Revival, Revolution or Reform: What does the Church need most?
Psalm 46; John 8:81-36
On October 31, 1517, when the young monk and theologian, Martin Luther, supposedly nailed his Ninety-five Theses to the door of All Saints Church in Wittenberg, Germany, he never meant to unleash a holy war. He never meant to undo the Catholic church. But he certainly did mean to call into question some of the practices of the church at the time. Namely, the problem he sought to address was the selling of indulgences, which were payments common people made to reduce their punishment for sins. Also the Pope was trying to build St. Peter’s basilica in Rome at the time and Luther didn’t believe he should be doing it on the backs of poor, sinful church-goers paying alms. Luther believed that forgiveness came directly from God and individual believers had access to that forgiveness through personal repentance, and their faith and belief in Jesus Christ.
This call for reform gave birth to the Protestant Reformation. Notice that the root word in protestant is protest. Obviously, many new brands of Christianity were born . Those who followed Martin Luther were called Lutherans. Some followed John Calvin and were called… (it's a trick question) Presbyterians. The Church of England (aka Anglican church) which would become the Episcopal church in the US was born. But something interesting happened in the Church of England. It reformed, true, but some didn’t think it reformed enough. They called for more spiritual reform. When it didn’t come, those groups separated from the Church of England. They came to be called the English Separatists.
The Separatists were persecuted for not conforming to the state sanctioned Church. Their property was stolen. They were beaten, imprisoned, and some died in prison. So around 1609, some of these Separatists moved to Holland, where laws governing religion were much more open. It was there, historians say, the first identifiable Baptist Church in Amsterdam began. John Smyth and Thomas Helwys were the two principal leaders. In 1620, some of these English Separatists set sail on the Mayflower for New England. They brought their religious passion with them, and their churches to the new land where they flourished.[1]
Whether or not you believe the church in contemporary America is flourishing depends on your point of view.
Dr. Ryan Burge is a political scientist and religious statistician who served as an American Baptist pastor, but now is a professor at Washington University and studies church growth and decline in America. Ryan shared this week that the most frequent question he is asked right now is: Is there a religious revival happening in the US? Some are pointing to stats like bible sales are up 40% and downloads of Christian music on Spotify are up 50% since 2019.[2]
David French’s piece in the New York Times recently brooded, “Something is stirring in Christian America and it’s making me nervous.” He wonders if we are seeing “revival” or something else entirely.
Revival, as described by Tim Keller, “wakes up sleepy Christians.” It energizes those who are Christian in name only to a more vibrant, genuine faith, and it brings non-Christians to Christ. Keller also notes that revival begins with repentance - personal repentance, “I have sinned.”
Is there evidence that this is the kind of revival that has been sparked? Too often, it seems the loudest Christian voices seem to be saying, “you have sinned” more often than, “I have sinned.” Where is the personal repentance, again? Sounds like the religious elite of Jesus’ day who might have said, “We are personally repenting of our previous unwillingness to call out sin in other people!” Oh so it’s a pharisaical revival! It’s repenting of not being loud enough when you told people they were wrong and going to hell.
That’s not revival.
That’s revolution.[3]
–A religious revolution that seeks to overthrow one political order and replace it with another, that wants to legislate morality to all… Sure echoes the religious kingdoms of ages past. Isn’t that why the Separatists came to the new world to begin with? So, they weren't subjected to state-sponsored religion and all that came with it?
Jesus said, “...And you will know the truth and the truth will make you free.” (John 8:32) Someone wrote, that every time these verses are read on Reformation Sunday, he remembers Jesus standing before Pilate just before he was handed over to be crucified and Pilate shrugs his shoulders and sneers, “What is truth?”[4]
That question is as relevant today as it was when the Gospel of John was written. Those under the sound of Jesus’ voice are as divided as Christians are today. We have let ourselves splinter into groups Jason Ripley calls, “media-crafted realities… Christians are equally divided, marshaling scripture to advance Christian nationalism from Washington, DC, to Moscow, with religious transpositions in Tel Aviv, Gaza, and a divided Jerusalem.”
