We made it. . .

We made it through the anniversary year.  It was the 500th anniversary of 1517 to 2017 -- since we are not sure about the accuracy of the nail pounding in the 95 Theses to the door of the Castle Church it is an anniversary without a specific starting point.  And, I suppose, the same could be said about its ending point.  Nevertheless, we have made it through a year of beating our chests and parading about our pride at being Lutheran.  For what it is worth, I am not at all suggesting we should have ignored this anniversary nor am I saying that we should not have a little pride of place as Luther's heirs.  But this was not so much the start of the Reformation as June 25, 1530, might be, with its formal presentation of the Augsburg Confession that has binding doctrinal force (at least in theory) among nearly all Lutherans.  Yet the Reformation spark that burned into a great flame began inauspiciously enough with some words of challenge on a paper by a monk not yet Lutheran and sent to an Archbishop who had no inkling of what this would turn into.  So 1517 is appropriately enough a good date to begin with. . . even if the end is not yet in sight.

We had a display of pictures and prints, a Lutheran timeline, a framed page from a Luther Bible published pretty close to Luther's time, and a host of other memorabilia.  We worked our way through everything in the Confessions except the Formula of Concord (that is to come shortly) and sang our way through Lutheran chorales.  For some it was a joy and for others it was a relief when it all came to a close.  But it remains an open question -- this thing called the Reformation.  It is not over yet and still there are Lutherans who want to be even more Lutheran (along with those who would prefer not to be reminded about such inconvenient truths as confession and catechism).  But the Reformation was never merely an event, it was and is a movement.  Maybe it is too little to claim that the Reformation is a reform movement within the church catholic or perhaps it is too much but Luther would surely think something was amiss if we made it into something that came and went in the past.  The Church is always being reformed.  Maybe not by a single force of nature like Luther but by the faithful who call with the Gospel and the faithful who hear and heed this call.  She is inhabited by sinful men (and women) and for this she must constantly be in a state of reform.  The devil's work will come to a close but he is still feverishly vexing the Church and creating reasons to acknowledge God's work of cleansing.  So I would posture a guess that God is not yet finished with Luther's heirs.  No should He be!

As you munch on your Halloween candy tonight, it would be good for you to ponder on the circumstances that surrounded the need for reform and renewal then and whether our own age and time is ripe for the same thing.  And then pray that those in our generation who hear and heed the call to reform will not squander the legacy nor fail to live up to the challenge of the future.