Difference between revisions of "Sermon for October 27th, 2019"

From Neal's Wiki
Jump to: navigation, search
Line 86: Line 86:
 
But perhaps you might be wondering why John Knox--or any of this 16th century Scottish fanfare, for that matter--holds any meaning for you?  Protestants are no longer at war with Catholics (at least, I hope not). And very few people in El Paso today give much thought to people, places and events half a millennium away on another continent.  So why is any of this important?  Three reasons.
 
But perhaps you might be wondering why John Knox--or any of this 16th century Scottish fanfare, for that matter--holds any meaning for you?  Protestants are no longer at war with Catholics (at least, I hope not). And very few people in El Paso today give much thought to people, places and events half a millennium away on another continent.  So why is any of this important?  Three reasons.
  
First:  All of us stand in a tradition.  Yours may or may not be Scottish, or Presbyterian, but no matter who you are, you stand in a long line of people who came before you--people with beliefs, spiritual practices, stories of faith and sacrifice.  Some of those people may be closer--a parent, a grandparent, a teacher, pastor or mentor who guided you on your path at a young age.  Some may be distant--ancestors who brought your family here from another place, or ancestors who broke with their ancient customs and culture to forge new traditions and beliefsWhich leads me to the second reason:
+
First:  All of us stand in a tradition.  Yours may or may not be Scottish, or Presbyterian. But no matter who you are, you stand in a long line of people who came before you--people with beliefs, spiritual practices, stories of faith and sacrifice that were handed down to you, prayed over you, hoped and dreamed for you.   
  
All of us stand in a tradition, but we are not trapped in them.
+
Some of those people may be closer--a parent, a grandparent, a teacher, pastor or mentor who guided you on your path at a young age.  Some may be distant--ancestors who brought your family here from another place, or ancestors who broke with their ancient customs and culture to forge new traditions and beliefs. 
 +
 
 +
It is good and right for us to recognize and give thanks for those who prepared the way for us. It's good and necessary that we understand our lives as part of a larger journey--a path that twists and turns, sometimes splitting off in different directions, and sometimes rejoining with other paths, but always moving forward. 
 +
 
 +
Before my ancestors were Presbyterians, they were Catholic.  Before they were Catholic, they were Vikings who worshipped Thor and Odin.  I don't know what they were before that. And I suspect that God is not yet finished with me, or my family, my children and their children. I hope they'll still be Presbyterians for many generations to come, but even more importantly than that, I hope they will still be moving forward, still seeking God and joining with God's people, to accomplish God's work in this world.
 +
 
 +
Which leads me to the second reason we do this every year:  To remind ourselves that while we all stand in a tradition, we are never meant to be bound or enslaved by our tradition. We look to the example of people like John Wycliffe, Anne Locke, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and John Knox, precisely because they were brave enough to stand up and change course--to

Revision as of 11:33, 26 October 2019

Matthew 10:26-31 (NT, page 10)

26 “So have no fear of them; for nothing is covered up that will not be uncovered, and nothing secret that will not become known. 27 What I say to you in the dark, tell in the light; and what you hear whispered, proclaim from the housetops. 28 Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell. 29 Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. 30 And even the hairs of your head are all counted. 31 So do not be afraid; you are of more value than many sparrows.

John Knox, the Thundering Scot

One of my favorite fictional Scotsmen is Groundskeeper Willie from the animated TV Show, The Simpsons. His character embodies a lot of the stereotypes we have about people from Scotland:

Groundskeeper Willie on Scots

One of my favorite actual, real, historical Scotsmen was this guy:

Gordonbowie.jpeg

The Rev. Gordon Scott Bowie was the pastor of University Presbyterian Church here in El Paso for 25 years. He was my mentor and friend, and seven years ago in this very room, as I knelt on these steps, he placed his hands upon my head said the prayer of ordination when I became a Presbyterian minister.

Rev. Bowie fit the Scottish stereotype in many ways -- he is legendary among Presbyterian pastors in this part of the country for standing up in the middle of a Presbytery meeting (all the pastors and church leaders in West Texas) and loudly telling the Presbytery Executive (the closest thing we have to a Bishop) that he could "go piss up a rope!" He was not a man to mince words.

In fact, when I think of John Knox, the 16th century Scottish reformer who almost single-handedly gave birth to the Presbyterian church, I imagine him to be a lot like Gordon Bowie.