The word Jesus uses to address the crowds, reads as “Jews” in verse 31 of the NRSV, but it is better translated, Judeans. This is not a tomato, toMAto situation. “Judeans” is a fuller description of the gathered. It refers to the Pharisees, chief priests, temple police, all those in the crowds who may be of the more left leaning: Essenes and Zealots, plus all those closest to Jesus. “All of you!” he says, are capable of continuing in my word and being true disciples. This is significant because he says this after a series of teachings, debates, and conflicts in John chapter 7 and 8. All the groups involved are Jews, yet representing distinct and opposing points of view. [5]
These debates are also happening during the Jewish Festival of Booths, or Sukkot, which remembers the Hebrews’ liminal season of sojourning in the desert after liberation from Egypt but before the conquest of the promised land. Its an interstitial period, in between time that awaits the outcome of reform. To these hearers who are living during the time of Roman occupation and debating if Jesus is the kind of Messiah who will be anointed King or the kind of prophet who will liberate them from Rome, Jesus’ words are both right on time and elusive. What is the truth?
We are certainly used to hearing an array of voices, politicians and pundits, who look at the same set of basic facts and insist that these facts indicate wildly divergent versions of the “truth.”[6] The truth is hard to come by in town halls or social media diatribes, particularly when it has as its aim persuading others to see the world as you do and then to do as you wish.
A preacher went into a bookstore and spotted two books he had never seen, “The Optimist’s Guide to History” and “The Pessimist’s Guide to History.” Selecting them both, the clerk at the checkout counter said "I've sold several of these but never both to the same person.” The preacher responded, “I guess some people are pessimists and some people are optimists, I’m just a preacher looking for sermon illustrations!” Thinking more about it, the preacher presumed that optimists probably bought the optimist version and pessimists bought the pessimist version which means that most of them weren’t looking for the truth. They were just looking for more evidence to confirm what they already believed. I mean, that’s human nature, for sure.[7]
I call for us early and often to live into our bold inclusivity, but on Reformation Sunday, we are challenged to lean into all three of our identity statements: faithful thinkers, progressive Baptists and bold includers. If we want to truly, TRUTH-fully follow Jesus, we have to dine with Pharisees and poor widows. Crossing party lines and building subversive friendships was Jesus’ modus operandi. He refused to get sucked into the agendas of the Essenes and Zealots, the Herodians, Pharisees, or Sadducees. Among these children of Abraham, he challenged the worst of each camp and pulled out the best of each. He had followers from Left to Right joining his movement, because he challenged the oppressive greed of Rome and the sword of the Zealots at the same time. Money and power, violence are not in his playbook. To be in this Jesus’ movement, they had to become new creations! And that starts with personal repentance.[8]
Like those early Separatists, how can we distinguish ourselves as champions of true spiritual reform? It’s not through legislating one group’s ideas of morality. Nor can we expect our politicians to legislate God’s love and generosity. I’ll borrow from some thoughts of Shane Claiborne, a Red-letter Reformer, here:
Governments can do lots of things, but there are a lot of things they cannot do. Even if government is passing just laws, no law can change a human heart. Only God can do that. Even when government is providing good housing, or paths to citizenship, or healthcare, – folks can have a house without having a home. We can keep people breathing, but they still may not be fully alive. The work of community, love, and reconciliation, transformation is the work of Jesus’ followers and cannot be left up to politicians or those who pander to them. This is the work that is ours to do.
Psalm 46:10 says, Be still and know that I am God! It was not a gentle call to quiet contemplation. It is more akin to the way the great head master of Hogwarts, Dumbledore, stood and screamed in the chaos of the great hall[9]
“Silence!”
On this Reformation Sunday, as we sing a Mighty Fortress is our God and remember brave ancestors of the protestant faith, let us hear anew the true word of God who is Christ our Lord; the way, the truth, and the life. Let us find in our souls a stillness where we are not focused on the sins of all those out there who need to repent, but where we get honest about our own sins. That is where true revival begins, and where something new and beautiful can be born. Amen.
[1] Freeman, David, Just Trying to See Jesus, sermon, Oct 30, 2022
[2] https://www.youtube.com/shorts/3xx9ZjrwVs4
[3] Holy Post podcast, Ep. 692: Vertical vs. Horizontal Morality, October 22, 2025
[4] Fairless and Chilton, The Lectionary Lab commentary Year C, Reformation Sunday
[5] Ripley, Jason, Working Preacher commentary John 8:31-36, October 2025
[6] Fairless and Chilton
[7] ibid.
[8] Claiborne and Campolo, Red Letter Revolution: What if Jesus Really Meant What He Said?
[9] Sermon Brainwave podcast, Reformation Sunday 2025, Rolf Jacobsen quote