10/29/67

Scripture: Romans 1: 1-17.

The children of our community will join hosts of others in celebrating Hallowe’en next Tuesday. Many will join in the youthful demand for treats under threat of tricks. Many others will solicit contribution for the UNICEF fund to help children all over the world. But next Tuesday marks a very significant event in history. For it is the 450th anniversary of an act which is often pin-pointed as the beginning of the Protestant Reformation, namely the posting of Luther’s 95 theses on a church door. There was a religious ferment going on then, before, during, and after 1517.

There is a massive ferment at work on the earth in 1967. Both Protestant churches and Roman Catholic churches are in swift transition in our time. Since the Vatican Council of the past decade, the Roman Catholic Church has lowered some of the wall of austerity which separated it from Protestant Christianity. Conversation and inquiry are much more evident than before. There is an ecumenical attitude evident there, albeit from a Catholic viewpoint. There is debate in Catholic circles on such matters as family planning, celibacy of the clergy, Christian fellowship with Protestants, merits and demerits of parochial education, and so on. But it does not appear likely that the Roman Church will soon deny the overall authority of the Pope; the hierarchy in the clergy; the belief that that church was entrusted in a peculiar manner with the keys to Christ’s kingdom.

Protestants are restive. We are much more inclined than formerly toward dialog and fellowship with Catholics. Many of us are trying to rediscover the essence of our faith. Some find new forms of worship and service desirable and suggestive. There is a mood of impatience that can be either a destructive force or a building force according to its direction. There is re-formation in our ideas of morality; in ways of acting and reacting. But we hold to our insistence on the freedom and responsibility of the individual. All of us will do well to hold to a faith that can steady and strengthen us --- a faith that is validated in the re-examining of history and scripture, a faith that stands the testing of experience.

A short generation ago, the late Quaker leader Rufus Jones spoke of faith as a pathway to God; as something that springs out of the essential moral disposition of the mind; as the soul’s insight or discovery of some reality that enables one to stand anything that can happen to him in the universe, as the will to believe in expectancy what can then be tested in experience. Of course, faith is much more than saying “yes” to any formula, any doctrine, or any pre-ordered creed. It begins in invincible surmise and it sends you into the practical adventure of action.

Some churches invariably include in the order of worship the repeating together by the entire congregation, of one of the great creeds of the Christian church. Often it is “The Apostles’ Creed.” Sometimes it is the “Nicene Creed.” But the people of those congregations remind themselves of those Christian attitudes which seem basic to them, when they regularly recite the creed. Other churches use in the order of worship something called “A Statement of Faith” like the one on the inside back cover of our hymnal, or an “Affirmation of Faith.” “Affirmation” may seem somewhat like the creed, except that it is more flexible and some affirmations may be varied in form from time to time. But it is one way of expressing positively what the worshipping Christians of that particular household of faith believe concerning their relationship to God and to each other.

There is some merit in that practice. Protestant Christianity is sometimes allowed to appear a negative expression. It is not. It is a very positive faith and must be so understood, particularly by those who join a Protestant church.

Here and there, you may get into discussion with one who holds membership in this church, or in a church of some other Protestant body, who speaks with some enthusiasm about what he does not believe. He may be particularly critical of the statement of faith of some other church. Or he may be caustic about the evidence, or lack of evidence, of Christianity that he thinks he observes in some particular church member he knows. Or he is excited and angry about a practice which is accepted by some others and which he avers to be wrong. But if his faith goes no farther than that, he is not very significantly Christian; and he certainly is not Protestant in the basic meaning of the name. If he is meaningfully Protestant, he is deeply concerned with his own faith and with our Protestant practices.

Historically speaking, the Protestant trend in Christianity began with the Reformation movement. The Reformation was a long time coming. We often think of it as beginning with Martin Luther, but there were numerous other reformers as well. Jan Hus was burned as a heretic in 1415, more than a century before Luther’s theses. The Moravian Church traces its spiritual history to Hus through an organization of the Bohemian Brethren formed in 1457, some 510 years ago, and a full sixty years before Luther’s theses. There were many others, before and after Luther, who are a definite part of the Reformation movement. John Wycliffe, in England, lived even before Hus. He translated the scriptures into the English vernacular, won the disapproval of the Pope, died in 1384. Twelve years after his death his bones were dug up and burned and the ashes scattered, and his books were ordered to be burned.

