Reformation ~ Reformata; Reformanda (Continually in Reformation)

by Rev. David Rommereim
 
Jeremiah 31.31-34; Psalm 46; Romans 3.19-28; John 8.31-36 

I have always been interested in history. I like family histories, 
personal histories, histories of towns and neighborhoods. I even 
enjoy the history told by the paleontologists who dig, clean, touch, 
and date the bones they discover in places like the Burgess Shale 
of British Columbia, Canada, or the digs of ancestors villages 
covered with dust and clay. 

I was treated to a storyteller who shared a wonderful history of a
small western town. The storyteller moved gracefully through the history 
of the aspiring little village during the 19th Century. People move as fast 
as horseback or buggy. The town was not far from the discovery of gold in
‘them there hills’ of California. There was a creek called Coyote Creek next
to the hills called Almeden where people learned to grow grapes and make 
wine. Remember Aliened Wine Makers? 

The poet/historian moved me through the ancients of that valley who lived 
peacefully since 11,000 BCE. They moved to this valley for the same
reasons many moved there since gold was discovered, the computer 
was developed, and the valley called Hearts Delight became the 
Silicon Valley. These ancients, native peoples, built a community 
of 3 to 4 hundred persons in a valley which now packs in 2.8 million
people. The ancient people of this Valley of Hearts Delight were 
peaceful persons with peaceful family systems that lived off the land. 
They were not farmers because the food was too abundant. 
They were hunters and gatherers. 

The storyteller began to turn my interest when she said that 
despite the beauty and bounty of that valley, the abundance of
food and the low stress the tribe only could gather a maximum 
of 3 to 4 hundred persons. You would think there would be 
a bounty of life because of the sun, the beauty, the foliage 
and the ease of life. Nevertheless, the community would 
always remain small. People tended to die young, or grow 
old with deformities. 

As it turned out ~ the historian informed us ~ there was a 
toxin in their lives. The toxin was discovered long after they 
became extinct. The toxin was mercury. It was hidden in the 
water, in the shrubs, and in the dirt. The community’s character 
of being a people of peace was no match for the toxin, the 
hidden enemy. 

What makes the study of history interesting is that the 
poet storyteller knows that there is yearning of our souls, a 
yearning we share with all humanity, ancients, modern, and 
postmodern which is a yearning to live in peace similar to the 
native peoples of that beautiful valley. It is a yearning of 
commonness rather than contention. 

That yearning for soul, is what keeps us hopeful and alive 
through all the challenges of this pluralistic, polarized world ~ 
a world of Israel and Palestine and Lebanon ~ Afghanistan, 
Iran, Iraq, and the United States ~ searching for ways to live 
in peace through guns and ammunition and war policy over 
against peace policy. A world where North Americans feel 
compelled to separate the “us” from “them” while most of the 
citizens seek to live together in difference; languages, 
nationalities, countries of origin, sexuality, places of work, 
play, and Sabbath. 

You and I have the same yearnings as wrote Martin 
Luther in the Small Catechism while he taught parents how to 
teach their children about the Christian faith. Martin’s 
explanation to the first article of the Apostles Creed still says: 
“I believe in God the Father almighty creator of heaven and 
earth”. In addition, to a love starved community, a soul-
starved community Martin continued with an explanation 
simple, clean and straightforward. He said: “But, what does 
this mean?” It means, “I believe that God has created me and all 
that exists. God has given me (and here’s the similar yearning) 
food, clothing, home and family, daily work and all that I need 
from day to day”. Whether it is 2.1 gigabit, or a Mac or a PC, 
a used car or a new BMW; whether we still use a typewriter 
or a pencil to do our work, the yearnings remain the same. 
God, creator, and giver of life (vita), challenges me to yearn 
and learn how to acknowledge that grace, today, by being 
thankful and living gratefully into the future. 

The famous Lutheran preacher Alvin Rogness one told a 
story about thanksgiving learned from his older generation. 
He remembered that there was once an old 98 year old 
woman who was so thankful it was the month of May because 
she said that she lived through May for 97 years and hadn't 
died yet. Or the woman who had two teeth left in her old 
mouth. She remained so thankful, as she said, “Well at least 
they meet.” 

