10-28-07

It is on a Wednesday this year. To be specific, it is this Wednesday. What am I thinking of? I remind you, I am a minister, and you are in church. What day is Wednesday of this week? With the red paraments as a hint. October 31, in addition to being Halloween, is Reformation Day! Making this, the last Sunday of October, Reformation Sunday.

It is no coincidence. For, you see, Halloween and the Day of Reformation are related. A lesson some of you slept through during your Confirmation Class, so let us correct this catechistic failure on this Reformation Sunday. Or provide you an opportunity for another nap. It's your choice!

The precursor to Halloween began in Ireland, long before St. Patrick Christianized that land in the 5^th century A.D. The Celts (Kelts or Celts, both are correct) who lived there, gathered on Oct. 31, as led by their religious leaders, called Druids, to pay homage to a god named Samhain, who was their god of death. None of which will appear on the Reformation test, so you can just relax and listen.

The belief was on this day, Oct. 31, which was the last day of summer on the Celtic calendar, with November 1 being the first day of winter, they did not do autumn at this time in Ireland, the belief was on this day during which the days grew colder and darker, Samhain, the god of the dead, called back from the grave the ghosts of those who had died during the preceding year that they might have one last romp through the neighborhood before bedding down for their long winter's nap.

Therefore, the Celts built bonfires to lighten the dark night of October 31 in order to protect themselves from the ghosts and goblins which haunted this last night of summer. The original Halloween. Understand this was not a time to celebrate life, but a time in fear of the dark and foreign forces of death.

When Christianity came to the Celtics the Church co-opted this pagan festival, as it did other festivals of the Christian calendar year, like Christmas and Easter. No longer celebrated as the Feast of Samhain, a day in dread of death and the one-night return of the ghosts of the dead, the Church established November 1 as All Saints' Day, a day to celebrate life and the goodness of the saints dearly departed.

Instead of seeing death as a dark, alien place, as did the Druids, the Church presented death as a place where those who had labored on earth, now from their labors rest; where those who had fought the good fight in this life, now wear the victor's crown of afterlife; where those who had toiled and suffered on earth now receive their eternal reward.

All Saints' Day, Nov. 1. The medieval English word for this Christian holy day was Allhallows' Day. The day in which we hallowed, or held in holy reverence, the saints who had gone before us. The day included merrymaking the eve before in anticipation of celebrating All the Saints, which was therefore, appropriately enough, called Allhallows' Eve, which over time was shortened to Halloween. Halloween. The eve before All Saints' Day.

So Wednesday evening, instead of the dead roaming your neighborhood, children very much alive will be about. Drive carefully. And instead of carrying ghoulish heads under their arms, though the Druids still have some say, they will be carrying Jack-O-Lanterns beaming bright.

And instead of ringing your doorbell with the fear of death, they will ring your doorbell with enthusiasm, which you might greet them with joy and generosity, much more in keeping with the Word of life we know through Christ.

Frankly, I think Halloween is fun. Join as for our "Trick or Trunk" as we reach out to the children of our neighborhood, as well as our own. Halloween is not the birth day of the devil, as some profess who prefer a faith of fear. It was not so for the ancient Druids, who invented it, nor has it ever been so for the history of the Church, who gave it a Christian spin.

Now, let's move up several centuries. By the 16^th century the Church added a new wrinkle to All Saints' Day. Wouldn't you know, it was a fund raising scheme the church linked to this holy day? Though sold year round, the sale of indulgences was especially brisk on All Saints' Day, the day in which we remember those who have gone before us.

So as we remembered our favorite Uncle Bartholomew, who liked his brew, we could lessen our concern for Bart's place in the hereafter by purchasing indulgences from the Church. In this way we could help reduce Uncle Bartholomew's penitential lifting in purgatory prior to his departure for heaven, at least we pray and pay. We purchased indulgences to give Bart a boast.

