Most all of us have heard of the Protestant Reformation all our lives. It's supposed to have been some great correction of evils in the church and a new start for Christianity. I guess that's as good an overview as any, but on this Reformation Sunday I want to humanize the Reformation a bit. There are some names we need to know (I'm not going to do dates): Martin Luther , of course—he nailed the “Ninety Five Theses” to the church door at Wittenburg on an All-Saints Eve and we usually date the Reformation from that moment. Luther's co-worker was a brilliant scholar named Philip Melanchthon , who also taught at Wittenburg University . These two plus a growing number of pastors started the German Evangelical Church —back then “Evangelical” meant “Lutheran.”
There are several branches of the Protestant Reformation. The other branch important to the United Church of Christ is called the “Reformed” movement in Switzerland , southwest Germany and Holland . Reformed Protestantism was begun by the senior priest of the central city church in Zurich , Ulrich Zwingli —I've mentioned Zwingli from time to time. The greatest Reformed theologian was a Frenchman trained to be a lawyer: John Calvin went to Geneva where he and his associates created a theocratic state. Calvin wrote the first Protestant systematic theology, The Institutes of the Christian Religion . One of the most important documents used by the German Reformed Church and the Evangelical Union here in America a hundred years ago was the Heidelberg Catechism, written by Zacharias Ursinus and Casper Olevianus . In Strasburg there were two great leaders: Martin Butzer and Wolfgang Capito. So here are the Reformed leaders: Zwingli, Calvin, Ursinus, Olevianus, Butzer and Capito.
The whole point of the Protestant Reformation was that human salvation is not mediated by a hierarchy or even by sacraments, but is a free gift we claim by faith alone, informed by scripture. Luther gave this message classic expression in his teaching and preaching on the Psalms and Paul's Letter to the Romans. We are saved by grace through faith.
When the Apostle Paul was being taken to Rome for trial before Caesar, he wrote a Letter to the Romans and sent it on ahead, to introduce himself to the Christians there. In the Letter he presents a mature explanation of the way he preached the gospel; and so the Book of Romans has become a core document for Christians to explain salvation. This passage that I read a few minutes ago is a pivot-point in the book. The first three chapters of Romans make one point: that all humankind is alienated from God and in bondage to what Paul calls “sin.” For Paul “sin” wasn't individual bad deeds, it is more like “Mr. Sin”—almost another name for the devil, who has captured both Jews and Gentiles in his net.[1] It's true that Moses gave God's law to the Jews, he says, but you don't reach perfection by obeying the Law of Moses. Gentiles have gone in all directions except to fellowship with the one living God. So, he asks, how can anybody be saved? The passage I read is his answer:
But now… the righteousness of God has been |
What he means is that God did it—we don't do it for ourselves. God sent Jesus Christ to be a human being absolutely faithful to God. When humans killed Jesus, it simply confirmed universal human alienation from God; and so God in Christ has already fulfilled our forgiveness. Turn to Jesus Christ, and his faithfulness and righteousness are yours.[2]
Now what this really means—and this is central to Protestant teaching—what this means is that God is like the father of the Prodigal Son, waiting for his absent child, watching the road, and when he sees him he runs and embraces him. That's what God is like for you. God wants a close friendship with you, and sent Jesus Christ to do everything to make it possible except take over your will—God doesn't force you into friendship. Salvation is a gift of grace.
Now this doesn't mean that there's nothing for us to do . It just means that what we do, we do because of our friendship with God, not in order to achieve friendship with God. In joyful gratitude we serve our neighbor, because God has accepted us . This is Protestantism.
What Protestants usually forget is that there was also a Catholic Reformation, or Counter-Reformation, at the same time; and it resulted in a great spiritual renewal in the European countries that remained Catholic.
Now let's jump from the 1500's up to 1620, to the time of the Pilgrims. (I said I wasn't going to do dates, but you already know 1620, the landing of the Mayflower at Plymouth Rock.) Those first comers to what is now the eastern United States were English Reformed Protestants. They had been living in Holland for twenty years, but they wanted their children to be English; so they got a royal mandate to settle an English colony. As they prepared to climb aboard the good ship Speedwell to go from Holland to Plymouth , England , their pastor, John Robinson, preached a sermon. One of the things he said in that sermon is this sentence: “God hath yet more light and truth to break forth out of his holy Word.” They sailed to Plymouth, got on the Mayflower, sailed to America, started Plymouth Plantation, became part of the Congregational Churches in New England—Reformed Protestants.
Now I'm going to jump from 1620 to 2004. Things have developed for the Reformed and for the Lutherans. A merger has taken place. The Evangelical Union Church in Missouri, Indiana and Illinois, the German Reformed Church in Pennsylvania and Maryland, the Congregational Churches of New England, and a small group of churches that called themselves Christian Churches, have merged to form the United Church of Christ. This is who we are. We have in our heritage all the stuff I've been talking about today—Martin Luther, John Calvin, Zacharias Ursinus, John Robinson, the Pilgrims—they are all in our church's heritage. In 2004 the national office of the UCC started an evangelism campaign titled “God is still speaking,” quoting Gracie Allen's words “Never put a period where God has placed a comma.” In other words, “God hath yet more light and truth to break forth out of his holy Word.” It means that we are part of the Great Reform movement. Our proclamation is: We are saved by grace through faith in Jesus Christ.
But we're living in exciting times. The church is changing. Two years ago I attended a Summer Leadership Conference at my alma mater seminary in Pittsburgh , and one of the speakers, Diana Butler Bass, commented one evening: “This change in the churches that seems to be leaving the traditional Protestant churches behind is not something to worry over. About every five hundred years the Holy Spirit makes a paradigm change in the church, and it takes several generations to work it out. You just have the dubious blessing to be living during one of those sea changes.” Yes “God IS still speaking.” “God does have yet more light and truth to break forth.” If we are to live up to our Protestant heritage, we will claim this and wait to see what the Holy Spirit is doing in our time.
Christianity is exploding in Africa and Latin America . In Asia the churches that American missionaries started a hundred years ago now need no missionaries—they are producing their own theologians, pastors, evangelists, and their own ways of explaining how God is working among them. The world-wide ecumenical movement has begun to break down the walls of mistrust and ill will between Orthodox, Catholic and Protestant churches; and in many parts of the undeveloped world we speak with one voice to serve dire human need—as in Darfur, Palestine and Cuba.
We are witnessing in our time nothing less than a new Great Reform Movement. Whether it will be anything like the one Martin Luther started we cannot yet discern. What we do know, however, is that the Spirit of Christ is still at work among us also; the Protestant message that we are saved by grace through faith is still a vital, redemptive call.
So on this Reformation Sunday, we may look back for a few minutes, but most of all we need to look to the present and the future—to see what the “Still-speaking” God is doing now, and be ready to rejoice in the blessing.
AMEN
[1] “Mr. Sin”—this explanation comes from George Howard, professor of classics, Univ. of GA (retired).
[2] “Faith of Christ”: I have followed George Howard, Markus Barth and other scholars in interpreting this phrase as “Christ's faithfulness,” not “our faith in Christ.” See the King James Version translation of verses 22 and 26.
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