Ephesians 2:1-10
1 You were dead through the trespasses and sins 2 in which you once lived, following the course of this world, following the ruler of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work among those who are disobedient. 3 All of us once lived among them in the passions of our flesh, following the desires of flesh and senses, and we were by nature children of wrath, like everyone else. 4 But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us 5 even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ —by grace you have been saved— 6 and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, 7 so that in the ages to come he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. 8 For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God— 9 not the result of works, so that no one may boast. 10 For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.
When I was growing up, my sister, step-siblings, and I generally wore clothes that were first bought and worn by somebody else. Of course, a lot of our toys, dishes, and small, household appliances were also first bought and used by someone else. What we didn’t buy from thrift stores (back when that sort of practice was looked down upon by the wider population) we picked up at local yard sales. I can remember going to some of those yard sales growing up; I especially remember going with my aunt Sharon, who was apparently a pro at these sorts of things as she liked to get up early on Saturday mornings and make the rounds in her burgundy “fox-body” Mustang.
It was always rather interesting to me, the whole concept of yard sales: someone would gather up enough stuff they didn’t want, stuff they couldn’t use, stuff they had long since replaced or never wanted in the first place, stuff they had outgrown, and they’d set it on tables or lay it on bedsheets in the yard and sell it to other folks for a few quarters. It beats throwing it all away! I always liked to look at the useless stuff folks would sell: old karate trophies, broken baskets, pots without lids or handles, workout equipment with all of the New Year’s resolutions still hanging on them, busted bowling balls, faded tee ball bats, rotary phones with frayed wires, and every once-in-a-while there’d be crates of old records with pictures of families in polyester suits standing outside of a motor lodge or metal bands with their wild hair and eye makeup. I suppose I liked looking at all that sort of stuff then (and, to tell the truth, now) because it all tells a story. Those sorts of useless things tell stories about the folks—the kind of folks who would keep them only to eventually let them go. You know, when I really think about it, a yard sale may be one of the best ways to get to know a person: you learn where they’ve been (you can tell by the coffee mugs from Las Vegas and the leather wallet from Sturgis, South Dakota); you can tell what they’ve enjoyed doing (all the old tackle boxes and Zebco reels might give it away); you can tell where they went to college, how many kids they had, and you can tell how long they like to hold onto things, but perhaps more than anything, what may in fact be the biggest thing you can learn about someone having a yard sale, is that they’re ready to let some things go, that they’re ready for a change.
Maybe this is why Phyllis Tickle used the image of a yard sale (or a rummage sale) when she observed the somewhat cyclical changes that have taken place in the history of the Church. She writes in her book, The Great Emergence: How Christianity Is Changing and Why, about how every five hundred years or so the Church (with a capital “C”) cleans out its proverbial attic and gets rid of some of its antiquated practices, dogmas, and traditions in order to make room for new, more appropriate ones. She points out the how Gregory the Great (Pope from 590-604 A.D.) serves as a sort of signpost for the first “rummage sale” of the Church, as it was around this time that the Roman Empire truly began to unravel and the Church made its first grand-scale mission effort outside of Rome. About five hundred years after that in 1054 A.D., what is called “The Great Schism” began. This marked the separation of the Western Church (what we now call the Roman Catholic Church) from the Eastern Church (Eastern Orthodox Church). This split was the result of theological disputes surrounding things like the relationship of the persons of the Trinity and the source of the Holy Spirit and ecclesiological disputes like who was the true Pope and where did he reside. Nearly five hundred years later, there was another shift, another rummage sale, that was sparked by an Augustinian monk who wrote a paper titled “A Disputation on the Power of Indulgences.” Indulgences were essentially paid-for promises of deliverance from purgatory. This monk’s name was Martin Luther, and he nailed his disputation (which consisted of 95 theses) to the door of Castle Church in Wittenberg, Germany on October 31, 1517, five hundred years ago this coming Tuesday.
So, if Phyllis Tickle is right, we’re either living in or on the verge of another shift, another “rummage sale” in the history of the Church, another reformation, another transformative epoch as we continue on in the great narrative of history. I tend to think we’re knee-deep in it! I also think that it isn’t necessarily something that happens only every five hundred years, but with the five hundredth anniversary of Luther’s 95 Theses only a few days away, I can’t help but reflect on these sorts of things. I can’t help but wonder, what is it that causes us—believers and the Church in general—to always be changing, in a state of reformation, never settled on what we believe to be right, true, and fully factual about what it means to live a life of faith? Why do we occasionally go through these rummage sales in the history of the Church?
Some might say it’s because we get bored, that the old ways of doing things become trite, that we tend to come to a place where we need to shake things up a bit or else we’ll just abandon the whole thing because it isn’t exciting anymore. I suppose I can buy that when it comes to some things in our lives. I mean, there’s a reason people buy this year’s version of whatever video games people play these days (I was tempted to say something about buying Super Mario Bros. 3 when it came out, but that might date me a bit…); there’s a reason we’ll watch reboots of our favorite T.V. shows and movies—it’s not that there was anything really wrong with the old ones, they just needed a little updating. Sure, we get bored with things when they don’t change, but I’m not so sure that’s why believers in the Church go through these seasons of reformation.
Now, someone might say it’s because the times change; we know more now than we did then, and I can get behind that—to a point. I mean, we definitely know that the earth is round and goes around the sun (well, most folks today know that), and we have a much deeper knowledge of the cosmos and the amount of life on our own planet. We know more about genetics, biology, chemistry, and physics, and all of those things help us to know ourselves and our world better, and yes, some of those things have caused and are causing us to ask very serious questions about some long-held beliefs and interpretations of Scripture and theology, but is the natural progression of knowledge enough to cause a reformation in the Church?
Of course, some will point to the shifting cultures of the world as a catalyst for change in the Church. Some will praise the change as a sign of progress, while others will bemoan such change as a sign of moving away from more centralized values. Some will call for the Church to resist change, while others will call for the church to embrace it, while still others will call for the Church to take a lead in creating such change. Cultural progress and change is indeed a powerful force, and it has led to many positive changes in the history of the Church as well as many unfortunate accommodations, but is it what really lies at the heart of reformation?
When I read Church history and look back on all of those movements and moments that might be truly considered as “reformations” within the Church, I don’t see people who were bored, nor do I see those who were only responding to the wellspring of new knowledge or seismic shifts within their own cultures. Whether it’s Martin Luther nailing his 95 Theses to the door of a church or Martin Luther King, Jr. proclaiming his dream on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, whether it’s a monk named Francis trying to call others to a life of selflessness and peace or a woman named Frances trying to help others rise out of poverty in Perry County, Alabama, whether it’s a group of people called Protestants, Lutherans, Presbyterians, Baptists, Anabaptists, Puritans, Pentecostals, or Emergent Christians—whatever the case may be, each and every time there has been some measurable movement, some “reformation” within or across the fabric of the universal Church, if it has thrived and continued on, it has been because those who began the movement, those who sought to create change, did so out of a deep desire to keep on following Jesus.
You and I are here, in this place, because there were those before us who believed in that onward call from Christ. You and I are here, in this place, believing that Christ still calls us on. It’s why we gather around the waters for baptism, why we gather around the Lord’s Table, why we meet in this room week after week, because we know we haven’t reached the end, because we know we haven’t settled it all, because we know there’s still a long way stretched out before us, and Christ is calling us ever on, maybe even on to the next reformation. Amen.
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