Here We Stand, pt 4
Matthew 22: 34-40
June 23, 2013
The great confessions of the Reformation Era, with which
we’ve framed our worship this morning, sound a bit discordant to post-modern
ears. Not only is the language stilted and distant, but the rather bleak emphasis
on human sinfulness, the redeeming blood of Christ, and the assurance of life
everlasting seem also more than a bit out of step with contemporary concerns.
It’s helpful, in trying to get into the mind of our
Reformation forebears, to recall that they were writing in the age so memorably
described by Thomas Hobbes: life was nasty, brutish and short.
Consider the lives of a few of the key players in the
Reformation:
Ulrich Zwingli risked his life to minister to victims of the
plague. He survived that but died in his mid-40s in a battle between Protestant
reformers and Roman Catholics.
John Calvin lived only to 54, and struggled with often
debilitating illness much of his adult life.
There were among the lucky ones.
Life expectancy for one born in medieval England at the time
of the Westminster Confession was about 30 years, although if you survived to
age 20 you could expect to make it to your early 60s. Today’s 20-year-olds can
anticipate making it into their early 80s, which is also true for American
babies born last week. In other words, life may be many things for us, but it
is not likely to be “nasty, brutish and short.”
When life is nasty, brutish and short it’s probably not
unusual to ask two basic questions: why is it so? And is there more that I can
hope for from eternity?
Embedded in the language of these Reformation creeds we hear
both a concern for moral behavior, on the one hand, and the recognition that
life is already pretty messed up. Absent hygiene and antibiotics, fallen
humanity seems as good an explanation as any for the Black Death.
In a world of constant sorrow – when infant mortality was
the norm and death in childbirth claimed countless mothers, when disease was
little understood and the treatments often worse than the ailment – the promise
of eternal life was a much-needed source of constant comfort and hope.
Thus the opening inquiry of the Heidelberg Catechism strikes
a profoundly pastoral note: What is your only comfort, in life and in death? That I belong – body and soul, in life and
in death – not to myself but to my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ.
The opening question of Heidelberg, written in 1562,
predates by almost a century, the opening question of the Westminster
Catechism, which sounds a similarly hopeful note: What is the chief end of man?
To glorify God, and to enjoy God forever.
These two catechism questions and answers form a neat
bookend to the cataclysmic upheaval that the Reformation Era brought to all of
Europe, and, taken together, they voice quite simply the two great themes of
Reformation thought: first, that God alone is sovereign and, second, that
humankind is utterly dependent upon the grace of the sovereign God made known
to us through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus.
That seems hardly worth a century and a half of bloody
conflict, but buried within those simple declarations, and all of the
subordinate clauses flowing from them, lie core convictions upon which rest the
subsequent 500 years of Western history. For the conviction that God alone is
sovereign over the hearts, minds and souls of humankind calls radically into
question the authority of any earthly sovereign, whether king or pope, and,
similarly, it calls into question any human institution that upholds earthly
claims to sovereignty, whether it be the church or the monarchy.
To say, as our Book of
Order proclaims in naming the essential tenants of Reformed theology, that
“God alone is Lord of the conscience,” is also to say to king and bishop:
“you’re not the boss of me.”
Funny thing about that: neither kings nor bishops appreciate
hearing anyone say that to them. Holy Roman emperors get especially testy. Thus
it was that as Emperor Maximilian II looked down upon Frederick III as
Frederick stood in the center of the Council Hall of Augsburg to defend his adoption
of the Heidelberg Catechism, Maximilian pondered what to do with a
troublemaking official who had introduced a catechism that did not align with
the Augsburg Confession.
As Jack Rodgers describes it, “Maximilian was a moderate
Catholic, but his rule depended on firm control over the Protestant princes. He
feared that escalation of the conflict (between the Reformed proponents of
Frederick’s catechism and its Catholic and High Lutheran opponents) might lead
to civil war. The matter needed to be cleared up, and dispensing with Frederick
would be the obvious solution.”[1]
Frederick stood accused of heresy and threatened with
banishment unless he repented of his Reformed faith. Standing before the emperor and his fellow
princes, Frederick thought of the words of the catechism he had initiated and sponsored:
What is my only comfort in life and in death? That I belong – body and soul, in
life and in death – to Jesus Christ.
Frederick’s calm and gentle manner in defending his faith so
impressed his accusers that they petitioned the emperor not to censor or punish
Frederick. He was acquitted on all charges, and the Heidelberg Catechism became
the preeminent theological standard for Reformed communities in much of Europe.
Not all of the Reformers were so lucky. As I mentioned
earlier, Ulrich Zwingli died in battle. Zwingli, who was born in 1484, mentored
the much younger Heinrich Bullinger, who wrote the Second Helvetic Confession.
Though it is not as well known today as other Reformed documents, in its own time
Bullinger’s confession was considered central to Reformed theological thought.
Zwingli was among the earliest and most radical of
Protestant thinkers. He and other Zurich-based Reformers published a German
translation of the Bible in 1530, four years prior to Luther’s now famous
translation. Zwingli led public demonstrations for the Protestant cause,
including participating when the leader of the printer’s union served sausages
to his fellow printers during Lent. While that sounds harmless, and even ridiculous,
the act has been compared to burning draft cards.[2]
Zwingli had been pressured by powerful laymen to leave his
position in part because he dared to call into question the practice of
recruiting Swiss peasants to mercenary roles in European armies, including that
of the pope. Zwingli protested, saying, “Some condemn the eating of meat on
Fridays and consider it a great sin, though God has never forbidden it. But to
sell human flesh – that they do not consider a great sin.”[3]
It probably came as no great surprise that such a man, in
such an age, should die with a sword in his hand.
By the time of the Westminster Confession and associated
catechisms, almost a century later than the great Reformation confessions of
the Scots, Germans and Swiss, the age was coming to a close. Great change had
swept the religious, political and economic landscape of Europe.
The long conclave at Westminster Abby in London – convened
in 1643 and lasting five years – found itself struggling to codify a form of
church order and civil government that might thread the needle between
monarchists and parliamentarians. The Westminster divines, as they were known,
succeeded in crafting a confession that defined the Presbyterian Church for
hundreds of years, but failed in their efforts to craft a document that would
lead to civil order based on shared power.
The basic problem, as is so often the case, was the matter
of power. The key theological assertion of Westminster – the sovereignty of God
– ran smack into the key political assertion of the monarchy – the divine right
of kings. If God is sovereign and is alone lord of the conscience, then the
king no longer has ultimate authority over the whole lives of his subjects.
Fifteen chaotic years after the Westminster Confession was completed,
the English Presbyterians who played central roles in its drafting were tossed
from their parishes, impoverished and disgraced by King Charles II and his
vengeful bishops whose power had been stripped by the Presbyterian form of
church order crafted at Westminster.
These old documents and their histories have still much to
teach us. I’m far from alone among my contemporaries at looking at our moment
in history as strikingly similar to the age of the Reformation. The
foundational institutions of our world – economic, political, religious – are
in tremendous flux, and our communications technology has been revolutionized
in our generation. We stand in deep need of a second Reformation.
But the violence and chaos of the first Reformation ought to
remind us that the chief lesson of the gospel must stay at the forefront of our
reforming. The law and the prophets – and those who would reform them – must
hang on this: love the Lord with all your heart, mind and power; and love your
neighbor as yourself. May that remain our first confession of faith. Amen.
posted by David Ensign at
11:05 AM
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