The Church Must Always Reform

Posted by stpauls on October 31, 2010 under Sermons | Be the First to Comment

Ecclesia semper reformanda est. The Church must always reform.

This was the cry that went out during the tumultuous years of the 16th century, when Europe and the rest of the Christian world changed so dramatically that the ripples were felt around the globe and are still felt today. The Protestant Reformation was a radical change from the practices of the day, so radical that we have a hard time fathoming what kind of impact it must have had on those who lived through it. You think the change from the Book of Common Prayer to the Book of Alternative Service was difficult? Think again! You think reclaiming the ordination of women was difficult? Think again! You think the issue of same-sex blessings is difficult? Think again!

The Protestant Reformation was something that affected people’s lives through more than their churchly sensibilities or their theology. It encompassed every aspect of their lives, so much so that some had to die for what they believed.  It is hard for us to imagine what it must have been like. It is hard, because, unlike today, the church wasn’t just an aspect of one’s life, barely on the margins of society. The church was at the centre of society, influencing every aspect of people’s lives. And any change had tremendous and profound impacts on people. The Reformation wasn’t just a theological movement: it was a new way of being that encompassed all of who and what you were.

With sometimes funny, unintended, and counter-productive results…

Take, for example, the role of women.

One theological insight central to the Reformation is the concept of a “priesthood of all believers.” All people have access to God by virtue of their baptism. We are all members of the body of Christ and we don’t need priests and bishops as intermediaries. Their role is part of the mission and ministry of the church and they are essential for the celebration of the sacraments. But they are not necessary for an individual’s salvation.

This radical way of responding to the Gospel was meant to liberate the people from the yoke of clericalism. And it did. The churches influenced by the Reformation did away with everything that they saw could get in the way of our relationship with God. It was about de-cluttering the access to God for all people, rich and poor, young and old, lay and ordained.

However, for women it meant that their official role in the church was relegated to sitting in the pews.

While the pre-Reformation church had offered choices for women, and even avenues to power within the church (don’t ever mess with an abbess, they have power!!!), the Reformation did away with all of it. The bad example of some nuns and monks and the bad (and really unfounded) theology, which thought that monastic and religious vows would provide an easier access to God, had sparked a cleansing fire that wouldn’t leave anything in its wake. Even the things that might have been saveable were burned, at times quite literally.

Out went the religious orders with all their pomp and entitlement! Out went the oppression of common folk by ecclesiastical establishments! Out went a theology that had clouded the Good News of God in Jesus Christ. Yet, out went also the contemplative and prayerful witness of monastic communities. And out went also any meaningful and active role of women in the ministry, mission, and governance of the church. And rectifying this mistake is an ongoing struggle.

Ecclesia semper reformanda est. The Church must always reform.

At the time of the Reformation, the church was in desperate need of Reform. Or so the Reformers argued. Yes, there were horrible abuses and terrible short-comings. The prevalent theology of the day was often used to help secure the church’s fortunes as an institution rather than to build up the reign of Christ. Ignorance, incompetence, and greed among the clergy did not equip the church for mission and ministry. Many common folk often had no idea about the tenets of our faith. There was much amiss…

Well, there was. But modern scholarship has proven that there were considerable regional differences. The church in central Europe and in Scotland, for example, was deeply corrupted. However, the English church actually had pockets of sanity and many monasteries and convents ministered in quite faithful ways to the poor and neglected and those searching for eternal answers. Maybe this is why the degree of radicalism in the changes was so different from country to country…

The Reformation wasn’t just about the practises of the established church, however. It was also about a theological shift.

Some 20 years ago, I was sitting in a class at university on the Reformation. Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, I was ready to go. I thought I had figured it all out and I was following my heart to pursue ordination in the church. It was all very exciting as I sat there to become a labourer in the church.

But deep inside I was hiding a secret. You see, in my innermost self, I didn’t quite believe I was worthy of God’s love. I felt puny, dirty, and incompetent. God surely had made a mistake in choosing me. I thought I was an imposter. And it wasn’t just about my vocation. It was also about my faith, the bare essentials of my relationship with God. Yes, I believed there’s a God. But God, surely, didn’t believe in me. God was far away, way above me, and out of reach. I believed that I had to work hard to earn God’s love. If only I would pray more, read the Bible more, be more involved in church, then God would probably notice me. If I became an ordained minister of word and sacrament, then surely God would love me and would make everything all right. In my heart, I was looking for what to do to earn God’s love.

