Most Christians know quite a lot of stories from the Old Testament, but I suspect that few of us have a good overview of its history. And the Old Testament spans a remarkably long time, from Abraham who may have lived as far back as 2200BC, through Moses who came to the fore in around 1500BC and was followed by the Judges. Israel reached its zenith in the reigns of David and Soloon at around the 1000BC mark or a little later. After that its history was a sad one of defeat and decline over several centuries, with the loss of the northern half of its territory to Assyria in 721BC and the destruction of Jerusalem itself in 586BC. It had taken 400 years for the nation to sink from high point to disaster.

Many of the prophets such as Isaiah, Jeremiah or Hosea believed that this decline didn’t happen because of poor political or military decisions – although the remaining southern Kingdom of Judah, less than half the size of Wales, really had very little power when faced by the might of the Assyrian or Egyptian empires. No; the prophets were convinced that the root cause of their nation’s woes was spiritual, as people had got lax in their religious observance and started worshipping the pagan idols of their neighbours, as merchants were dishonest, adulterating their goods and giving false measure, as judges were more interested in receiving hand-outs from rich clients than in dispensing justice, as priests were simply “going through the motions” of worship, and as kings who, with one or two notable exceptions, set a poor example “from the top”.

One of those “exceptions” was King Josiah, whose story we heard earlier. He came to the throne in about 640BC at the tender age of 8 and in his mid-teens seems to have experienced some kind of religious awakening. Over the next decade or so Josiah vigorously followed a path of religious reform. He pulled down the pagan shrines that had been erected all over Judah and, I’m sorry to say, had their priests slaughtered. He cleared out and refurbished the Temple, which had got cluttered with pagan paraphernalia, and in the process discovered a “Book of the Law of Moses”, possibly what we call Deuteronomy, which he read and then started to put into practice. Josiah organised a public renewal of the Covenants between the nation and God; and he ordered a celebration of the Passover “such as had not been seen since the time of Samuel”, seven centuries earlier. Josiah may well have seen himself as a second Moses, able to lead his people to freedom but, after he was killed in an ill-advised military venture, things soon returned to the way they’d been before his reign. His reforms hadn’t gone deep enough and had failed.

In the “live” church service I had  already mentioned Martin Luther and the story of him nailing his so-called “95 Theses” to the church door at Wittenberg on October 31^st 1517. When you look at a printed version of these you’ll realise that they weren’t intended to be an easy read: in fact Luther – a university professor – had put down was a set of propositions for a formal academic debate,in Latin, to boot. The subject for the debate was something called “indulgences” – letters or parchments that were being sold by the Catholic Church with the promise that those who bought them would have their sins forgiven. These had become popular with people because they seemed to offer an easy route to salvation; and popular with the Church because their sale was funding the construction of the hugely expensive new St. Peter’s Church in Rome. Luther – among others – was appalled by this practice and wanted to start a discussion about it. So he not only nailed his Theses to the church door but also sent copies to his Archbishop and several friends. Soon the debate was raging across Germany and even in Rome; Luther had lit a touchpaper of discontent which wasn’t going to be extinguished easily.

Now Luther wasn’t the first person who’d sought to reform the Catholic Church. Indeed, it’s not really clear how far he intended reform to go – he certainly didn’t want to break from Rome and the Pope, at least at first. But we have to remember that his actions – just like King Josiah’s – took place in a particular social and political context. For this was the time of the Renaissance, when new ways of thinking were emerging, ways which started to question the traditional teaching of the Church. It was a time, too, when individual thought was being encouraged, with each person needing to make up their own mind about spiritual and moral values rather than meekly accepting what they were being told. It was a time when the Roman Catholic Church, used to being the dominant political force, had become rich and complacent with its leaders seeming to be more interested in power than God; that power was now being challenged by secular politics. And – not to be dismissed – this was the first time when easy mass communication was possible: printing had revolutionised the way that ideas could be spread. The time was ripe for reform and Luther had unwittingly set it in motion. If the Reformation hadn’t happened, today’s world would be very different to what it is.

Josiah’s reforms took place way back in the mists of time; and even the Protestant Reformation is now five centuries in the past. So is there any point in thinking about them today? I would say, “Yes, there is” – because I believe we can learn from history and avoid repeating its mistakes.

