[AI translation] The age in which we live today is also a Reformation for the Church in itself. It is often said that the world today is not favourable to the Church, that the spiritual climate today is not favourable to the Church. Well, I feel quite the opposite, and I could say that the current worldly thinking, the spirituality, the atmosphere in which we find ourselves today is very good for the Church, because it is a reformation for the Church, because it is constantly reforming the Church, the Church's thinking and the Church's life. When we are now celebrating the Reformation, our celebration of the Reformation should not be confined to talking about events of the past and recalling the memory of heroes who died long ago. No! But we ourselves are part of the Reformation. This is also shown by the fact that there is a great dividing line running through our churches: it is becoming less and less self-evident that one belongs. Anyone who wants to stay in the Church today has to do so with increasing self-consciousness and determination. Today, everyone is truly the religion they profess, not the religion they were born into. It matters less and less who, where, in which pastorate, in which register, what kind of registration. And it is becoming more and more decisive what one feels, what one believes and how one expresses it. For everyone who still belongs to the Church today, in one way or another, sooner or later it happens that Jesus comes to him personally and asks him: do you want to follow me or do you want to go away too? It is becoming increasingly clear that belonging to the Church cannot be an ornament, cannot be a decoupage, cannot be a good reference for getting on in the world, cannot be a habitual accessory to a certain civil way of life - but either a conscious and deliberate following of Christ, or nothing! If being a Reformed is only a legacy handed down to you from your ancestors, if it is only such a spiritual legacy, it will sooner or later be destroyed, just as the material legacies have been destroyed. So there is a great reformation of the Church, which of course does not come without pain and suffering. Here, too, a whip is cracking, as it did in the Temple in Jerusalem. But in the heat of this pain and suffering, it is Jesus who is shaping the new in His Church.Yes: this is what is important, this is what we must first of all see very clearly and firmly, that it is Jesus Christ Himself who is wielding the whip. True reformation is never what men do, but what Jesus does. We can never really create something new because we cannot renew man himself. But when Jesus does the reformation, then everything becomes truly new! Four hundred years ago, it was Jesus who shook a monk named Martin Luther in the silence of his monastery cell, almost to the brink of despair, so that he could be able to hear His Word, His word of grace, all over again. And I believe, my brethren, that it is Jesus - Jesus Himself - who is asking us again today, to the very depths of our hearts, if we really believe in Him? Do we really want to follow Him?
Of course, we are now looking at a different Jesus than the one depicted in the paintings and marble statues of past centuries. You know, for example, Thorwaldsen's statue of Christ: this Jesus is gentleness, forgiveness, goodness - his two hands reaching out to people with a blessing and invitation. Well, in this blessed, precious hand, we find it hard to imagine the whip with which Jesus turned against people and against people's religious acts! Well, now we must know the figure of Jesus cleansing the temple, for that too is part of His divine being! At least we will at last know the Jesus who is not there to grant our wishes, or to make our great feasts romantic and touching to the point of sentimentality, or to protect our health, or to be a fond memory of childhood, or sometimes to lull us into a pious mood - but who is the firm, hard, loving Lord of His Church.
Jesus there, in the story I read, used the binding brakes of the sacrificial animals as a whip with which He then carried out the great act of purification. And do you know, brethren, what Jesus is using today as a whip against His church? The spirit of the age! Precisely that secular thinking, that anti-clerical and anti-religious propaganda which is gaining strength all over the world! Yes: atheistic thinking, the propaganda of militant atheism, is today the whip that Jesus is using to reform and purify His Church! We must not be offended by atheist propaganda, still less defend ourselves against it with a counter-propaganda, nor reject it or attack it with a certain crusade; nor should we be frightened by it and imagine that now our faith is being eradicated from our hearts - but we must see it as a tool, a whip with which Jesus is purifying His Church. When Jesus in that story threw out of the temple in Jerusalem the sellers and their wares: the disciples, the true disciples, did not have the thought, "How cruel our Lord is!" but the Word that is written, "The love of thy house devours me." They knew a whole new aspect of their Master's great love. Let us see now also His great, fearful love in the way He cleanses us, even if it whips us, even if it hurts us!
