Kendall's Notebook page 17
Sermon: "For Reformation Sunday"
Also: Bible Sunday
By: Kendall Brown
Text: II Timothy 3: 16
October 26, 2003
My text this morning is from II Timothy 3: 16:
“All Scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, so that everyone who belongs to God may be proficient, equipped for every good work.”
I turn to that Scripture with a faith that strives to be enlightened by the history, tradition and learning represented in the visual display on the Communion Table before you. The Concordance, the Biblical Dictionary, the 12-volume commentary, and the Greek and Hebrew texts and dictionaries are the basic tools of Biblical scholarship that inform our faith. From that informing we learn that the word translated “inspire” in Timothy meant in the ancient world “to breathe into.” This verse is connected to the creation story in Genesis where God gave life to Adam by “breathing into” the nostrils of the lifeless and dusty body the breath of life. We live in faith that that same life-giving inspiration has continued to work among God’s people. We celebrate today the inspiration of the Reformation and the continued inspiration that is with us even here and now and in this place.
Before you this morning is also a second text that comes from our by-laws and is printed after the order in the bulletin:
“This church acknowledges as its sole head, Jesus Christ, the Son of God and the Savior of man. It acknowledges Christians all who share this confession. It looks to the Word of God in the Scriptures, and to the presence and power of the Holy Spirit, to prosper its creative and redemptive work in the world. It claims as its own the faith of the historic Church expressed in the ancient creeds and reclaimed in the basic insights of the Protestant Reformation.”
That article ties us as a congregation to our roots in the Reformation and the heritage and history of the church prior to the Reformation. It also ties us to Martin Luther and his elevation, if you will, of the Scriptures to a very central place in the life of the church.
Two events in Luther’s career come to mind on Reformation Sunday. The first event, was Luther’s document, “The 95 Thesis” tacked to the church door in October of 1517. There, Luther opposed the church’s selling of indulgences to raise money for Rome by offering the opportunity to pay your relative’s way out of Purgatory and into Heaven. Later in 1521, Luther was on trial for his thinking and teaching before the Diet of Worms. In that trial, Luther’s judges pressed him with the question of authority. By what authority did he think that he could go over the head of the pope he was asked. His answer was:
“Since then your serene Majesty and your Lordships seek a simple answer, I will give it in this manner neither horned nor toothed. Unless I am convinced by the testimony of the Scriptures or by clear reason (for I do not trust either in the Pope or in councils alone, since it is well known that they have often erred and contradicted themselves), I am bound by the Scriptures I have quoted and my conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and I will not retract anything, since it is neither safe nor right to go against conscience…May God help me. Amen.” Luther’s Works (Philadelphia: Muhlenburg Press, 1958, volume 32, pp. 112-13.
The “Ninety-five Thesis” can be thought of as the Declaration of Independence for the Protestant Movement and Luther’s statement of defense as the Bill of Rights for Protestantism.
Before the Diet of Worms, Luther in his defense set the Scriptures as the source of authority in place of the Pope as the source of authority for the Catholic Church. This displacement is symbolically before you with the Bible on the Communion Table taking the place of the crucifix.
In lifting up the Scriptures, Luther and other reformers recognized the inherent dangers. In a document entitled, The Babylonian Captivity of the Church, Luther railed against the pope and the papacy. For the reformers, a great fallacy of faith was to give the Pope so much authority that the office of Pope became an idol, a false God put in place of the one true God. The reformers were no fools and neither were they incapable of critiquing their own positions and thinking. They recognized that just as the Pope could be made an idol, the Scriptures themselves could be idolized.
Luther struggled with this central issue for Protestants and outlined a position of defense against this erroneous thinking and falsehood of faith. For him the Scriptures and the Word of God are two different things. The Scriptures contain the Word of God, just as a newspaper contains the news, but the newspaper isn’t the news. What the word is is clearly stated in the Prologue of the Gospel of John, “The word became flesh and dwelt among us.” The Word is Jesus Christ and the Scriptures contain that word. Luther used the analogy in one sermon of the Scriptures containing the word as a cradle contains a baby.
We all simplistically remember Luther for his teaching that salvation is by faith alone. We do not always stop to ask Luther (the answer is there before us in his writings) what is faith. Luther is emphatic about this. For him Faith is never a belief or acceptance of certain teachings, doctrines, commandments, or positions – no matter how religious or Biblical or Christian we might think those positions or dogma might be. For Luther faith was one thing. It was a relationship with Christ, a relationship that reoriented and redirected one’s life by the grace of God. Scriptures themselves need to be interpreted in the light of their center, Jesus Christ. By this understanding, Luther guarded against the Scriptures ever becoming an idol.
