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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.
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The Rev. Gene R.Preston14th Floor, Blk 36, Lower Baguio Villa Tel : 25516161 Fax: 25512114E-mail : gpreston@netvigator.com |
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