Reformed, and Always Being Reformed

Luke 12:49-33

"I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled!

I have a baptism with which to be baptized, 

and what stress I am under until it is completed! 

Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? 

No, I tell you, but rather division! 

From now on five in one household will be divided, 

three against two and two against three; 

they will be divided: father against son and son against father,

mother against daughter and daughter against mother,

mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law

and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law.”

My wife and I moved this summer to an out of the way place, Whitehall.

This was where we found a home at a low cost on water, 

on a creek that feeds into the champlain canal.

We live on Williams Street, Washington County road 12.

It’s pretty busy.

If you follow Route 12 south out of Whitehall, 

It ends in a wide spot on the road, named Truthville.

That’s right, I live on the road to Truthville.

In our time when Truth is so controversial, I thought about that.

Not much is known about Truthville, not even a village, 

but identified as a hamlet by the state of NY, 

absorbed long ago into the village of Granville.

How did it get that name? We don’t know.

So what is out there in Truthville and on the road there?

The Amish are out there.

I see and hear them go by my new home in their black horsedrawn buggies

with the tan canvas covers.

The Amish belong to different “orders,” and I haven’t yet learned 

    which order to which my new neighbors belong.

They are seemingly locked in an older time before major industrialization.

Amish are a small group that came out of the Reformation in the 16th century.

Today is Reformation Sunday, 

when we remember Martin Luther nailing to a church door, 

95 demands for changes in the Roman Catholic Church.

The Amish struggled then and struggle now with living the Christian faith, 

and maintaining their traditions, truthfully and honestly.

They oppose what is “modern,” by which they mean anything 

that promotes sloth or luxury, which is contrary to the Bible.

They quote Psalm 119: 

Turn my heart to your decrees, and not to selfish gain.

Turn my eyes from looking at vanities; give me life in your ways.

That’s enough about the Amish today, 

although I was going to pick as a hymn

'Tis the gift to be simple, 'tis the gift to be free,

'Tis the gift to come down where we ought to be,

And when we find ourselves in the place just right,

'Twill be in the valley of love and delight. [not in the current Presbyterian hymnal]

The Truth down County Road 12 may just be “simple living.”

I always thought and said about the Reformation that it failed.

The Church in Rome was not Reformed; it was split and divided.

The wisdom of the Roman Church was always to find a place

for those within it who objected to one thing or another.

That is why they created Catholic “orders,” such as the Jesuits, 

the Benedictines, and the Franciscans

(who have some similarities to the Amish).

Catholics named us Protestants, protesters

We have always split up when we disagreed, 

so that there is a plethora of denominations and sects, 

each with its own take on the Truth.

I have used an old Presbyterian Sunday School from 1950 

to teach the history of the church. 

Fire Upon the Earth by Norman Langford

It has a simple outline that is easy to learn.

The story of the Christian Church in 4 parts:

The church conquers an empire

[up to Constantine, who adopted Christianity as the religion 

of the Roman Empire, a period we often date to 325.]

The church becomes an empire

[When it became rich and powerful, up to the Reformation;]

The church shakes the world

[The Reformation, usually dated to 1517 

when Martin Luther shook the church and the world,]

and finally,

The world shakes the church

[The American Revolution in 1776 is a good time 

to date the beginning of the shaking.]

This was the time of the Enlightenment and its new ideas, 

followed by the science and new thinking of the 19th century, 

and finally all of the inventions and horrors of the 20th century.]

Another important book was written about the same time, in 1948: 

The Shaking of the Foundations, by the theologian Paul Tillich. 

It is a book of sermons, one entitled “The Shaking of the Foundations,”

based on Isaiah, who said: 

“The foundations of the earth shake. Earth breaks to pieces.”

What troubled Tillich was the development and use of the atomic bomb, 

    which from 1945 onward signaled a new and terrifying world 

because we have the power to destroy everything and all of us.

Think about this: 

No longer did we need God to destroy the world; 

it was now in our hands.

And yet most people in the church during my life

have looked back to the 1950's as a golden era for the church

when new members appeared without anyone making an effort,

when church buildings overflowed with children and youth,

when there was a social contract in which almost everyone

belonged, believed, and behaved in approved ways.

But the truth was otherwise.

In 1953 I was 9 years old and scared to death of atomic warfare.

And yet this was the decade of conformity,

the time when nothing was supposed to change,

but everything was changing.

We didn’t see the changes that were percolating

until the Civil Rights movement exploded in the ‘60's.

Tillich wanted the churches in 1948 

to know of all the changes that had been impacting 

the church and its faith for many decades and centuries.

Discoveries in astronomy, geology, biology and botony had changed 

the ways in which we view the world, our origins, and life itself.

This was forcing people to think in new ways about God as creator.

From 1776, developments in philosophy changed the ways in which 

people understood reason and faith.

Writers of history critically changed the ways in which we viewed the past, 

including the writing of the Bible, 

and the origins and development of Christian faith and doctrine.