There was no better day to purchase indulgences than All Saints' Day. If the Church did not exactly run a fire sale, it certainly did encourage the practice, especially important now in the early 1500s for the Church was constructing St. Peter's Cathedral in Rome, and for those of you who have been there, you know it is the greatest & biggest Cathedral in the world. You can guess how expensive it was to build even back then. So buy those indulgences, and build the Church while bailing out beloved Uncle B.

Some of the faithful objected to the concept of the Church selling real estate in heaven, sight unseen, of course, an Augustinian monk named Luther among them. So it happened on Oct. 31, the meddling monk, who was also a teacher at the University of Wittenberg, Germany, knowing the indulgence vendors would be setting up their booths the next day for the All Saints' Day sale, nailed a list of 95 complaints to the church door at Wittenberg, that this corruption of the One Holy Catholic Church, and other criticisms, might be debated.

This is what one did back then to spark a debate. You nailed a pronouncement to the church door, and then folks would come and gather around with their soap boxes. You'll notice the nails in our doors out front, from which our red ribbons hang this morning.

So ripe for revolution were these days that Luther's spark landed as a cigarette in one of our drought dry forests this summer, and it set off a conflagration that burned for the next 400 years called the Protestant Reformation. Begun with Luther and the 95 propositions posted on Halloween Day, 1517. And that, my friends, is the long answer as to how Halloween and the Day of Reformation came to be celebrated on the same day.

So, again class, what day is this Wednesday? Correct answer: It is Halloween and Reformation Day.

Let's do a little more Luther, as long as we are here together: for though it may be said the fires of the Reformation are extinguished, the message of the firebrand of the Reformation continues to ring, I hope and pray.

The message being: we are saved by God's grace. Not by our works, not by our wealth, not by our good looks, but by God's grace. The battle cry of the Reformation, "by grace alone," and still the foundation of all Christian experience, despite the ways, yes, even the church, loses the message to theologies based on merit. No, it is by God's grace we are saved.

Luther was a man burdened by guilt, which manifest itself in depression. Well, there was a lot of stuff worthy of depression in 1500. It was only a few generations removed from the plagues which wiped out one-half the population of Europe. And the plague still persisted, including taking the life of two of Luther's brothers.

Consequently, death was a major theme in medieval Europe, as it was with the Druids of the original Halloween. Much of medieval life was for the purpose of preparing for death, and doing those things that would increase one's chance of getting into heaven.

Everywhere there were reminders of our mortality, including in the great Cathedrals where the statues and stained glass windows pictured Christ as judge, or warrior with sword in hand, or Christ crucified on the cross, which Luther said reminded him of the punishment he deserved for his wretched sins.

In the church at Mansfeld, Germany, where Luther grew up, there was a stained-glass window which showed the Church as a ship on a tempestuous sea, a common symbol of the Church. But in this ship, riding safely aboard, were not the disciples with Jesus, but monks and nuns, while drowning in the tempestuous seas about were the pathetic laity. It presented a pretty clear picture. If you wanted to get safely to the other side, you better get thee to a monastery or nunnery.

Precocious Martin picked up on this point, and disappointed his father, who wanted him to be a lawyer. Though Luther began graduate studies in law, one day while in route back to school following a semester break, he was caught in a violent thunder storm, and perhaps visualizing the stained glass ship upon the chaotic seas, he fell to the ground and vowed to enter the priesthood if his life were spared.

It was and he did. Meet monk Martin.

As an Augustinian monk Martin was meticulous in observing the monastic rules. He was serious about his salvation. As he said, "If ever a monk got into heaven by his monkery, it was I." The problem was the harder he tried, the more depressed he became, for the greater he grew in awareness of his own unworthiness. "Wretched worm" was the way he described himself.

Every monk had a confessor, and fortunately for Martin he had a wise one. Staupitz, a vicar in the Augustinian order, knew Luther was missing the point of the gospel. He was mistaking the means, the monastic exercises, for the end, which is salvation. In other words, Martin thought he could earn his salvation.

So Staupitz arranged for Luther to teach at the new university at Wittenberg, that he might study if not experience the Gospel first hand. Wisely, Luther was sent to teach a course on Paul's Letter to the Romans.

