Do you know what special day is coming up this week? Sure! Halloween! It’s great to have a costume and pretend. What will you be this year? Here are a few masks to try on. Wow! No matter what mask we wear we can tell its you! Masks can hid our face, but can’t hide our heart and spirit. Next week is also All Saints Day. We don’t follow Jesus at Cold Spring Church alone. On no! All Saints Day November 1 reminds us that millions of people just like us followed him thousands of years ago, too, and there will be countless others who follow Jesus in the future, too. We are not alone in our faith. And next week is also Reformation Day. 502 years ago a man named Martin Luther along with many friends decided to make improvements in the Church, to help all of us focus on three things, we find hope by the Bible alone, by Faith alone, and through Jesus alone. We are reforming, improving, and that’s why whatever mask we wear for Halloween, or the other masks we may put on, will not hide us from God’s love. This Halloween, remember that God loves you, stay safe, and don’t eat too much candy!
This week we are departing from the lectionary readings to talk about the roots of faith and how our faith can be rebooted for the future as we build on the promises of God. The theme is the Olive Tree. From Genesis to Revelation and everywhere in between, the olive tree is a metaphor for our faith. From the olive branch returned by the dove to Noah to the great olive tree in the new heaven and earth of Revelation, anointing oil inaugurated kings, blessed believers, and it was on the Mt. of Olives that Jesus wept over Jerusalem. You will never look at the olive the same way again!
People don’t usually ask, “What costume are you going to wear for halloween?” No, instead we ask, “Who are you going to BE this year?” Halloween isn’t just about putting together a clever “costume.” It is about creating a personal “image.”
Mask wearing is always associated with this time of year for more than two millennia, and ironically, on October 31, 1517, Martin Luther pulled the “mask” off of the Church when he posted his 95 complaints on the neighborhood billboard. He saw the Church hiding and pretending to be something very unlike Christ. Along with John Knox in Scotland, John Calvin in Switzerland, and other reformers, he fanned the flames of the Great Reformation across Europe.
We all wear masks, and some masks are authentic and appropriate ways for us to interact in the world. But some masks we wear mey help us hid or pretend to be something we are not and not be part of a costume, at all. In this week’s text from Mark 10:46-52, we meet a man named Bartimaeus who becomes “uncloaked.” He shows us that when we come “face-to-face” with Jesus, any mask or pretense must fall away and our most basic needs and desires are revealed to the Son of David who has the power to heal us and heal the world, transforming us to be our real selves.
Romans 8:29-30 The Message (MSG)
“God knew what he was doing from the very beginning. He decided from the outset to shape the lives of those who love him along the same lines as the life of his Son. The Son stands first in the line of humanity he restored. We see the original and intended shape of our lives there in him. After God made that decision of what his children should be like, he followed it up by calling people by name. After he called them by name, he set them on a solid basis with himself. And then, after getting them established, he stayed with them to the end, gloriously completing what he had begun.”
Now, that’s transformation!