As I was sitting in that class room at the University of Erlangen in Germany some 20 years ago, I heard a story of another German who had similar thoughts and quandaries. He also was looking to be embraced by God fully. He also was striving, in the language of the day, to be justified. The answer he came up with was a radical departure from what he had been told, but it was indeed a reaffirmation of what had been proclaimed on the pages of sacred texts ever since they were written.

Yes, I am talking about Martin Luther. And his solution to the problem was simply this: there is nothing we can do to be justified before God. God is the one who justifies. Or to put it in contemporary language: God is the one reaching out to us. God is the one coming our way. God is the one who becomes human in Jesus Christ, so that we don’t have to strive to be like God, but so that we can encounter the Eternal One face to face, eye to eye, hand to hand, and feet to feet. We are never too puny, too bad, too sinful for God to search us out. And this is the secret of the Reformation: It is not about us reaching to the heavens, creating our salvation, working hard to make ourselves acceptable in the eyes of God. It is about God’s free gifts of grace and mercy and love. It is about God’s saving and healing embrace. It is about God, who is acting in our lives, even now.

And this was liberation for Martin Luther. And it was liberation for me. Sure, Reformation theology gets a bit more complicate and complex. But this truth sets us free. And it is a good starting point for living our lives free of shame and guilt, and free of fear.

Ecclesia semper reformanda est. The Church must always reform.

Of course I realise that my issues some 20 years ago, as closely as they might have mirrored Martin Luther’s struggle, are my issues in the end. But they were real issues. And I found answers and consolation in our Christian tradition, as I adapted the prophetic insights for myself and my time.

Yes, time moves on. And people are different. And many people out there are asking all kinds of questions, and probably quite different questions from mine, which are quite personal and maybe a bit arcane. But in today’s world, we cannot get stuck with offering old answers to questions nobody is asking anymore. The Reformation is ongoing. The challenge for us as we follow in the steps of the Reformation is to listen to the questions of all those we encounter, to take their questions seriously, and to search our Christian tradition not for standard, conventional, or even traditional answers.

But it is to search for answers that will open new and life-giving avenues into the mystery of our triune God. It is about listening to the movement of the Spirit, even if the Spirit is moving us into scarily new territory. It is about being open to the idea that God might call us in our time to a new Reformation.

Ecclesia semper reformanda est. The Church must always reform.

[The Reverend Markus Duenzkofer delivered this sermon on October 31, 2010, Reformation Sunday.]

Reformation Sunday Instructions

Posted by stpauls on under Staff Blog, Webmaster Blog | Be the First to Comment

Good morning. And Happy Reformation Sunday. Welcome to St. Paul’s, whoever you are and wherever you find yourself on the journey.

As you can see, today, things are a little bit different. They are different, because October 31^st falls on a Sunday, and, no, we will not be celebrating Halloween today, but we will celebrate Reformation Sunday.

On October 31, 1517, a then-unknown Augustinian monk by the name of Martin Luther nailed 95 theses on the door of a church in Wittenberg in Germany. In his theses, Luther outlined the corrupt state of the institutionalised church, her failure to preach the Gospel, and called for changes, for reform that would restore the church to be God’s mission in the world. As anecdotal as this might be, the event sparked events that we today describe as The Reformation.

And today we celebrate these events, not because we want to join our full communion partners in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada in their celebrations, even though that would be a good enough reason. No, we celebrate today, because the Anglican Communion is a Church of the Reformation, and it finds meaning in the prophetic and Spirit-filled insights of English Reformation, a Reformation that drew on the Lutheran and Reformed movements of the European continent, but a Reformation that also was quite distinct. Whether that makes us a Protestant church or not, can be hotly debated. I, for one, think we are something quite unique among the denominations, not really Protestant, but not really Rome-ish either… We are a Catholic church, and have been since the early beginnings of the churches in the British Isles. And we continued to be a Catholic Church, when we also became a Church of the Reformation under the rules of the Tudor and the Stuart monarchs in the 16^th and 17^th centuries.

Now, I am sharing this with you, because I believe this complicated understanding of who we are among the denominations of the world, is also reflected in the rather diverse way we worship. And this is despite the fact that as Anglicans we define ourselves not through a ruling teaching office, like the Roman Catholic Church’s magisterium, neither through confessional documents, like Lutherans, Presbyterians, or Evangelical Reformed Churches, but through our prayer book, through our common prayer. You might think that would make our worship rather uniform, but, frankly it doesn’t.

The first Book of Common Prayer (or BCP for short) was published in 1549, and we will be using this liturgical formulary today. However, we will not be following the practices of the first BCP entirely. Why? Because the mid-16^th century was a time of marked controversy.

