Kondo the Church!
As it was said to me over dinner Thursday night, you know you have arrived when your name becomes a verb.
Marie Kondo, who apparently lives in a small apartment in Tokyo, gives advice on how to get rid of stuff, and organize what you have left. Hence the verb “Kondo”.
Sounds like a plan. In fact, 500 years ago the church held a gigantic rummage sale. It got rid of a lot of stuff, some of it good, some of it as awful as my neighbor’s amateur paintings and the busted furniture that sits in their carport awaiting the HabiStore truck.
It was Mark Sisk who said, ‘every 500 years or so the church holds a gigantic rummage sale’ and Phyllis Tickle who quoted him in her book, “The Great Emergence.” Phyllis was hopeful that there was more to it than just getting rid of stuff. In fact, the discovery of what really matters, what amongst the detritus of centuries are the “keepers”, is what it is about. Not what you lose, but what you gain.
I lost a few pounds a few years ago, and gained by it. I emerged healthier. It wasn’t what I lost, it was what was essential for continuing life. (And living more joyfully as a result.)
That is in part what the Reformation of 500 years ago was about. Loss and gain.
Of course everybody lost something. In fact what was sought was security: in part freedom, freedom to worship without fear (as John the Baptist’s father put it), and in part simply freedom from fear. For the great fear of that time, apart from physical violence and depredation, was the loss of one’s eternal soul.
And so the question that came to the fore, that propelled some real abuses and powered some deep insights, was simply this: what must I do to be saved?
In some ways it is the same question we ask now, using different words: instead of salvation we choose security, instead of providence we choose prosperity, instead of grace we choose … greed - or do we?
It doesn’t have to be that way - because we have faith in a faithful God - and that faith can lead to action. However blessed we are, we know our faith is founded on something more solid than solid ground.
As Martin Luther said,
“Faith is God’s work in us. It changes us and makes us to be born anew of God. This faith is a living, busy, active, mighty thing. It is impossible for it not to be doing good works incessantly. Faith is a living, daring confidence in God’s grace, so sure and certain that believers would stake their lives on it a thousand times.”
https://elca.org/Faith/ELCA-Teaching/Luther-and-Lutheranism
What must I do to be saved? Somewhere in a stack of unsorted papers near my desk is a pamphlet that J. Lee Jagers gave me when I was sixteen years old. It was entitled simply that: “What must I do to be saved?” It listed all the different Scripture passages that answered that question. Remember somebody asked Paul and Silas that, and they gave an answer, somewhat along the lines of “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you shall be saved.” (Acts 16:31)
Sometimes it was “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ” - and be baptized. Often it was like that, “Believe and…”
“Believe and…” do something. Show something. Show somehow that you got the message, that you received the Spirit, that you are saved. Tell somebody, shout, seek baptism, something. Act it out and make it real.
Is that enough? Let’s come back to that.
At the time, all those years ago, I was relieved to hear that what I had already done was enough. I did not also need to fulfill this guy’s requirements, this guy at the same Boy Scout camp, who handed me a pamphlet printed all in red and said, you need to be baptized in the Holy Spirit. You need to speak in tongues. Why would you deny this gift?
Now I will tell you I was fortified, I was somewhat prepared, as the same Lee Jagers who sent me the pamphlet had already taught me and others the Biblical passages about spiritual gifts. I could see for myself that speaking in tongues (unknown, ecstatic or interpreted) was just one of the gifts. It was not required for salvation. In fact it came after salvation.
Just as I later learned that we do not do anything to inherit eternal life. It does not work that way. It is already too late. You cannot do anything about it. God is already at work before you are born, before you even think about it. He is there. Searching for you, seeking you out, searching you out, knowing you. And that is as old as time. Actually much older. Why would God wait around?
The one who creates us is the one who redeems us is the one who empowers us.
There is truth to the saying “Believe and…” in that once and as grace dawns upon us we begin to respond to its light. We begin to respond. To God’s light.
It is already day. We just need to open our eyes and live into it.
This is hard to see in the depth of night. And the darkest hour is well before dawn, when temperatures are low, body metabolism is at its quietest, and the chances men and women knew long ago of death are there a breath away.
And the chances we know, of death, from illness or catastrophe, or malevolence, are a breath away from us too. Not that we think about it much on a cheery fall morning.
Unless it is all we, one of us or some of us, think about. Some among us of course have it on their minds all the time. Perhaps someone near to them is in distress or dying. Perhaps they are behind the eight-ball on a mortgage or rent and may lose their home. Perhaps a child is in jeopardy through illness, mistreatment, or disease.
But even though, even then, when the darkness of evil or the sadness of sickness or the shame of defeat, are upon us and surround us, we are beheld in a greater love.
That is what we believe in, that is what we love, when we love Jesus, when we love God. And that is the love that saves us, heals us, makes us whole, despite and in the midst of our brokenness.
And that is what will lead us home.
JRL+ 5:42 AM Thu Oct 28 2021
October 31 Reformation Sunday (Jeremiah 31:31-34; Psalm 46; Romans 3:19-28; John 8:31-36). Lutheran Church of the Foothills, Tucson.
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