Once upon a time, there was a very proud church. This church was proud of how big it was. After all, it was one of the biggest churches in its town. This church was proud of its worship. After all, it was very well attended. The music was excellent. The preaching was outstanding. And people felt a sense of God’s presence in their worship. They would say something like, “Surely, the Lord is in this place.” This church was proud of its annual budget. Its people were generous, and so it had excellent facilities, a fine staff, and it did many, many very good things in its community with the resources at its disposal. This church was proud of its theology, its way of thinking and believing and the clarity of its purpose and its identity. This church was proud of its missions. It was a leader in its state in both giving to missions and going for missions. This congregation believed that Jesus really meant what he said in the Great Commission, “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you” (Matthew 28:19-20). This church was proud of its fellowship. After all, there were children and youth and adults of every age and station—young adults and median adults and senior adults—together sharing in one another’s lives and in the worship and the service of God. It was a very proud church, the kind of church that sometimes said to itself, “Oh God, we thank you that we are not like all those other churches. Struggling in size. Uneventful in worship. Failing to meet budget. Wayward in theology. Weak on missions. Lacking in fellowship. O God, we thank you that we are not like those other churches.” Forty years later, this very proud church is but a shell of its former self. I could take you there to see it, and you would shake your head and wonder what on earth had happened.
Now, it’s not clear to me that in every case pride goes before a fall, as Proverbs 16:18 is sometimes translated. It seems to me that sometimes pride doesn’t precipitate the fall as much as it exacerbates it or accelerates it. It’s not clear to me that in every case pride goes before a fall as much as it goes before a long, slow decline. But however it happens, it is clear to me that this morning’s Gospel lesson from the Revised Common Lectionary applies every bit as much to churches as it does church-goers. It applies every bit as much to congregations and entire denominations as it does to persons and individuals who make up congregations and denominations. And it occurs to me that the message of this passage to congregations and denominations is all that more pertinent on this particular Sunday that is celebrated around the world—at least among Protestant churches—as “Reformation Sunday.”
The roots of Reformation Sunday go back to October 31, 1517, 490 years ago this month, when a Roman Catholic priest and university lecturer named Martin Luther nailed 95 theses or statements or arguments to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg, Germany. His 95 theses argued against the idea that forgiveness of sin or pardon could be purchased from the church by making a contribution to the effort to renovate the greatest church building in the world, St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. When Luther nailed his arguments to the door, a conflict began that has forever broken and fractured the church. The very proud and very large Christian church in the West came apart, in part, at least, because it was a very prideful church. A church whose size made it difficult for its leaders to be responsible and responsive. A church whose worship, in many ways, was inaccessible to worshipers. A church whose “budget,” so to speak, was so enormous and complex that it was, in fact, one of the primary economic engines of all of Europe, with massive land holdings that led to extraordinary profits from agricultural enterprises. It held a near monopoly on the tithes and offering and giving of the general populous without any accountability to those who were doing the giving. A church whose theology was above reproach by its congregants. A church whose mission was carried out by the relative few “religious,” while others just looked on. A church whose fellowship was strained and tenuous. I know any number of Roman Catholic priests in the United States today who have said things like, “If I had been a Roman Catholic in 1517, I would have been Martin Luther’s kind of Roman Catholic.” The church was in desperate need of reform. But what happened, of course, was not so much reform, as it was fracture, schism, brokenness that has never been repaired.
It’s not clear to me whether pride precipitates the fall or only accelerates and exacerbates it. It’s not clear to me that pride always precipitates a fall; sometimes it is a long, slow decline. But it is clear to me that there are those churches and denominations who to this day play the role of the prideful Pharisee in this morning’s Gospel lesson—“O God, we thank you that we are not like all those other churches”—instead of the role of the penitent tax collector who says, “O God, have mercy on us, for we have sinned. We have fallen in our efforts to answer your call. Have mercy on us, for we have failed you and our world and ourselves in our mission. Have mercy on us.”
In this morning’s gospel lesson we are reminded that the church is always under construction. The church is always undergoing renovation. The church is always in need of renewal. The church must always move toward transformation. The church always requires reformation. We must never be so proud that we do not subject the sacred cows of our size and our worship and our budget and our theology and our missions and our fellowship to scrutiny, to question, to challenge from within and challenge from without, so that instead of taking a fall or entering into a long, slow decline, we are constantly responding to the movement of the Holy Spirit of God among us and around us, sensitive to internal and external conditions that are constantly changing, with the result that our call and our mission in one decade may not be the same as our call and our mission in another. If we fall into the trap of pride, we will keep doing over and over and over again the things we did in the past while the world around us moves on and is filled with needs and opportunities for ministry and mission that we never see or hear because we are so very proud of being such a very good a church.
Instead, we must always be under construction and undergoing renovation. We must always be in renewal, transformation and reformation. The way forward with God lies in our penitence rather than in our pride. It is the penitence of a congregation that together and individually prays, “O God, have mercy on us, for we have sinned. We have fallen away from your call, and we have failed you on our mission. Forgive us, O God. By your grace and power, renovate us, renew us, transform us, reform us, in Jesus’ name and in Jesus’ service. Amen.”
This material is Copyrighted © 2007 by Jeffrey S. Rogers. It may be copied or disseminated for non-commercial use, provided this notice is included. The author can be contacted at jeffrogers110@bellsouth.net.
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