Other reformers whose lives were contemporaneous with Luther’s time were Cranmer of England; the English Tyndal who was burned at the stake in 1536; Melancthon in Germany; Zwingli in Switzerland; the great French theologian, John Calvin, who worked in exile in Geneva, was some 25 years younger than Luther, and he plowed deep furrows in the Reformation fields, as did John Knox, the Scotsman who spent much of his time working with Calvin.

There were people, through many decades of soul-searching and struggle, who believed that the faith of Jesus Christ was basically finer, more potent and transforming, than the general belief taught and practiced by most members of the organized church of their time. They proclaimed their beliefs; they gathered together in groups of like-minded seekers-after-truth. Many of them were persecuted; and not a few were put to death. They were not just rebels. They testified to a transforming faith, and it was this positive belief, put into the action of their lives, that was deemed so disturbing to established ecclesiastical authority that it could not be tolerated by the establishment. And so the Reformation movement was a profoundly disturbing movement because of its positive implications.

One reason that the Reformation was able to take hold successfully in Germany was that there was so much of positive conviction growing there already that the reformers’ ideas could readily take root. And so, on October 31, 1517, Father Martin Luther, an Augustinian monk who was then a priest of the Roman Catholic church in Germany, fastened his now famous 95 theses on the door of the church in Wittenburg. To put up such a paper was nothing new. At that time a church door was often used as a kind of bulletin board. And, particularly, notices that could be discussed and debated might be posted there. Luther’s action was one way of saying, “Here is something I have thought about a great deal. I am ready to argue about these propositions, or paragraphs, or theses. I believe what I have stated here so strongly that I am willing to debate with anyone who wants to talk about them.”

These ideas had been growing in the mind of Luther for months as he went about his preaching and teaching in a parish, and his study and his praying in the monastery. But he probably had not expected that they would fire the interest and imagination of so many people --- of whom were folk of no particular consequence and some of whom were in high places of authority and influence. Of course one thing that stimulated Luther’s conviction was the fact that Joseph Tetzel, a representative in Germany of the pope, had gone to great extremes in the sale of indulgences. Tetzel represented to the faithful that there was a sort of reserve, or pool, of virtue stored up by the goodness of saints. For a price in money, one could draw on that pool for forgiveness of his own sins, so that one might escape the sooner from purgatory after death. To be sure this “indulgence,” or written assurance, that Tetzel offered cost money. But folks didn’t mind that, if they could feel sure that they would not suffer long in eternity for their sins. Some appeared even to feel sorry for, or to repent of their sins, if they had the assurance of one of those indulgences which they had paid for.

Martin Luther belonged to the same church as did Tetzel. But Luther was convinced that the only way to make up for one’s own wrong-doing is to repent of it and to seek the forgiveness of God. He had studied, long and carefully, the New Testament writings of Paul. One of Paul’s statements which struck Luther with particular force was the last phrase of this morning’s Scripture lesson in the 17th verse of the first chapter of the letter to the Romans: “The just shall live by faith.” (Paul wrote it again to the Galatians, and it appears in the book of Hebrews. It had come from the Old Testament book of Habakkuk.) To Luther this seemed to mean that one is justified by the faith he holds and practices rather than a series of atoning acts or penances or by the assurance of some other person that he will somehow “fix it up” with God. Luther, at that time, had no intention of leaving the church in which he was trained. He was intent on witnessing what he believed should be its true faith.

In 1529, some of the princes of Germany --- enough to be a powerful group in the life of that nation --- drew up a statement in objection to some of the compulsions of the Church. They called their statement a “protest.” And the name stuck to them like a nickname. At this meeting -- the Diet of Speyer in 1529, 12 stormy years after publication of Luther’s famous theses, the reforming German princes and free cities said in their formal statement: “We must protest in matters which concern God’s honor and the salvation and eternal life of our souls; everyone must stand and give account before God of himself, and no one can excuse himself by the action or decision of another, whether less or more.” That was a positive statement of belief on a controversial issue. It was a stand on their right to have propagated the evangelical gospel.

The word they used in their statement, “protest,” means “dissent” only in a secondary sense. The Latin word “protestari” means “to profess, to bear witness, to declare openly.” The genius of proper Protestant Christianity lies not in negative dissent, but in positive affirmation of the truth of the Christian Gospel as set forth in the New Testament. The Protestant Reformation of the 16th century was a movement to recover the original New Testament gospel of justification by God’s grace through faith in Jesus Christ. Thoughtful Protestant Christians still have the opportunity to defend and reaffirm this heritage. We constantly affirm that the gospel of faith in Christ is relevant. It applies not only to our thoughts at Sunday worship, or during private prayer, but to all of our living. There is nothing exclusively altogether “secular,” nothing that should not be touched and influenced and shaped by the basic religious faith that a Christian holds.

