.
But the Jews had forgotten what it meant to be captive. And because they’d forgotten their captivity, they couldn’t see the promise Jesus was offering them. They couldn’t see they were living in invisible prisons.
I don’t think the mistake the Jews make is all that surprising and uncommon. I think all of us at one time or another forget we are captive and thus miss the promise of freedom. All of us have some sort of invisible prison. Prisons of fear or addiction or pride. Prisons we’d rather remain inside because freedom, true freedom, is more terrifying than the familiarity of captivity. But captivity to old habits is not what Jesus wanted for the Jews and is not what Jesus wants for us. And so, we hear in this text the promise and the power of our adoption into God’s family through the death and resurrection of Jesus. The Son has set us free and so we are free indeed. And because that place is permanent, even when we forget our place, someone will come around who will remind us of our freedom, of a world bigger than our imaginations, and will draw us back out into freedom again.
That is what we celebrate on Reformation Sunday. Not that Martin Luther wrote some stuff a long time ago, but that God is continually, through people like Luther, but also through people like you and I, drawing people back into the promise and the power of freedom. Reformation isn’t something that happened once, five-hundred years ago. It isn’t even something that happened for the first time five hundred years ago. Since the time of Jesus, the Holy Spirit has been and will continue to be reforming us and making us new. So that we can experience God’s presence in our lives just as we are and who we are. The reformation is the flowing, moving breath of the Spirit reorienting our timeless God for a time-bound people.
This morning I want us to take an opportunity to, like Luther did, declare our place in the Reformation. You may be familiar with the story of the ninety-five theses, how Martin Luther nailed a list of thoughts to the doors of the castle church in Wittenberg, and the list was published, passed around, and eventually led to the spread of the Reformation movement across the globe. What you may not know is this nailing to the door doesn’t have quite the same umph to it as we might think with such a bold visual. The Castle Church door was like the community bulletin board. Well, more like the community Facebook page. People could post questions or comments for conversation on the door to invite others into discussion. This morning we’re going to take an opportunity to post some Reformation thoughts on our own old style Facebook page, just like Luther did. Each of you has a small piece of paper. I invite you to write on your paper either a way you’ve experienced reformation or a way you’d like to experience reformation. Then when you’re ready, you can come and “post” it to the door. We have some nails and hammers. And after the service I invite you to come up and look at the door and engage each other in conversation about what Reformation might look like today for us. Happy Reforming!
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