Reformation Day Assembly, 2014

What follows is the text of an address I was privileged to give at school for Reformation Day. I love Reformation Day, and all that we celebrate, and so I love giving addresses on the topic! Last time I did this, I spoke about Martin Luther and the gift of personal Bible reading. This time I chose to speak about Zwingli and the importance of searching the Bible to see if what he hear and believe is true.

Here is the speech:

What do you think of when you are asked about the Reformation of the Church in Europe in the 1500s? What image, what picture do you think would best represent the spirit of the Reformation? Martin Luther courageously standing before the Roman Church council demanding to be shown in Scripture where he is wrong? John Calvin preaching courageously in Geneva, not that far from Roman Catholic France, which he fled for his life? Ulrich Zwingli courageously eating sausage with some friends during Lent?

You heard me correctly. One of the important leaders of the Reformation started changing the church by eating sausages. Sausages. No joke.

The year is 1522. Zwingli is a priest in a Roman Catholic Church in the city of Zurich, Switzerland. He is 38 years old, and is not a person to back down from a challenge. In 1522, that challenge came during the season of Lent. Lent is the period of 40 days before Easter. During these 40 days, Roman Catholics are supposed to give up something. At the time of Zwingli, that thing was meat. In the 1500s, Roman Catholics gave up meat for Lent. This was supposed to create in them a reminder of Christ's sacrifice. The problem with Lent is that it is nowhere found in the Bible. And this was Zwingli's challenge to the Roman Church.

One night, after a long day’s work, a friend of Zwingli’s, a man who owned a printing press, shared some smoked sausage with his workers, because they were tired and hungry. When the bishop and other priests heard of this, they arrested the man. Zwingli took the matter to the pulpit and preached an important sermon that following Sunday. He preached a sermon in which he showed that it doesn’t matter what we eat, don’t eat, or even celebrate or don’t celebrate. What matters is our hearts before God. The Church should not demand things from people that God does not demand of them. If it does not say in the Bible that people should fast at Lent, why does the Roman Catholic Church demand that people should fast?

We do not simply remember Zwingli for eating sausage (even though he didn't eat any, he defended those who did), we remember Zwingli for his insistence on sticking to Scripture. He always asked what the Bible says. Tradition, church teaching, nothing is as important as Scripture for guiding and directing our lives.

Zwingli follows in the wonderful tradition of the Bereans whom Paul meets in Acts 17. Not impressed simply with Paul's words or his credentials as an apostle, the Bereans constantly searched the Scriptures to see whether Paul's teachings were true.

Acts 17:10-13
As soon as it was night, the brothers sent Paul and Silas away to Berea. On arriving there, they went to the Jewish synagogue. Now the Bereans were of more noble character than the Thessalonians, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true. Many of the Jews believed, as did also a number of prominent Greek women and many Greek men.

The basis for truth is not the one who brings the message, whether apostle or Pope. Nor is it whether we like the message or it makes life easier for us. The basis of truth for anything we do in Church or in our Christian life is Scripture alone.

Zwingli pushed the Roman Catholic Church in Europe to find this foundation again. The Roman Church had put heavy burdens on the people, adding lots of extra teachings and practices. There were feast days for saints, fasts for repentance, actions to do for earning forgiveness. Priests could not marry, people could not read the Bible themselves, and many other things. Zwingli went back to the Bible, and started freeing believers from these heavy burdens.

The last time I had the privilege of speaking at our Reformation Day assembly, I spoke about Martin Luther and perhaps the greatest gift he gave the churches--the importance of reading the Bible for yourself. Here Zwingli adds to this gift by showing us why we read the Bible for ourselves. If we don’t know Scripture, we can be taken captive by the teachings of men, and be drawn away from the revelation of God.

Did you know that when Zwingli first received a copy of the Greek New Testament from his friend Disiderus Erasmus, he took a whole year and read through it, cover to cover? Do you know why Zwingli was such a force in the Reformation? Because he saturated himself with God’s Word, and read it as often and as fully as he could!

God has given us his Word so that we can know him. Why would we let anyone get in between us and God? Search the Scriptures like the Bereans, to see if what you are told is true. Search the Scriptures like Zwingli, to see how best to live your life before God. And search the Scriptures above all, because it is there, and nowhere else, that we know the One, True, Living God.

New Years' Resolutions?

I am not one for making resolutions at this time of year, we should be reflecting and resolving year-round. That being said, the end of one year and the beginning of another does lend itself nicely to these actions.

