by Bishop Bill Gohl
For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God – Ephesians 2:8
This weekend, our synod's Youth + Family Ministry will gather for its first large group event of the program year: FreeRide. Middle school students and their adult leaders will gather from across Delaware and Maryland at the NorthBay Retreat Center in North East, Maryland under the year-long Reformation 500 emphasis, Reform School.
I will confess, I don’t love that theme with its double entendre about something akin to confirmation classes and juvenile detention all rolled into one; however, it's good to be reminded that we are never done with the reformation and that the church at its best should always be an incubator for reform, a "reform school," if you will.
Luther and one of his theological contemporaries, John Calvin, rarely saw eye to eye about the nuances of the Christian faith. Calvin was wont to say: "ecclesia semper reformanda," the church must always be reformed; a point which Luther amplified in the Large Catechism: "a Christian life is nothing else than a daily baptism, once begun and ever continued." We are never done being reformed by the gift God gives us in baptism, we are constantly in reform school, dying to sin and rising to new life in Christ.
This sense of always dying to sin and rising to new life points to a church that is always evolving, always in a place of reformation. We rely on the means of grace, baptism and communion, for forgiveness, correction and direction; we are grounded in the Word of God, Jesus Christ, revealed in the holy scriptures to be discipled and disciplined for our work and witness in the world. Every gathering of the people of God in worship, study, fellowship and service become a "reform school" moment, mining from us that which God is summoning for the sake of the world in this day, reminding us again and again that we have been baptized for this moment, this season of the church’s ministry with and among neighbors near to us and across many human-designed divides.
I will not be with our younger disciples this weekend, and it grieves me since they often reflect in their lives of faith my deepest hopes for the future of this church. This weekend, I will carry you and your prayers to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, where our companion Northern Great Lakes Synod, will celebrate the installation of Katherine Volz Finegan as their new bishop.
But if I were with our middle school students this weekend, I would remind them of another distinctively Lutheran Christian commitment as they enter a time of Reform School: Our baptism in Christ roots us deeply in a living, not static, relationship with God; because Jesus makes us free, we are grounded, secure and on the move all at the same time.
The sixteenth-century reformers lifted up central tenets of the Christian faith by challenging practices and misused doctrines that had obscured them. Much in the same way, we should be in a constant state of reformation, creating in our communities of faith "reform schools" where God can continue the work of the Spirit, birthing from our churches – and in each one of us – new life in Jesus Christ for the sake of the world.
God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ — by grace you have been saved — and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the ages to come he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God— not the result of works, so that no one may boast. 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. – Ephesians 2:4-10
Luther and one of his theological contemporaries, John Calvin, rarely saw eye to eye about the nuances of the Christian faith. Calvin was wont to say: "ecclesia semper reformanda," the church must always be reformed; a point which Luther amplified in the Large Catechism: "a Christian life is nothing else than a daily baptism, once begun and ever continued." We are never done being reformed by the gift God gives us in baptism, we are constantly in reform school, dying to sin and rising to new life in Christ.
This sense of always dying to sin and rising to new life points to a church that is always evolving, always in a place of reformation. We rely on the means of grace, baptism and communion, for forgiveness, correction and direction; we are grounded in the Word of God, Jesus Christ, revealed in the holy scriptures to be discipled and disciplined for our work and witness in the world. Every gathering of the people of God in worship, study, fellowship and service become a "reform school" moment, mining from us that which God is summoning for the sake of the world in this day, reminding us again and again that we have been baptized for this moment, this season of the church’s ministry with and among neighbors near to us and across many human-designed divides.
I will not be with our younger disciples this weekend, and it grieves me since they often reflect in their lives of faith my deepest hopes for the future of this church. This weekend, I will carry you and your prayers to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, where our companion Northern Great Lakes Synod, will celebrate the installation of Katherine Volz Finegan as their new bishop.
But if I were with our middle school students this weekend, I would remind them of another distinctively Lutheran Christian commitment as they enter a time of Reform School: Our baptism in Christ roots us deeply in a living, not static, relationship with God; because Jesus makes us free, we are grounded, secure and on the move all at the same time.
The sixteenth-century reformers lifted up central tenets of the Christian faith by challenging practices and misused doctrines that had obscured them. Much in the same way, we should be in a constant state of reformation, creating in our communities of faith "reform schools" where God can continue the work of the Spirit, birthing from our churches – and in each one of us – new life in Jesus Christ for the sake of the world.
God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ — by grace you have been saved — and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the ages to come he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God— not the result of works, so that no one may boast. 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. – Ephesians 2:4-10