Henry VIII had severed the ties of the Church of England from the Church of Rome in 1529. He had disbanded and dissolved the monasteries, and had brought in some reform of the church. But the king had kept the old liturgies. The Latin mass was still said in most places. The church might have been independent of the Pope, but it surely didn’t show in the way the church worshipped.

On the other hand, Henry had allowed for his son to be educated by Protestant teachers. So, when Edward VI became King of England in 1547, things started to change dramatically – and quickly. Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury already under Henry VII, soon set about to write English liturgies. No more Latin, thank you very much! And in 1549, the first BCP came into use.

However, the 1549 BCP was a work of compromise. It tried to bring together Catholic and Protestant sensibilities and achieved in offending both sides: Catholic traditionalists were peeved because it was a major break from the Roman liturgy. No more elevation of the elements. And the Communion prayer was distinctly different from the Roman rite, even though it was based partially on an ancient pre-Reformation liturgy used in England called the Sarum Rite.

But for those with allegiances to the Bishop of Rome, this was not good enough. It was an ungodly innovation.

Puritan reformers were peeved, too, because the 1549 BCP was theologically conservative, kept vestments such as albs, copes, and stoles; celebrated a “mass” on an altar; and called for weekly celebration of communion. That was all way too much “Popish heresy” for the growing group of powerful reformers. And Edward and Cranmer were very much part of this camp.

So, in 1552, a new BCP was published, reflecting some of the radical changes of the left-wing Reformation of Geneva and Zurich. Away with candles on the altar! Away with altars altogether! Away with vestments! From now on, there would only be communion tables placed in the quire parallel to the choir stalls. The priest was to stand on the North side of the altar, i.e. on the left from the congregation’s perspective, to avoid any form of improper veneration. And only a surplice was allowed as a form of vestment.

The most radical change, however, was in the theology. The so-called Black Rubric was introduced, which called for kneeling at communion, but declared quite emphatically, that there was no real presence of Christ in bread and wine.

Edward VI died young in 1553 and, with the ascent of Mary, the BCP was thrown out. Mary’s goal was to reconcile with Rome, but she, too, didn’t occupy the throne for very long and in 1558, her half-sister Elizabeth became queen. Elizabeth, like her half-brother Edward before her, had embraced the Reformation and in 1559 the third BCP was put into use. This was supposed to be a compromise between the 1549 and the 1552 BCPs, but it had a definite bias towards the more Protestant 1552 BCP. However, the instructions about vestments were relaxed a bit. The priest could wear a stole again. The Black Rubric remained, but the declaration that there was no real presence of Christ in bread and wine of communion was thrown out. And these rubrical instructions remained in place almost unaltered in the 1662 BCP, which was the fourth BCP, and which is still the official BCP of the Church of England.

Today, you will see a mix and match of these BCPs. This is not to confuse you, but this is to show you the breadth of our tradition. We will be using the 1549 BCP in its original form. However, I will wear a surplice and a tippet, something still the norm in some more radical low church Anglican parishes. We have placed the table parallel to the choir stalls and at communion I will stand on the North side. And of course, there will be no elevation of the elements today. And you should not be crossing yourself, and don’t even think about bowing or genuflecting. Otherwise I will report you to royal officers!

There will also be no processing, since that was considered to be too Popish. And despite the fact that the Reformation was about doing away with clericalism, I hope you will find it interesting to experience how much you will hear my voice today. Not much lay participation. And of course, in 1549, there would also have been no woman in any leadership position, including the clerks of the choir. This was a very male-dominated movement and that’s why there are only pictures of “dudes” on the cover of your bulletin.

Because of space restraints, communion will be administered at a station in front of the chancel steps, not in the prescribed form, which called for kneeling. And communion ministers will be John [Charnell] and me, because it is quite clear that only ordained ministers can administer the consecrated bread and wine, right?! What was that about clericalism…?

One last word about music: The Reformation did encourage congregational singing and this is yet another gift that needs to be celebrated. Unfortunately, many of the hymns sung at the time of the Reformation are alien to us. Still, we will use John Merbeck’s setting of the liturgy, which would have been used by many English churches at the time of the Reformation. And I did throw in a Martin Luther hymn for good measure. But, remember, the Reformation did call for the liturgy to be done in the vernacular. And wouldn’t that make contemporary hymns our vernacular songs…?

I hope you will enjoy this experience. But it is not really about simple enjoyment, or an exercise in historical dress-up. I hope you will learn more about the beautiful and profound depth of our tradition, how it has changed, and how much change is part of being a Catholic and Reformed Church. Most importantly, I hope this liturgy will provide for you new avenues into the mystery of our triune God.

by Markus Dünzkofer, October 31, 2010.