New fields of study, such as anthropology, sociology, and psychology

challenged the ways in which we thought of human origins, 

religious community, our humanity, and our personal lives.

Medicine began to reduce suffering and early death. 

Technology brought us ease from backbreaking work 

and it brought the terrors of world wide war to civilians, 

and created the possibility of the destruction of life on earth. 

Langford wrote a wonderful last chapter on the modern world, 

but there is no mention here of the killing of 6 million Jews and others 

by the Nazis. 

It wasn’t until the 1960s that the holocaust entered media consciousness.

But Tillich acknowledged the Holocaust, writing:

“What answer shall we give, what answer can we give 

to such a crucial problem —

a problem in which Christianity as a whole is at stake, 

a problem which has nothing to do with a theoretical criticism 

of the idea of God, 

but rather which represents the anguish of the human heart 

which can no longer stand the power 

borne by the daemonic forces on earth?”

The atomic bomb and the holocaust intensified the questions about the love,

power, justice, providence, and even the existence of God.

For all of these reasons the very foundations of the churches 

have been shaken badly during the past 80 years.

----------

Now the churches are in a terrible crisis.

I don’t have to tell you about membership loss.

What has happened is that many thoughtful people have concluded 

that the church is teaching things

that belong to a world which no longer exists.

In the old world spirits filled the air – that’s where Halloween comes from –

the earth was the center of the universe

human beings were privileged creatures;

ministers and priests had authority over people’s lives,

church leaders and politicians were respected, or at least feared.

The US was an exceptional nation, 

the Pilgrims were kind and peaceful, 

and the founders were perfect men.

No one seriously believes these things now.

We live in an age of rapidly increasing 

knowledge and communications.

We know so much more about everything. 

And so we are re-evaluating everything about our world and our history. 

25 years ago we did not think of the Kingdom of God as The Empire of God,

as a political declaration by Jesus against the oppression of Rome.

We thought of the Kingdom as future, not here and now, 

and not as a vision for a better world, 

which it is in the Lord’s prayer when we ask 

that God’s will “be done on earth as in heaven.”

We didnot see it as an alternative lifestyle to the system of Roman slavery,

We didn’t see how Jesus and Paul were opposed to the classism 

and economic inequalities, the racism, and the sexism.

But it is all there.

 

Just in the past two years, partly because of political divisions, 

partly because of the pandemic, 

partly because of events such as the police killings of people 

like George Floyd,

we now know things about the Bible, the churches, our nation 

that we could not admit to before.

Our understanding of ourselves and our world is changing fast, 

and the impacts of technology and economic globalization 

have changed the lives of millions of people.

What is worse is that the changes are not over.

*When there are many changes around us, accelerating in speed,

affecting more and more of us, personally,

fear and anger rise, and hate follows, 

as people look for someone to blame.

In such conditions societies begin to fall apart.

--------

I think that 911 was so shocking 

that many Christian Americans ceased to believe in a providential God, 

and in an America that was so exceptional 

that he (God) would protect us from attack.

Think about that: God will no longer protect us, and maybe never did.

We began to see how racism was baked into the Constitution.

We now understand that Lincoln’s dream 

“that this nation shall have a new birth of freedom” 

failed just as the Reformation of the church failed.

We now see how President Grant’s efforts

to heal our divisions and fix the Constitution failed.

After 911 we began to ask 

“Why are there so many monuments of Confederate heros?”

And “Why didn’t the Civil Rights legislation of the 1960's change much 

for Blacks, and make much difference in our life together now?”

That question is the core of CRT, so badly misrepresented 

across the country this year.

I think January 6 has made us realize that the America of John Wayne movies

and television shows that were a big part of my childhood, were a lie.

Church news in recent weeks shows that conservative, evangelical churches

are now collapsing as they become more politicized. [The Atlantic]

Following Jesus has nearly disappeared from many of these congregations.

To be a member in some of these churches now 

requires not confession of faith in Jesus but in the former president,

who was viewed as chosen and called by God.

Following Jesus has nearly disappeared from mainline churches, too, 

but for different reasons:

Most of us are too comfortable and have too much invested 

in our material assets for us to concern ourselves much with the poor. 

Even politicians I like never speak of the poor; only of the middle class.

Jesus would have us consider the poor.

Most of us are too busy enjoying our affluent lives and our families 

to give thought to building a better world for everyone.

I tell you today that it is not your fault or mine 

that the churches are failing, 

that our nation is stumbling, 

or that we have difficulty helping the poor.

We inherited a history of systems – 

political, economic, educational, social, religious – 

that determine how we live.

To change or break out of those systems is very difficult, 

and can take centuries.

I took a doctoral level course in 1986 

on how to change and improve presbyteries.

We concluded that the structures and systems we are given

have more impact on us than we have on them.

