RED. It’s a color that evokes passion, perhaps even danger. Fire trucks, blood, chili peppers, lipstick….and Reformation Sunday.
This upcoming Sunday is Reformation Sunday, and this should serve as the reminder that University Lutheran’s tradition is for people to wear red on Reformation Sunday.
We do this because it matches the red of the paraments and vestments on Sunday. But…maybe…hopefully…there is more.
Maybe we wear red because there is passion, even danger, when we think about the Reformation.
There are all those lame stereotypes about Lutherans being meek and mild. Those don’t fit with Reformation Sunday. Reformation Sunday is for strong, powerful statements. “Here I stand, I can do no other.” It is for men and women that stood up against abuses, abuses of the Word of God that ended up abusing the terrified and the oppressed.
Reformation isn’t having those abuses. Reformation stands up and cries “foul!” Reformation seeks the solution to the problems. Reformation looks to God instead of man. It looks to neighbor and seeks the best for them. Reformation cries the pure Gospel aloud because it has power.
Reformation challenges the status quo with the bold and powerful sign of the battered and bleeding Savior on the Cross, dying so that we may live and be free. We raise that Cross in the face of the word like a protester’s sign, signifying the problem but also the hope.
Wear red this Sunday, and when you do, think about the dangerous passionate God who came to set us free from sin so that we might be dangerous and passionate like the Son.