Nomad
Today, on many Protestant Church Calendars, is Reformation Day. The day in which we commemorate the boldness and bravery of Martin Luther and many other Reformers who took a bold stand in the 1500’s against theological and political corruption they observed in the Catholic Church. (That is an oversimplification, of course.) None of the Reformers set out to cause divisions or to break away from the mainstream Roman Catholic Church. All of them hoped to be a force of reformation and renewal within the confines of the historic Church. But, as history would have it, almost all of the Reformers and their followers ended up splintering from the Catholic Church, forming a new movement that became known as Protestant or Evangelical (Martin Luther preferred this term!) Christianity.
Nearly 500 years later, we find ourselves in a similar place to the Evangelical Reformers. We find ourselves at a point in history where the Evangelical Church in particular, but the broader universal Church in general is in desperate need of Reformation. The Church in America is being torn asunder by infighting and bickering, abuse and scandal in our leadership, our valuing of privilege, power, and politics over the people we are called to shepherd. We live in a day where the Gospel has been diluted and veiled by all sorts of agendas- theological, philosophical, financial, political- and the light of Christ that seeks to shine through our unity, love, and justice has been greatly dimmed. We are in a day where the Spirit of God is fiercely blowing upon the Church, calling us to wake up from our slumber, raise our sails, and surrender to the Spirit’s wind which beckons us into reformation, renewal, and redemption. God is still speaking to the Church today. He is calling us to move into uncharted territories, places that our forefathers could have never imagined. As he calls to us, we are given a choice.
We can move with the breeze of God’s Spirit.
Or we can cast over our anchors and resist the wind.
If we do the latter, I fear, our ships will be tossed and destroyed in the tempest. God’s Spirit cannot not be resisted. And to do so will result in damage. We will damage ourselves, as we continue to see every day, burning each other senselessly at the stake. We will also wound the world around us that we are called to heal. If we cling to tightly to our power and privilege, to the way things have “always been”, we will miss out on being a part of the cutting edge of the new thing God is doing in our midst. We will miss out on participating in God’s further redemption and recreation of the world. We will miss out on the Kingdom of God’s expansion.
However, if we choose to submit to the Spirit of Christ and allow him to lead us into new territories, we will, like the Reformers before us, get to glimpse the innovative, creative, and ever expanding Love of God overwhelming our world. We will be co-creators with God, agents of renewal in the Church and in the world. Sure, there will be periods of discomfort and pain. We will feel marginalized and strange. Such is the fate of prophets and innovators. But I believe that if we allow God’s Spirit to blow into our sails, surrendering in total faith, we will be used to usher in a new age of the Kingdom of God like the world has never seen. We will be used by God to expand righteousness, to speak a fresh Word to our generation, and to agents of change and salvation to the ends of the earth.
Today is Reformation Day. God is calling His people into reformation.
Can you hear Him?
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