Reformation and Revival

 At the end of October our church celebrated Reformation Day.  I participated in it, but frankly with mixed feelings.  I am a follower of church history and can tell you why the Reformation was needed, in fact, why it was necessary, set in motion by the plan and purposes of God Himself.  But history is first and foremost factual, and facts need to be presented understandably if they are to be understood. I was manning the 95 Theses booth with a dog eared and stained reproduction of Luther's invitation to debate laid out on the table, looking much the way you might have imagined it being talked about and handed from person to person in the common rooms of inns and taverns.  What I found was that  many people had never heard of the Reformation, or Martin Luther, or the 95 Theses.  A whole section of their spiritual heritage and foundation had never been poured.  And of those that had some inkling of what those things referred to, no one had ever read the 95 Theses.  They had no opinion on them because they had no idea of what their content was.

The kids who came up to the table just wanted to know what they had to do to get a piece of candy.  At least they cut to the chase quicker than the adults.  But the fact of the matter is that you can't make the Reformation understandable by pinning the 95 theses on the wall while blindfolded, or fishing in a pond for fish cutouts that have the Solas of the Reformation written on them.  The bottom line was candy, not understanding.  Frankly I'm not sure you could ever make the Reformation anything but boring except to those with a scholarly or historical bent.  And that leads me back to what I was thinking about as I sat at the table and answered questions about Martin Luther, or his theses.  What is the difference between Reformation and Revival, and what does the church need?

Questions, questions, questions, and no complete answers seem to stand up and challenge them.  While I do not dispute the importance of the Reformation in the life of the church, I do wonder about its legacy, what we have made it to be.  At its hearts it was about restoring the centrality of Jesus to the church, retelling with power the story of grace received by faith, of restoring the liberty won for each believer at the cross, and making the very word of God available to each and every follower of Jesus.  What we have fashioned it into, in my thinking however, is the hammering out of each point of doctrine, finely honing it and expounding it so that a strong wall against error in thinking and behaving is hedged around us.  In my mind that's been tried once by a man named Moses who received the words of God on a mountain, written by the very finger of God.  And those that came after compiled instructions and elucidations on what those words meant, how they were to be interpreted, how they were to be lived.  And the law killed those who tried to serve it.  I am not saying that this is the rule, but it has proved itself time and time again, those that follow strict reformed teaching end up turning into grumpy old men.  Their life and joy is drained out of their soul.

That's why I wondered about Revival, rather than Reformation.  Revival seems solely to be the work of God's spirit, changing things from inside the human heart.  And maybe that is why we are so suspect of it.  We can never control the human heart, it is unpredictable, it it spontaneous, it appears to act without reason or forethought.  It moves on the wind of the Spirit, turning wherever the Spirit wills.  Two final scriptural thoughts.  First, Job 34:14  "If He (God) should determine to do so, if He should gather to Himself His spirit and His breath, all flesh would perish together, and man would return to dust."  And Psalm 104:29. "You hide Your face, they are dismayed; You take away Your spirit, they expire and return to their dust.  You send forth Your Spirit, they are created, and You renew the face of the ground."  Reformation and Revival....God removes His spirit and we die, He breathes and we are renewed.  God removes doctrine and dogma and what happens?  Interesting thought at least.