Reluctant Reformation

Last week was about the third most important week in the church, if you're Lutheran. At the top of the list are Christmas and Easter. Last week was number three: Reformation week. It isn't too difficult to see why it's such an appealing week for Lutherans to celebrate. We're named after the reformer after all.

Unfortunately we don't seem to have much of the spirit of ol' uncle Marty. For the last fifteen years I've heard sermons about the importance of congregations having a reformation attitude, but see (and hear about) congregations that struggle to change the smallest things. I hear reasons ranging from the importance of not pushing away the people already in the church to the importance of tradition.

Now, I certainly don't want to alienate people already in the church and do respect and value tradition, I wonder, at what expense? Youth and Young Adults are increasingly absent from the church and membership in the ELCA is down in general, but there is no real reformation.

My frustration lies in the fact that we've celebrated Reformation Week as long as I can remember, but I've never seen any substantial reformation happen. We're often the slowest to adjust when it comes to staying relevant. People need to be engaged and people want sincerity. But a church talking about reformation but never moving forward isn't engaging or sincere.

I think rather than talking about reformation, we ought to actually do it. Reformation is like baptism. Yes, it is an event that is part of our past; yes, we need to know what it means and what God did for us in those events; and yes, they are certainly big parts of our identity. But reformation, like baptism, must be celebrated daily. We must embrace that the old is dead so that newness in Christ is our identity.

Baptism is death from the old sinful self and life in Christ and for our neighbor. And that is the reformation we need: a church dead to itself. Tradition, comfort and history are only valuable in that through them we can relate to our neighbor and make them feel comfortable. If those things become barriers to the people we should be focusing on, then Christ calls us to find a way to bring the Gospel to them.

So let's wait to talk about the "reformation we're having" until we're actually having one. Let's pull our traditions, church culture and comfort out by the roots. If it's out by the roots we can reshape the church to focus outside itself, rather than in pews. And once we do that, we can replant some of what's been pulled out, remembering that the church is about bringing Christ to the world, not about the world coming to church.