I have, unfortunately, begun and abandoned a number of Bible reading plans, as I realize that I do not spend enough time in the Word. I tend to collect Bible reading plans, and then put them away. I want 2014 to be different. I am selecting a plan, and then will (hopefully) blog my way through it. In the end I hope to have some good meditations to use for devotions at school with my students.

I am still looking at a few different plans, and coming up with criteria for evaluating them. For now, here is a good blog post listing a number of plans: Gospel Coalition Blog.

I will let you know the results by New Year's Day.

Jehovah's Witnesses and their Small God

We have been the fortunate (or unfortunate, depending on your perspective, I suppose) recipients of the attentions of our local Jehovah's Witnesses. They regularly come to our door and drop off their reading materials. Usually when I'm not home, however. I was struck after this most recent visit by some of the articles in their latest magazines (The Watchtower and Awake! for those who do not receive visits).

First of all, I began reading these with more interest when I read an article a while back about the criminal on the cross beside Jesus. As far as I remember, the JW perspective on this criminal was that he was not truly saved, for that wouldn't be fair to those who had actually lived good lives before they died. This criminal repented at the last minute, and so was not actually good enough to enter heaven with Jesus. To me, this is no longer gospel, but a works-based, self-righteousness religion, and denies the grace and mercy of God.

However, this latest magazine caught my attention with the articles entitled "The Lie that Made God Nameless," "The Lie That Made God a Mystery," and "The Lie That Made God Cruel" (these can be found here). The first article is fairly straight-forward, saying that we do know the name of God (they say it is Jehovah, most Old Testament scholars I have read pronounce it Yahweh), even though some people say we can't say it (like orthodox Jews), or don't know it any ways. This is nothing new to Bible-reading Christians.

The remaining two articles show, as I read them, that instead of protecting and magnifying the glory and greatness of God, the JWs actually make God smaller by demanding that he be understandable by our reason, and that God, to be the Judge of sinners, must therefore be cruel.

The first of these articles deals with the doctrine of the Trinity--which JWs disagree with (to them, Jesus was not the eternal Son of God, but became the Son of God at his ascension (or resurrection, I can't remember which right now)). They argue against the Trinity in this short article by saying that Jesus never claimed to be equal with the Father, and so is not God. They also argue that the Holy Spirit is not a person, but is God's "active force." Without getting into the issue of how we received and understand the doctrine of the Trinity, the JW objection is that we could not know this doctrine, and this makes God unknowable. I quote:

 "Can you really love someone who is impossible to know or understand? The doctrine of the Trinity, therefore, is a barrier to knowing and loving God."

The question I have in return, however, is: How can finite, limited minds understand the God who created them? Do we not learn from Job that God is beyond us? That God is far greater and more mysterious than we could ever imagine? That a God who can be understood by us is a God who is not that great?

Of course we know of God through revelation alone--we are limited, sinful people! This does not make God unlovable, it makes God even greater and more lovable since he chose to reveal himself to us. It makes our thankful response of obedience even more important, because knowledge of this great and 'unknowable' God is all that much more precious.

The second article tries to make God less cruel by denying the doctrine of a place of eternal torment after this life for those whom God has not elected. In an interesting use and misreading of Ezekiel 18:4, the JWs argue that this place does not exist, but that unchosen souls will be destroyed and no longer exist. But their misquote does not take into consideration the context of the passage in which 'soul' is then identified as the people who sin, not just their souls (read Ezekiel 18, you'll get what I mean). Their other 'proof text' is Job 14:13, and they use an old translation to make their point that the OT does not refer to 'hell' but 'the grave.' Most modern translations have "Sheol," the OT reference to what happens after this life (usually understood as 'grave'). But most poetic references are from the viewpoint of the living, otherwise when David says, in Psalm 88:10

"Do you show your wonders to the dead?Do those who are dead rise up and praise you?"

does he mean that once we are no longer living, we cannot praise God? That denies the essence of John's vision in Revelation where the citizens of heaven are praising God, including those who have been killed for their obedience to Christ!

It is interesting that the JWs do not quote any New Testament passages about eternal punishment or Hell. They pick and choose their texts to suit their purposes.

In the end, I would not become a JW because their God is too small! They try to make God fit our understanding, our reasoning, and our ideas of what God should be like. Give me the untamable, mysterious, Judge of the Bible over the watered-down lesser God of the JWs! Give me Yahweh over this Jehovah, because here I can see the greatness, the unimaginable holiness, power, and majesty of the God of the Bible.

