The Reformed Church is Always Reforming
There would be no Church of Jesus Christ had there been no Jesus Christ. That is obvious, but it’s the first thing to say. The second thing is to say that there would be no Church of Jesus Christ had there been no Apostle Paul. That is less obvious to most people. The third thing to say, and one which almost no one, other than those who attended seminary, would observe, is that there would be no Church of Jesus Christ had there been no council of the New Testament church leaders as it was recorded in Acts 15.
The average Christian, and perhaps even the average seminary graduate, would not list what happened in Acts 15 as one of the most important events in the life of the Church, but it was. Without it, almost certainly there would be no Church.
Here was the Sitz im Leben, the historical situation which resulted in the dramatic decision made by the most important leaders of the Church in the 5th or 6th decade after the birth of Jesus. Most of the earliest followers of Jesus were Jews. They were born Jews, they were raised as practicing Jews, and they perceived themselves wholly to be Jews. Not Christians, but Jews.
However, within twenty years of Jesus’ crucifixion, several thousand Gentiles had joined the nascent Church. What was to be done about that, the early Church wondered? Was it --- you should pardon the expression --- kosher --- for Gentiles to become Christians? And if they did, shouldn’t they first become Jews? The original disciples were all Jews. Paul was a Jew. Barnabas, Mark, Silas, and virtually all the other missionaries listed in the Book of the Acts of the Apostles also were Jews. About the only big shot in the earliest years of the Church who was not a Jew was Luke, the writer of the Gospel of Luke and also the Book of Acts. Otherwise, everyone else listed in Who’s Who in First-Century Christianity was Jewish, which meant “Jewish-Christian,” but which meant essentially Jewish in basic orientation.
A general question arose among the Jewish Christians about how – or if – Gentiles could become Christians. It was prompted by a specific question. In order for Greeks, Romans, or others to join the Church, should they first be circumcised? Half of the Gentile converts weren’t too concerned about that, but the other half were ----- a lot. Probably most of that half declared that if circumcision was a necessity for becoming a Christian, they would sadly choose to pass.
After a heated debate on the subject, Paul and Barnabas and some of the other church leaders were deputized to go to Jerusalem to seek a decision on this matter. Some of the Jewish-Christians in Jerusalem insisted that Gentiles not only had to be circumcised, but that they also should be required to follow “the law of Moses,” which meant, at least theoretically, all 613 separate laws that are found in the Torah, the first five books of the Bible.
The first to respond to this declaration was Peter. He reminded them that he had previously said that Gentiles should be welcomed into Christianity, and that they need not accept all the laws of the Torah. That episode is found in Acts 10. Peter concluded his statement by saying, “We believe that we shall be saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus, just as they” (the Gentiles) will” (Acts 15:11). After that Paul and Barnabas told of how effective the mission to the Gentiles had been in Greece and Asia Minor.
Then James spoke. We need to understand that James was the brother of Jesus. Furthermore, he was the leader of the church in Jerusalem, and the Jerusalem church was at that time the Mother Church of Christendom. We learn from the letter of James, which purportedly was written by Jesus’ brother, that he disagreed with Paul about several issues regarding what the essence of the Christian faith should be. Nevertheless, James quoted some scripture passages from the prophecies of Amos (9:11-12), Jeremiah (12:15), and Isaiah (45:21) to the effect that God Himself intended the Gentiles also were to become identified with the people of God, and not the Jews only. James finished by saying, “Therefore my judgment is that we should not trouble those of the Gentiles who turn to God, but should write to them to abstain from the pollutions of idols and from unchastity and from what is strangled and from blood.”
What, exactly, does that strange observation mean? Three of the restrictions have to do with food, and one with sexual behavior. The “pollutions of idols” phrase means meat that had been sacrificed to the Greek or Roman gods. Tenderloin steak sold for $8.49 a pound in the Athenian or Ephesian marketplace, but if it had been thrown on an altar to Zeus for ten seconds and then withdrawn from the fire, you could buy it for $2.19 a pound. Kosher butchering forbade that any animal could be strangled to death. It had to have its jugular vein properly slit so that nearly all the blood would drain out. And Jews were not to eat blood either. Thus no blood sausage. I as a Gentile am quite happy with that restriction. The very thought is revolting.