Because of this understanding, Luther did not give all of the books of the Bible the same weight or value. The weight and value of a Scriptural passage is determined by first shining the light of Christ on the passage in question. Then, with the help of reason, one determines whether or not that same light shines through in the passage under examination. Luther considered Romans the most important document in the Scriptures. Like many other reformers, he considered the book of Revelations unworthy of inclusion in the Christian Canon.
Luther would roll over in his grave he could hear some of the arguments that go on in the church today and particularly the way people argue. So often people argue by quoting Scriptures. “It says in the Bible chapter such and such verse this and that doesn’t it?!!” Verses keep getting tossed back and forth, for what reason – I am not sure, I guess, with the idea that whoever can come up with the most verses to justify their side wins.
Luther would be appalled to hear people lift an obscure verse from some ancient ritualistic code in the Book of Leviticus and grant to that verse the same weight, the same authority, and the same credence as Jesus’ own ‘Golden Rule.” In fact in many arguments, more authority is given to some randomly selected verse from some Old Testament Code than to Jesus’ own teachings about love and grace. Luther warned against such idolizing of Scriptures and treating faith as a belief in rules and regulations instead of living faith as a living relationship with one’s Lord.
Luther declared sola Scriptura, by the Scriptures alone at the Diet of Worms. With that declaration, he gave the Scriptures a rightful place of great importance and authority in the church. 500 years however, is a long time and there are things that Luther meant and didn’t mean by his teaching of sola Scriptura. Luther, reading the Bible in the 1500’s would have taken much that he read as literally true. Columbus sailed in 1492, Luther was born 1483. In his lifetime, many people still thought the world was flat and even Columbus’ voyages didn’t prove otherwise. Luther lived in a different world than we do and he would have taken much in the Bible, such as the seven day creation story, as literally true. He had no reason anywhere in his life or world to question that.
Luther, like all the major reformers, read the Bible critically and applied principles of criticism and investigation to their reading. Huge portion of Luther great legacy of writing is dedicated to Biblical criticism. He accepted portions of the Scripture as metaphor, poetry, story, parable – words with meaning beyond the literal translation. He interpreted Scriptures always under that one central teaching, that the light of Christ must shine on and in the Scriptures to know the passage’s value.
Although Luther would have read much of the Scripture very literally, the teaching that the Scriptures are infallible and inerrant was not a part of his program and teaching. For him, infallibility is something to be seen in Jesus Christ and God and there only. The doctrine of infallibility does not come to us from Luther, the other Reformers, like Calvin or John Knox, or the Reformation at large. The doctrine of infallibility is a product of what has become known as the Fundamentalist Movement which grew to some prominence in the 1800’s and early 1900’s. Luther’s theology placed the love and grace of God in Christ so central to all things, that a doctrine of Scriptural infallibility was not needed by him and would have been considered idolatrous to him.
One thing the church has not done well in our lifetimes has been separating out and teaching and clarifying these things that I am talking about this morning. In fact, I would not be surprised if a few of you listening to me this morning might be saying to yourselves, “Well, that is news to me.” It shouldn’t be news. I am not talking about anything that hasn’t been around for hundreds of years!
Even though I grew up in a parsonage and throughout my childhood was taught in Sunday Schools that were top notch Christian Ed. programs, my church life (which was practically all of my life) did not prepare me to live with my faith in the world that I entered as a young adult. I had to rediscover and redefine my faith.
The Bible in my childhood was presented to me as something to be taken in the same way that it was taken by Luther 500 years earlier – as literally true in many places. But entering adulthood, I found myself in a world that contradicted much of what had been given to me as true in the stories of my faith. Luther did not have to deal with all of the scientific knowledge that had been acquired by the late 1900’s, and the implications that had for the way I had been taught to perceive the world through the eyes of faith.
My college program was well designed for the business of turning my faith world upside down. I was a biology major (in a pre-med program) with a theology minor for the first three years. In my senior year, I reversed my major and my minor and graduated with a theology major and a biology minor and very close to the completion of a double major in biology and theology.
