Monday, October 28, 2013

Re-Formation

This sermon was delivered to the people of The Lutheran Church of the Nativity on October, 27, 2013.  This is Reformation Sunday for many Protestants, and the text was 1 Kings 5:1-5; 8:1-13.  



Our journey through the narrative lectionary continues this morning with the next step on the faith journey of the Israelites.  They have had two kings, who while they both had their flaws, helped unite Israel and bring peace.  Now, they are on their third king, Solomon who takes it upon himself to build a house for the Lord.
And this was some house.  It took Solomon seven years to design, gather materials, and build.  The people made large pots, huge candlesticks, and even decorated the innermost dwelling place with golden cherubim.  This is a house fit for a king.  And God does come to dwell among the people.  God’s presence fills the house of the Lord - God’s presence is so great that the priests cannot stand to minister there.  Solomon explains for us that “The Lord has said he would dwell in thick darkness.”
And the form of Judaism that we come to recognize with the High Priests in Jesus’ day slowly begins to form.  For this particular group of people, the temple is no longer a place to signify God’s presence in and among the people.  Rather, for them worship becomes all about saying the words just right, making sure the animals are sacrificed in just the right spot, and that people give enough to pay for the priests’ food and the upkeep of the temple.  
Sounds a little familiar right?  For those of us who grew up Lutheran, every year on Reformation Sunday, we hear about how the Catholic church was worrying more and more about money, worrying more and more about saying the right things, and worrying more and more about making sure everything was in its proper place.  We associate these with bad things, because our superhero, Martin Luther, comes in with his mighty hammer - reminiscent of Thor - and starts pounding his 95 Theses to the door of the high and mighty Catholic church in Wittenberg.  Luther wants to reform these things within the Catholic church, much like the prophets of Israel wanted to reform the Jewish faith as we’ll see in the next couple of weeks.  
For the prophets and for Luther, it wasn’t about making sure that things were said just right, or that the building was perfect.  Like Pastor Mark said last week, God doesn’t care about outward appearance.  God is concerned with the heart of the individual.  Luther and the prophets were concerned about the hearts of the people who were claiming to be children of God, but weren’t acting like it.  They said that God doesn’t dwell only in a building, or in the priests, or in the pastors, but that the Spirit of God dwells with each and every one of us.  God dwells in the thick darkness, not in some building that humans have built.
We have been blessed with an opportunity to live through a period of re-formation of the church today.  There are several authors writing right now that talk about how the church is in a period of upheaval.  We’re beginning to let go of some of these things that don’t matter, an institutionalized faith focused on blind participation rather than the heart, mind, and soul’s engagement with God.  We too, have lost sight of what’s important to God - our heart -  in favor of this great institution that we have built out of Martin Luther, who would likely shudder to hear us call ourselves Lutheran after him.
That’s not to say that what Martin Luther did for the church was bad, no he put the scriptures in the hands of everyone, so that all might have a personal experience with God, and he tried to show that God dwells with each and every one of us when he uses one of his popular phrases, “priesthood of all believers.”  Martin Luther reminds us that we cannot earn our salvation, and to borrow the phrase from The Princess Bride, “and anyone who says differently, princess, is selling you something.”  Martin Luther and those who are working alongside him, John Calvin, Philip Melanchthon, and others, are trying to remind the church that it’s about the heart.
This is similar to the religion associated with the temple, because this form of Judaism didn’t start out as this institutionalized Judaism that would focus exclusively on right worship, with disregard for the poor or oppressed.  Instead, this temple was built out of love for God, out of gratitude for what God has done, and out of desire to let people see that God dwells among them.  It was a physical icon, or worship aid, to help people focus their hearts and minds to be with God, and to be transformed by God.
Unfortunately, as is the problem with many icons, these worship aids to help us focus our hearts and minds to be present with God, the people started to think of the temple as THE place where God was present, to the exclusion of everything else.  Those who followed about 150-200 years after Martin Luther started to think of the icons that he developed in his writings to help people dwell with God, began to think of those icons as the only ways that people could dwell with God.  Just as there are many worship aids that we have developed over the past 50 years, that have been seen as the only way to worship or be with God.  

Yet, now we are seeing people pick up hammers and smash these idols, which once were icons, just as Martin Luther did almost 500 years ago.  We are able to let go of some of these things that were created to help us worship, but now hinder the worship of others.  We see people pick up things that haven’t been used for a thousand years, and say “This is a place where God’s light shines through.”  That’s why we celebrate the Reformation today, why we celebrate the building and dedication of Solomon’s temple.  We celebrate the fact that God continually inspires us to re-form, re-think, and re-build icons that help us see God more clearly.  We also celebrate the fact that God encourages us to challenge, question, and smash the icons that have become idols, so that we might let go of something that stands between our hearts and God.  Amen.  

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