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In a sense that date was a kairos moment for the Christian Religion and maybe for the western world. A point in time that we can point to when “everything changed.” A moment when a young monk nailed to a door a document listing 95 theses he wanted to debate – 95 ideas that challenged the practices, if not the beliefs, of the religious hierarchy of his day and region. Ninety-five statements that would get him kicked out of the established church and establish not only a new religious order but precipitate changes in the old order. |
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For a bit more than a year now I have been tweeting “Today in Presbyterian History” on an almost daily basis. (Maybe a better term for it is “Today in Presbyterian History (with some other Reformed history now and then).”) As I have looked at Presbyterian and Reformed History I sometimes ponder why we don’t mark more of these other dates.
One of the earliest reformers was John Wycliffe, sometimes known as “The
Morning Star of the Reformation.” Unfortunatly, we don’t seem to have
an exact date in 1382 when the first English translation of the Bible
appeared from the efforts of Wycliffe and his associates, and it was
repeatedly revised over the next decade, even after his death on 31
December 1384. But Wycliffe’s teachings got him in trouble even after
death and he was officially declared a heretic on 4 May 1415 and his
body exhumed and burned several years later.
Maybe we should regularly remember something associated with Jan Hus, the Czech reformer, like 20 December 1409 when he
was excommunicated or 6 July 1415 when he refused to recant and was
burned at the stake.
Or what about the first Lutheran martyrs, Heinrich Voes and Johannes
Esch, who were burned at the stake in Brussels on 1 July 1523. Their
deaths inspired Martin Luther to write his first hymn, “Ein neues Lied wir heben an.”
Dates associated with John Calvin are not as initially dramatic as for
Luther, but a couple of them are 1 September 1536 when he began his Geneva
ministry, or March of 1536 when his first edition of the Institutes of
the Christian Religion was published. Or maybe 16 January 1537 when the
City of Geneva adopted Calvin and Farel’s Articles regarding the church
and worship in the city.
For Presbyterians there are a number of dates associated with the
Scottish Reformation to regard with attention, such as 17 August 1560
when the Scottish Parliament ratified the Scottish Confession of Faith,
although the Presbyterian Form of Church Government was not assured
until 1 May 1707 with the Act of Union. And there is 20 December 1560
when the first Presbyterian General Assembly met. But we should remember
that Reformation history precedes this, going be earlier in the century, including 29 February 1528
when Patrick Hamilton became the first Scottish Protestant Martyr when he was
burned at the stake for his following of Luther’s teaching.
And for a final example, there are the French Huguenots. They suffered
through the highs and lows of various permissive edicts (such as
Orleans in January 1561 and Nantes on 15 April 1598) and massacres
(Wassy on 1 March 1562 and St. Bartholomew’s Day beginning on 23 August
1572).
Having said all that, let me begin my conclusion by saying that the Commemoration of the Reformation on 31 October is probably a good choice — the actions of Martin Luther with a hammer and a debating document at the castle church door represents a single dramatic moment that captures our imagination and precipitated a chain of events that led to the first mostly successful reformation of the established church. (We will leave the debate as to whether this actually happened to others. And Luther also sent a copy to his bishop that day.)
But my point today, is that while we remember that particular landmark – that kairos moment – we must also remember that it was neither the first nor final word on the subject. Much groundwork was laid before Dr. Luther’s actions and much struggle followed.
And so it still is now — while we may mark, remember or even celebrate some particular event as a milepost, it is almost always the case that much effort and history preceded it and much work is left to be done.
As Jodocus van Lodenstein from the Second Dutch Reformation wrote in 1674 (and I think it has been expanded a bit)