When confronted by a Jehovah's Witness, next time just tell them that their God is too small, and then point them to the true God of the Bible.

A Reformation Day Assembly.

I delivered my first school assembly address on Monday.  The topic, of course, was Halloween.  Okay, no it wasn't.  It was the reformation, as October 31st commemorates the day on which Martin Luther, in 1517, nailed his 95 Theses to the Wittenberg church door.  But, as I argue, this was not the glorious beginning to the Reformation, this was a scholar's invitation to debate about the practices of indulgence-sellers.  If you read the 95 theses, as I made my grade 9s do, you will see that he does not disagree with indulgences as such, nor the power of the pope, but with the practices that have surrounded these things.  The real Reformation began, I would argue, during the Diet of Worms where Luther demanded to be proven wrong on the basis of scripture alone.  

What follows is my assembly speech, which I did not deliver verbatim.

___________________________

When Martin Luther strode up to the church door in Wittenberg on October 31, 1517, he did not intend to start a revolution.  What he intended was to reform certain practices in the church of his time.  In fact, the church door was the bulletin board of the city: if you had something you wanted people to know or to read, you didn’t e-mail them, you didn’t send it to the newspaper, you took a hammer and some nails, and you posted it on the church door.  Martin Luther was simply inviting people to come and have a debate with him about these things called indulgences.

Here’s the deal.  The Pope, the leader of the Roman Catholic Church, had this great big church to build in Rome: St. Peter’s Basilica.  But the problem was that he was broke—he had no money left.  How was he to build a beautiful new church without a penny left in his bank account?  He would raise the money by selling indulgences.  These were pretty pieces of paper that let a person out of purgatory early.  Purgatory is that place between earth and heaven where our souls go after we die to become clean.  We are purged of our sins before we can enter heaven.  Depending on how often you had sinned in your life, you might have to spend many years in purgatory before you could enter heaven.  An indulgence releases the soul from purgatory, and sends them merrily on their way to heaven.

Of course, we don’t believe in purgatory.  But in 1517, Martin Luther did.  And so did most of the people around him.  They believed in it so strongly that they would pay whatever they could to buy an indulgence.  Luther, however, was not convinced.  Purgatory, he might believe in;  Indulgences, sure;  But the fact that the people had to pay for them?  That was a stretch.  And the fact that the people selling indulgences, people like John Tetzel, took money from people too poor to even buy bread to eat?  That was too far.

On October 31^st, 1517, Luther wanted to put a stop not to indulgences, but to the corrupt practices of those selling indulgences.  He did not want to start a revolution.  The revolution came later, when the leaders of the Roman Catholic Church decided that Luther was a nuisance.

What happened on October 31^st was Luther saying “Something has to change!”  What happened two years later, in 1520, was Luther saying, “Everything has to change!”  Nailing the 95 Theses to the church door in Wittenberg was simply the act of a scholar wanting to argue and discuss with other scholars.  But when the Roman Catholic Church decided it didn’t want to play nice, Luther set the world on fire with a speech, a speech with ended this way:

Since then Your Majesty and your lordships desire a simple reply, I will answer without horns and without teeth.  Unless I am convicted by Scripture and plain reason—I do not accept the authority of popes and councils, for they have contradicted each other—my conscience is captive to the Word of God.  I cannot and I will not recant anything, for to go against conscience is neither right nor safe.  [Here I stand, I cannot do otherwise.]  God help me.  Amen.

Here is where Luther set the wheels of the Reformation in motion: don’t quote pope or council to me—they are human and can be wrong, in fact, they have been wrong!—instead show me from the true, infallible, trustworthy Word of God where I am wrong.  Luther denied the authority of the Pope to determine the meaning of the bible.  Luther denied the authority of the Roman Catholic Church officials to tell ordinary people—people like you and me—what the Bible says.  In fact, Luther felt so strongly that every person should have the responsibility to read the Bible for themselves, that he spent the next year translating the New Testament from the Greek into his own language: German.  And since Luther, every Reformation that happened did the same thing: translated the Bible and put it into the hands of ordinary believers.

This is the lasting and greatest legacy of the Reformation.  When we celebrate Reformation day, we do not simply remember a monk who invited other scholars to debate about the way indulgences were being sold.  No, we celebrate the fact that through this very humble beginning, the Lord raised up for his church a man who would eventually say ‘No!’ to manmade rules and regulations, say ‘No!’ to hiding the Bible behind human tradition, and said ‘Yes!’ to putting the gospel of Jesus Christ in the hands of every believer.  And once that happened, everything did change.  Men like Zwingli, Calvin, Melanchthon, Bucer took this bible and continued Luther’s Reformation in their own countries to the end that all men, women, and children may glorify God—a God they have access to through his Word, a God they know from the Bible.

