On my bookshelf I have a book entitled “The Next Reformation”. If you search Amazon, you can find plenty of books that are titled in similar ways: the next Reformation, the new Reformation, Reformation again, etc. 

I get what those book titles are getting at, but I think in some ways, all of those titles miss the entire point of the Reformation from the perspective of Lutheran theology. People like Philip Melanchthon and Martin Luther weren’t simply fixing problems present in the Church during the 1500’s and then calling it good until a later point when someone else would have to take up the banner of “reform” again. Instead, what those early Lutheran reformers were doing were creating a system of reform, a theology of reform that was supposed to live on past them.

If you think about it, this is the truth of our lives and of our kitchens. Kitchens and lives are things that get used on a pretty regular basis. If you’ve ever spent much time in a kitchen, you realize that there is a constant need for “reform”. This reform comes in the form of washing dishes, putting silverware away, loading the dishwasher, unloading the dishwasher, wiping down the counters, etc. Each of those acts is an act of “reform,” bringing things back to the way that they should be.

Your life, like your kitchen, also needs constant reform. Martin Luther put it this way in those famed 95 theses: “When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said “Repent,” he intended that the entire life of believers should be repentance.” (95 Theses, Thesis 1) Now repentance is technically a little different than “reform,” but repentance reforms our lives – bringing us back to where we need to be, bringing us back to rightness and correctness. Your whole life needs to be constantly cleaned, just like your kitchen, and Jesus offers that cleaning to us.

If you’re a Lutheran, you should also recognize this beyond your own life. We have a heritage of seeing this on a “whole church” level. We look around at the Christian church, even at our own denomination, and we see a need for reform there just like we see a need for reform in our personal lives. We are called by the Holy Spirit to repentance and reform, we are called back to the truths of Scripture, Faith, and Grace, we are called back to Jesus.

This Sunday we celebrate Reformation Sunday at University Lutheran. As we do, we don’t celebrate that we “got it right” as much as we celebrate that God in His grace constantly calls us back to “get it right” in repentance and reform. Let us heed His calls to return to His truth.