Oct 31, 1999
My Final Reformation Sermon! Or, Allelulia
and Please Forgive Me, Martin Luther"
(This message by pastor Gene R. Preston was delivered
October 3l, l999, Reformation Sunday and the day that Roman
Catholics and Lutherans signed a historic document of
reconciliation in Augsburg, Germany. This joint declaration
lifted mutual denunciations of over 400 years ago and
declared a common understanding of the doctrine of
justification by faith which, in some important ways, ends
the division created by the l6th Century Reformation and
Counter-Reformation.)
When I was a young minister in the 1960s, Reformation
Sunday, traditionally the last Sunday of October, provided
the annual cartharsis for Protestants to feel smugly
superior to Roman Catholics. It was not because we were
acquainted with the dissenting thought of Martin Luther. We
hardly read brother Martin back then, and almost no one,
except die-hard Lutheran theologians, read him now.
No, this late October burst of Protestant superiority was
a cultural indulgence and a gut commitment that America was
a Protestant nation and we Protestants were just innately
superior in doctrine and grace to Catholics. We were able to
maintain these prejudices because until the l960s American
Protestants and American Catholics lived in distinctly
isolated communities and prejudice always sustains itself
when isolation and the ignorance it breeds are the rule.
All of that has radically changed in just one generation.
And I am happy to declare that this will be my last
Reformation Day Sunday Sermon. It is my last sermon for the
obvious reason that by this time next year I will be retired
and in all probability never have a pulpit to occupy on the
last Sunday of any future October. I shall by new
circumstances not only have to forsake any comment on
Reformation Sunday but on Halloween and All Saint's Sunday,
which tend to crowd the preaching agenda on this last Sunday
of October.
But it is my final Reformation Sunday in a much more
important way: Today, October 3l, in Augsburg, Germany, the
home town of Martin Luther and where he tacked up his 9l
reformed ideas on the cathedral door, Roman Catholic and
Lutheran delegations are signing a historic agreement. In
several ways it ends the Reformation and thus the need for
any future Reformation Sunday. This is, in truth, the final
Reformation Sunday for us all.
What is being signed on this day is an agreement which
does two important things: First, it lifts mutual
denunciations, literally official ecclesiastical curses,
which Lutheran leaders placed upon the Roman Catholic Church
in the mid-l6th Century and a counter-denunciation and curse
which the Roman Catholic Church placed upon Lutherans and
other Protestants at the same time.
Secondly, the agreement is a l9 page doctrinal statement
laying out a mutual understanding that salvation is entirely
at the initiative of God and the work of Jesus Christ and
that humankind does nothing and can do nothing to earn,
merit or expedite God's saving grace. The dispute about
justification by faith or by works was, after all, the major
dispute provoking the Reformation. In a sense the
Reformation has won, since the document sets forth ideas
which are classically Protestant. However, Catholic
theologians, who have co-drafted the agreement, maintain
that Martin Luther simply got the Catholic church's position
on salvation wrong from the outset. The new statement does
not so much correct as clarify catholic thinking.
In hindsight the split in European Christians in the l6th
Century, seems rather like the heated polemical argument
that takes place in Matthew 22. The majority of Jews
rejected the Jewish Christian appeals, positions hardened,
the Christians were thrown out of the synagogues,
stereotypes proliferated from both sides, and we end up with
the harsh judgements of today's Gospel in which the Matthean
Church remembers Jesus as indulged in a ferocious series of
curses upon the Jews.
It is not unlike the soaring polemics and caricatures now
beginning to fly between Pat Buchanan who has just bolted
from the Republican Party and the GOP faithful who want to
emasculate Buchanan. Upon resigning Buchanan made sweeping
and denunciations of the Party whose presidential nomination
he twice sought. Pat can expect spiteful counter-charges.
*********
Now the amazing thing to me is that what is happening at
Augsburg, Germany, this very day is simply the official
church catching up with millions of Catholics and
Protestants who in recent years have already decided that
the Reformation and Counter-Reformation have ended. I
rejoice that in only one generation of my life we have moved
at the everyday level of Christian contacts and
understanding to a full acceptance of one another.
Last night I conducted the Lord's Supper at the Emmaus
Men's Walk here on Hong Kong Island. The Emmaus Walk is one
of the most inter-faith Christian efforts I know about and
for 30 years lay Catholics and Protestants have been
comfortably sharing this spiritual renewal movement. Since
Holy Communion is always a part of the 72 hour retreat,
Catholic and Protestant consciences are free to do as they
wish regarding receiving the elements.
One thing that the agreement signed today in Germany does
not do is that it does not give permission for Roman
Catholics to receive the sacrament of communion outside
their church. And thus it does not relieve Protestant
consciences from the need out of respect for the catholic
teaching to refrain from receiving the sacrament when they
are present at a Catholic mass.
But, notwithstanding official church positions, many
Christians of both faith traditions have voted with their
feet and come forward to receive the sacrament from clergy
of the other faith. Several times I have been deeply moved
when catholic priests have come to receive the elements from
me.
This reconciliation at the grassroots has been until
recently an American and a European experience. I would
guess that in Hong Kong, Chinese catholic and Protestants
are back where Americans of those two faith groups were 30
years ago.