So, my brethren, when militant atheism mocks or accuses the Church of something, we must take it seriously in the light of the Gospel, as a question for us to examine ourselves, concerning the past or present of our Church. Indeed, we must face with courage, and even with obedient humility to the Lord of the Church, the questions which Christianity receives from atheism, often with propagandistic exaggeration and distortion. For example, we ourselves must examine the legitimacy of the ideological accusation that the Christian faith, in its historical development, has been an ideological glorification of the conditions of bourgeois society. Is there not some truth in the claim that the bourgeois conception of private property and bourgeois morality were sanctioned by the Christian faith? It is good that the world asks us such questions! How else would we wake up to the fact that the Church of Jesus is not bound to any social form and cannot be the instrument of any political system?! Then, for example, is there no truth in the accusation that the pre-Copernican cosmology still persists in the thinking of the Church and in the public consciousness of the faithful, and that this is really an obstacle to scientific progress? Do you know that even here in this congregation there have been those who have been offended by the fact that I, in explaining prehistory, have said that the six days of creation do not mean six times 24 hours, and that Adam does not mean a certain Adam, but man in general! I dare say that this oft-voiced objection by atheism that the Church believes that God created the world in six days, when science has shown that we are talking about millions of years, has led our Church to a more correct understanding of the Bible, to a deeper and truer understanding of the divine revelation given in the Bible!
And it is just as well that believers have so often been mocked as heaven-facing, other-worldly, deluding themselves with otherworldly bliss - because it is precisely this that has forced us to take practical Christianity much more seriously than we used to. Jesus is driving out, you feel, from His Church the fruitless forms of cultic piety, the religiousness of ritualistic externals, and He is deepening our Christianity into a Christ-following that is a blessing to the world. Then we must also face the accusation that Christian peoples and churches have condoned, and often ideologically justified, the miseries of this world, war, colonialism and exploitation. Is this accusation entirely made out of thin air? Or have we really confused the gospel with our economic interests, our nationalism, our political ambitions?! Is it not Jesus who wants to purge all such falsifications of His gospel from our faith?! So let us not be afraid of atheist propaganda, but let us take it with gratitude and humility, as a painful but undeniable sign of Christ's fearful love! The whip that was cracked in the temple in Jerusalem did not harm the temple, in fact! It was for the good of the temple! Jesus was defending the temple with it. It was working for the sanctity of the temple, for the purity of the house of prayer. Atheism's accusations and questions, legitimate or illegitimate, should lead us to repentance and conversion, not because atheism is right about everything, but because such accusations always bring us back to the gospel and force us to understand the truth of biblical revelation in a new light.
It is still absolutely true and valid today, as the disciples perceived it in Jesus' strange, harsh attitude, "The fearful love of your house consumes me!" Love! He loves us jealously! That is why he is so strict, that is why he is so hard! And that is why the fate of the church is not hopeless! That is why the church has a future! We not only remember, but we are in the Reformation, in the love and action of our Lord in reforming His Church. The church of the Reformation is a church in repentance - a church that is always being re-examined, tried, tested by its Lord. So let us be glad when He is hard on us. He is training us, teaching us to be truly the Church, His Church. An army who do not argue with the world, but serve the world! Who renounce all social recognition, public reputation, financial security, to make it clear to non-believers that the Gospel is not an ideology but a way of life: a life force that leads and trains us to serve others without reservation. To be there for the other person with all our love and willingness to serve, despite the needle pricks and unworthy suspicions we have suffered. In the meantime, we may be diminished, those who did not seek Jesus there, but rather a real adornment, a tradition, a reactionary citadel, a pious pleasure or oblivion, may be alienated from the church. We may become poor in the process. It will not be a good deal for the church! There is no money to be made! You may have to suffer for it. It will be abandoned by those who are afraid! In these times of reformation, the army of those who hold on will be diminished. But the Lord will be great among them! Where Christ is, the cross is never far away. And that is our hope! For when we are weak in ourselves, then we will know how true it is that His power is done through our weakness, and that His grace is sufficient for us! Then we will know that indeed "Our God is strong..."
Our God is strong,
Our good armour and shield,
If he is with us, who is against us?
The Lord is our refuge.
The ancient enemy still pursues us,
His army is great, his weapon of valour;
There's no other like it on earth.
Our strength alone is worth nothing,
We would soon fall;
But the heroic leader fights for us,
Whom God has appointed by our side.
Who is it, you ask? It's Jesus Christ,
Holy Son of God, Lord of heaven and earth,
He is our triumph.
Canto 390 verses 1-2
Amen!
Date: 31 October 1962 Reformation