Still, these four prohibitions represent an odd compromise for Gentile converts. To my knowledge the three items regarding food were never strictly observed, but the fourth, regarding unchastity, was widely accepted. Nevertheless, this peculiar decision and this queer compromise is the third factor which makes possible the existence of the Christian Church in the 21st century. Had not that decision been made, and were it not James who proposed it, there might well have been no Church at all, because Jews were no longer becoming Christians, and Gentiles would never have signed up, if it required circumcision and the observance of all the laws of Moses.
The last Sunday in October or the first Sunday in November is often called Reformation Sunday in the Protestant churches. Last Sunday Rabbi Bloom preached in our service, so obviously that was not going to be Reformation Sunday. Therefore I chose today to be our Reformation Sunday. And the scripture passage you have just heard about is the first major example of reformation in the New Testament Church. The decision made in Jerusalem re-directed what Christianity was and what it was to become. It is described in half a chapter in the Book of the Acts of the Apostles, but it had permanent and profound influence from then on. Without a reformation of the thinking then current among Jewish Christians, there would be no Christians today. Thus in most churches in western Christianity there are surnames like Adams, Baker, Christianson, Dettmer, or Ebert, rather than Aaronson, Baruch, Cohen, Disraeli, or Edelman.
When we think of the Reformation, we almost always automatically think of Martin Luther. And we think of Luther nailing his Ninety-Five Theses to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg, Germany on All Hallows Eve, Halloween, October 31, 1517. An even more important date and event is when Luther stood alone before the Diet (not diet, as in what we eat, but Dee-et, conclave) of Worms (not worms, as in wiggly creatures in the ground, but Vore-mmms, a city near Frankfurt, Germany). It was April 18, 1521, and Luther had been ordered to recant his teachings or face possible imprisonment or even death. “I consider myself convinced of the Holy Scripture, which is my basis,” he bravely declared. “My conscience is captive to the Word of God. Thus I cannot and I will not recant, because acting against one’s conscience is neither safe nor sound. Here I stand; I can do no other. God help me. Amen.”
A Latin phrase evolved in the early Reformation period to describe the Church of Jesus Christ. Ecclesia Reformata Semper Reformanda: The Reformed Church (Is) Always Reforming. Reformation of the Church must never stop. It must continue on to the end of time, because the Church always needs to be re-reformed. It cannot remain static, nor can it leap blindly from one position to another. What does the Church stand for — now? What should it do --- now? What does it believe --- now?
For eighteen centuries the Church not only accepted slavery but actually supported it. In the 19th century, that changed virtually everywhere that the Church was strong. For nineteen centuries the Church forbade divorce under any circumstances. Then it reluctantly declared that divorce was acceptable, under certain carefully proscribed conditions. For almost twenty centuries the Church said that homosexuality was evil. Now, and with astonishing swiftness, it has decided that a homosexual orientation is probably a genetic given, and that the small minority of people who have that inclination cannot will themselves out of it.
The week before last Lois and I went to Chicago for the 50th anniversary of the graduation of the Class of 1964 from McCormick Theological Seminary. While there I had a conversation with one of my classmates. He told me that he had become the pastor of three small Presbyterian congregations in northwestern Ohio. Then he went back to Chicago to become the pastor of the Chicago Metropolitan Community Church. In small communities like Hilton Head Island, the Metropolitan Community Church is an unknown denomination, but in most medium to large cities across the country, with the possible exception of the South, there are Metropolitan Community churches for the growing numbers of gays and Lesbians who are willing publicly to declare their orientation. The denomination has existed for the past thirty years or so.
Gordon told me that eventually he left the pastorate of the Chicago Metropolitan Community congregation. It wasn’t because of problems over sexual orientation, he said, but over the same kinds of problems which plague other churches. “Gordon,” I said, facetiously, “do you mean to tell me that they have the same kinds of problems that we have?” But then, they are fully human also, aren’t they, just like us? So why wouldn’t they wrestle with the same issues and uncertainties? He told me that a few years ago his male partner and he were married in a civil ceremony, and that recently, now that it is legal in Illinois, they also were married in a religious ceremony by a compassionate member of the clergy. The reformed Church is always reforming. What seems orthodox for centuries may need to be reconsidered by the Church.
