Visit to a Small Planet

Grizz and I collaborate on the script.

NB: According to my granddaughter, Grizz is female.

The scriptures referred to are Jeremiah 31:31-34 and Romans 3:19-28.

CT: Well, we have a special visitor for Reformation Sunday: our interplanetary visitor...Uh, what's your name again?

G: Grzl'pltz.

CT: Ye-ah. I'm gonna call you Grizz. So the first time you visited us, back at St. Francis many years ago, you said you were studying earth.

G: I wanted to determine if earth was an asylum or a prison.

CT: An asylum or a prison. And that was because...?

G: You are cut off from all other intelligent lifeforms in the universe. I thought the reason was, while humans usually know what you should do, you don't do it.

CT: Oh, that's right. And if we willingly do what we shouldn't...

G: You are lawbreakers and this is a prison.

CT: But if we do what we shouldn't do unwillingly...

G: You are sick and this is an asylum.

CT: Is there no third option?

G: That you are all dumb.

CT: Hmm. I think I explained then that we are kinda all of them. Sometimes we ought to know better and we just don't think. But also it's hard for us to do what's right at certain times and so we deliberately take the easy way out and don't do what we should. On the other hand, because of our fallen human nature, it's impossible for us to do right all the time. We do things we know will harm others as well as ourselves and we don't know why. We're spiritually sick.

G: And you told me how God in Jesus came to save you.

CT: That's right and because of what he did, we just have to put our full trust in him to be saved. And then he starts the process of transforming us into the people he created us to be.

G: So what is this Reformation?

CT: It's really a return to that message, thanks to a man named Martin Luther.

G: Ah, yes. 20^th century minister and civil rights activist.

CT: No, that's Martin Luther King Jr. He was probably named after the original Martin Luther. As you saw at the beginning of our service, on All Hallows Eve in 1517, Luther nailed to the door of his church 95 thesis or propositions he wanted to debate about the doctrine of indulgences. That led to a major rethinking of Christianity.

G: But according to our records, at that point in Europe's history, most people were Christians.

CT: True, but the church had drifted from the gospel or good news of Jesus. It was a big bureaucracy, with a lot of money and power. And what Luther proposed was going to make huge changes in the way it operated.

G: He wanted to get rid of the church?

CT: No, he wanted to reform it. He did want it to get rid of some things, like paying for indulgences to get people out of purgatory.

G: (makes scanning sounds) I just scanned all 31,102 verses of the Bible. It doesn't say anything about indulgences or purgatory.

CT: Precisely. In the 1500 years since Jesus was on earth, things got added that weren't in the Bible, and some that couldn't even be deduced from it. So by that time selling indulgences, or time off of doing penance in purgatory, was a way the church raised money. Luther's archbishop was doing it, to pay for his new and third bishopric, and some of that money was going to the Pope to rebuild St. Peter's church in Rome.

G: If the church leaders were doing it, what's wrong with that?

CT: Like to see a list of 95 things wrong with that? But mainly it misrepresents our relationship with God. It says we have to earn God's favor or grace, that we have to work or pay to get right with him. It ignores God's love and willingness to forgive us.

G: But if you do something wrong, shouldn't you pay for it?

CT: If you take or damage something that belongs to something else, sure. But what if you can't pay the cost? What if everyday you say and do numerous things that are wrong, or neglect to do things you should? We lie; we cut corners; we break traffic laws when we can; we lust after people we shouldn't and covet things we shouldn't. We don't love God as we should or our neighbor, much less our enemy. How could we possibly pay for everything we have done wrong our entire life? As it says in Psalm 49, “...the ransom of a life is costly; no payment is ever enough....” (Psalm 49:8) Yet the church was saying that if you pay them money, you could get out of punishment for your sins.

G: When I scanned the Bible it said that Jesus paid for all our sins.

