and Still Being Reformed

This sermon was heard at the First Presbyterian Church in Marshall, Texas on Reformation Sunday, Sunday October 30, 2011, the 31st Sunday in Ordinary Time.

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Joshua 3:7-17

Psalm 107:1-7, 33-37

1 Thessalonians 2:1-8

Matthew 22:34-46

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable to you, O Lord, our rock and redeemer.  Amen

A few years ago, a friend of mine was an Associate Pastor at one of the big Presbyterian churches in Ann Arbor, Michigan. During a staff meeting one day, the Head of Staff was reminiscing and lamenting that the church, the denomination to which he was ordained fifty some years earlier just wasn’t the same anymore.

That would have been 1955. Since 1955 the Presbyterian Church has been a part of two reunifications and three splits. Women Elders had been around for 25 years, but the first women to be ordained as Ministers of Word and Sacrament were still a few months away. As this pastor reminisced, half of his Session was seated by women and close to half of the staff meeting were women.

On the cultural landscape “The Honeymooners,” “The Lawrence Welk Show,” and “The Mickey Mouse Club” all debuted that fall. There’s quite a difference between those shows and “The Apprentice: Martha Stewart,” “Nancy Grace,” and “How I Met Your Mother” wouldn’t you say?

Politically, it’s the difference between Presidents Eisenhower and George W. Bush. It’s the difference between the Soviet Union becoming the Soviet Union and the Soviet Union becoming Russia in an unwinnable war in Afghanistan. For the nation, it’s the difference between 48 and 50 states. We can lament or we can celebrate, either way the wind blows we must agree with this pastor, there have been a lot of changes in the last 50 years.

Simply, things change.

The gospel takes an interesting turn from what we have been hearing over the past several weeks. Jesus changes his audience from the temple leadership to the people assembled, and begins saying something that to our Christian ears sounds unlikely. “The teachers of the law and the Pharisees sit in the Moses’ Seat. So you must obey them and do everything they tell you.”

After thoroughly trumping their every word, Jesus tells the people that the scribes and Pharisees are to be obeyed. After Jesus takes the wind from their sails, Jesus tells the people to do as they say.

Was Jesus saying that their regular teachings were good? Hardly likely. After telling the people to do as they say, he adds not as they do “for they do not practice what they preach.” Jesus tells the listeners that the teachers of the law and the Pharisees are in ministry for what it can get them. They sit high in the social order. They are given the places of honor at banquets. They are given the best seats in the synagogue, seats where people will see them. They are greeted in the square and treated with respect. Jesus makes them sound like the heads of the “Five Families” in “The Godfather” movies.

Jesus tells us that these men, in their positions of power and authority, are using the Moses’ seat for personal gain. They are using their position to exalt themselves. He warns the world that “whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted.”

As I said three weeks ago, “Jesus was there to tell them that times were changing.” Jesus was telling the world that leadership was not top-down, nor was it really bottom-up. As followers of Christ, we are called to follow the Lord in all that we do. We are called to seek the way of God in all aspects of our lives. We are called not to follow someone because they are charismatic or because they hold an office. We are to follow him.

So Jesus doesn’t hold up these Pharisees, these specific leaders as men whose works should be considered model behavior. Rather, he holds the office in esteem, and by virtue of their positions they should be obeyed. In the words of singer and author John Michael Talbot: “Jesus rebukes the lifestyle of the religious leaders of His day, but He honors their position of authority as those who occupy the seat of Moses, and says we must therefore be obedient to valid religious leaders.”

They should be honored by following what they say, but in a world where actions speak louder than words; their actions should not be followed.

Something that doesn’t get enough play in our churches is that there were four basic schools of Judaism at the time of Jesus. We have heard of the Sadducees and the Pharisees. The Sadducees were the leaders of the temple. They oversaw all of its operations and most importantly its finances. The Pharisees were the rabbis who were in charge of the local synagogues and served as interpreters of the law. There were also the Essenes, a group of Jews who chose to live separate from the rest of society, maintaining the purity of the faith. The final group was the Zealots who wanted the immediate overthrow of the Roman authorities and return the Holy Land to its rightful owners. If this required violence, so be it.

I mention this because it reminds us that Judaism wasn’t a single faith held together in a lock-step of beliefs. Judaism itself had its own sects, denominations if you will. Each of these sects saw something as more important and focused on it for the good of the faith. There were power movements, there were political movements, there was a purity movement, and even a rebellious movement.

What Jesus was calling for was renewal. Jesus announced not the end of their faith but its fulfillment. The prophet they had anticipated for over four-hundred years was with them.

But the renewal, the reformation he promised was nothing like they expected. Frankly, the new life Jesus promises is like nothing any of us ever expects. This is just one piece of the wonder and the glory of God, the grace and peace that is beyond our understanding. It isn’t something that can be contained by any particular sect. It is beyond any of our denominations.

A couple of weeks ago I said this, “Ecclesia reformata, semper reformanda; the church reformed and always reforming. This has been the call of the reformed churches since the days of Luther, Calvin, Knox and dozens of others. These words are being shared still in Sunday Schools, pulpits, and in seminaries. These words are important to what we understand as our specific place in the Body of Christ, the universal Church.”

