Reformation Day: To Celebrate or Not to Celebrate

This past Sunday, the sanctuaries of many Lutheran churches looked as if someone took a red paintbrush to them and went wild. The occasion—the Festival of the Reformation of the Church, a time in the evangelical church’s life where we remember the activity of the Holy Spirit in reforming the church that began on October 31, 1517 and continues to this day. In the church, feast and festival days marked by an emphasis on God’s activity through the Holy Spirit are recognized with the liturgical color red.

After worship, I ran into one of the parishioners and remarked about how nice it was to see all the red in the sanctuary. Her response was less than enthusiastic. She told me she hardly thought the Reformation was a time for celebration and that surely when the Last Day is finally past, confessional and denominational differences within the church will be no more. I had to agree with her. The Reformation is hardly a time to celebrate division in the church—although that’s what many Protestant folks make it about.

On October 31, 1517, the Martin Luther nailed 95 Theses outlining grievances with the Catholic Church to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg, Germany, sparking the Protestant Reformation.

The Reformation is truly a celebration about God’s activity in the world and specifically in the life of the church. We who confess a belief in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all that is, seen and unseen—we celebrate on Reformation God’s amazingly creative work in our lives. We who confess a belief in God Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, who for us and for our salvation, came down from heaven, and became incarnate from the Virgin Mary, and for our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate, suffered death and was buried—we celebrate on Reformation God’s amazingly gracious and radically gratuitous outpouring of self for our sake. We who confess a belief in God the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who has spoken through the prophets—we celebrate on Reformation God’s continued speaking to us, both in the 16th-century and in this day. To celebrate the Reformation of the Church is to celebrate the very activity of God in the history of the world—an activity that is about life in abundance.

The stark reality, for Christians such as ourselves who confess a belief in the “one holy, catholic, and apostolic church,” is that the unity we so long for in Christ isn’t fully known among us now. In the Reformation gospel text for this past Sunday, Jesus tells his disciples “You will know the truth and the truth make you free.” Knowing the truth, however, can cause tension, strife, discord, disunity, and conflict. The truth has a way of calling us on the carpet and making us realize that our brokenness and insufficiency.

At the same time, the truth also reveals to us God’s extraordinary love and grace in the face of our failings, this world’s brokenness, and all other problems that face us. We who’d like to think if we just work hard enough, if we just pray hard enough, if we just come before God with a pure enough heart—we who make our salvation about what we do find the truth that God’s already promised us life and promised it abundantly to be a difficult message to shallow.

When remembering the activity of the Holy Spirit in the world, not just during the Protestant Reformation, but also at other times in the life of the church, two verses come to mind—two verses attributed directly to Christ himself.

Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword, -Matthew 10:34.

I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me, -John 17:20-21.

Christ’s fervent desire is that his church, his holy bride, be one with him and God the Father. His death and his resurrection assure us that we are one with him and by the waters our one baptism, we are made members of not only him but of one another.

But Christ also recognizes that his message isn’t one that is easy to hear or to bear; rather, it is one that will cause all sorts of problems precisely because it’s about the truth—the truth of who we are and who God is. The truth that left to our own devices, our natural inclination is to worry about individualized selves at the expense of the rest of creation. Christ comes proclaiming to us both by his words and by his very life, the truth that God will overcome that inward turning selfishness and incorporate us through the continual and constant activity of the Holy Spirit into a new paradigm marked by a unity that emanates from God.

The celebration at Reformation is not of the division within the church—a division that is natural for humanity by its very inborn nature. The celebration at Reformation about God’s revelatory truth made clear to us time and again by the incessant work of the Holy Spirit. It’s a truth that shows the brokenness, corruption, and sinfulness of ourselves and of this world we find ourselves, but what’s more, it’s a truth that shows us God mends all brokenness, purifies all corruption, and erases all sinfulness through Jesus Christ.

The renewing and life-giving power of the Spirit shatters our image of a comfortable, self-reliant world and replaces it with God’s radical, Christ-centered reality. For the unity that we celebrate at Reformation isn’t a unity of doctrine, practice, or institution. It’s a unity that transcends all our human capacity of understanding and finds its meaning in God through Christ Jesus. What we celebrate on the Festival of the Reformation of the Church isn’t the unity of the church; rather, we celebrate the unity Christ incorporates us into when we catch glimpses of the truth of who we are and who God is.

-DS