In the line up of congregations participating in the
March for Jesus going on down there now, I did not see a
single catholic parish or organisation listed. I imagine the
Protestant organisers of the local March would not even have
thought about inviting Catholic participation.
How did it happen that in only one generation many
Christians have overcome the separation of four centuries?
To an important extent it has taken place because of the
increased mobility of all societies. I never knew a Roman
Catholic until I went to university. In recent years college
experience has proven a great destroyer of stereotypes. It
is nearly impossible when you have close friendships with
persons of other faiths to cling to inherited prejudices
against them.
Then when I was in the army I was several times in
situations where the only worship available to me was Roman
Catholic. On my first furlough from the Army at Christmas
forty some years ago I was visiting a close friend in
Boston. She was Boston Irish Catholic and she took me to the
midnight mass at the Cathedral. The cardinal was
officiating. I wanted the sacrament. Should I refrain
because I am Protestant. I went forward and received
communion. The sacrament was, after all, begun by Jesus, not
by his church.
In the reconciliation of American Catholics and
Protestants probably the two signal events in the public
area was the election in l960 of the first Roman Catholic
President, John F. Kennedy. JFK made it possible for Roman
Catholics to feel they were fully American and made possible
for American Protestants the desire to extend a respect
formerly denied Roman Catholics by the Protestant majority.
The other wondrous development for Christian
understanding was the l962 Vatican Council convoked by a
pope whom every Protestant loved, Pope John XXII. This
wonderful spiritual leader opened many doors within his
Church to encourage joint meetings and discussions with
Protestants. The agreement signed today is one latter day
fruit of what Pope John began in l962..
We have come a long way in just one generation. It is
good that we are finished with Reformation Day Sundays, as
such. Genuine interfaith progress has removed the defensive
and parochial attitudes which sustained that outmoded
anniversary.
*******.
There is a downside in the finish to Reformation Day
Sundays. Tolerance is admirable but tolerance stemming from
ignorance and indifference is the weakest form of mutual
acceptance and so fragile as to be fractured whenever
hostile forces are renewed in the society.
When an increasing numbers of persons in the pews on any
given Sunday, know very little about Jesus, why insert talk
about Martin Luther or Pope John XXII. It would only
overload and confuse the limited perception of many. When so
many are ignorant about the bible, why risk confusing things
further by talking about church doctrine! When many
followers of Jesus make their decisions because it feels
good to them, or because Jesus will give them success, and
without any understanding of what the doctrine of salvation
through faith alone means, why bother to read a single page
of the agreement signed today. Nobody will understand it;
nobody really cares to understand it.
The old Catholic and Protestant tribalism is dead except
in a holdout places like northern Ireland and Hong Kong. But
millions are today happily ignorant and indifferent about
interfaith relations because all truth and meaning have been
relativized and all spiritual meaning rests on only the
personal and subjective convictions of individual believers.
The prevailing ignorance and indifference among
Christians is a terrible handicap to building on recent
successes toward a fully integrated body of Christ. And
ignorance often precedes the repetition of some barbaric
hostility.
In the growing relativism of truth, the nearest axiom we
can agree upon is along the lines of "What is true for me
may not be your truth." In matters religious another
prevailing axiom is: "We are all working to get to the same
place. All religions lead to the same god, just by different
paths. It doesn't matter what you believe as long as you are
sincere."
Such axioms lead us to put faith in any faith and makes
serious consideration of Christian faith a silly and
irrational exercise. Such a vague and bland creed robs us of
any language and ideas with which to engage one another. And
such bland disregard for our faith histories trivialises the
sacrifices of countless martyrs and saints.
As we put away Reformation Sunday, we can rejoice that we
have sheathed the old doctrinal swords of polemical attack.
But we still need passion and fervency and devotion in truth
about Jesus and God. Otherwise we will all slip back into
our tiny, individual truths and miss the greater and grander
Kingdom and Way of Truth which Jesus promised to those who
follow him.
While the Reformation is ended there is continuing need
for the principle of the Reformation in both Catholic and
Protestant congregations. The Reformation principle is that
the church is always being reformed and must always be
reformed because we are always in the process of being
formed by the Holy Spirit around Jesus Christ.
A premise of scripture is that we are not free and
sovereign to belie anything we like. We are servants of one
lord, or another. We also are by nature servants of our sin
and stupidity. Now another Lord, named Jesus, has asserted
dominion in our lives and that Lord, Jesus says: IF YOU
CONTINUE IN MY WORD, YOU ARE TRULY MY DISCIPLES; AND YOU
WILL KNOW THE TRUTH AND THE TRUTH WILL MAKE YOU FREE.
The joy I have at giving my final Reformation Sunday is
that Roman Catholics and Protestants, in part because of
what the official churches are doing today, in part because
of what Christians at their local levels have been doing or
wanting to do for years, can now meet on common grounds of
the same scriptures, mutual study, vital human exchanges,
and even worship. Together and truly holding one another's
hands we can seek the greater and grander Truth of Jesus
Christ. That will make us all participants in ongoing
Reformation.
Pastor
Gene Preston
Archives:
Sermon Texts
|