HAPPY REFORMATION DAY!

It was on this day in 1517 that Martin Luther posted a copy of the 95 theses on the door of the castle church in Wittenberg, Germany. (It makes sense he would have done that, the church doors were the community bulletin boards of the day, and there would have been a crowd coming for All Saints Day on November 1st). So, today is celebrated as Reformation Day.

Celebrations of the Protestant Reformation don't exactly shine, compared to all of today's Halloween festivities, but the message of the Reformation is still important. One of the slogans of the Reformation still rings very true today: Semper Reformanda - always reforming. The church is always in need of reform, always in need of dying again in Christ and being rasied from the dead, so we might be truly free. After all, the church is US - the people, individuals called into community, to love and serve God and neighbor.

So before you go to bed tonight, give God thanks for the ongoing work of the Holy Spirit through faithful reformers, teachers and all of us regular, ordinary Christians.

(For extra fun, read "On the Freedom of a Christian," which Luther wrote in 1520.)