“If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples;

and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.”

John 8:31-32

Beloved of God,

One of the events that informs our life together and the life of the larger church this year and next is the 500th Anniversary of the Reformation on October 31, 2017.  In anticipation of that event, the Sunday Adult Class is beginning the fall with a study of Martin Luther’s 95 Theses.  It was these Theses, posted on the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg, Germany on October 31, 1517, that historians point to as the beginning of what would come to be called The Reformation.  Luther wasn’t the only reformer, of course.  Many others, both prior to, during, and after Luther, paved the way for this new movement within the church catholic to take root.  But Luther became the face of the Reformation.  His penchant for prolific writing (55 volumes worth!) in language the common person could understand, combined with the invention of a printing press with movable type, made him the bestselling author in Europe for over a decade.  What he wrote—much of it challenging to greater or lesser degree the received tradition he had inherited—caught the attention of the age.  But what was it that made this movement which began as a trickle, become a flood?  What were the “hidden springs of imagination, high up in the hills, that were to feed the broad river of the Reformation?”[1]  According to author Peter Matheson, it was the advent of new images, allegories and metaphors for the divine and the human—metaphors taken from a reanimated reading of the Bible—that subverted the world which the Reformers inherited and paved the way for another. “When your metaphors change,” writes Matheson, “your world changes with them.”

The most pervasive image of the Reformation is that of the liberated Word of God.  The gospel of John is steeped in image and metaphor, as evidenced by the series of seven “I AM” statements of Jesus: “I am the bread of life; I am the light of the world; I am the gate for the sheep; I am the good shepherd; I am the resurrection and the life; I am the way, the truth, and the life; I am the vine.” In John 8:31-36, the gospel text appointed for Reformation Sunday, Jesus says to the people who had believed in him, “If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.” Their first answer (and mine) is “We have never been slaves to anyone.” Oh how hard we work to keep the truth of our shadow from becoming known!  We do our best to hide it even from our own selves!  But before we can participate in the freedom God offers us in Jesus, we must own the fact that we are far from free; there are forces at work within and around us that keep us bound tight.  The freedom from “sin, death, and the devil” that Luther understood as pure gift of God—unmerited and unachievable—compelled him to preach Word alone, Faith alone, Grace alone, as the pillars of the good news.  This insight has served as a touchstone for the whole church for five centuries.

The danger inherent in any historical movement is that overtime the images and metaphors that once served as a fresh, invigorating wind, awakening the senses and animating the imaginations of a generation, can become immovable truths, fixed in stone; can become, in other words, fossilized.  The invitation for us, as we enter this 500th anniversary year, is not only to ask what images animated Brother Martin and other 16th century Reformers, but what images and metaphors can animate the church of this day, carrying the momentum forward so that the church does not become a museum relic of the past.

The life we share together is full of possibilities—you can read about many of them in this edition of Peace Notes.  Which ministry opportunities ignite your passion? Which are you drawn to be part of?  Where are the gaps that you sense need to be filled?  Go ahead!—use your imagination and creativity to ask how you individually might embody good news in our time and context, and how we might do so together.

With you on the Way,

Pastor Erik

[1] Peter Matheson, The Imaginative World of the Reformation. (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2001).