Preaching and Teaching the Reformation in 2017
Commentators have observed the trend towards diminished denominational loyalty in many ecumenical Protestant churches. Individuals tend to join local churches because of proximity and personal friendships rather than their upbringing in a particular denomination. What this means for many of us who stand up each Sunday in our Methodist, Congregational, Lutheran, Baptist, and Presbyterian pulpits is that the members of our congregations do not come to worship with a common set of shared experiences and expectations formed from childhood. Our Sunday worshippers have not had their deep assumptions of worship and faith shaped by the same hymnal, order of worship, or celebrations of sacraments.
And even beyond the outward aspects of how comfortable worshippers are with any morning’s selection of hymns, collects, prayers, and readings; we find that the people who gather on any given Sunday morning come with a daunting spectrum of experience and interaction with Scripture. In addition to the question of biblical literacy, there is a vast range of understanding regarding foundational Christian doctrines such as sin, atonement, the Trinity, salvation, resurrection and covenant, just to name a few. Worshippers may have the vaguest understanding of denominational polity and identity. These gaps are amplified in denominations that are not highly doctrinal. Here, I speak from personal experience as a pastor in the United Church of Christ. The UCC does not have a formal test of orthodoxy and even its beautiful “Statement of Faith” is offered as “testimony to what we understand about God” rather than a summary of required beliefs for membership. As preachers of the Gospel in 2017, we have come very far from the time when Christians had to be able to recite and claim to believe every word of the Apostle’s Creed as the universal threshold for participation in the worship and life of the Christian community.
Adding to the challenges facing us in the Protestant pulpit are the large number of individuals in our congregations who were raised in the Roman Catholic tradition and came to Protestantism as adults. Years of catechism classes and the church’s claim to unquestioned magisterium shaped these individuals’ grounding in the Christian faith. in our pews, too, are others who largely lack formal grounding in the basics of our (or any other) religion.
Even “cradle Protestants,” with many years of Sunday School and Vacation Bible School, may be very comfortable with our music and worship conventions but have little familiarity with the underlying principles of Reformed theology and the Reformation. All this is to say that, for a large percentage of our congregants, there is precious little understanding of what it means to worship and engage with Scripture in the Reformed tradition.
Within our sanctuaries and in the society at large encompassing Catholic, Protestant, and the unchurched, most people’s understanding of the Reformation is based entirely on what was learned in high school and college Western History classes. At best, there is a vague understanding of rebellion against the authority of the Pope, unhappiness over the sale of indulgences, and centuries of utterly confusing religious warfare.
I have been privileged to lead some exceptionally well-educated, progressive, congregations, including one congregation in a college town. Despite many years of formal education and years of church attendance, several members of the congregation said that they had never been introduced to the three solas (sola fide, sola gratia, sola scriptura) until the morning I preached it.
Anyone standing up in a Protestant pulpit in 2017 takes on the task of not only preaching relevantly about applying the timeless wisdom of Scripture to the challenges of everyday life but also of teaching the significance of inheriting the legacy, teachings, and values of the reformers.
We are called to help our congregations understand and treasure the priceless freedom — purchased at so great a cost — afforded to all individuals to voice doubts openly, to question without fear or embarrassment, and to encounter Scripture deeply and personally. We take for granted the freedom to question, analyze, and decide for ourselves countless issues in our political life, schooling, and society in general. Yet at one time, this was a revolutionary concept. We need to help our congregations appreciate just how revolutionary a concept it was to assert that every Christian has the absolute right to question the meaning of Scripture. This principle of the Reformation was not a revolutionary concept for theology alone. Inevitably the right to question authority — including political, educational, and scientific authorities — changed the trajectory of Western society. That the Reformation spawned centuries of religious warfare may, on the surface, appear to be disagreements over two differing theologies and polities (Catholic and Protestant). However, this protracted era of religious warfare was a broader battle over individual political, economic, and intellectual freedom.
When the Protestant reformers encouraged individuals to draw their own conclusions “as led by the Holy Spirit” rather than accept the conclusions promulgated by church authority, it was not only a sea change in the Christian faith but a sweeping change for Western civilization. The Reformation’s greatest impact on Western thought was to legitimize individual inquiry. Some have speculated that the Enlightenment could only have taken hold when it did because the Reformation had created a context in which individual reason, thought, and responsibility made sense. Notably, the Reformation cultivated the soil in which the Enlightenment could take root…with all its ramifications including its pervasive influence on the Founding Fathers of our nation.