So it was one night in preparation for his lecture, Luther was reading the fifth chapter of Romans, as you heard read this morning. And Martin stumbled across the verses, "...since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand..." (1-2)

With this reading Luther experienced the Gospel, the good news about God's love for us through Christ. It was not because of his monastic maneuvers that God loved him, it was because of Jesus' sacrifice for us "while we were yet sinners" (8). And with this Martin was transformed. No longer a "wretched worm," but a beloved child of God. This led Luther to challenge the medieval theologies of his day which had buried the good news of God's grace with the rules and regulations of the Church, making it appear salvation was something we achieved by our work or purchased with our pocket books and not a free gift from God.

Luther got this from Paul, just as did Augustine, founder of Luther's order of monks. The Augustinian's shorthand way of expressing God's grace was to quote Paul's "justification by faith." To stretch it into one sentence, it is as Paul writes to the Ephesians, " It is God's grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God - not the result of your works. " (8) Hopefully this clears it up. "Justification by faith," not works.

Or as the famous 20^th century theologian, Paul Tillich, explained it: "Accept the fact that you are accepted, even though you may feel unacceptable." A definition Luther would have liked.

I would suggest another approach. We each share a need in common: to know that we matter. Luther and Paul both had this need as well. It has been the same yearning in every age. We need to know our lives count for something. Why, we can even endure much suffering, if we know our lives have significance and worth, and that our suffering is for a purpose.

It is precisely to deliver this message that Jesus came into our lives. The Gospels record how it happened. When Jesus went into a town he immediately sought those who were shoved to the edge of society, persons who were discriminated against because of sex or race, or ignored because of class, or determined inferior because of handicap, or shunned because of sickness, or shamed because of their past.

Jesus sought those who were struggling mightiest with self-worth. Or at least these are the ones who gladly gathered around Jesus, because none of that mattered to him. Jesus treated them as it they were individuals precious in the sight of God whoever they were or wherever they had been.

He called them by name and said outrageous things like, "You will be first in my kingdom," and "inasmuch as you do unto the least of these you do unto me." And "Blessed are the poor, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven."

You see, Jesus made the point God loves not only the gifted, wealthy and righteous, which everybody already knew, especially the righteous, but God loves those equally as well who society labels as unlovable.

This was the good news. And where it was proclaimed, previously crippled people walked with dignity. People who had lost sight of things saw again. And people who were slaves experienced a freedom that even their masters envied.

Even more incredible was Jesus' astonishing news, culminating on the cross, that "while we were yet sinners," Christ loved us and died for us, that we might experience God's grace.

The best part of this news is we cannot earn it. It is given to us as a gift. Which makes it hard for some of us to "simply accept that we are accepted," because most of us spend a good deal of time and energy trying to prove our worth and trying to be important by our own efforts. And with the time and energy left, we try to cover up our imperfections. But, hey, we've all got them.

Look at the saints we have seen this morning:

1) Old St. Paul, he suffered a disease we know not, but which sidelined him frequently. Furthermore, let's be honest, the Pharisee in Paul never entirely washed out. It creeps in there between the lines of his letters in the form of arrogance and chauvinism. Shoot, Paul was even wrong on some things.

2) St. Augustine, by his own confessions, had his dark nights of the soul as he wrestled with lustful thoughts and sexual fantasies and with that a deep sense of unworthiness.

3) And our lovable Luther had coarse manners, and even coarser speech. For years his writings were edited to clean up and clear out the vulgarity, not to mention the anti-Semitism.

But these saints marched into heaven before us. None of them perfect. What they all shared in common was God's grace. God's grace enabled them to overcome their imperfections and give themselves to something greater than themselves, in spite of themselves.

They still had their troubles. What they no longer had was the need to doubt their worth and the burden to justify themselves. They no longer had to pretend they were someone other than who they really were.

In other words, they no longer had to dress up in costumes for Halloween in preparation for All Saints' Day. They chose between goblins and grace. And by their faith they accepted grace. We should do no less.

Happy Halloween.