A New Message
Martin Luther burial site, under the pulpit, All Saints’ Church, Wittenberg, Germany, image from panoramic photo by the author.
The passage I’ve read is one of the more familiar sections of the Timothy correspondence. To many biblical scholars, it seems probable that Paul was writing from Rome, where he was imprisoned, and soon to be martyred for his faith. It seems quite natural that he is sharing what he can, while he can, with his protégé Timothy, reflecting upon how he reached this late stage on his journey of faith, and what the purpose of his life was. The Lord gave him strength, he recalls, to fully proclaim “the message.” The nature of that message was radically different than what he had believed and proclaimed before he met Jesus on the Damascus road.
Fifteen-hundred years later, the way Paul framed the message again had enormous power when rediscovered by Martin Luther. The new message then was really the rediscovery of an old message, an foundational theme in the Christian religion: that we are saved from sin by God’s grace through faith, not human works; that we can approach God through the merits of Christ, and without the mediation of a priest; that the Bible is the primary standard of faith by which we know these things to be true.
Martin Luther, who lived and worked in what is today Germany, is probably the famous Reformer, but he is not the only one. During summer travels, I was reminded that Jan Hus in Prague, one-hundred years before Luther, preached the reform of church practices. After Luther, John Calvin systematized and spread the influence of Reformed theology in Switzerland. John Knox thought through the implications of this theology for relationships between people, offices, and groups in the church, and in Scotland crafted a new system of Church government that still influences our government today.
Each year, at Reformation Sunday, we have opportunity to remember. We celebrate our Protestant heritage so that we never forget the sacrifices made that allow us to worship in truth rather than fall into idolatry, and to live in freedom rather than subject to unjust tyranny.
Today’s Hebrew-testament reading comes from the prophet Joel, who in his own way, was champion of the new message. The Old Testament book that bears his name records the aftermath of a locust plague. Joel’s message, like that of many biblical prophets, is a mixture of bad and good news. The bad news is that God’s judgment has come because the people have neglected their obligations. If the people will not change, then the promised “Day of the Lord” will be not a time of rejoicing, but a time of trembling and destruction. Imagine how some people must have wanted to silence Joel, to place him at a safe distance where his message would not be heard, and would not create an uncomfortable disturbance. In that environment, Joel shares the good news: beyond judgment comes God’s deliverance. The God for whom Joel is a messenger will pour out the Spirit who will inspire additional new ideas: “your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men shall see visions...”
The apostle Paul, in being a champion for the new message, faced serious opposition from those who preferred the message be silenced. In an earlier letter, he tells us about some of those occasions. “Five times I have received from the Jews the forty lashes minus one. Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I received a stoning. Three times I was shipwrecked; for a night and a day I was adrift at sea; on frequent journeys, in danger from rivers, danger from bandits, danger from my own people, danger from Gentiles, danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger from false brothers and sisters...”[1] Now under house arrest and awaiting martyrdom, Paul says that the Lord stood with him, and strengthened him, that the new message of salvation through Jesus Christ “might be fully proclaimed and all the Gentiles might hear it.” The new message was so powerful that his enemies could not contain it.
In the ongoing tension between messengers of hatred and conflict, and the messengers of grace and peace, which side to join is not always an easy decision. One author suggests that somewhere along life’s path, most of us have had the experience of being treated in ungraceful ways. The hurt we feel can easily lead us to do the same. And such behavior, repeated again and again, perpetuates an unhealthy cycle. I often see it in our regional church conflicts. We feel mistreated, we react in kind, and so we invite mutual mistreatment.[2]
One of the keys to getting out of this unhealthy cycle is to recognize that you are in it, that you have a choice to escape. In other words, the walls of the boxes that oppress us are not always the concrete fortresses they seem. Sometimes the walls of the boxes are cardboard.
Palestinian Aziz Abu Sarah and Israeli Maoz Inon are unlikely partners. Aziz was born and raised in Jerusalem; his brother died of injuries sustained in an Israeli prison. Maoz spent his teen years in an Israeli community near the border of Gaza, where his parents were killed in the attack of October 7, 2023. Each has felt intense emotional pain, and spent parts of their lives harboring feelings for revenge. Today, they work together for peace, and are writing a book about their shared journey, due out next April.
Each acknowledges there is a time and place for military intervention, and there is a role for diplomats and professional peacemakers. But the problems their people face require something greater and deeper than all that. Maoz says, “We cannot heal wounds and trauma by waging a war of revenge over Gaza. We cannot heal ourselves by ethnic cleaning the Gaza Strip. We must end the war, and embark on a brave and courageous journey to peace and reconciliation ….”[3]
The pair argues that in a context where people are so divided by fear and anger that they cannot see one another’s humanity, what is needed is space for people to come together for conversation, to treat one another as deserving dignity and respect, to truly see the situation as the other sees it, then work for just and compassionate treatment for all.
The wisdom of our Protestant Christian heritage has something to do with trusting God is present and active in the world enough to accomplish transformation like that, and being humble enough to listen for new and better solutions when they come along. It’s about getting out of the cycle in which blame and shame trap us in a box, and in which we blame and shame others into another box. It’s about breaking through those walls of cardboard, and following God into greater truth and freedom, justice and love.
May God make it so for us.
NOTES
[1] 2 Corinthians 11:24 ff.
[2] Leadership and Self-Deception: Getting out of the Box, The Arbinger Institute, San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc., 2002, chapter 14 “Collusion,” p. 91 ff.
[3] Maoz Inon, transcript of interview, BBC News America, 7 Oct. 2025, https://archive.org/details/KQED_20251008_003000_BBC_News_America/start/480/end/540 accessed 8 Oct. 2025.
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