Here is the lasting legacy, the great treasure of the Reformation.  Here is Christianity’s dangerous idea: we are all able and responsible to read God’s Word; to understand it; to submit to it; and to let it change our hearts and our lives.

Go home.  Pick up your bible.  Continue the work of the Reformation started almost 500 years ago.  And do not take this simple act for granted—being free and able to read the Bible for ourselves was a hard-won victory, begun in a humble way, on October 31, 1517.  Remember Luther.  But remember even more to read your Bible, for there we stand.  We can do no other.  God help us.  Amen.

Peace Be With You: Monastic Wisdom for a Terror-Filled World, by David Carlson

I had the pleasure of reviewing a book which seeks a response to the events of 9/11 in the cloistered halls of American monasteries, rather than the influential halls of politics.  David Carlson, a professor in Religious Studies at Franklin College, journeyed to find a deeply religious answer to 9/11 that could transcend politics, international relations, rhetoric of terror—an answer that could instead be deeply Christian.  His interest in Christian monasticism led him to ask two foundational questions for his research: “First, how did monks, nuns, and retreatants respond when first learning of 9/11?  And second, how have they continued to respond to our world of violence and terror, given their spiritual resources and training?” (p. 7).

I will admit that the monastic life has always held some fascination for me, even coming from a Calvinistic Reformed tradition.  There is something to the idea of retreating from the world, deeply imbibing and ingesting the Word, and thereby relating to the world again on a totally different and secure footing.  The contemplative life truly appeals to me.

What I noticed in this book, though, was that the monastic life is not as different in its responses to 9/11 as the ‘secular’ world is.  What struck me on a positive note was how much discussion of forgiveness there was—a truly Christian and Christ-filled response (Carlson even discusses the Amish school shooting and the amazing response of forgiveness and love offered to the perpetrator’s family).  What struck me on a negative note was how even some of those who ought to be more deeply Christian (as one might expect monks and nuns to be) too easily give up on the truth of the gospel in favour of a kind of inter-religious ecumenicity where Islam and Christianity are simply different paths to the same summit.  Even those who retreat from the world still find the world inside.

However, I found this to be a thoroughly enjoyable book as it forced me to respond to the issues raised, and think deeply about my own response, not only to something like 9/11, but to all the violence and pain in the world around me.  Carlson succeeded in making me think deeply on these things, and so drink deeply from the unique gospel we have in Christ in order to not only find my own response to terror and violence, but also to other Christian’s response as well.

As a Canadian, this book may not have had the impact on me it might have on an American, but reading the journey of Carlson and the thoughts it provoked has given me a renewed perspective on the world around me.

Steep Learning Curve.

Studying education at Redeemer didn't warn me about this.  Prepared me, yes.  Warned me?  No.  (Okay, they most likely did, but I probably forgot).

The first two days of school, even the first three, were not terribly fun days.  Perhaps for the students, not for me.  I was struggling to figure out how I should be teaching my students, and what would work best.  I was struggling to plan, to prepare, and even to organize my day!

Now that I have had a few days to sit back, review, and organize, I think that I have learned my lesson: don't teach the students, just let them learn.  Rather than trying to cram information into their heads, I should let them figure things out, giving them every opportunity and all the necessary information and skills to do the work themselves.  So now, I have lesson planned with lots of hands-on work, and much less of me talking.  I think everyone will be happier.

So, in sum: days 1-3, ignored.  Forgotten.  Day 4: starting fresh.  Hopefully my students won't mind!

The Trouble with Teaching.

During my time preparing for my upcoming classes, I have stumbled upon an area of weakness in myself.  The content is no problem--I either already know what I am teaching or can work it out easily enough.  I've been in university long enough to know how to learn quickly.  No, the weakness I have discovered in myself (although one that I had known before, but now it becomes all the more important) regards presenting the material.  If I could simply lecture my students with them taking notes, that would be great.  But I have to present the material to them in a way that is not only understandable, but also interesting, and at the same time motivating.  I need to get them involved in the subject, not just working on the subject.

Some teachers, I think, have an easier time with this.  I've seen some great stuff in classrooms.  I, on the other hand, do not have such a talent (perhaps due to my own love of studies in which I never really needed to be externally motivated).  So now I will have to work out things for students to do which will be interesting to them, not only interesting to me...