Reformation Sunday is next week (Sunday, October 30.) If you’re a lifelong Lutheran, you’ve been celebrating Reformation for as long as you’ve been coming to church. You might even think of it as a feast day as important as Christmas and Easter - so it might be the only day you see some of those folks who pack into church just a few times a year.
For those of us who have come to the Lutheran denomination from other places, Reformation is more of a mystery. We find out we’re supposed to wear red (sometimes by showing up in the wrong color the first time we’re here), we hear quite a bit about indulgences, and we know that Martin Luther, working from within the Catholic Church, had enough complaints to post 95 talking points on the wooden doors of his nearest cathedral.
My journey began in the Roman Catholic church, went through the Episcopal church, and has found me at Lord of Life for the past eight years. I like to think this gives me a perspective I can share with other people who have also come from other denominations; and now that I’m an “insider” I can talk about how the Reformation set us apart from other churches and how that makes Lord of Life and our own brand of Lutheranism feel so different from other communities.
Getting beyond the basics, I like to compare the difference between the Lutheran Church and the Roman Catholic church to the differences in the messages of Peter and Paul.
Peter was the insider. One of the original 12 apostles. Jesus’ right-hand man and the first pope. He also got chastised a bit by Jesus for making some very mortal human decisions. We only get two books in the Bible attributed to Peter. His message focuses on doing things the right way to be saved, an earthly inheritance in the kingdom, having early Christians separated from the “gentiles,” and that the flock of Israel is God’s representation in the world.
Paul was the outsider and took not only a new Christian identity, but the role of Evangelist who spread the Christian faith in the world. We attribute thirteen books of the Bible to Paul. His message focuses on our salvation coming through our faith instead of what we do, the promise of a heavenly position in God’s kingdom, all people being part of the Body of Christ, and that everyone is a representative of God.
Even though the BIble adopted much more of Paul’s writing, the Catholic Church ended up resembling a lot more of Peter’s ideology: rule-based, exclusive for the worthy few, us vs. them.
Martin Luther’s Reformation helped us look at things in the more broad ways that Paul did as he spread Jesus’ word to the growing church. He welcomed everyone to the table the way we do each Sunday morning. He celebrated everyone’s faith together and asked them to worship in their own language instead of the ancient Latin the Catholics had been using for 1,500 years. He reminded us we are all worthy to be saved because Jesus has already said we are - we don’t need a church to tell us whether or not we can be included.
This is the kind of Christianity we celebrate at Lord of Life this Reformation. No exceptions. No expectations. No exclusions.
Yours in Christ,
John Johns