In a culture of privilege, and sometimes feeling a little 
entitled, I remember the old joke about the first article 
explanation offered by Luther to the people struggling in 
1523 with what it means to say the creed from Sunday to 
Sunday. I say the explanation just quoted, “...all I need from 
day to day...” acknowledges that the difference between 
them and us is between my need and the ancients need. In 
addition, often I confuse my needs and from my wants. I want, 
I want, I want. 

Professor Lewis W. Spitz from Stanford University wrote 
in his introduction to his two volume edition of The Renaissance 
and Reformation that “contemporary humankind is suffering 
from amnesia. (We) are drifting along in a state of mind that 
the Danish Theologian Soren Kierkegaard once referred to as a 
kind of world historical forgetfulness.” Others say that this is 
the price we pay for our desire to ‘live in the present’. In fact, 
it would not take much to figure out how involved we are in 
the present life at the expense of the past and (if you listen to 
our legislators) we look like we live in the present, thinking 
about the future, ... at the expense of the future of the third 
and fourth generation that come after us. 

Just think about how many items you could have bought 
with your 17 to 18% interest bearing Visa Card, before you 
get to pay off the principle. Moreover, think about the items 
that are already broken or out dated by the time you finish 
paying it off. We often lose the past, and for many of us, 
(myself included) we get an opportunity to call them “senior 
moments.” However, when it comes to our souls, when we lose 
the past we often lose a future at the same time. This is 
because we make decisions without digging deep at our 
roots. 

Now, I am not talking about the trauma of our past, the 
past we need to overcome; the abuses that may have 
happened because we have been injured, or in harm’s way 
by someone who has lost a sense of civility and humanity. That 
past must be overcome; we must overcome abuse, and the 
harm caused by injury. However, we must never forget that 
injury is such a way that we repeat the harm to another 
innocent person in harm’s way. 

Yet, the past is not simply reading history to pass a test 
on our SAT exams, confirmation obligations. No, reading of 
history means we look into the mirror dimly and then face to 
face, as we gather the impact of our memories. In addition, 
when we can suspend judgment, when we can forgive, when 
we can be forgiven, we find that the mirror is revealing what 
the Apostle Paul says, is “grace upon grace.” Moreover, this, I 
say is grace abounding; when we may look at our past 
without shame. When we may look at our history and learn. 

I know that when I buried my grandfather in the dirt 
which gave him his soul 1/4 mile from the earth he worked for 
40 years I also buried a piece of my living self. I also 
remember that that grandfather was a kind man who taught 
me a faith that I learned to move away from. He taught that 
to be Christian one must act a certain way. We glibly 
understood that way as a collection of “no’s”: no partaking of 
the fruit of the vine, no dancing, no card playing... etc. In 
addition, in his telling of that way of living he forgot to tell us 
that ‘he enjoyed it’ even though we did not. However, in 
burying him I learned that his roots were more than a simple 
pietistic faith builds on a series of “nos.” Rather his was a vital 
faith meant to sustain his living, and his living alone. In 
addition, it was the vitality of his spirit that I buried, not an 
unhappy man. 

The Reformation we are celebrating today went public in 
1517 when the priest Martin Luther printed the 95 Theses and 
nailed them to the Wittenberg Chapel door. It was a door 
like our Open Red Doors that provided information to the 
public over the needs and the habits of the community. In 
addition, in case you may think that we should stay out of 
public life I remind us that our roots go deep into the political 
uprising of the German state in the 16th century. We are 
called to enter the political arena stand for no guile, nor no 
shallow decision, nor, a compromise of the future generation. 

However, that this was called a reformation was not new 
to world history. There were many reformation events in the 
church and society throughout the history of the church. In fact, 
the word ‘reformation’ was first coined in Italy about 1200 by 
a monk Joachim of Flora, who took the term to predict a new 
age about to dawn in the Catholic Church. The term was 
picked up by persons like the poet Dante and used 
continuously to the age of Martin Luther, and Melanchthon 
and the humanist Erasmus. To those German and Austrian and 
Anglo reformers the word means a cleansing of the church, 

and a handing over of the church to the 3 mile per hour rabbi 
who walked among the people to teach about memory of the 
faith coupled with a new covenant with God in an age that 
was alive to God’s providing food, clothing, home, family, 
daily work and all I need from day to day. Moreover, a God 
who demanded that when those basics were not provided 
that God’s justice prevail. Moreover, it was a justice not 
meant to hurt the families who have, but simply provide for 
families who have not. The Reformation, in other words, was 
and remains a matter of the soul of the people; in times of 
plenty and times of want. 

