Through the Ages

As we prepare to celebrate Reformation Sunday next week, I began to think about one of the reasons why Martin Luther was so successful in his effort to reform the church, and that was the invention of the printing press. Gutenberg’s printing press was created somewhere between 1436 and 1439, but even though it was able to mass produce writing it wasn’t until around 1500 when there were over 100 printing presses in production throughtout many European countries that had these devices to mass produce documents.

In fact wikipedia says that between 1518 and 1520 the printing press produced somewhere around 300,000 copies of Luther’s writings. That mass production was only possible because of the printing press, but more importantly because the printing press itself had been so widely produced across Europe from 1440 to 1517.

I think it is important to see that these changes were taking effect at about the same time to create this powerful movement of reform in the church and because the church was tied to the government it was also a massively political change as well. The Reformation continued to change the religious and political atmosphere for quite some time, including after Luther passed and his colleagues and friends took on this movement of change and reform.

Which almost seems ironic because nowadays when you mention the word change in Lutheran churches the word is met with fear and suspicion. Somewhere along the timeline the need and the fire that sparked Luther and the Reformation was lost to many people and we became comfortable with keeping things the same and normal.

Looking at today’s passage from 2 Samuel, it has a lot to say that we could focus in on, but in light of today being Reformation Sunday, I saw this passage through the lens of reform and change. The main focus of the passage is on this idea of God living in a tent and David wanting to build him a house of cedar, but God tells Nathan that it will be David’s ancestor who will build a house for God. God even starts off the conversation by saying that God has always been in a tent for the Israelites since they left Egypt.

I thought about where God has been for God’s people since creation and how that has changed over time. We see God hovering over the waters of creation and then there is the image of God walking in the garden with Adam and Eve.

Then we see God as a voice speaking with Noah and then to Abraham and his descendants. God’s voice guiding them and blessing them as they listen to and follow God’s commands. We see God travel with them wherever they go.

We see God as a burning bush when God speaks to Moses and how God leads the people Israel as a cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. Then the ark is built and we see God’s presence symbolized in that way. Not only does God interact with the people of Israel differently as they change but we see the people of Israel move and live in so many different places as well.

This text from Samuel talks about the eventual building of the temple by Solomon and how that will also change the way that people experience the presence of God and the ways that the Israelites worship God in a centralized place. However, foreign powers take over their land and they are forced into exile twice where they must adapt to new ways to worship God.

Through the ages the ways the Israelites and now we worship God has changed and that change happened in a big way as I said through the Reformation, including the ability to read the Bible in a persons own language. Which to me, begs the question as children, ancestors, inheritors of the Reformation, and living through a global pandemic…what are things that are permanent and what are things that can and maybe should change?

Much like the printing press created a revolution in the way that people wrote and communicated and distributed information, we live in an age of technology where we can share and learn information at the tips of our fingers. I wonder where Luther might have ended up had he not used the printing press. To be honest, I think he would have gone the route of the earlier reformers that also tried to bring about change in the church, excommunicated or worse. I am not here to bring answers but to ask the questions of ourselves of how we have an opportunity to embrace the core of what it meant to be a part of Luther’s Reformation and apply it to our story today.

The core of our faith is the same and that hasn’t and won’t change. Much like the Israelites, no matter where they lived or how God’s presence was presented to them, they worshipped the one and the same God. Whether in their homes, at an altar of stone, in a tent, in a cedar house, or in a great temple the one constant was that they worshipped God. That’s what was permanent for them.

God was equally permanent and yet changing with them at the same time. God established the covenant with Abraham, made a kingdom through David, established worship at the temple through Solomon and then tore the temple in two at the death of Jesus on the cross. God’s promise to be with us no matter what and no matter where is central to our relationship with God. Whether it is today or when David united the kingdom or when Abram was wandering through the the lands following that promise, the one thing that hasn’t ever changed is God’s strong and faithful love toward us.

Like Luther and the message of the Reformation, let us be so bold as to change the things that need to be changed and hold fast to those things that truly matter so that nothing can get between us and the message of the Gospel. Nothing in all creation can separate us from the love of God as found in Christ Jesus. Nothing can ever do away with God’s love. No pandemic, no law, nothing. It isn’t about the what, but it is about the WHO…the I AM. The great IAM no matter the time or the place has ever left our side and that should be the one permanent belief that we hold onto and never let and change shake from us. God is for us and stands with us no matter the place or time, no matter how much has changed or stayed the same. God’s kingdom will last forever. Amen.