A few weeks ago Heather and I visited Saint Joseph’s Oratory in Montreal. This is the place where so many people got healed that they left a huge collection of canes.

It’s also a grand building where they’ve made statues of saints and you have to pay to light a candle for prayers.

It got me thinking about the Protestant Reformation era. It’s like the Catholics got too religious, and maybe everyone was individually thinking “Am I the only one seeing this?” and then the printing press came out, and people found out they weren’t alone in their thoughts, setting the stage for the protesters to rebel. Religion and rebellion. Then the Anabaptists came along, neither submitting to the religious traditions nor protesting them, but rather just following Jesus, in what has been called the “radical reformation”.

What does that look like today? Maybe the evangelicals are the new religious group. Our buildings are starting too look as grand as those cathedrals, we may have big photos of founding pastors instead of statues, and there are plenty of things that require payment. And we’re all individually thinking something might be a little off, but then the internet comes along and we find out we’re not alone.

So who are the protesters? How about the non-denominational, the unaffiliated or the house churches? “I’m not like those denominations”. Or, like the protestants, is it just a different version that eventually will turn into something that looks just like “those denominations”?

Who are the radical today? Like the anabaptists, anyone who’s not fighting between kingdoms on earth, but rather gives up their lives (often literally in the anabaptists’ case) to join God’s kingdom.

The devil wants to talk us into being religious, replacing Jesus with some form of ceremony or tradition. When we can’t stand that anymore he tells us we’re rebellious. And so we flip back and forth from religious duty to rebellious hidden sin, with plenty of counselling and books to read to help us along the journey in circles to nowhere.

Jesus offers us freedom as we radically follow him. The Anabaptists were known for the “third way”. Not submitting to man-made religious traditions, and not rebelling against them. There’s always another way.

So when you feel trapped between two bad options, ask God to show you another way, a kingdom way.

Now when Joshua was near Jericho, he looked up and saw a man standing in front of him with a drawn sword in his hand. Joshua went up to him and asked, “Are you for us or for our enemies?”

“Neither,” he replied, “but as commander of the army of the Lord I have now come.” Then Joshua fell facedown to the ground in reverence, and asked him, “What message does my Lord have for his servant?”

The commander of the Lord’s army replied, “Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy.” And Joshua did so.

Joshua 5:13-15