Reformation 3 – The Church his people
Written and preached by Wayne Clarke:
New North Road 5thNovember 2017 am
Bible passage:1 Peter 2:4-10
As you come to him, the living Stone– rejected by humans but chosen by God and precious to him–5you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual houseto be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.6For in Scripture it says:
‘See, I lay a stone in Zion,a chosen and precious cornerstone,and the one who trusts in him will never be put to shame.’
7Now to you who believe, this stone is precious. But to those who do not believe,
‘The stone the builders rejectedhas become the cornerstone,’8and,‘A stone that causes people to stumbleand a rock that makes them fall.’
They stumble because they disobey the message– which is also what they were destined for.
9But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.10Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.
Martin Luther
Series of talks inspired by an anniversary – 500 years this month since the beginning of what we call the Reformation.
names
Last week we saw how the work of Martin Luther through his writing, then Zwingli and later Calvin spread to England and Scotland. King Henry VIII was a staunch Roman Catholic loyal to the pope right up until it suited him to break away from the pope and be head of his own church. The issue for him was ending his marriage to Catherine of Aragon. Because the pope wouldn’t agree to his scheme to get rid of Catherine, he got rid of the pope and started the Church of England. But Henry hated the teachingsof Luther.Henry destroyed a lot of the power of the Catholic Church but he remained loyal to Catholic doctrines.
It was only later through his son Edward and his daughter Elizabeth that the Protestant ideas took hold in England. At the same time in Scotland a harder Protestant church based on the teachings of JohnCalvin was introduced underthe teaching of John Knox. Knox caused a revolution in 1560 by turning a Protestant parliament against the Catholic Queen: Mary, Queen of Scots. It was her son James who would bring a more balanced and gentle Protestant faith to both Scotland and England, although the Catholics tried to blow him up on this day in 1605.
Everything we have heard so far has had a common thread. It’s all been a bit Game of Thrones. Luther turned his state Protestant under a friendly Prince. Calvin ruled his city with an iron rod. Henry VIIIused Thomas Cranmer to impose his will and John Knox turned parliament to his side. It’s all been about politics and power. Luther said the pope isn’t the authority in the church, but in practice religious authority stayed in the hands of the secular rulers. Protestants said that authority came from the Bible in the hands of the people, but the power structures stayed the same. The religious power simply movedfrom Catholic rulers to Protestant rulers.
But… There was one group who had different ideas. Do you remember I said that Zwingli thought that Luther hadn’t gone far enough in his reforms of things like communion? One group of people who followed Zwingli thought he hadn’t gone far enough on the way the church was formed.
We call this movement the Radical Reformation.They took the reformation ideas further than Luther and Calvin ever did.They believed that ordinary people could meet to study the Bible and hear God speak to the community. Theybelieved that discipleship and teaching was open to everyone, which meant women as well as men. This group discovered in the Bible the radical idea that people were not Christians because of where they were born but only when they freely chose to follow Jesus andso they should only be baptised as believers.
The group became known as Anabaptists, which means re-baptisers, called people to be baptised as believers even if they had been baptised as babies.
One of the first of these leading Anabaptists was Balthasar Hubmaierwho argued that torturing and burning people was not the best way to show God’s love and for doing do he was tortured and burned for his faith.
Anabaptists has a different view of the church, that the church was not all the people who lived in certain place but those who has been called by God to faith in Jesus. They were the gathered churchbecause they had been gathered by God from the secular world into a community of faith.
Another leader of this movement was Menno Simons, the father of what’s now called the Mennonite church. Believers’ baptism was a sign of being part of the church through faith and no longer being part of the world around. It called for a radical commitment to follow Jesus in the community of the disciples of Jesus.
These ideas may sound normal to us but in the sixteenth century they were revolutionary. The ideas of the Anabaptists were always unpopular with the authorities because they challenged the authorities wherever they went.
In England those ideas influenced a group of Separatists – people who saw theChurch of England as being too Catholic and too worldly. They were as unhappy with King James as the Catholics who tied to blow up Parliament and their lives were also in danger, so a group of them went to Amsterdam led by a man called John Smyth and there in 1609 in Baker Streetthey started a church in a Bakehouse that was the first ever Baptist Church as we understand it today.
Radical Reformation
The ideas that came out of the Radical Reformation are just as influential today as the writings of Luther and Calvin. They lie behind the idea of the separation of Church and State that is so important in America and one thing that America has got right.
Today we follow the teaching that’s there in the Bible that was recovered in the Radical Reformation that baptism is for those who turn to Christ in faith. It’s important because it marks out those who are part of his Church – those who have received by faith the grace of God and joined the gathered community of disciples of Jesus Christ.
And when we are part of that community we are those who are called by God to be together. Peter in his first letter says we are:
text
“chosen by God and precious to him–you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood”
1 Peter 2:4-5
Luther nearly said it but then stopped short of saying what the Radical Reformers said – in Christ we are all chosen by God. In Christ we are all precious. In Christ we are all priests.
He goes on to say in verses 9:
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“But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.”
1 Peter 2:9
In the Church there is no spiritual hierarchy. All who are born again have equal access to God and equal potential to minister for God. There is only one mediator between us and God and that is Jesus Christ, and Christ has given us each one of us direct access to the Father.
This idea of the priesthood of all believersliberates us as Christians from mere religion. Through Jesus and in the Holy Spirit we can know the Father – each of us can know him, whoever we are. We don’t need special words or special qualifications or to wear special robes.
What it says about us is that we all matter– female and male, young and old, educated and uneducated, new in the faith as well as mature in the faith. God can use us, he can speak prophetically through us. We have prayer times and encourage everyone to pray because we believe this. We have church meetings to listen to one another because we believe this. We have elections to choose new deacons because we believe this. Every one of us is gifted by God
What it says about God is that God is for us– for you. He is your God. Not just my God, not just the God of your elders and betters, whatever that means, he is God for you, God who is building a people of power, God who is Lord of all the Church.
As we end this series we grieve over a church divided. We recognise that those who spoke in the name of Jesus 500 years ago got a lot of things wrong, some things very wrong. But we thank God for the Reformation, for the truth that God made known through his imperfect people. And we pray that God will keep on reforming and renewing us his people of the 21st century.