Reformation and Reconciliation (R & R)
Or Why Change the Apostles' Creed?

Happy Halloween! Or "Happy Harvest Festival!" Happy Reformation Day! Don't forget to vote Tuesday. Could we add anything else to this day? What a lot going on.

Are your kids going trick or treating tonight? Are you ready for trick or treaters? Will your porch light be on so you can give candy to the kids who come by in their costumes -- some scary and some just plain cute? Or have you abandoned celebrating Halloween along with the increasing number of Americans who see it as a pagan festival and who now have what are being called "Harvest Festivals" as an alternative?

Most of us grew up thinking Halloween was a harmless little holiday for the kids. But others now see it differently. And that difference is just one more example of how our country is becoming more and more polarized around a whole lot of issues. That's going to show up Tuesday when we go to the polls to choose our next president. Disagreement is a healthy, good thing. Especially in a democracy like ours, and even in the church. Disagreement turns unhealthy, though, when people continually line up on the same opposing sides regardless of what the issue actually is. I'm no expert analyst, but that's what seems to be happening more and more in our country. We're calling this the "culture wars." We divide along ideological lines. And so, most likely, the same people who have abandoned Halloween for a harvest festival may very well vote for George Bush and the people who are going trick or treating may very well vote for John Kerry. And unless you've been living in a vacuum, you can list all the other issues we line up opposing one another on. This polarization is becoming such a powerful force it almost seems to be taking on a life of its own. It seems anymore that if you take one position on an issue, all the other controversial issues line up right behind and you don't have to think anymore. You're just given a label and that's where you stand on a whole cluster of issues. We increasingly define and label one another according to what we're against rather than what we're for.

Well, I'm happy to say I have good news today for those of us who are weary of such unhealthy polarization. Today, Reformation Sunday, the eve of All Saints Day, or All Hallow's Eve (which is how Halloween got its name, by the way), is the 487th anniversary of the day Martin Luther nailed his 95 points of debate to the door of the castle church in Wittenberg Germany in 1517. He ended up causing such a stir that he changed the world. And the church became polarized into two camps -- Protestant and Roman Catholic. But today is also another very significant anniversary. Today is the fifth anniversary of the signing of the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification by Lutherans and Roman Catholics. Five years ago today, Lutherans and Roman Catholics officially and publicly declared that the theological issue that so polarized the world in the sixteenth century need no longer polarize us today. In essence, we agree on a shared understanding of justification. We've come to a consensus. That doesn't mean we're in full communion with the Roman Catholic Church. That doesn't mean we still don't have differences. But it does affirm that there is far more that unites us than divides us, and that we can begin to put away the hostility we once had toward one another. What a relief.

I realize this may be much more difficult than it sounds. Especially for some of us who grew up when hostilities between Roman Catholics and Protestants were pretty high. I've heard stories of kids who took catechism in the Roman Catholic church as late as the 1960s who were told not to play with Protestant kids. If they did, they were taught, they would go to hell. I've heard Protestants talk about how their parents told them if they were walking down the street and they saw a Roman Catholic approach, they should cross the street and walk on the other side. If you grew up with this mindset, it's probably pretty hard for you to think about reconciliation on this Reformation Sunday. But more and more, reconciliation is what being Lutheran is about. Reconciliation and Reformation go together. "R & R." Get it? Our Evangelical Lutheran Church in America takes ecumenism -- what some call the movement to unify Christian churches -- very seriously. There are many who see Lutheranism as a reforming movement within the church as a whole. After all, Luther never intended to break away from the Roman Catholic Church. He intended to change it from within. The ecumenical initiatives our ELCA is taking are an effort to continue the work Luther set out to do from the beginning. We are seeking out relationships of full communion in order to give the Gospel first place in the church.

This reforming movement that Lutheranism is within the church as a whole is a reforming movement that is both catholic and evangelical. To be evangelical means to be committed to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. To be catholic means to be committed to the fullness of the apostolic faith and its creedal, doctrinal articulation for the world.¹ To be ecumenical means to be committed to the oneness to which God calls the world in the saving gift of Jesus. Your new pastor is a prime example of this. I just finished three years on the staff of an Episcopal Church and functioned fully as an Episcopal priest, even though I fully maintained my official status as an ELCA pastor of the Southeast Michigan Synod. And we showed the world -- or one little corner of it, anyway -- a unified face of Christianity.

We got a new dog last August. We have a soft spot in our hearts for rescue dogs. And this little black cocker spaniel from the Humane Society is the cutest little guy you've ever seen. His name is Carl. But there's one thing about Carl that is driving us all crazy. He is afraid of men. My husband Barry and our oldest son Matt who is 16 cannot go anywhere in the house without Carl barking his head off. He is scared to death of them. He runs away when they come in the room. And it's all so unnecessary. They intend him no harm. They've done him no harm. They're trying to build a relationship with him and it's very frustrating for them. But Carl must have been hurt so badly by a man, we guess, that he can't let go of it. That wound is running his life. That wound is leading him.

I wonder if that's still true for some of us Lutherans when it comes to our relationship with the Roman Catholic Church? Are old wounds still leading us? Is that why we're afraid of the word catholic? This dawned on me because of conversations I've had with you about the creed and which creed we should be using in worship. I promised we would explore this in the sermon today and so here we go. Why do we have two different versions of the Apostles' Creed? Why is one pasted in the back of the hymnal? Why did they change the old creed when the Lutheran Book of Worship came out in 1979? Is it going to be changed again when our new worship resource comes out in the next few years? Shouldn't we be saying the original Apostles' Creed?

First of all, let me say that I never intended to get into this kind of change this soon. But I guess Pastor Gross and Pastor Haase made this change two months ago. And I'm not sure anyone ever explained to you why. I won't ask you to make any changes without first explaining them to you. So here we go.

