Deuteronomy
34:1-12
European
Christians had been disputing differences in theology and practice for
centuries when Martin Luther, five hundred years ago this Tuesday, nailed a
list of 95 points that he was willing and eager to debate onto the door of the
castle church in Wittenberg, Germany.
For a whole list of reasons that included political situations and
economics and the development of new technologies like the printing press, this
time the differences blew up quickly and violently and the smoke is just now
really clearing.
The
Protestant Reformation forced the Roman Catholics to make changes that they had
been trying to avoid, and there was a movement called the Counter-Reformation
that swept aside a lot of medieval superstitions and abuses, but did it too
late and (as some would see it) not thoroughly enough. The Western branch of the Church split off
into the Catholics, who recognize the authority of the pope, and Protestants,
who do not. The Protestants split into
various groups based on what they believe about the sacraments and how the
Church should best be organized, with further complicating issues that usually
have to do with nationality.
We have a window, over to your
right, that is a monument to those days.
At the top you can see Martin Luther nailing his 95 theses to the
door. Below is a Scottish reformer named
John Knox, over whose shoulder is the thistle that is the national flower of
Scotland. Knox almost single-handedly
oversaw the development of Scotland into a Protestant (and specifically
Presbyterian and Calvinist) nation. Here
he is shown telling off the French ambassador in 1572, when Charles IX of
France ordered the massacre of over 70,000 Protestants all across France in the
space of two days. On the bottom of the
window is Roger Williams, exiled from Massachusetts because of being a Baptist,
establishing Rhode Island as a colony that allowed freedom of conscience fifty
years ahead of William Penn.
(Surprising, isn’t it? – the Baptists were the ones who established the
separation of church and state in this country.)
The story of the Reformation is
usually told in terms of kings and popes, debates and wars, but wild changes were
lived out on the local level and it was very direct and personal.. There were times that the ancestors of the
United Church of Christ, the Zwinglians, went through towns smashing windows
like these because they were idolatrous, graven images. There were thousands and thousands of monks
and nuns who had no place to go when their convents and monasteries closed. Who knew how to handle priests who were
marrying? Music was being forced into
the services and the Virgin Mary was being forced out. In southwestern England, at one point, there
were riots where people grabbed the clergy and forced them to say mass in Latin
the old way, not because they wanted the pope back, but because they had had
enough of the changes and just wanted it all to stop.
It was rough. Change happens, and we don’t always like
it. Years later we may look back,
though, and say we understand why it had to take place. Or maybe it will take longer than that. When did the Roman Catholics finally admit
that people should understand what is being said in public prayer? December 10, 1962 – but it took ten years
more to approve the translations.
When I was in tenth grade we had to
memorize a long passage from “The Passing of Arthur” by Alfred Tennyson, where
a dying King Arthur tells his old friend Sir Bedivere,
“The old order changeth,
yielding place to new,
And God fulfills himself
in many ways
Lest one good custom
should corrupt the world.”
Times
of great change come with a sense of both loss and hopefulness. They are tiring to live through.
Moses had led the people out of
Israel and through great and terrible times in the desert. By the time of his death, the rest of his
generation had died, all who had ever lived in slavery and known the Pharaoh’s
oppression. The entire people who
survived and who would cross the Jordan into the Promised Land by that point
had known no leader other than him. At the end of his life it was said,
“Never since has there arisen a prophet in Israel like Moses,
whom the Lord knew
face to face. He was unequalled for all the signs and wonders that
the Lord sent
him to perform in the land of Egypt, against Pharaoh and all his servants and
his entire land, and for all the mighty deeds and all the terrifying
displays of power that Moses performed in the sight of all Israel.” [Deuteronomy 34:10-12]
In
the early part of his leadership, however, Moses was not the revered figure we
know. This was the man who was
confronted by an enslaved Hebrew back in Egypt,
“Who
made you a ruler and judge over us?” [Exodus 2:14]
Moses
led people like that man to freedom and then heard them shout at him,
“…you
have brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with
hunger!” [Exodus 16:3]
He
had been the right man for the right time, but eventually it was time to let
go, or maybe I should say, to let his people go, because they were headed on
into a place which was not to be his place.
