Undas and the Reformation in the Philippines

As most everybody knows, this week celebrated the 500th anniversary of when Martin Luther posted the 95 Theses on the door of the castle church in Wittenburg, Germany. The Protestant Reformation was kicked off from this otherwise normal event, as Luther and the Roman Catholic magesterium (popes, cardinals, bishops, so on) dug their heels in over the argument over the gospel and the final authority in the church. To Luther and the other Reformers, the Gospel was buried underneath all the junk of Roman Catholic tradition that had accrued over the years, with the teachings on indulgences and purgatory and the selling of "grace" by the popes being some of the most obscene displays of any sort of religious leadership, and it is the mess with indulgences that actually prompted the 95 Theses. Pressing into the conversation about church practices led to conversations about authority within the church itself. Luther began making arguments from Scripture and reasoned that practices or teachings that were not in the Bible need to be gotten rid of as they pollute and mess up the worship of God and how Christians practice their faith. The Catholics were swinging hard for the opposite: the gospel was not based on grace and faith alone but on the dependence of the person on the grace to be dispensed by the Catholic church itself. This also made sure to vest final authority not in the Bible, but in the Pope as the one who was in possession of the keys of the treasury of heaven, able to dispense grace as he saw fit. 

It's odd that from our vantage point here in the Philippines I see (at least on the Internet) calls and questions about what the Reformation was about and if it is still a thing that is needed today. The questions and posts go like this: Catholics and Protestants believe basically the same things right? I mean, they both say they love Jesus and believe that it is by grace through faith in Christ and His work on the cross that we are saved, so it's all good! Besides, aren't there other things that we need to worry about right now like all the racial issues and abortion and radical Islam and radical atheism and the moral decline of the country and North Korea and that America is looking less like a Christian nation and looking more like....well, who knows! Aren't all these things more important than squabbles over doctrine and practice? Isn't the overwhelming situation in the world excuse enough to excuse Protestants and Catholics from arguing over something that happened 500 years ago so that they can band together and fight the culture war together? 

There have been others, much smarter than me, who have dealt with this question. I'm not worried about all that now. Not really. 

I think about the question of if the Reformation still matters as I ride in a tricycle that has prayer beads hanging right in my face. I think about the Reformation when I walk into a store and they have a small shelf with candles and a figure of Santo Niño so that they can gain his blessing in their work. I think about the fact that while Halloween has come and gone people here (Catholics and other Christians) are celebrating the festival of Undas. 

This week school is out. People are off work, and it is the time of Undas here in the Philippines. The whole country has the week off because of this three day holiday. It may not be as flashy as Dia de los Muertos in Mexico, but Halloween, All Saints and All Souls Day(s) are a time when families go out to cemeteries and remember the dead. That in and of itself is not that bad or problematic, not at all. But they will take food and drink out to their departed family members and have a meal with them. They will say prayers for the dead, they will spend the two days at the grave site communing with their dead. Sometimes they do try to get an indulgence (still on the books in the Catholic church!) for their departed or say a Mass for the dead. But the streets are almost empty, as hundreds and hundreds of people go back to their family hometown so they can visit the resting places and offer sacrifices to the dead so they can intercede for the living. 

So I don't really wonder about whether the Reformation is over or not, or whether or not the differences between Catholics and Protestants matter or not. Of course they do! My family and I currently live in the "most Christian country in Asia" that is a modern pre-Reformation Europe, in some small very rural areas the Bible is still located only in the church and the priest (when he is there) is the only one able to read and interpret the Bible for the people in the pews. The situation here is one in which what looks like work among an already "Christian" peoples is really work with pagans that pray for and to the dead, offer them food and drink, worship statues of people rather than the God who created them and think that by doing all of that plus other good works gets them into heaven. So we are working here among people who are believing a false Gospel (which Paul says is no Gospel at all!) and trying to get the few churches that are here and evangelical to get outside their own doors and preach the Gospel and hold out the true hope that they have found in Christ and His blood shed on the Cross! 

So while some of us did celebrate the 500th of the beginning of the Reformation, we don't have to ask if it is over, we know it's not. We have the Word of God in English (and Cebuano), and we don't say the Mass every Sunday, and we get both the Cup and the Bread in the Lord's Supper, and we don't pray to the dead begging them to pray for us, and we (most importantly) have all of this because the Gospel has freed us from the legalistic bondage that worldly religion tries to tie us to, we have experienced the freedom that the Gospel brings us and we see the world through this lens. 

Pray that the people here in the Philippines would also learn to see this way. Pray that they too would get all that we have, not because we are better or brighter than they are, but because we have heard and we have tasted and seen that our God and His Gospel is good.