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On Oct. 30, I was blessed by celebrating the idea of church reformation in Wittenberg, Germany. There, on Oct. 31, 1517, Martin Luther distributed the Ninety-Five Theses or truth-claims that required attention if the church was to be better. Can we agree that the church can always be better? I think so.
It was the Eve of All Saints Day, and Luther knew a lot of people would be attending All Saints' Church, also called Castle Church. It is said that he nailed his document to the Castle Church doors, which served as a bulletin board, but what is important is that he wanted people to see these ideas and to discuss them.
In summary, the Ninety-Five Theses argued that the grace of God is free. God loves and forgives unconditionally in order that we and all creation might live life fully and freely. Luther wanted to stop the practice of selling indulgences by which the church raised money through selling certificates of forgiveness. More broadly, Luther wanted to correct an understanding in the church that we could somehow earn God's blessings and salvation by our own actions and good works.
Just as I think we can all agree that the church can always be better, I think we can also agree that proposals for change can be met with disagreement and division. The church continually reforms itself, despite our resistance to change. Disagreements in the 16th Century and since then have caused the birth of hundreds of Christian denominations as human sin causes disunity and people go their own way.
But we believe that reform and change is the work of God who bestows on us the Holy Spirit to guide our thoughts, to empower us with gifts that help us to build each other up, and to bring us together as a community. We are called to be in conversation and to address problems both in the church and in our society.
With faith in God and faith in the presence of God's Holy Spirit, we as individuals and collectively as the church can open ourselves to criticism because we know God embraces us, even with our mistakes. We do not need to earn God's love by being right and good all the time! With faith in God, we can examine ourselves and our practices to see if our traditions and behaviors come from the culture we live in or if they reflect the amazing grace of God for all creation. We can listen to others. Luther believed that despite the powers of this world -- our customs, our fears, our egotism -- that if we keep Christ at the center of our conversations, the church will continue to reform in order to meet the challenges of the day and remain united!
In Wittenberg, in 1521, after some radical reformers destroyed much of the artwork in the City Church of Wittenberg, Luther asked his friend Lucas Cranach to paint a new altar. In the painting shown here, Cranach shows Luther pointing to Christ.
He also paints a windblown white tunic around Jesus, which many interpret to represent the winds of Reformation that are never ending!
Rev. Viking Dietrich, Regional Representative for Europe with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America