I was immersed in the world of modern science through the studies of embryology, genetics, anatomy, botany, organic chemistry, bio-chemistry and physics. A portion of one year was spent in the pre-natal lab at the Maine Medical Center in Portland, where I spent hours studying chromosomes and the development of the fetus under microscope. There I saw up close and personal what my professor was talking about when he spoke about how ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny. Ontogeny (the development of the embryo) recapitulates (repeats, copies) phylogeny (the origin and the evolution of the species).
In those studies, I came to appreciate how evolution is no more a theory than it is a theory that leaves on a Vermont hillside change color in the fall. It is not a theory that leaves change color, it is a part of life and the natural world that leaves change color. Likewise, evolution is not a theory it is also a part of this life that God has given to us.
I studied the essentials of nuclear medicine. There I learned about x-rays, radiation treatment for cancer, and isotopic treatment for cancer, and learned about the formulae and equations that define the working of the atom in those medical applications. I also learned that those very same formulae and equations apply to the atom in other fields such as the production of nuclear power or the making of an atomic bomb. I learned that those same formulae, equations and principles of atomic science are also employed in archeological studies.
Because of the accuracy, the dependability and the truthfulness of the formulae used in nuclear physics, your dentist is able to give you an x-ray without burning your jaw off. Using those same formulae, doctors of oncology are able to give radioactive medicine to cancer patients without totally zapping the patient. Those same formulae and equations are used by archeologist in a procedure known as carbon dating. Carbon dating offers a picture that reveals our world and our human species to have a history that goes back 100’s of thousands of years. Something had to give here. I had been taught in Sunday School a timeline of world history that only went back 5000 years.
My faith did stay alive and became deeper through my studies in theology and as my knowledge of science grew through my studies in biology. For me, the two realities – religion and science – never became an either/or thing by which I had to accept one or the other as true. My faith grew in the direction of both/and not either /or. Both the teachings of science and the teachings of our faith are true.
The more I studied religion and science, the more Psalm 8 resonated with me:
When I look at the heavens, the work of your fingers,
The moon and the stars that you have established; what are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them. Yet you have made them a little lower than God and crowned them glory and honor.
The truthfulness of science, including science’s learning about evolution, does not subtract one iota of truthful-ness from that magnificent hymn declaring the greatness of God as our creator. The more I studied science and learned of the wondrous mysteries of this world and the universe, the more in awe of God I stood. Evolution is just another one of those mysteries of life, that leaves one breathless in the presence of a God, the creator, who could set such a world in motion. The theory of evolution is no more a threat to faith than the theory of gravity or the theory of relativity. And I never hear anybody complaining about those two theories, which also like evolution, help to explain the workings of some part of our natural world.
If Luther lived in the twentieth century, the theology he developed in the 16th century would have equipped him to accept the teachings of science without having to repudiate either his faith or any part of science. His theology was helpful to me in making that synthesis.
Let us go back to Luther’s declaration before the Diet of Worms and listen again for something we missed the first time we heard it this morning.
Luther said, “Unless I am convinced by the testimony of Scriptures or by clear reason.” In that one sentence found in the Bill of Rights of the Protestant movement, Luther gives reason the same weight and authority as he does to Scriptures.
Let us relive the dialogue between Luther and his accusers who asked him on what grounds did he repudiate the pope. Luther’s answer was twofold. First he said, “The pope is out of line because any good reading of the Scriptures will make it obvious that the pope is out of line.” Luther was also saying, “the pope is out of line because it is obvious to any reasonable person, any person using his or her God-given brains.”
Before the Diet of Worms, Luther tied reason (scientific thinking and inquiry) to the interpretation and application of Scriptures. That reason and faith go hand in hand has been a basic understanding of the Protestant faith since the opening shots of the Reformation.
The partnership of reason and faith compelled our faith ancestors in the United Church of Christ. The Congregationalists in New England established schools in the East like Harvard and Yale that Christians might acquire the knowledge to perpetuate an intelligent and reasonable faith. For the same reasons, schools like Yankton and Elmhurst were founded in the Midwest by our Evangelical and Reformed ancestors in the UCC.
Something has happened in our world that blinds us to Reformation truth and faith today. Today, many parents send their children to Christian Schools with the expectation that such an education will help their children grow up to be Christian. The many institutions of learning that our ancestors in the faith founded across this nation were established that our youth be given a reasoned education that they might develop an intelligent faith.
Reformation is a day to become reconnected with the valuable treasures of the past. One of the great offerings from Luther to us, living in a world that divides and draws apart at every turn, is that simple and basic teaching - Reason and Faith go hand in hand.