There is another way to translate this statement which I prefer. “The church having been reformed is always being reformed.” It’s longer and not nearly as catchy, but it’s important for us. This translation maintains the Latin verb forms which focus on God’s work on the church. The church is not an active participant in the kingdom, it’s passive. This is important, from a grammatical point of view, it’s passive not active.

On this Reformation Sunday this statement comes to full flower.

Several years ago, Presbyterians Today published an article about that saying “ecclesia reformata, semper reformanda.” One of the things this article says is that this statement has been “appropriated in times of disagreement and pressed into the service of our own agendas. It is even sometimes wielded as a weapon against those who differ from us, as if to say, ‘My position is more reformed than your position!” Shamefully, this phrase and this argument have been used recently in Presbyterian circles. It has been used to spread not so much fear, though surely that has been spread, but more it has been used to say “My position and I are reformed and you and yours aren’t.”

The article gives a couple of warnings to the church. The first is that newer is not always better and the second that the church cannot reform itself.

Luther, Calvin, and the reformers were not advocates of “newer is better.” It was in fact their goals to return to a more ancient, more pure form of church life that was centered in scripture alone. Among Luther’s Ninety-Five Theses about the state of the church was that the church was selling absolution for sin in exchange for cash money. This may have been nothing terribly new, but compared to being saved by grace alone, it was new and it was not welcomed.

Then again, Luther, Calvin, and the reformers were not believers that just because it was old it’s good. They also recognized that change was important, but more on that in a moment.

As for the church being able to reform itself, this too is not so. As I said a couple of weeks ago, the phrase “ecclesia reformata, semper reformanda” is filled with verbs in the passive voice. They knew that the church did not reform itself but would need to always be reformed. God is the great reformer and the church is always the object of that reform.

The article then reminds us of the two reasons for the church needing to always be reformed. They are because of who we are and because of who God is.

The church needs constant reformation because we are human. We sin. I don’t say this to say we are Charles Manson/Tim McVeigh evil. I say this because we are human and cannot know what is good without God. We are human, we sin, and because of that the church as a group of human beings will lean toward sin. This is why we need God to be with us and why we need God’s reforming work in the church.

The second reason, is who God is, a living God. The living Lord our God created and continues to create. Church historian Edward Dewey notes that reform has a backward reference and a forward reference. I mentioned the “returning to more biblical, purer worship” reference in the words Luther and Calvin a moment ago, but there is a forward reference too. They knew that the world was changing. They also knew that if the changes being made were not Godly they would not be worthy nor would they last.

The article ends with this:

Ecclesia reformata, semper reformanda. This motto calls us to something more radical than we have imagined. It challenges both liberal and conservative impulses and the habits and agendas we have lately fallen into. It brings a prophetic critique to our cultural accommodation—either to the past or to the present—and calls us to communal and institutional repentance. It invites us, as people who worship and serve a living God, to be open to being "re-formed" according to the Word of God and the call of the Spirit.

Last year when Lisa and Sissy were painting, one of the things they did was find a bunch of old pictures, wondering if I would want some of them for my study. One that has been important was a picture from 1985, 25 years ago. It’s a picture of the Deacons, what the Book of Order calls “Servants of Compassion.” Along with fifteen other men are Mr. Glen Newberg and Mr. Melvin Staggs. They are standing right up here in the chancel and on the floor below. Every one of them is wearing a suit. As I look at the picture I wonder what they would think today.

When the picture was taken, Ronald Reagan was president, today it’s Barack Obama. I won’t do a full comparison of the television shows but as racy as “Dallas” was in 1985, by today’s standards it’s pretty tame. Earlier this month, the Presbyterian Church intentionally ordained its first openly homosexual minister. I’m sure the denomination has ordained a homosexual minister before, but this is the first time it was intentional and public.

I wonder what they would think of a pastor wearing robes and a stole instead of a suit. I wonder what they would think of a pastor with a goatee instead of being as clean shaven as they were.

I wonder what the church will look like in 25 years when I’m 75 years old, and again in 50 when I’ll be an afterthought in this world.

I wonder now reading verse eleven, “The greatest among you will be your servant.” We often read this as our call and our vocation. Those who are the greatest leaders are servant leaders. Now I believe this is true. I do believe the greatest leaders are servant leaders. But something more has popped up in my imagination.

I now see when reading this verse that Jesus wasn’t just teaching us how leaders need to behave, he was teaching us that this is how he behaves. Jesus the Christ is the greatest among us, fully human he is more human than we can ever hope to aspire. Fully divine, he is the greatest who has ever walked the earth. He declares here the simple truth that he is the greatest among us and he is the servant of all.

This is what I say this morning. Jesus the Christ is the greatest among us and the servant of all. We have been reformed and continue to always be reformed. We aren’t changing for the sake of change; we aren’t throwing out the baby with the bathwater. But neither do we glorify our humanly past at the expense of God’s future.

By this, I pray these men of 25 years ago and the reformers of 500 years ago will look at us and pray we continue to live in the way we are called: Saved by grace through faith to live into the fullness of our creator-and still creating-God. Because it is only by God’s good grace that we, the church, the body of Christ, has been reformed and is constantly being reformed.