Lutherans from across Switzerland gathered in Geneva this month to commemorate the 500th anniversary of the Reformation and 50 years of the Federation of Lutheran Churches in Switzerland and the Principality of Liechtenstein.
Speaking at a service held on 10th September at the Temple de la Madeleine Reformed church, Rev Dr Martin Junge, general secretary of the Lutheran World Federation, said the anniversary of the Reformation was a “magnificent opportunity” to “reassert the preciousness” of the message of justification by grace through faith in Jesus.
“Its pertinence hasn’t eroded,” he said. “It speaks today as it spoke 500 years ago, because it is a message that speaks to our human condition. One doesn’t need to live in any special time, nor in any special place to be able to receive the good news of God who has chosen to set a tone of compassion, solidarity, justice and peace in our world. Hence, people need to continue hearing these news: there is a starting point and a context for life that doesn’t begin with us, but begins with God through Christ, and stays there even if our life ends in human terms.”
Rev Dr Junge said that rather than focus on the “great things” of the past, the anniversary was a chance to engage humanity with the “liberating message of Christ”. But he added that, just as the message of the Reformation received “traction” in the past because it addressed the perception that “there were things being pushed into the marketplace, which didn’t belong there”, it was his hope that churches in the tradition of the Lutheran Reformation wouold continue to question the notion that “everything is saleable”.
“’Not for sale’ is a tagline which we in the LWF have used for the Reformation Anniversary,” he said. “It is an insight that springs from the liberating power of Christ’s redeeming action. Today, it inspires us to address a trend that makes trade to become the sole driver of social, communal and political interaction. There is nothing wrong with trade. But left on its own and given unaccountable supremacy, that drive will continue eroding what God is otherwise inviting humankind to embark on: a conviviality of solidarity and compassion, of peace and justice. Because of this, it matters to us people of faith, how things are ordered in this world.”
Rev Dr Junge also called the church to stand “without hesitation” for freedom but added that it is a “special freedom”, an “unselfish freedom”. “A freedom that sees the ‘I’ in relationship to the ‘we’, never cut off, or in isolation of it,” he said. “It is a freedom with others and for others.”
The general secretary added that this freedom stands in “stark contrast” to the prevailing way of embracing freedom today, particularly in the Western context.
“The ‘I’ is just becoming too big, too absolute, too much of a stand-alone entity, incapable of connecting and relating, even of seeing the other,” he said. “It sets its own compass of morality so as to continue claiming the big space it needs, over and against others. The ‘I’ is increasingly losing its social competence.”
Rev Dr Junge said the Reformation remains ongoing because “God’s mission is not over”. “God continues claiming space in our lives, inviting us to live from what is given to us. God continues to set us free from the anxiety of perfection, accomplishment and success, inviting us into a journey of transformation to become who God wants us to be. God doesn’t stop, God is alive. That’s why Reformation is ongoing.”
The Federation of Lutheran Churches in Switzerland and the Principality of Liechtenstein – known as the BELK (Bund Evangelische-Lutherischer Kirchen in der Schweiz und im Fürstentum Liechtenstein) – was founded in the early 1960s by five independent Lutheran churches. It joined the LWF in 1979.