When Covid first struck (and doesn’t that now feel a very long time ago?) there was lots of talk about the way it was going to radically change the way we live. Everyone was going to work from home (although I could never work out how builders, plumbers or bus drivers were supposed to do that), we’d all walk or cycle everywhere and shop at friendly local stores, none of us would leave Britain on polluting long-haul holidays to distant destinations … it sounded as if we were entering a new utopia. That sense of optimism spread to the churches, too: ministers were saying that we would draw in hundreds of new worshippers via the Internet, that we could dispense with all those tiresome meetings, that we should close down those outdated activities which had run their course: God was “doing a new thing” and Covid represented a wonderful opportunity to get rid of all our outmoded ways of working and re-imagine church for the 21^st century. In other words, Covid was forcing us into a new reformation: and, said some people at least, God was behind it.

Well; quite apart from rejecting the idea that God wanted millions of people to die in a deadly pandemic, I could never accept that rhetoric. I felt strongly that what most people wanted was to return to their old ways of doing things, to “get back to normal” as quickly as they could. Time has, I believe, proved me correct. Yet I do feel that we have missed an enormous opportunity – enforced, unpleasant and tragic as it has been – to start a new reformation; not merely in the churches (I’ll come back to that later) but in all human society.

For it’s become clear just how much things need to change. The “Black Lives Matter” movement and the online abuse directed at the England footballers who failed to score goals in the Euro shoot-out showed us how deeply racism is ingrained in our world. The “MeToo” movement, the murders of Sarah Everard and Sabine Nessa, the recent concern over the spiking of drinks tell us that there needs to be a sea-change in the way that many men think about women. Marcus Rashford’s campaign to provide poor children with free meals, together with the growing reliance on food banks, highlights the huge inequalities in our world – especially when we see billionaires blasting themselves into space for a brief “jolly”. And, of course, the COP26 conference is focussing attention on the most serious problem that has ever faced the human race – although I share the Queen’s pessimism that a lot will be said but little achieved. We need change, in our eating, in our shopping, in our travelling, in our doing, in our thinking – but most of us act as if it’s other people who must change, not ourselves. After all, we shouldn’t have to restrict our personal freedoms and choices – should we?

And what about the churches? Clearly there is a huge problem with abuse in some sections of the Church and this needs to be rooted out; we have all been appalled by recent revelations. There is also a need, at least in Britain, for some kind of restructuring to take place in some denominations: we simply can’t afford the panoply of church officials that we once took for granted, we need to be “smarter” and “leaner”. On the local level, Covid has forced many churches, kicking and screaming (or, more likely, scratching their heads!) into using the Internet: whether we like it or not. Zoom is here to stay although it’s clearly not appropriate to every situation and we mustn’t lose the value of gathering in person.

Thinking a bit more deeply, we need to recognise that the way churches operate has changed over the centuries rather than staying the same and that they probably need to change once more. For most British churches broadly follow a pattern of activity that was established in the Victorian era; things would have been very different in (say) the time of Elizabeth I or the Dark Ages, while we might struggle to recognise the “churchiness” of congregations in New Testament times as it would be so different to ours. One of the geniuses of the so-called “new churches” – and there’s much in them that I dislike – is that they are new and aren’t shackled by the bonds of history; that does have its drawbacks but it also means that they are free to relate to modern society in ways which most of the older denominations fail to do.

And what about our message? Yes, the Gospel’s “old, old story” of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection is fixed and unchangeable. But it seems to me that Christians do need to think through some current issues in the light of the Bible, possibly coming to different  conclusions to the ones that they’ve always held. For instance, should we accept the free-market capitalist economy as the one which best serves the world and its people, or are there other ways in which business can operate? Should we continue to plunder the earth’s resources or can we be more responsible stewards of God’s creation? In the light of advances in medical science, do we need to rethink our views on gender and sexuality, even on life and death themselves? We must also face the questions which will be posed by “artificial intelligence”. Luther and his contemporaries couldn’t bury their heads in the sand and ignore the huge changes that the Renaissance was bringing; nor can we, today.

Let’s come back to Josiah to finish. He wanted to reform Israel because he believed that his nation’s health depended entirely on its relationship with God. Not many people in Britain today would say that today: after all, we are a secular and multicultural modern state and would never dare to claim any “special relationship” with God.

More simply, you and I would agree that we cannot force other people to accept our beliefs and values. Nevertheless we know, deep down, that if everyone followed God’s guidelines for living, such as loving our neighbours as ourselves and giving them the respect they deserve, or acting fairly and justly in business, or farming in ways which both feed people and value the land itself, or governing with a bias towards favouring and lifting up the poor, or promoting peaceful rather than violent ways of resolving disputes, or simply recognising that we humans are answerable to a divine Power that is greater than we are – if we all adopted those principles and values, then our world would be a far happier place than it is and we would be able to face the future with far greater confidence than we do. That, I believe, is the kind of reformation we so desperately need today.