Psalm 46!!!!!!! First Presbyterian, Pasadena II Corinthians 3:1-6!!!!!!!! October 25, 2015 REFORMATION OF THE HEART James S. Currie! There is something comforting about looking to the past. As one who not only has an enthusiastic interest in the past and who thinks there is much to be gleaned from history, I find myself easily immersed in the past. Indeed, one reason we celebrate anniversaries, whether birthdays, weddings, or churches, is that we like to remember. Thereʼs a lot to be said for remembering people, funny stories, significant events.! Last Saturday night, after a wonderful afternoon of lunch, hearing Ted Foote speak, planting trees, and enjoying a splendid concert of three different choirs, I went to Pepperʼs Restaurant to pick up a meal that Jo Ann and I had ordered as take-out. Upon arrival, I discovered a long table at which members of the Donahoo and Clark families were sitting. Among other things, they were re-living a wedding at the church on East Harris Street at which Brian Clark, the groom, had passed out. Brian was holding forth amid great laughter. Of course, his wife, Susan, wanted to have equal time. What fun that was as they re-lived something that at the time, I suspect, was not all that funny. There was a lot of that kind of stuff going on last weekend. Of course, after 75 years we still donʼt have as much to remember as our sister church in Scotland which is moving towards its 800th anniversary!! The Bible is the story of Godʼs love for, and faithfulness to Godʼs people. That is our story as well, but how will we know our story unless we know it -- that is, read it, study it, remember it? We need to know our past. There is the oft-quoted line from the 1
Spanish philosopher and essayist, a line that appears on a wall at the Dachau concentration camp in Germany: Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. So the past is important.! Today is Reformation Sunday. We remember such luminaries as Girolamo Savonarola, John Wycliffe, Jan Huss, Martin Luther, John Calvin, and John Knox. They are part of our story as well as all the biblical figures we remember. They called for a renewal and reformation of the Roman Catholic Church in their times, namely, in Europe in the 1400s and 1500s. That became known as the Protestant Reformation and we are theological beneficiaries and descendants of that movement. We are grateful for the courage and the sacrifice and the vision those persons had.! We look with pride to, and gratitude for Abraham and Sarah, Moses and Zipporah, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Daniel, Peter, James, John, Paul, Lydia, Aquila and Priscilla, Augustine, Aquinas, Columba, Julian of Norwich, Luther, Calvin, and all the rest who have influenced who we are as Christians and as Protestant Christians.! But in their own lives I doubt that they were as clear about the legacy they would leave behind as we are. While they may have known their own past, they did not live there. Abraham and Sarah left their homeland in Ur and followed Godʼs call to a new land. While Moses may have known the story of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, he responded to Godʼs call to challenge the pharaohʼs power and to lead the people of Israel out of slavery in Egypt. I suspect he did not know what lay ahead of him in doing so, but he did it. How could Jeremiah have known what the future held for the people of Judah as he and they watched the Babylonians attack and, eventually, sack Jerusalem? And yet, he bought a piece of land in Anathoth that he knew was about to be taken by 2
the Babylonians as a sign of hope that they would eventually return to their homeland. Rather than hearkening to a glorious past under David, Jeremiah hears God declare that God will make a new covenant with this people, that I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people (Jer. 31:33).! And Isaiah, in speaking to a people who finally did return to a devastated homeland, rather than dwelling on the pain of the recent past or the glory of the distant past, issues words of hope: Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her that she has served her term, that her penalty is paid, that she has received from the Lordʼs hand double for all her sins (Is. 40:1-2).! And the story goes on and on. The great saints of Scripture and of church history, while knowing their past, did not hear God calling them to go there. Instead, God calls them into a future that, no doubt, seemed uncertain and scary to them. I doubt that Jan Huss, who was burned at the stake in Prague, knew where his efforts to change the church would lead. Luther went through times of depression after he was excommunicated from the Catholic Church and, I would wager, wondered what difference, if any, his efforts would make. The same can be said of anyone who risks himself or herself for a cause they believe to be right.! And where would we be if people like others had not dared to e different and explore new possibilities -- people like Johannes Gutenberg who invented the printing press which, perhaps more than anything else, contributed to the spread of the Reformation in the 16th century; and people like Jonas Salk who developed the vaccine against polio, and Thomas Edison and Alexander Graham Bell whose discoveries and 3
inventions changed the way people live and communicate, and Mary Anderson who invented the windshield wiper in 1903, and Lyda Newman who was not only a womenʼs rights activist, but is also credited with inventing the first hairbrush. Combs, on the other hand, have been around for over 5,000 years.! Thatʼs the irony, isnʼt it? Those who look to the present and the future are looked upon by the rest of us as heroes and heroines of the past which may keep us from looking at our own present and future and the opportunities that God may be putting before us.! In his letter to the Corinthian church Paul reminds the people in that fledgling congregation that they are living letters of Christ, letters not chiseled on tablets of stone (such as the Ten Commandments) or written with ink, but rather letters written in our hearts by the Spirit of the living God. The letter kills, Paul writes, but the Spirit gives life (II Cor. 3:6). Paul is as much as saying that, while the past is important and is part of who we are and we need to know it, God expects us to live in the present because God is at work among us now.! God can have it both ways. In Isaiah we find the prophet reminding the people: Look to the rock from which you were hewn, and to the quarry from which you were dug. Look to Abraham your father and to Sarah who bore you;... (Is. 51:1b-2a). But the same prophet attributes these words to God: Do not remember the former things, or consider the things of old. I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert (Is. 43:18-19).! Even in the same letter Paul writes to the Corinthians that there is such a thing as a healthy disregard for the past: So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: 4
everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new! (II Cor. 5:17). In other translations we read, The past is finished and gone; behold, the new has come. Thereʼs a freshness, a newness to what God is about.! We are the people of God. As such, we need to know our story, our history. But as the people of God, we also look with eagerness to see how God is active and at work in the world now, and how we might be letters that declare the love of God for this world as exemplified in Jesus Christ. Our Presbyterian and Reformed tradition has put it this way: we are reformed and always being reformed, according to the Word of God. That is, we are part of the Reformed tradition; that is who we are, that is the rock from which we are hewn. But we belong to a God who is always doing something new and who is calling us to risk ourselves for the sake of that enterprise.! Before he became president of Princeton Seminary in 1936 John Mackay was a Presbyterian missionary in South American, first in Peru, then Uruguay, and then throughout that continent. One of the things he is reputed to have said that has stuck with me is how he noticed that, when there was a parade, there were always people in the parade, but there were also always spectators hanging out the windows above the street. Mackay observed that Christians are not spectators, but persons in the street who are active and involved in the life of the community.! I think thatʼs what Paul is saying in II Corinthians. We are all letters of recommendation for the gospel of Jesus Christ. As such, we ourselves need to be open to what the Spirit may be saying to us and to our generation.! Last weekend was a wonderful way of connecting to our past. But we cannot stay there. As Will Willimon has said, Jesus is on the loose in the world, and we need to 5
follow him wherever he may go, heeding his call to risk ourselves for the sake of the gospel and of his kingdom. I donʼt know what exciting things God may be calling us to do in the months and years that lie ahead, but I do know and believe that the Reformation of the 15th and 16th centuries continues today because it was not only a reformation of the mind, but it was also a reformation of the heart.! Where will the Spirit lead us? I donʼt know, but itʼs an exciting ride, and I hope that we will never ask to be let down.! Thanks be to God! 6