Now Protestants are accustomed to the assertion that the freedoms we cherish in this nation have been mightily nurtured by the faith which we hold. We cherish freedom to think, and speak, and assemble without fear of reprisal from any external authority, be it civil or ecclesiastical. And to a very significant degree it is true that our Protestant expression of faith, and our cherished liberties go in parallel direction. However, our faith concerning freedom needs to go much deeper than this kind of forbearance. As Christians, we go to the New Testament for the light of understanding. In a part of Paul’s letter to the people of Corinth there appears this statement, at the 17th verse of II Corinthians 3: “Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.” The word “Lord” refers to Jesus -- not just the Jesus of earthly appearance so much as Jesus the Christ, the focus of spiritual power.

In general, the fruits of the spirit of Christ in a Christian are moral and spiritual. But they grow from the rooting of life, set in the heart, not from mere obedience to commands. The restraint of commands, both positive and negative, is replaced by the constraint of love in Christ, which becomes voluntary willingness.

It is important to understand Paul’s idea of liberty. We easily fall into the piteously insufficient view that liberty means freedom from restraint or compulsion. And so one may, if he wishes, say, write, or think anything he supposes he can get away with. He is not compelled, for instance, either by doctrine or authority, to go to Church on Sunday. So he goes if he feels like it. If he prefers, he goes hunting instead, or sleeps through the morning, or takes a trip, or does whatever else may strike his fancy -- because he knows of no penalty attached, or any other compulsion to make him go to church. He feels free to go or not to go to public worship.

But the supposed freedom from all external restraints creates a problem. How shall we order our lives when we are free to do as we like? Huxley said, “A man’s worst difficulties begin when he is able to do as he likes.” Paul’s solution to the problem of this negative kind of liberty is this: “True liberty is not the freedom to do as we like; it is the power to do what we know we should.” Through Christ, Paul is made free of the religious law of his time to become a son of God!

An artist finds freedom in his devotion to his art. He isn’t even an artist if he runs from it or ignores, or neglects, it.

We sometimes hear it asserted that such-and-such a church requires one to attend worship regularly, to give heavily, to obey the laws and leaders of that church. And too often one is tempted to say, “I’m glad I don’t belong to that church.” So what? Does any affirmative Christianity issue from such negative complacency? The virtue of proper Protestant Christian expression is in willing, faithful attention to the spirit of willing, voluntary effort. Of course you don’t have to give ten percent of your time to church work, and five or six hundred dollars a year to church program and building. Your prayers are not prescribed as to form. But if you and I are truly Protestant Christian, we do witness, we do profess our belief and loyalty, not alone by a nod or a single assertion in a brief ritual but by our willing service, our willing and joyful giving in worthy amounts of time and substance, our willing attention to the worship of God.

In another letter, to the people of Galatia, Paul said, “You were called to freedom, brethren, only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love be servants of one another.” [Galatians 5: 13]. Unless we use our liberty for positive service, in the interests of love, we shall find ourselves in deeper bondage to our own unruly passions and desires.

James Reid makes this telling distinction in the exposition of the Interpreter’s Bible. Let me repeat it slowly, for it comes close to the truly Christian concept of liberty: “True liberty is not the freedom to do as we like; it is the power to do as we ought.” And the secret of liberty is found in the power of the indwelling Spirit. Through Christ, we find both guidance to do what we ought to do and the power to do it. That power has sustained Christians through some stormy times, yet with calm and strong peace in their souls.

It is a good thing for Protestant Christians to use a Reformation Sunday to remind themselves of a great spiritual heritage. The Reformation came about through the faith-inspired devotion of imperfect people who desired righteousness and who wanted a church that might be spiritually like the New Testament company of Christ’s followers.

Reformation Sunday has living significance if the remembrance of that heritage impels us to the devotion, the service, the giving, the sacrifice, and the gladness which we can honestly and willingly lay before Him whose we all are.

Let our faith be a willing, consecrated affirmation, to which our whole lives give constant testimony.

Amen.

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Delivered in Wisconsin Rapids, October 29, 1967.

Also at the Wood County Infirmary, November 8, 1967.

Also at Imiola Church, October 26, 1969.