Thomas Moore wrote in the book Care of the Soul “that 
the great malady of the twentieth century implicated in all of 
our troubles and affecting us individually and socially, is ‘loss of 
soul’”. And the soul he refers to is not only the deep mystery 
of a disciplined disciple of prayer, it is not only the out of 
body experiences of some Pentecostal glossalia, it is not only 
the ability to “pray good prayers in meetings”, nor is it the 
piety of those who appear to “do church better than others”. 
The soul is touched with memory, with place, and with 
yearning; not for what I may want, but a yearning for God. It 
is the soul, which cannot be intellectually defined, but may be 
imagined as one touches the stuff of their memory. Mr. Moore 
says that when ‘soul is neglected, it does not just go away; it 
appears symptomatically in obsessions, addictions, violence, and 
loss of meaning. In other words, care of the soul rids us of the 
maladies of our lonely lives; lives of quiet desperation. The 
soul is at our every door knocking, seeking, asking, and 
entering unannounced. 

Martin Luther was the reformer who remembered Jesus 
spoke on the cross, ‘It is finished.’ The cost of their discipleship 
was the Christ. In addition, the costliness of a disciple-less 
world is our contemporary predicament of violence, despair, 
illusions, and fear. In addition, this does not mean that we at 
Good Shepherd will solve all the problems of this community. 
Nevertheless, it will mean that we at Good Shepherd are 
challenged to develop the memory of Christ, with the 
yearnings for God through the hope of a future for our 
children and our elderly. Professor Joseph Sittler called that, 
“Faith active in love.” 

Martin Luther does not have to be a 16th century relic of 
Roman Catholicism. He does not have to nail 95 theses to a 
church door. Yet, it is the spirit of the reformation that calls us 
to be in reformation (sempre reformanda). 
This is the reason why your pastor seeks to challenge mission, 
with what is vital, so that what is essential to our 
living here in this place, to the acting, and offering of justice 
to our world and community, is what we decide to do 
together, not in contention, but with appreciation for one 
another’s spiritual touch of God. 

How do we do that? Philippians gives us a clear four-
step process. It is: read Philippians 2. 1-4. We are seeking 
for ways to be the church in an age that is crazed with 
delusions of grandeur, and illusions of want; in an age 
yearning for community while they sit alone listening to radio 
talk shows and call that community. 

Our mission is clear: to belong to one another in 
honorable ways, and belong to a community as citizens 
practicing a public life based on our values and principles of 
Jesus’ Way. It is having a home, a place, and a history while 
we live intensively in the present for a valued future. It is a 
yearning for the promise so voiced by Jeremiah to 
wanderlust people saying: “The days are surely coming, says 
Adonai, when I will make a new covenant with the house of 
Israel and the house of Judah. It will not be like the one I made 
with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to bring them 
out of Egypt--a covenant they broke, though I was their 
husband, says Adonai. However, this is the covenant I will make 
with the household of Israel, after those days, says Adonai. I 
will put my law within them, I will write it on their hearts; and I 
will be their God, and they shall be my people. No longer, shall 
they teach one another, or say to each other, ‘know the Lord’, 
for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the 
greatest, Says Adonai. For I will forgive their iniquity and 
remember their sin no more.” 

TO BE A GREAT POEM 
 ~ a reflection by Walt Whitman 
(from preface to Leaves of Grass) 

This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and 
animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that 
asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your 
income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not 
concerning god, have patience and indulgence toward 
the people, go freely with powerful uneducated 
persons and with the young and with the mothers of 
families, read these leaves in the open air every season 
of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been 
told at school or church or in any book, dismiss 
whatever insults your own soul--and your very flesh 
shall be a great poem. 

