This 500th Anniversary of the 16th Century Reformation is also the onset of climate departure. Not just climate change, but climate departure, the tipping point beyond which there is no way back.
Martin Luther (1483-1546)
Preparing to preach on Reformation Sunday at Central Presbyterian Church in St. Paul leads to reflection on a strange text and several great hymns.
The text (Exodus 33:12-23) pictures Moses in the cleft of the rock with God’s hand covering him while God passes by with the reminder that no mortal can see the face of God and live. The hymns that come to mind are “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God” and “Immortal, Invisible, God Only Wise.”
Perhaps, like Moses in the wilderness, we are in the cleft of the rock — between a rock and a hard place — and more than a little humbled as the Creator of all that is, Being-Itself, passes by while we are in the dark.
This moment of climate departure demands a new reformation, beginning with the recognition that we, homo sapiens, are mammals with the horses, cows, dogs, lions, cheetahs, and elephants — and that our future is imperiled by the gods of greed and prosperity our hearts have manufactured.
“Human nature is, so to speak, a perpetual factory of idols,” wrote the 16th Century Reformer John Calvin.
2017 is a far cry from 1517, but it is, in this respect, the same.
A difference this year is that Martin Luther’s Ein feste Burg — “A Mighty Fortress” — will be sung in Catholic masses as well as protestant celebrations, bearing witness to the reconciling love of God over centuries of time.
Meanwhile the prosperity gospel — based on the idol of property — will go unchallenged in many churches, a departure from the truth that can only be found between a rock and a hard place: this cleft of the rock in 2017 while God passes by.
- Gordon C. Stewart, Chaska, MN, October 27, 2017.
Views from the Edge 
St. Louis Jesuits (I believe) have a song “Be Not Afraid.” I verse says “Be not afraid/I go before you always./Come, follow me, and I will give you rest.” I’d appreciate some rest.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thank you, Barbara, for the reference to this hymn. I pray you’re request is granted. Sooner rather than later. Yesterday’s David Brooks’ NYT piece doesn’t give much comfort on that score, but he reminds the reader that there is still hope that somewhere our better selves still lives somewhere in the American DNA. If it isn’t we always have Amos, Jeremiah, the rest of the Hebrew prophets, and the crucified-risen Jesus to lead us on.
LikeLiked by 1 person