Re-Form-ation
October 30, 2011
Matthew 23: 1-12
Today, in the protestant church tradition, is reformation Sunday. Reformation Sunday is a remembrance of the day that Catholic Priest, Martin Luther, nailed his 95 theses on the door of the Wittenburg Church in 1517. Luther was concerned about the burdens that the church was putting on its people, for the sake of money and control and order.
But today, we are not going to be talking about Martin Luther. He is a heroic icon in other parts of the Christian tradition. But, the Anabaptists don’t typically look to Luther as their bold leader. His protest of the church in the early 16th century may have been the spark that began the reformation, but Luther turned his back on the radical reformers, our theological ancestors. In fact, he led the charge against the Anabaptist, advocating for their murder, and sending them into hiding.
So, today, unlike much of the church universal, we’re not thinking about Martin Luther so much. We’re thinking today about our own radical reformers, and about Jesus, the great reformer.
You heard the story shared by Dottie with our children this morning. This story is how our tradition began. A few people gathered together to study the texts, and to understand the meaning of Jesus for themselves. And, inspired by the holy spirit, the members of this group baptized each other and shared communion together.
Lest we forget the radical nature of this event, I’ll remind you of a few key things: First, their gathering together to read and study the text was illegal. It was against the law of the church and the state for them to do this. And, second, adult baptism was completely forbidden. It was beyond the scope of the Church’s imagination, really. Why would you be baptized again? Baptism at that time was done for infants to secure their salvation, and was part of the state system of record-keeping. Refusing to baptize children, and baptizing each other—it was utter destruction of the social, theological and church systems that had been created and upheld for centuries.
And yet, in doing these simply radical, or radically simple acts of love for each other—sharing communion and baptism rituals together in a home, while reading the texts together—these first Anabaptist seemed to get closer to those first teachings of Jesus. They released themselves of the burdens of the church—the burden of hierarchy, of order, and of certainty. And in sharing secret baptism and communion together, they took their first life changing, life threatening steps of radical discipleship.
In our text from the gospel of Matthew, Jesus said some confusing, contradictory things. After Jesus answered the question of the Sadduceess—what is the greatest law?—Jesus launched into an angry rant against the Pharisees. Jesus said to the people—your leaders have inherited their authority, so listen to what they say, but don’t do as they do. They do not practice what they preach. They give you the burden of the law, but do not practice the law. All that they do, they do so that others will see them and be impressed. So they wear large phylacteries—doesn’t that sound like such a naughty thing? Phylacteries? Well, phylacteries are large amulets that religious leaders used to wear—they held portions of the holy scripture in them. These scriptures we held close to their hearts.
Jesus was concerned about the shallow showiness of the leaders at the time. All piety, purity, and place, with seemingly little interest in social justice. If they did care about social justice, they would not have asked Jesus about the greatest law, and they would not have plotted to kill him for suggesting that all were welcome at the banquet table.
In hearing this text today, I can just about hear Grebel, Blaurock and Manx discussing it in secret in their homes on January 21, 1525. I can just about hear the water being poured over their heads, and see the bread and cup being shared. I can imagine that the words of Jesus were liberating to them, as they re-imagined what it meant to be the body of Christ. They had been part of a church that had placed great burdens on the people, and had made no attempts made to lighten the load—Anabaptist’s sluffed off these burdens in favor of what was most essential about the gospel. Instead of the indulgences, and fear based theology, they choose to risk their lives to live in community, and to try—in their time and in their context, to follow in the way of Jesus.
But, even as I talk about this Radical Reformation story, I see how easy it is to make a phylactery out of it. How easy it is for us to become burdened by the powerful story of discipleship. We carry these burdens around in our collective anabapist psyches—burdens of martyrdom, right relationship in community, the ways we live out peace, the ways we baptize—the list could go on and on. And, of course, there’s nothing intrinsically wrong with these things in our history. There’s nothing wrong with remembering the martyrs, with being right with our brothers and sisters, with striving to live at peace in all the layers of our lives, and valuing adult choice in baptism—the problem is when we wear them around our necks like phylacteries. The beautiful gift of our stories and tradition should not become our piety our adornment, our idols. They should become—like Jesus—a model for following God.
In Matthew 23, Jesus was calling his community to reform. He was calling his community put aside their piety, and follow God. He wanted them to recall that loving God could not be separated from loving neighbor, that justice and mercy were at the heart of God’s relationship with God’s people.
The radical reformers were calling the church to reform as well. Perhaps some of you Anabaptist historians will correct me if I’m wrong, but I have never understood the radical reformation as the act of petulance or or belligerence. These Anabaptists loved God, they loved the church, and they were inspired and confronted by the words of Jesus as they read them together.
Jesus’ words in Matthew 23, and in the last few chapters of Matthew that we’ve read this fall—they confront us, and challenge us. And, in light of reformation Sunday, they remind me that reformation is not something that happened 2,000 years ago, when Jesus was alive and in conflict with the Phariseess and Saduccees. This is not something that took place 500 years ago in Europe, and ended the difficulties of the church. Re-form-ation is constantly happening. We must always be listening to the words of Jesus as we are challenged to be the church together in our context.
And, what worries me about the Mennonite church is that there is a part of the church that has decided that what is means to be Mennonite is to have the right name, to act with certain sensibilities, to attend the right schools. Because is doing this, our church becomes an ethnic tradition, rather than a community embodying discipleship.
This summer the Mennonite convention, I met a pastor who is leading a small intentional community and house church in the mid-west. Matt and I had spent the evening with other urban Mennonite pastors, and the next day I saw him in the convention center, looking rather deflated. When I asked him if he was ok, he told me his story. He was new to the tradition, and coming to the convention, he realized that he was not “one of them.” Matt had no familial connections here. He didn’t know the songs in the hymnals, he didn’t understand the politics. Matt also works for his conference, and had just written two articles in a Mennonite publication. One was about sexuality, and one was about church polity. He was not criticized for the sexuality article, but his job was threatened for criticizing the denomination’s structure and leadership. Between his experience at the convention and this experience with his bosses at the conference level, his bubble was burst. He wasn’t sure anymore that he wanted to be Mennonite.
Now it’s very easy to criticize our denomination—with some distance we can see the holes in the polity, the problems with the structure, and the areas of neglect. But, it’s almost too easy.
What we really are being asked to do in this text is to examine ourselves—our own community. As the priesthood of all believers, what are the phylacteries that we wear around our necks? Is it our pedigree? Is it our rigid interpretation of the story? Is it “we’ve never done it that way” and “Anabaptism can only be expressed in this way”?
Jesus calls us to not just teach the words, but live the words we teach. Otherwise those good words that have become so dear to us, are no more than ornaments around our necks. They are nothing more than flash and show. The words become our idolatry, but do not change us.
Our radical reformation story is incredible to me—these folks read the scriptures together and decided that the church was not acting the way Jesus called them to be. And so they decided to live differently. But we cannot hold up the radical reformation story if we are going to be unmoved by it, if we will not allow it to re-form us. Because when we do this, we make that incredible 500 year old story our phylactery, our icon.
Following in the way of Jesus is never static. We are—in every age and generation—being called to re-form-ation. Let us seek to day those places where the words of Jesus and the actions of our reformers re-form us. AMEN.