The Church’s Extreme Makeover
October 2010
I’m not ashamed to admit it. For the longest time one of our favorite shows was the reality television series, Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, hosted by Ty Pennington. I confess that I have a soft heart and love for underdog stories. For all of the drama on talk radio and the evening news, our world is full of really good deserving people who sacrifice for others…who in the midst of dire circumstances are able to keep their eyes on the prize--human relationships and caring for them and demonstrating love and service to others. Most of the time these things go unnoticed by others, and these people simply do right because it’s just what they are designed to do.
Which is where the show comes in. These people are working and struggling themselves ragged for others, and the show pulls on our warm fuzzies because it does for these people and their families what they can’t do for themselves. Who doesn’t recognize the phrase, “Bus driver, move that bus!” and the hope, surprise and overwhelming gratitude that is always resting just a yard away?
I know that there are criticisms of the show and its over-the-top homes that while beautiful and gracious, leave the recipients of the show with higher taxes and overwhelming upkeep on now supersized properties.
But then, maybe that’s the point. Grace is overwhelming. And when we’ve received it, it often leaves us with a reality that we’re ill-prepared to believe in or handle.
If we’re lucky, we’ll get a makeover or two or three at sometime in our lifetime. Maybe it’s a new haircut/hairdo, a new closet full of clothes, new glasses, new teeth…well, let me just stop there. But it will leave us changed somehow, even in a small way and will change how we relate with the world.
The Church, the one that began at Pentecost with the outpouring of the Spirit of the Resurrected Jesus, and ends with us today, has gone through several extreme makeovers…each of which ended up being more than just skin deep. Phyllis Tickle, founding editor of the Religion Department of Publishers Weekly, maintains that they’ve occurred about every 500 years or so. The first was the Great Collapse (around 500 AD) with the fall of the Roman Empire and the pristinization of Christianity in the monastic cultures that emerged through the collapsing Roman Empire. The second was the Great Schism (around 1000 AD) when the Church of Rome split off of the unified Christian Church of the day, forming a distinctly Western Christian tradition. The third was the Great Reformation (around 1500 AD), and is the Extreme Makeover that we Lutherans are known for. It was our namesake, an Augustinian monk and Bible scholar named Martin Luther, who initiated this makeover with the simple assertion that God’s grace through Jesus is real and isn’t for sale. More importantly, it’s free and it’s unilateral. (In other words, God doesn’t consult us on whether or not we should be recipients of it. God simply decides to give it to everyone. Period.) Lutherans celebrate this makeover every year on Reformation Sunday!
Tickle maintains that in the Western world which includes us here in the United States, we are now in a 4th Extreme Makeover, one she calls The Great Emergence. We are for the first time in almost 2000 years rediscovering Jesus and his mission, on Jesus’ own terms and without the Greek, Roman, and Enlightenment philosophies that have hidden Jesus and his heart for so very long.
So what? What’s this mean for you? Well, chances are if you’re reading this, you’re a Lutheran follower of Christ. And that means that you are a part of a Christian tribe that causes change in the world. It’s just a part of our DNA. We’re upstarts and rabble rousers…good ones…pointing out to people that the free and unmitigated love of God for this world is as real today as it was 500 or even 2000 years ago. But like those who went before us, we’ll have to discover for ourselves just how to tell a world that looks very different from Jesus’ world or Martin Luther’s world this incredibly Good News.
So here’s to our constant Reformation, and struggle as God’s people to live Jesus and communicate his free gifts to this world.
Happy Reformation Day! God loves you, and I do too!
Pastor Nathan
October 2010
I’m not ashamed to admit it. For the longest time one of our favorite shows was the reality television series, Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, hosted by Ty Pennington. I confess that I have a soft heart and love for underdog stories. For all of the drama on talk radio and the evening news, our world is full of really good deserving people who sacrifice for others…who in the midst of dire circumstances are able to keep their eyes on the prize--human relationships and caring for them and demonstrating love and service to others. Most of the time these things go unnoticed by others, and these people simply do right because it’s just what they are designed to do.
Which is where the show comes in. These people are working and struggling themselves ragged for others, and the show pulls on our warm fuzzies because it does for these people and their families what they can’t do for themselves. Who doesn’t recognize the phrase, “Bus driver, move that bus!” and the hope, surprise and overwhelming gratitude that is always resting just a yard away?
I know that there are criticisms of the show and its over-the-top homes that while beautiful and gracious, leave the recipients of the show with higher taxes and overwhelming upkeep on now supersized properties.
But then, maybe that’s the point. Grace is overwhelming. And when we’ve received it, it often leaves us with a reality that we’re ill-prepared to believe in or handle.
If we’re lucky, we’ll get a makeover or two or three at sometime in our lifetime. Maybe it’s a new haircut/hairdo, a new closet full of clothes, new glasses, new teeth…well, let me just stop there. But it will leave us changed somehow, even in a small way and will change how we relate with the world.
The Church, the one that began at Pentecost with the outpouring of the Spirit of the Resurrected Jesus, and ends with us today, has gone through several extreme makeovers…each of which ended up being more than just skin deep. Phyllis Tickle, founding editor of the Religion Department of Publishers Weekly, maintains that they’ve occurred about every 500 years or so. The first was the Great Collapse (around 500 AD) with the fall of the Roman Empire and the pristinization of Christianity in the monastic cultures that emerged through the collapsing Roman Empire. The second was the Great Schism (around 1000 AD) when the Church of Rome split off of the unified Christian Church of the day, forming a distinctly Western Christian tradition. The third was the Great Reformation (around 1500 AD), and is the Extreme Makeover that we Lutherans are known for. It was our namesake, an Augustinian monk and Bible scholar named Martin Luther, who initiated this makeover with the simple assertion that God’s grace through Jesus is real and isn’t for sale. More importantly, it’s free and it’s unilateral. (In other words, God doesn’t consult us on whether or not we should be recipients of it. God simply decides to give it to everyone. Period.) Lutherans celebrate this makeover every year on Reformation Sunday!
Tickle maintains that in the Western world which includes us here in the United States, we are now in a 4th Extreme Makeover, one she calls The Great Emergence. We are for the first time in almost 2000 years rediscovering Jesus and his mission, on Jesus’ own terms and without the Greek, Roman, and Enlightenment philosophies that have hidden Jesus and his heart for so very long.
So what? What’s this mean for you? Well, chances are if you’re reading this, you’re a Lutheran follower of Christ. And that means that you are a part of a Christian tribe that causes change in the world. It’s just a part of our DNA. We’re upstarts and rabble rousers…good ones…pointing out to people that the free and unmitigated love of God for this world is as real today as it was 500 or even 2000 years ago. But like those who went before us, we’ll have to discover for ourselves just how to tell a world that looks very different from Jesus’ world or Martin Luther’s world this incredibly Good News.
So here’s to our constant Reformation, and struggle as God’s people to live Jesus and communicate his free gifts to this world.
Happy Reformation Day! God loves you, and I do too!
Pastor Nathan
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