The fountain helps you imagine those feudal times centuries ago in the early Reformation, and you feel like you could almost be there.

Then you read the small sign by the well which says something like this: "This well was not here at the time of Luther." 

You learn it wasn't there a hundred years after Luther.  It wasn't even there two hundred years after Luther.  OK, its been around a while, but it's part of a water system installed long after the time you conjure up in your mind.  Not being what you thought it was, the well is kind of like a fake.

Luther himself encountered less than authentic artifacts which were called relics.  Peddled around in his day were presumed bits of the true cross, a scrap of fabric alleged to have been taken from Jesus' burial shroud, or some bone from an early Christian martyr.  Somebody said Jesus' baby blanket was in Aachen, Germany.  Today there is snickering skepticism over an old box which cynics argue might hold the bones of Jesus. 

What a load of garbage.

We don't venerate relics.  And our faith is not in fakes. 

I don't lament this, but I do regret a great deal the loss of respect and reverence for the truly holy memorials of our faith - the blessed Sacraments, the orthodox liturgy where Law and Gospel are rightly divided in preaching, and holy absolution.  We have become an age of Biblical illiteracy, ecclesiastical chaos, and undisciplined novelty in our churchly life. 

It's not the well, the scrap of wood, or a holy bone that's fake. 

We're the fakes.  We, ourselves. 

We fake it repeatedly.  We can look the part, point to our appearances, hold up little artifacts of our church involvement, but deep down in our confession of sins and the examination of our souls we each know we are a faker.  Our own heart and lips are relics.

What makes me a child of God is not my church attendance or appearance, my ownership of a Bible or even my learnedness of Bible stories - or boasting I once could recite the catechism. 

What makes a Christian is the genuineness, the authenticity, and the timeless mercy of God in Christ Jesus for us.  The message of Christ is not dusty.  It is vibrant and as bright and powerful as the first time it was declared.  The liturgy of the church is not creaky except to those who don't know it or use it.

Worship is not us harking back in time to muse over what Luther or the martyrs or even what Jesus did.  Worship is not collecting relics of liturgy or finally substituting something cool or trendy to get people in the door.

Worship is the divine activity of God who doesn't fake it.  He delivers what His word expresses.  The bread and wine of the Lord's Supper are not leftovers.  They are Christ's real living body and His dear and genuine blood.  God doesn't fake it when He announces forgiveness to us fakers.  He delivers.

God doesn't give us phony joy propped up by manipulated emotions.  He gives us true joy in Christ, certainty of our place in His kingdom, and God's honest grace.  God give us wisdom to recognize the difference between relics (the passing, ephemeral, and soon-scrapped bric-a-brac of popularized religion) from the everlasting, unalterable, and reliable testament of God's favor in the message of Christ crucified.  The splashing water of Holy Baptism and the nourishment of the Lord's Supper are as pure and pristine today as the first time John the Baptist cupped his hand in the Jordan River or the first time Jesus raised the cup and said, "This is my blood for you for the forgiveness of your sins."  

To a faker like me, the substance of Christ, the REAL Christ, means everything.  Don't you agree?