So the presidency changes a new president 

more than the new president changes the presidency, 

and the Vatican changes a new Pope 

more than the new pope changes the Papacy.

----------

We have known for some time that the old religion is dying; 

a new one is emerging or being born.

Now we know that what is coming 

will be a great disconnect from what we have known.

Old style churches will continue to exist, 

but the model of paid, seminary-trained ministers 

and buildings like this will be drastically reduced. 

Some seminaries will close.

What is taught in one congregation 

will have little similarity to what is taught in another.

The number of people who believe in the God who takes care of us 

and rules the world will continue to shrink.

The Christmas story, the Easter story, the Exodus from Egypt 

will become more and more simply old myths known to some, 

studied by a few, and not believed by the larger populace.

Twenty years ago I warned the presbytery I served 

that when the greatest generation that had fought WWII died off, 

church membership would fall off a cliff.

That has happened.

But here is the hope: People will still gather together, 

perhaps in twos and threes, to read the words of and about Jesus, 

and they will study what he meant in his context

and they will discuss what they might mean for them in their time.

These will be younger people than any of us in this room today.

Christianity as we, the Boomer generation, have known it, will die with us,

and that’s OK, even a good thing, 

because many good features of the modern, secular (non-church) world 

grew out of the gospel and the church.

The modern secular world is the inheritor of the old world and its churches.

The younger Christians who come after us

will accept and welcome and include people

who are different and other from themselves.

They will not accept the racism, misogyny, and xenophobia 

that we have inherited from our parents and grandparents.

Christian faith has always been changing, and it is changing now.

We are quickly and sometimes slowly discarding 

some of the fear and hate and control that are present in scripture 

and which have been a major feature 

of church structures for 2000 years.

We are slowly adopting new language, new symbols, 

and new metaphors for that which gives us meaning in life.

Members of churches are experimenting 

with practices from other places and times.

We learn from Buddhism and borrow spirituality from Native Americans.

So much is happening that no one can fully understand it.

But perhaps we are growing up, as Jesus wanted us to when he said

“No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back 

is fit for service in God’s Empire.” Luke 9:62

 Or as Paul wanted us to, when he said:

“Speaking the truth in love, 

we must grow up in every way into Christ.” Ephesians 4:14-15 

The Reformation is important because we all need to be reformed, 

and our 500 year old motto requiring us to continue to reform,

reminds us of our need not to rest on the past.

We need to be converted from the errors of our thinking and believing.

This is a time for wandering and it will take 40 years. [A long time]

The writer Diana Bass bluntly says “We thought we were in exile 

but now we have to actually go there. 

[The] Slavery and exile [of the Exodus story] suck; 

so [the lesson is that we must] make a home where you are.”

Meanwhile, she says “We need to detox from domination systems.”

We are all burdened by the domination systems of the church, 

of racism, of misogyny, and of capitalism.

One example is the real estate system of zoning, credit, and 

mortgage approvals, 

which excluded women and people of color from home ownership.

---------

Several times in recent weeks I have seen a man or a woman

begging at an intersection, often with a sign that says 

“Help - Homeless” or something like that.

I have wanted to give to them, but I was in the wrong lane 

and the light turned green so that I had to move on, 

or I couldn’t get my hand into my pocket because of my seatbelt.

So last week my wife and I pulled up next to such a man 

and I asked Carol to get some money out. 

She pulled out a $10 (more generous than I) 

and I gave it to the man with a few words of encouragement.

The light turned, I went on and the driver of an on-coming semi-truck 

honked, waved his fist at me, and shouted at me.

He was obviously upset that I had encouraged a beggar by giving to him.

I give to beggars to show myself that I am not selfish; 

that I do not think that what is mine is so important 

that I have to hang on to it, 

that I do not want possessions to control my life.

Mostly I have to give to beggars because Jesus said to do this.

“Give to everyone who begs from you, 

and do not refuse anyone who wants to borrow from you.” 

(Matthew 5:42) 

This was made real to me by Bob Funk, 

founder and leader of the Jesus Seminar.

He was a great Bible scholar, who had left the church as a young man

because he realized he could not follow Jesus’ teachings.

The rest of his life he studied Jesus’ teachings and gathered other scholars

around him to analyze what Jesus said and didn’t say.

Give to everyone who begs from you 

is in the top ten most likely true sayings of Jesus.

I heard Bob speak of this verse several times. 

Each time he lowered his voice as if the saying was special, even holy.

But he described it partly as a comic saying of Jesus, 

because those following this teaching would become penniless

themselves within a short time.

[Like the saying about giving your coat and your cloak,

which would leave a first century Palestinian naked, 

a laughable image.]

Giving to beggars is impractical, even stupid and impossible, but it is true.

They are the great victims of the systems we enjoy and support.

In the second century, Christians were excused from this command 

because we don’t know if the beggar was deserving of the gift.

I suppose that there were angry, individualistic, moralistic wagon drivers 

even in the second century.