You would’ve thought I had asked if Jesus was the Son of God or not.

Earlier this week, I posed a simple poll on Facebook to my fellow Lutherans:

This weekend, my congregation is observing:

👍 The Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost
(and we’re staying green)

❤️ Reformation Sunday
(and we’re going red)

Please react appropriately.

The reactions started trickling in, with ❤️ after ❤️ after ❤️. Only two lone 👍 (my own included) — and one 😮 (perhaps at my audacity for posing such a question).

I grew up Lutheran. I went to Lutheran schools from three-year-old preschool through college. I took a couple of years after college to flirt with the Methodists … and then found myself right back in an ELCA congregation and, ultimately, seminary. I am now serving in my third congregational call and approaching the seventh anniversary of my ordination as a Minister of Word and Sacrament in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America later this year.

I. Am. Deeply. Lutheran. There is no question about that — except for, perhaps, “What does this mean?”

So what does this mean? That a lifelong Lutheran should dare to downplay the significance of Reformation Sunday?

A quick search through my sermon archives reveals that I have preached on Reformation Sunday every single year of my ordained ministry from 2019 through the present, plus once during a preaching lab in seminary in 2015. (Which isn’t really surprising when all but one of those Reformation Sundays has been spent as a solo pastor.) Only two of those sermons have been preached on texts other than the traditional readings assigned to Reformation Sunday — which, unlike most other lectionary days, are the…same…every…year. Now don’t get me wrong: These are good readings. But goodness do they ever get stale from a preacher’s point-of-view.

But that’s not why I’m choosing not to use them this year.

This year, we’re staying green. The cover of our bulletin will say “The Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost.” And our readings will be from the “regular” lectionary for Ordinary Time. Prompted in part by guest preaching in a nearby Episcopal congregation this coming Sunday, and an Episcopal colleague in turn preaching from St. John’s pulpit in my absence, I chose to go (or rather, stay) green out of a sense of ecumenical unity and bridging divides across denominational boundaries.

Adopted by the 1999 Churchwide Assembly of the ELCA and the 2000 General Convention of the Episcopal Church, “Called to Common Mission” has formed the foundation for our ecumenical partnership for over 25 years: “Our churches have discovered afresh our unity in the gospel and our commitment to the mission to which God calls the church of Jesus Christ in every generation. … Our search for a fuller expression of visible unity is for the sake of living and sharing the gospel. Unity and mission are at the heart of the church’s life, reflecting an obedient response to the call of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

On Reformation Sunday, we celebrate not just our own particular Lutheran theological heritage (which is indeed a gift to Christian theology and history), but we also celebrate the Church — not our church, not the Lutheran church … but Christ’s Church. This coming weekend, as a Lutheran preaches across town at an Episcopal congregation and an Episcopalian preaches from a Lutheran pulpit, we can celebrate this exercise in ecumenical unity across denominations as a gift, in the spirit of the Reformation, as together we proclaim the liberating love of God made known to all people in Christ Jesus. It doesn’t get much more Reformation than that.

So, no, I’m not not observing Reformation Sunday. I’m just not changing the paraments to red or using the same old texts, at least not this year. But I am remembering with gratitude the heritage I have inherited since Luther first posted his Ninety-five Theses to the door of a church in Wittenberg, Germany, in 1517 — clinging to a gospel which unites us and the message of God’s liberating love for us and for all people that transcends denominational divides (and every barrier).

(But yes, we’re still singing “A Mighty Fortress” — and you can still wear red if you really want to.)

Faithfully,
Josh+