At the last, he was reminded that the story of God’s people did not
begin with him and neither would it end with him.
“The Lord said
to him, ‘This is the land of which I swore to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob,
saying, “I will give it to your descendants”; I have let you see it with your
eyes, but you shall not cross over there.’ Then Moses, the servant of
the Lord,
died there in the land of Moab, at the Lord’s command.” [Deuteronomy 34:4-5]
Things don’t begin or end with us,
either. We are responsible to our
forebears, and we are responsible to those who come after us. We receive the gospel and we hand it on. We must do both, and be grateful when we get
a glimpse of the future that God has in store – and God knows what we do not:
what lies over there, in the distance across the Jordan, in the country that we
have not seen nor known and where we may never set foot.
So, let me tell you a little bit
about how that grand vision may unfold on the local level in our own day. We are not going to be smashing windows or changing
our worship practices. Still, we’re dealing with a situation, in larger terms,
similar to what happened with Luther.
Technology changed in his day from handwritten manuscripts to printed
books. In ours, we’ve already seen it
switch from paper to screens.
So, see those speakers on the
wall behind me? They were not here when the building was put up, they
were added when the last organ was installed. Now that we will be
changing the organ for one that works, those speakers are going to
disappear. There will be new organ speakers, hidden on this
side of the rafters so that they are less conspicuous. We’re also working
with a different company to improve the audio sound system and we
will add a speaker above the existing black speaker you see on the beam to
improve the sound from our microphones. And good news, the new speaker and the
existing black speaker will be painted to blend into the wood they are mounted
on.
What you will notice, instead of the speakers on the front wall, will be a
screen on the right, beside the front window. That will be installed
after Christmas and before the new organ, which we estimate will be ready for
Easter. (Remember, please that that is an estimate.) The control
board for the screen will be at the back of the sanctuary and you may see it as
you come in, but not when you are seated.
We will not, I repeat, not be using the projection system to run announcements
or try to replace the hymnals. We will be looking for ways this new screen
can enhance our worship. You might see a great painting of the
Israelites crossing the Red Sea or of the Last Supper. Occasionally,
there will be a sermon illustration. There could be pictures of someone’s
life shown during a funeral or a memorial service. And we could project a
translation while the choir sings an anthem in Latin or Swahili. We
are seeking to change in a way that makes use of new possibilities.
When I think about this stuff, I honestly
get nervous. It is not my native
turf. But I turn for insight to people
who have a better handle on it than I do.
I don’t mean the techies, but historians like Phyllis Trible who, in
turn, cites
“Mark Dyer, an Anglican
bishop known for his wit as well as his wisdom, [who] famously observes from
time to time that the only way to understand what is currently happening to us
as twenty-first-century Christians in North America is first to understand that
about every five hundred years the Church feels compelled to hold a giant
rummage sale. …That is, as Bishop Dyer observes, about every five hundred years
the empowered structures of institutionalized Christianity, whatever they may
be at that time, become an intolerable carapace that must be shattered in order
that renewal and new growth may occur.”[1]
She
continues,
“…every time the
incrustations of an overly established Christianity have been broken open, the
faith has spread – and been spread – dramatically into new geographic and
demographic areas, thereby increasing exponentially the range and depth of
Christianity’s reach as a result of its time of unease and distress. Thus, for example, the birth of Protestantism
not only established a new, powerful way of being Christian, but it also forced
Roman Catholicism to make changes in its own structures and praxis. As a result of both those changes, Christianity
was spread over far more of the earth’s territories than had ever been true in
the past.”[2]
That
last part is something that, God willing, I would love to live to see happen
again. Yet if it does not happen in my
time, I have no doubt that it will happen in God’s time.
No comments:
Post a Comment