Before going to Chicago for the seminary celebration, we went to Janesville, Wisconsin to see a high school friend of mine who has been fighting cancer for several years. I have previously referred to him in another sermon. Ted worked for 22 years baking cookies which he marketed solely through cooperative grocery stores in Madison, Wisconsin. He didn’t particularly enjoy this work, but it at least provided him a rather steady if also meager living. Then he went to live in the woods in a small cabin built by his grandfather decades ago. He was a latter-day Henry David Thoreau, with no electricity or running water and his multitude of books.
Ted became disenchanted with both government and religion during his wilderness sojourn over the past twenty years. Nevertheless he continued to read widely in books and magazines which did or did not support his new views, and he very kindly saves clippings for me from his greatly varied intellectual gleanings. One of these was a review of a book called The Unintended Revolution: How a Religious Revolution Secularized Society. The book was written by Brad S. Gregory. Professor Gregory is an historian who believes that the primary unforeseen effect of the Protestant Reformation was to transform the western world from a basically religious place into a secularized society. He wrote, “Judged on their own terms and with respect to the objectives of their own leading protagonists, medieval Christendom failed, the Reformation failed, confessionalized Europe failed, and Western modernity failed, but each in different ways and with different consequences, and each in ways that continue to remain important to the present.”
That long sentence is a large pipe bomb deliberately thrown into any international gatherings of European and American intellectual historians. As if it were not a sufficient detonation, Prof. Gregory also wrote this: “The Protestant Reformation that began early in the sixteenth century destroyed the unity and the coherence of Christendom, initiated a process of explosive doctrinal fission from which western Christianity, western philosophy, western political theory and institutions, western economics, western society, and western morality have never recovered.”
Holy cow! Whoever would have thunk it? Brad Gregory seems to think that the whole western world has gone to hell in a handbasket, and it all happened because some 16th century Catholics thought the Catholic Church needed some reforming if it was to be true to itself. Well, my friend Ted also seems to feel that the world is in a terrible mess, and we need to reconsider where we are in order better to lead us to where we are going. A way to express that is to say that the reformed Church, or the reformed world, must always be reforming.
Albrecht Durer was a famous German artist who lived at the time of Martin Luther in the early 16th century. He and his brother Albert both wanted to study art at the Academy in Nuremberg, but their father did not have enough money to send both of them there. So the brothers flipped a coin to see who would go. Albrecht won, and Albert went to work in the mines. Years later, in 1508, Albrecht produced a famous painting called Hands of an Apostle, but it now universally known as The Praying Hands. The hands in the drawing were in fact the gnarled, rough hands of his brother, which made possible the added fame of the older brother. Christians, like the New Testament gathering in Jerusalem or the reformers of the 16th century or the Durer brothers, Albrecht and Albert, must work on behalf of one another for the continuing reformation of a Church and world in constant need of reforming. Those who make names for themselves in the process are not the issue. The issue is that everyone needs to strive together to improve what always needs to be improved.
Do we still believe what we have always believed? If so, are we truly reformed? Do we still think what we always have thought? If so, are we truly reformed? Are we stuck in a rut, and if so, do we know it? If we know it, are we willing to try to get out of it?
As they say, a mind is a terrible thing to waste. My seminary classmate Gordon might have been wasted had not conditions changed in the Church and in society so that he could better and more freely exercise his gifts. My high school friend Ted may lose his battle with cancer, but his life will not have been in vain, because his mind has kept whirring at a highly admirable pace for his whole unique and exemplary life.
No one at any age should intellectually pack it in and declare that they are giving up on life and letting others make all the decisions. Fight the good fight with all your might. Illegitimi Non Carborundum. A mighty fortress is our God, and the reformation must never cease. Jerusalem, or Worms, or Nuremberg, or Hilton Head Island, beckon. Join the struggle!