We face a host of significant challenges in preaching and teaching about the Reformation in our churches today. It is a tall order, particularly because our public schools totally shy away from teaching about the real theological dimensions of the Reformation for fear of appearing to be critical of the Roman Catholic tradition. This makes our tasks as Protestant clergy even more important. It falls on us (and pretty much us alone) to convey the meaning, impact, and ongoing importance of the Reformation.
I have embraced this challenge with a deliberate combination of Bible study and preaching in keeping with the twin ordination vows to serve as preacher and teacher. In practice, this means I offer frequent short Bible study classes that start off with an eye-opening session on linguistic and scriptural ambiguity. It is unthreatening and even fun to look at examples of ambiguity in modern speech (think of “eats, shoots and leaves” in English for example). Another popular and non-threatening way to illustrate the radically different ways of inserting the missing spacing in “GODISNOWHERE” as an example of the ambiguity of spacing- and punctuation-less Hebrew. With these examples as ice-breakers, the lessons take a careful selection of familiar passages presented with multiple translations—again, carefully chosen to showcase alternative understandings. One particularly popular illustration is the opening lines of Psalm 121 which can be interpreted as a stirring, strong and unquestioning affirmation that our help comes the hills. It can also be interpreted to be an image of individuals looking to the hills not with assurance but with an open question, “where is my help coming from?”
Again, this never fails to elicit comments from folks who never knew the familiar Psalm’s Hebrew roots were so inherently open-ended. These discussions help participants in the class internalize the concept that Scripture in translation across language, time, and culture does not have one and only one absolutely correct meaning. With this understanding, it is “off to the races.” The class lays the foundation for individuals appreciating the necessity to encounter Scripture with study, prayer, dialogue, and the Spirit’s guidance. Conclusions are drawn, then, based on their own direct, personal engagement with Scripture. Particularly for people who grew up accepting the church’s one-and-only correct way of interpreting the Bible, this engagement can be immensely liberating. Every year, there are adults who tell me that this is the first time in their lives that they felt free to acknowledge and express doubts that they have held for decades.
Follow-on classes very deliberately take on inherently controversial subjects such as slavery, the role of women in the church, and the nature of music in worship to explore not only alternative ways of interpreting specific words and passages but also to look at passages from different books of the Bible that seem to be inconsistent with each other. Only after students have encountered these challenges first-hand is the stage set for a presentation on the Reformation. For many in the class, it will be the first time they understand the Reformation and Protestantism as more than a break from the structure of the Roman Catholic Church and the Pope. They are free to adopt a fundamentally different understanding of the relationship between God, Scripture, and each individual’s God-given intellect, faith, curiosity, and conscience.
In addition to using formal Bible study to teach the principles of the Reformation, I deliberately work explicitly Reformed concepts into my Sunday sermons. I follow the Revised Standard Lectionary, but use a variety of Bible versions on any given week specially to highlight different ways of encountering very familiar lessons. Although the Bible in the pew racks are all NRSV, in the course of a year, the congregation will read and hear the morning’s lesson in individual translations including William Barclay and J.B. Phillips, as well as The Jerusalem Bible, Contemporary English, NIV, The Message, King James, and the New English Bible. In fact, some weeks I will include two contrasting translations of the same passage in the bulletin.
I enthusiastically preach from many troubling, ambiguous, and perplexing lessons. Grappling head on with the dishonest steward, “let the dead bury the dead,” Martha and Mary, and so many other troubling passages; provides an opportunity to genuinely bring a new hearing and understanding. Repeatedly, after preaching one of these vexing lessons, individuals have expressed a breakthrough in their understanding brought about by hearing the troubling but familiar passage in an unexpected translation and a new perspective. Once individuals have experienced first-hand a variety of ways of understanding a passage, they are in the frame of mind to appreciate the real meaning of the Reformation.
Finally, in addition to teaching the Reformation in Bible study and from the pulpit, there is a way to inject the enduring wisdom of the reformers into the routine of church committee meetings. I miss no opportunity to quote the motto of the Reformation and remind people that to be a reformed church is not a static trait but a dynamic one of our church today, here, and now: Ecclesia reformata semper reformanda (the reformed church must always be reformed).