CT: Exactly. Luther himself used to worry about every little sin he had committed. He despaired of ever being righteous in God's eyes. And then, in the course of teaching the books of Romans and Galatians, he realized that Jesus had taken care of that and that all we have to do is trust in God's grace revealed in Christ. The idea that the church could monetize that or in any way decide who gets God's grace was wrong. As it says in Ephesians, “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God—not as a result of works, so that no one can boast.” (Ephesians 2:8-9)

G: So Christians don't have to do good works?

CT: Not to be saved. As we said, you can't do enough of them. But once we are saved, good works inevitably follow. As that quote from Ephesians continues: “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.” (Ephesians 2:10) A doctor can't expect a person with a broken leg to walk. But once he fixes that leg, he expects the person to walk eventually. In fact, the doctor will write orders for the patient to do therapy so that he or she will walk again. Jesus fixes what's broken inside us with the expectation that we will walk with him.

G: So Luther explained this to the church leaders and they reformed the church.

CT: I wish. They called him to the Diet of Worms...

G: Diet of worms?

CT: I know what you're going to say.

G: Yummy!

CT: I did not know you were going to say that.

G: Can I have a diet of worms?

CT: It's a common mistake. In this context diet means an assembly and Worms was a town in Germany. They called Luther to meet with the Holy Roman Emperor and representatives of the Pope. He hoped they would listen to him. But they never let him debate what he had found in scripture. They just wanted him to take it back.

G: Did he?

CT: No. He couldn't in good conscience renounce the truth of the gospel. So they condemned him.

G: He died a martyr?

CT: He probably expected to. But his prince hid him from the authorities who might kill him. And while he was in hiding, he translated the Bible into German so all his fellow countrymen could read it for themselves and see if he was right.

G: So what got reformed?

CT: Ideas. Ideas about God and the church and the sacraments and the Bible and just about everything. And that led to new churches based on those ideas.

G: And he called those churches Lutheran.

CT: He didn't. He would rather the churches be called Evangelical because that means “gospel-based.” He wanted the church centered on Jesus and the good news about what God had done and is doing through Christ.

G: But the Roman Catholic church did not go away.

CT: No. And the disagreement got violent and even political. But eventually the Roman Catholic church did begin a counter-reformation and corrected some of the abuses Luther pointed out.

G: Did the Roman church ever accept the idea that we are saved by grace through faith?

CT: Actually it did. In 1999 a Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification was signed by the the Roman Catholic Church and the Lutheran World Federation. And in 2006 the World Methodist Council adopted it, as did the Anglican Consultative Council in 2016 and the World Communion of Reformed Churches in 2017, the 500^th anniversary of Luther posting the 95 theses.

G: So Luther's idea of the church being reformed is completed.

CT: Well, we still have differences to work out. Some of those differences are on important matters, such where authority lies in churches, and others. But on the essentials we are largely in agreement. We all agree that Jesus is God made man who died for us and rose again and that we are saved by God's grace, through trusting in him. We all believe God calls us to love him and love our neighbor in all we think, say and do.

G: So all is well and good?

CT: No. We still have problems to be dealt with. And part of this is because we focus a lot on reforming institutions and systems. But a good institution run by bad people can do bad things. People need to be reformed as well. When a potter sees that what he is making is not turning out right, he reshapes or reforms the clay into what he intended. God is the potter; we are the clay.

G: I find that image in Isaiah, Jeremiah and Romans. But how can people be reformed?

CT: By letting ourselves be changed by God, through prayer, through reading and absorbing his Word, through letting his Spirit work in our lives. The Bible says, “If anyone is in Christ, they are a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come.” (2 Corinthians 5:17.)

G: Most religions I have scanned are about maintaining and blessing the status quo; but following Jesus is about changing people and the world for the better.

CT: Yes. And it starts with changes in yourself.

G: So if you aren't changing, if you are the same person that you were before becoming a Christian, if you aren't growing spiritually, if you aren't becoming more faithful, more hopeful, more loving, more Christlike, you need to ask yourself if you are really following Jesus.

CT: What an alien thought!

G: Thank you. Can I have the worms now?