Last week I said that in honor of Reformation Sunday, we would use the original Apostles' Creed. Well I did some research, and the creed on page 106 is, with the exception of one word, the closest thing we have to the original, in the English language anyway. And that one word is not the word catholic. It's the word hell. The original uses both the word catholic and the phrase descended to the dead instead of the phrase descended into hell. The original version stems from about the year 700 of the Christian or Common Era. Luther is the one who changed it. He changed the word catholic to Christian. I guess I would too if the Roman Catholics excommunicated me and were threatening to burn me at the stake.

Way back in the 1960s, ecumenical meetings began between Roman Catholics and Protestants, arising in part from Vatican II and the olive branch extended by the Roman Catholic church toward healing relationships with their Protestant brothers and sisters. Out of those meetings has evolved something now called "The English Language Liturgical Consultation." At this table have been English speaking Roman Catholics and Protestants of every stripe, including even Missouri Synod Lutherans and Unitarians! Wouldn't it be something, these people wondered, if we could come up with common versions of all our liturgical texts -- all the words we use in worship -- to present a united front to the rest of the world? Then, if someone went into a Christian church, whether it was Roman Catholic, Lutheran, or Presbyterian, they would feel at home with the words of worship. They would know those words and be able to sing or say them because they would be familiar with them. Then, in the words we use in our worship, at least, as Jesus said, we could all be ONE. The texts in the Lutheran Book of Worship, which came out in 1979, when most Lutheran congregations made the switch, reflect the discernment of all these different church bodies working together so that we all might be ONE, at least in the ecumenical texts we use in worship.

When we say catholic in the Apostles' creed, note that catholic is spelled with a small c, not a capital C. It means the universal church across all time and space. When I refer to the church that has the pope you will hear me say "The Roman Catholic Church," not just the catholic church. I realize it's very, very difficult for you to think about using the creed on page 106 as opposed to the one pasted in the back of your book, especially if the one in the back of the book is the one you know and feel comfortable with. And I realize it's very difficult for you to have everybody saying different words at the same time, if we allow you to pick whichever creed you feel comfortable with.

I'm told that when the LBW came out in 1979 you did switch. But then for some reason, much later, you pasted this older, Lutheran and non-ecumenical version of the creed in the back of your books. I'd like you to imagine for a moment what it might be like on Sunday morning for God to be listening. Here is the one holy catholic and apostolic church across time and space confessing their faith using the words of the Apostles' Creed. Everyone is united, saying the same words together -- the words that these people from all denominations have worked so hard to come to consensus on. (Imagine what it took to get the Unitarians and the Missouri Synod Lutherans to agree!) God is listening to these beautiful words spoken in one voice across time and space. And then there are some rumblings, like we have heard over the last two weeks during our worship here. Hmmm? "What's that about?" God says. "Not everyone is saying the same words. And here we were making such progress. Where's that coming from? Someone's saying the 'quick and the dead?' Do they even know what that means? 'Sitteth'? I see Martin Luther turning over in his grave. He wanted the language of the liturgy to be the language of the people! I haven't heard anyone say "sitteth" in at least 300 years. Christian instead of catholic? Oh, my children. Don't they know they can put those wounds behind them? Oh, my goodness, that's coming from Michigan. From Livonia. From Holy Cross Lutheran Church! The Lutherans? Isn't that an ELCA congregation? That doesn't sound like the ELCA Lutherans. They're so ecumenically minded. They don't need to be led by that old wound." I don't mean to put words in God's mouth. I'm just stepping back to help us see the bigger picture, and where Holy Cross fits in to that.

I don't know if you've noticed but I'm very careful to introduce the creed by saying, "Let us confess our faith using the words of the Apostles' Creed. I never say, "Let us confess our faith in the Apostles' Creed. Our faith is not in the words, but in the WORD. The WORD made flesh. Jesus himself. Luther said the Bible is like the manger that holds the Christ. We could think of the creed in the same way. Both the Bible and the Creed are simply the words that hold the WORD. Let's not confuse the words with the WORD. That's idolatry. And that's another sermon.

I would like to ask you today, in honor of the fifth anniversary of the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification, and in honor of the painstaking ecumenical strides we have made as a church over the last fifty years, and as your own little step toward healing the polarization we know too well in this country, for all these reasons, I'm asking that you make the effort to make the switch. That you start using the ancient and ecumenical wording of the Apostles' Creed as it appears in the LBW on page 106, and not the more recent Lutheran version pasted in the back of your hymnals. I know this will take some effort. I can't promise you it's not going to change again, ever so slightly. "Descended into hell" may be changed back to "descended to the dead." You may have to look at the words on page 106 for a while before this more ancient and ecumenical version is committed to your memory. But think of it as your sacrifice in working toward the healing of the world. Think of it as your own dying and rising with Christ, that we all may be one. So, this week, enjoy some tricks or treats or harvest festivals, don't forget to vote, and most of all, please be sure to enjoy some R and R!

¹ See "A Declaration of Ecumenical Commitment: A Policy Statement of the ELCA," on page 6 of The Vision of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, www.elca.org/ecumenical/vision.html

See also the document, Principles for Worship, which is part of the ELCA's "Renewing Worship" initiative. Principle L-12 states, Common texts are a sign of unity, and Principle L-13 states, Ecumenical creeds are a sign of unity The consultation on Common Texts (CCT) also has its own website. See also the latest version of the Apostles' Creed discerned by the English Language Liturgical Consultation. This is available at http://www.renewingworship.org/resources/ELLC/texts/apostles_creed.html.

Pastor Dana Runestad
Holy Cross Lutheran Church
October 31, 2004
Livonia, Michigan

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