GREETINGS REFORMING LUTHERANS,
Over the centuries, we Lutherans have kept a special day to thank God for the freedom that the word of God grants to believers and to pray that with the help of the Holy Spirit, we will be continually reformed and renewed for the ongoing health of the church. During the sixteenth century, some German Lutheran churches celebrated an annual day of thanksgiving for the Reformation, and in 1667 the festival was set for October 31 or the Sunday prior, since on this date in 1517 Martin Luther posted the Ninety-five Theses on the Wittenberg church door.
Along with thanksgiving we celebrate with hope and possibility what God has done and will continue to do through us, the church as Christ’s body. Think about how God shapes us as individuals and as a community of faith to be a witness to God’s activity in all creation.
As Martin Luther was shaped through the community of faith in his day, he was crushed by his sin, his failure to live up to God’s standards and expectations of holiness. Repetitive confession and study of God’s word in community reformed and shaped him as he grew to discover God’s good news of grace made known to him in Jesus Christ. God’s acting through Jesus, his life, his death, his rising and returning shaped Martin Luther by a grace that changed and shaped not only his life but the journey of the church. A journey that ripped the church apart giving birth to the Lutheran Church and Protestant Churches and a journey where we find today, Catholics and Lutherans working together on all of the things we hold in common which are much more than our differences.
God had not stopped shaping and forming us through the scripture,
through God’s gift of grace pulling us toward God and God’s hope for humanity to live and thrive and grow into the people we have been created to be. When difficulties arise, we can lose sight of God’s grace and the shape of God’s ideal for us. In the midst of difficulties, it is all the more pressing for us to look and keep looking for God to shape and form us. Luther’s journey reminds us to keep turning to God in community, with God’s word, dipping our fingers in the waters of our baptism and tasting the bread and wine of Jesus with us, trusting God to shape, form and reform us.
Give thanks to God, the potter that shapes us, adding gracious life-giving water to make us into a new creation, a vessel that bears the image of God in this place with one another to the world. Happy Reformation Lutherans! God's not finished with us yet. Thanks be to God!
BIBLE – Bold Inquisitive Belief Loving Expansively,
Pastor Connie Spitzack
