A Reformation Faith

A REFORMATION FAITH (October 28, 2001)

"I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith." 2 Timothy 4:7

This summer when I was in the highlands of Scotland visiting the Munro family Donald and Sheena took me to Tain. There in a church I saw a large tablet dedicated to the memory of a man named Patrick Hamilton. It said: "The youthful abbot of the Monastery of Fearn near Tain, of noble extraction and allied to royalty, learned and full of faith, he was the first preacher of the Reformation in Scotland and the first to seal its doctrine by a martyr's death, being burnt at the stake in St. Andrews, 28th of February 1528.

"His reek," it was said "infected as many as it did blow upon". His principles quickly spread over Scotland. Their influence was felt in the neighborhood of his monastery and was early and decidedly manifested within these walls where this tablet is erected to his memory." Mr. Hamilton was burned at the stake in Scotland only 11 years after Luther began the Protestant Reformation in Germany.

The most well known reformer in Scotland, of course, was John Knox. It is said that one midnight in his bedroom, after praying for hours on his knees, Knox was interrupted by his wife. Knox angrily told her that by her interruption she had just delayed the Reformation in Scotland. He had already won over half the nation and he was sure the other half would follow before dawn.

No one ever accused Knox of being either uncertain or wishy-washy. For years he had been a galley slave imprisoned on ships in the north sea and during his exile on the continent. He carried a giant two-handed sword with him whenever he went out preaching, for his own protection. He often faced off directly against Mary Queen of Scots, who became exasperated with him. "What are ye within this Commonwealth?" she once demanded. Knox replied, "A subject born within the same, madam. And albeit I neither be earl, Lord, nor baron within it, yet has God made me (how abject that I ever be in your eyes) a profitable member within the same."

An English archbishop was so frightened by Knox's democratic ideas that he cried, "Keep us from such visitations as Knox hath attempted in Scotland; the people to be the orderer of things." Knox took the remark as a compliment. By 1560 Knox had persuaded the government of Scotland to declare Presbyterianism to be the official church of the country.

All of this came about within a relatively short time after it all started quietly in a university town in Germany. On October 31, 1517 a heretofore unknown monk and Bible professor named Martin Luther posted his 95 Theses in Latin on the doors of the castle church at Wittenberg, Saxony. Luther intended only a scholarly debate conducted in Latin, but the 95 theses were quickly translated into German and started a fire storm throughout the country.

Luther is one of the few people of whom it can be said that the world was profoundly altered by his work. By any measure, the posting of the 95 theses is one of the most significant events in the history of the western world. Luther was not an organizer or a politician, and he certainly had his faults, but he also had a profound religious faith and an unshakable trust in God. He had a direct, personal relationship with God which brought him absolute confidence in his own personal salvation. Like St. Paul, Luther saw that personal salvation was in essence a right, personal relationship with God.

The ground of this right relationship is what God has done for humans in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ on our behalf. It is not in any way a result of our own works, but faith in the righteousness of God revealed in Jesus Christ. Christ has borne our sins and has imputed to us who believe in him His righteousness. This transformation in us is from first to last the work of God. Repentance is not, he said, a single act, and forgiveness in no way can be bought, he said, such as the Church had been trying to do with the sale of what were called "indulgences", but instead true repentance is really a life-long habit of mind.

Up against Luther was a man named Johann Tetzel who is one of the most famous salesmen in history. He was also something of a ham actor. Pope Leo had sent priests and monks like Tetzel to every corner of Europe with the job of selling indulgences in order to pay for building St. Peter's cathedral. The indulgences promised a reduced time in purgatory for a price.

With an entire roster of sins, there was a price list for which one could obtain forgiveness by coming up with the money. Tetzel and others would go into a market place, set up a cross, and cry out: "As soon as the coin in the coffer rings, the soul from purgatory springs." Luther said he doubted if the church could really control how much time anyone spent in purgatory and, in any case, the money raised would be better spent feeding the poor. He also said, who knows but that the present life, rather than some future life, is the real purgatory or testing place?

Luther himself had a very modest view of his own role in the Reformation. "While I was drinking beer," he said, "God reformed the Church." There were certainly many abuses which cried out for reform in the Church, and it is a mistake to think Luther was the only one opposed. The Catholic Church corrected many of these abuses years later in the Counter-Reformation, but it was too little, too late.

Years ago the famed minister at Riverside Church, Harry Emerson Fosdick, wrote a book on the Reformation and said that the customary picture of a decadent church against which the Protestant Reformer arose in wrath is only part of the picture. What was happening was there was a deep and moving demand in many walks of life for a genuinely vital Christian way of life, what Fosdick called "a spiritual hunger for a vital, inward religion" and an experience of God's grace immediately available to individuals.

In other words it wasn't simply a negative revolt but it was a positive affirmation - God in Christ was immediately available to the hospitable soul. Many groups before Luther had urged this, but it was Luther who set the match to the wood and started the fire. The layman was to emerge no less than the priest as having direct access to God, what Luther called "the priesthood of all believers", displacing the old model of a priesthood between the people and God. This is what is really "a Reformation Faith" - a faith which seeks and finds direct access to God, within the supporting framework of the fellowship of believers, who are the Church.

The Church, he said, is the whole community of Christian believers, since all are really priests and since every person must be "a Christ to his or her neighbor" - the priesthood of all believers.

The essence of Christian living, Luther said, is serving God faithfully in one's calling, whether in church work as a minister or not, since all useful callings - whether it be baker or barrister or bartender -- are equally sacred in the eyes of God.

Two centuries before Luther an English scholar of the Bible named John Wycliffe said all dominion is from God - see our reading from the book of Joel this morning -- and those on earth hold it only for God's sake. In the first edition of his English translation of the Scriptures Wycliffe said - and this is in the 14th century - "The Bible is translated and shall make possible Government of people, by people, for people."

Luther was no saint and he said so. He could roar at his enemies with stormy violence and he was given to outbursts of anger of theological differences. He could speak of God in the most eloquent language and then use language fit only for a barroom. He could be bawdy and course and he was given to complaining later in life. It is not unusual. In his later writings there are some very unfortunate anti-semitic statements. In the rising conflict between the peasants and the nobles he took the side of the latter because he feared disorder and chaos and, forgetting his own humble roots, he wrote a very vitriolic tract against the peasants.

But whatever he did he did in earnest. He was relentless in pursuit of Truth. He didn't believe truth was relative, as so many do today. He opposed the tendency to reduce the gospel to the "use-level" of reality, that is, is it "useful" to support one's personal needs, or bring wealth, or peace of mind, or prestige. Instead he saw it as the Good News in Jesus Christ, God's Truth, period. It uses us, not we it. It forms us, not we form it. A truly "Reformation Faith" lets Faith itself define our lives, shape our goals and attitudes. God's Truth abideth still.

This past month there was probably no hymn of the church sung more frequently than "A Mighty Fortress is Our God". It is based on psalm 46, which was also perhaps the most frequently read psalm in public gatherings across the nation. It is one of Luther's great gifts of hymnody to the Church: "And though this world, with devils filled, should threaten to undo us. We will not fear, for God hath willed His truth to triumph through u. The prince of darkness grim, We tremble not for him; his rage we can endure, for lo! His doom is sure, One little word shall fell him."