WILD GEESE 
~ by Mary Oliver 

You do not have to be good. 
You do not have to walk on your 
knees 
for a hundred miles through the 
desert, repenting. 
You only have to let the soft animal of 
your body 
love what it loves. 
Tell me about despair, yours, and I 
will tell you mine. 
Meanwhile the world goes on. 
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain 
are moving across the landscapes, 
over the prairies and the deep trees, 
the mountains and the rivers. 
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the 
clean blue air, 
are heading home again. 
Whoever you are, no matter how 
lonely, 
the world offers itself to your 
imagination, 
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh 
and exciting-- 
over and over announcing your place 
in the family of things. 

(Mary Oliver, from Dream Work) 

Submittted by Rev. Robert Emerick, Pastor, Bay Ridge United Methodist Church, [email protected] &
Rev. David Rommereim, Pastor, Lutheran Church of the Good Shepherd, Bay Ridge, [email protected]


We invite you to talk about something that is very important to all of us: TAXES and JOBS. 

First, we want to remind you that, from 1946 to 1971, taxes were fair and we had higher employment. Fair taxation means that all points on the economic spectrum do their part. To return to tax fairness in our land, it is vital to remember all of the purposes of our government established by the Preamble to our Constitution: “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and
secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.” 

Second, we are well advised to note the words of Adam Smith, known as the Founder of Free Market theory, who wrote, “…
the rich should contribute to the public expense, not only in proportion to their revenue, but something more than…that proportion.” (The Wealth Of Nations, Book V, Chapter II, Part II).  Adam Smith also wrote, “The rich, in particular, are interested to…secure…their own advantages.” (The Wealth Of Nations, Bk. V, Ch. I, Pt. II).

Third, the data from independent, unfunded, unsponsored research shows that: During the Great Depression, Federal spending dramatically reduced unemployment by 42.5% between 1933 and 1937 - from 24.9% to 14.3%.  At the end of World War II, Federal debt was the highest in history - 120% of our nation’s total annual economic output (GDP, or Gross Domestic Product).  And, from 1946 to 1971, we had higher tax rates on the highest incomes, and we actually had more prosperity, a stronger economy, and the Federal debt went down by almost 70%!  (See the Facts below.)

Facts about taxes, unemployment, Federal deficits, Federal debt, and real private sector growth:
                                                                                                                From 1946 to 1971:             From 1972 to 2011:
1. Average tax rates on the highest salaries and unearned incomes: -----------  80% -----------------------------  44.1%
2. Average tax rate on profits from investments (Capital Gains): -----------------  25.8% --------------------------- 18.9%
NOTE on Capital Gains: In 2006, “high net worth” individuals tax-sheltered $1.6 Trillion in “offshore” accounts - that figure may be higher now. 
3. Average unemployment rate: -----------------------------------------------------------  4.6% ----------------------------   6.4%
4. Average annual Federal budget deficit: ----------------------------------------------  1.3%-----------------------------  11.5%
5. Average total Federal workforce:-------------------------------------------------------  5.7 million ----------------------  4.7 million
6.Number of Federal Budget surpluses: ------------------------------------------------    8 --------------------------------   4
7. Real average annual private sector growth rate:-----------------------------------  2.5%  ----------------------------  1.8%
8. Federal debt: ----------------------------------------------------------------------  WENT DOWN 69.1% --------- WENT UP 167.5%

Conclusion:
Even with the Great Depression and WWII debt, and, even with the added post-war cost of the Marshall Plan, the GI Bill, and the Eisenhower Federal Interstate Highway System, and, on top of all that, the additional expense of the Korean War, the Cold War, and the Vietnam War, the Federal debt actually went DOWN 69.1% between 1946 and 1971!  What’s more, from 1946 to 1971 we had lower unemployment, much lower deficits, and higher real private sector growth. AND, we had all this prosperity and economic strength with higher tax rates on the wealthy.

We welcome discussion. Sources and data are available on request.
Rev. Robert Emerick,
Pastor, Bay Ridge United Methodist Church, [email protected]
Rev. David Rommereim,
Pastor, Lutheran Church of the Good Shepherd, Bay Ridge, [email protected]

This information is meant for honest teaching. We are aware that some members of the congregations may not agree with the publication of this information.