Reform

 Back in the 1990s, there was a political party in this great nation of ours called the Reform Party, brought to you by Preston Manning. Of course, I didn't understand much about politics back then, still don't to be honest, but I was aware of it as a political force. That party long ago merged with other right of centre parties, but it still seems like it's around, like a movement in your peripheral vision. Gone when you look straight at it, but almost visible in the background.

Reform for us in the church, though, always brings up Reformation, which is the festival that defines us as Lutheran Christians. For Luther did not seek or want to bring about a new faith, a new religion or anything like that, he sought to reform what was already there. And in reforming it, it was an effort to save and rescue what was good, and to abandon what had gone bad. And you know, you can get a lot more done that way than by pretending that everything is all good all the time.

For if you pretend that something is all good and needs no help, then you're going to find out very rapidly that the rot is going to spread. Unchecked problems lead to more problems, you know, and the more unchecked the problems are, the more of a problem they're going to be. Rot is rarely confined, you know. Decay does not understand limits. Once rot and heresy and false teaching begin to appear, they don't tend to leave on their own accord. Pretending that there are no problems to be addressed leads to the rot spreading and growing, and a reformation requires an admission that things are not the way they should be. 

A long long time ago, in web 1.0, there was a website that I went to called dieoff. It is long since gone now, partially because its prediction of the end of the world by 2010 did not manifest in the slightest. But the quote that the website presented was this one from Thomas Hardy 

We have to be prepared to look at the worst if we are to go towards the better. And in the case of Dr. Luther, it was an examination of the worst, to look fully at the rot that had gotten in in order to come out on the other side better. What was the worst? The church had lurched into non-Biblical teaching. And that church had to be reformed, not eliminated or forgotten. What was bad had to be removed, in order that what was good could be retained. And this process of reformation is a bigger picture of what happens in the individual Christian. For we, for the most part, do not live our lives strictly according to Biblical teaching, though we should. We do not do only what the Bible requires nor suggests. Instead, we frequently go against the word of God. We do what pleases us. As Christians, we should live according to the principles of scripture, but elect not to. And every week, we traipse back to the sanctuary of God's house, and make a simple demand - as the church was reformed, so too ought we to be. We have had a look at the worst, our scheming, gossip, unclean living and so on. We have had a deep glimpse at the rot, and you know what, we don't like it. That's why we come to church and say to God fully and clearly 'yeah, I did some things I don't like and am not proud of.' And that's when God, the real one, forgives those sins, strips them away, and leaves you behind.

Back in the days of dieoff, I was actually frightened by the concept of forgiveness of sins. Really. What I was frightened about was the notion that Jesus would actually take my sins away, as far as the east was from the west, and that I would get Ookpiked. In case you don't know, from Dennis Lee's book 'Alligator Pie,' there was a poem about the Ookpik, and it goes thusly.

Ookpik

An Ookpik is nothing but hair.
If you shave him, he isn't there.

He's never locked in the zoo.
He lives in a warm igloo.

He can whistle and dance on the walls.
He can dance on Niagra Falls.

He has nothing at all on his mind.
If you scratch him, he wags his behind.

He dances from morning to night.
Then he blinks. that turns out the light.

That concept of there being nothing left once the shaving was done was how I thought about my sin. If Jesus can take it away, and he does, then what's left? Is there anything left at all? And when Luther and his contemporaries looked at the church at the time, a similar thought must have occurred to them - if we remove all the rot and disaster, what's left? What's left indeed. But they did, and when they did, they discovered that there is still beauty, truth, joy and wonder left. What was there from the first place, brought out from underneath all the rot and decay, and presented as it should have been from the beginning.

You too, if you are to be reformed, once all the rot is gone, the sin and shame, is there anything left? You bet there is. And what's left is you, the You that God shed his blood to redeem.