The Hope of Reconciliation

On the 500^th Anniversary of the Reformation

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 can boast.  For we are what God has made us, created in Jesus Christ for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.  –Ephesians 2:8-10

Once, I was interviewing for a new call and the call committee asked me about my favorite bible verse.  I hesitated, verses rattling around in my brain.   It depended a lot upon what was going on in my life at the time.  But, finally, I settled on Ephesians 2:8-10.   For me, these verses sum up the heart of my faith.  While these are not the “traditional” Reformation verses,  (Romans 3:21-31),  they crystalize for me the insight into God’s graciousness that drove Martin Luther to question and challenge the church of his time. 

The core of Luther’s insight and these verses from Ephesians is just this:  salvation is God’s doing, not our own.  God acts to reconcile the world to God’s self through Christ.  Even our ability to trust in that reconciling act (faith) is a gift from God.   The minute we start to boast about the superiority of our personal theology, righteousness, holiness or morality, we’ve missed the point.  (And we all do it from time to time, don’t we?). 

But why would God give us such an amazing gift?  Why save us?   The first and best answer is that God loves us and created us and everything that exists out of that great love.  But, Ephesians reminds us that God also created us for a purpose.   God saves us from ourselves so that we can be who God intended us to be in the first place:  the caretakers of the creation God loves…  including one another.  God saves us from our brokenness and death so that we can join God in the work of reconciling a broken and suffering world.   We were not created and recreated in Christ just to wallow in God’s love for us.  We were created in Christ to live in and through and out of that love as a way of life. 

On this 500^th anniversary of the Reformation, it is that grace-centered, reconciling way of life that we are called to live and embody as God’s people in the world.   This is not a time for denominational boasting.   It is a time for re-committing ourselves to join God in the hard work of reconciliation.  It is a time for re-committing ourselves to the work of caretaking that God created us for.

These next days, there will be commemorations and prayer services and gatherings around the world to mark the 500 years since Martin Luther posted his “95 Theses” in Wittenberg, Germany.   Many of these events will bring Lutheran and Catholic and other Christians together to reflect on 500 years of division and to rejoice in the growing unity among us.  It is my hope and prayer that these events will provide the impetus to continue the work of reconciliation that has marked the last half-century and spur us to continue working together to share God’s love, mercy and compassion with a hurting world.

Peace,

Bishop Mike

Please pray for peace, with justice, among all God’s children all around the world.  Thanks for reading.