When John Knox died, his eulogist famously said of him, "Here lies one who neither feared nor flattered any flesh." Anyone who has studied his life to any extent knows this to be true.

John Knox is one of two Reformers who is often pictured with a sword in hand (the other is Ulrich Zwingli--I will likely preach on his life next year).

Knox4.jpeg Knox3.jpeg Knox2.jpeg Knox1.jpeg

The reason for the sword is that Knox actually began his career not as a preacher, but as a bodyguard for a preacher, George Wishart (the man in the picture who isn't holding a sword). Wishart was an early voice in Scotland preaching against the wealth and power of the Catholic church, and demanding that it reform. Knox, who was at the time an ordained Catholic priest, went to hear Wishart preach in his hometown. He was moved by Wishart's words, renounced Catholicism, and offered to be Wishart's bodyguard. By all accounts, John Knox was someone you didn't want to mess with.

Ultimately, however, he failed as a bodyguard. Wishart was arrested, tried, and convicted of heresy, then burned at the stake, becoming an early martyr for the Protestant cause. This had a profound impact on John Knox, who put down his sword and picked up his Bible, preaching wherever he could, and wielding words as a far more effective weapon for the rest of his life.

It wasn't too long before he, too, was arrested, and forced into slavery on a galley ship, where he was chained to a bench and forced to row for hours on end each day. Two stories from this time in his life are worth repeating:

As a galley slave Knox contracted an illness and was near to the point of death, when a fellow slave lifted him up from the bench just high enough to see the coastline of his native Scotland. When Knox saw the spires of the cathedral at St. Andrews, he swore to his friend that he would not die until he might proclaim God's glory in that place. Whether through miraculous providence, or sheer Scottish stubbornness, Knox recovered.

And the second story is this:

Knox's captors on the slave ship were Catholic, and at one point they tried to force all the slaves to kiss a statue of the Virgin Mary. Knox, who viewed statues (and the veneration of Mary) as idolatry, seized the statue, tossed it overboard, and said, "Let Our Lady now save herself. She is light enough, let her learn to swim."

Remarkably, and despite this sort of behavior, after two years John Knox was finally released from the slave ship. From here his life took several twists and turns, some of which I shared with you two weeks ago in the sermon on his contemporary, Anne Locke. I'll fast forward through that and pick up the story again in Geneva, Switzerland, where Knox studied under John Calvin, and pastored a congregation of Scottish and English exiles. This is that church:

Knoxchapel.jpeg

It's right next to Calvin's church, St. Pierre's:

Stpierre.jpeg

And it's still an active, worshipping, Presbyterian Congregation today:

Knoxchapel2.jpeg

While Knox was pastoring this congregation, preaching three times a day, with sermons averaging two hours each, he managed to still find enough time to get married, father two sons, and produce (with others) a new translation of the Bible, called (appropriately enough) the Geneva Bible, which was:

  • The first English Bible to be translated directly and completely from the Hebrew and Greek texts
  • The first Bible to have verse numbers
  • The first annotated "study Bible"
  • The Bible quoted by Shakespeare in all his plays.

There is a famous wall in Geneva which pays tribute to Knox and the other 16th century reformers:

Reformationwall.jpeg

On that wall is a panel which depicts Knox preaching:

Reformationwallknox.jpeg

But that's not him preaching to his congregation in Geneva. It's actually a scene from later in his story--the part of his story that intertwines with my own.

In 1559, several influential Lords back home in Scotland wrote to Knox in Geneva, begging him to come back and bring the Reformed faith to their country. This was a dangerous proposition. Scotland was under the control of a Catholic Queen Regent, Mary of Guise. Eight days after Knox arrived back in Scotland, the Queen Regent issued a proclamation outlawing all Protestant ministers. In response, the next day John Knox marched into the city of Perth, and into the pulpit of St. John's church, where he preached a fiery sermon condemning her, and the idolatry of the Catholic church. Riots broke out in the streets of Perth, and Mary of Guise marched with her army to Perth to restore order and root out the Protestants. Her army was met by over 3,000 supporters of John Knox. She was vastly outnumbered, and quickly arranged a "truce."

This is St. John's church, and the pulpit where Knox preached the sermon that launched the Reformation (and the Presbyterian movement) in Scotland.

Stjohn.jpeg

Stjohnpulpit.jpeg

The church was built by the Lords of Perth, the Ruthven family (my Scottish ancestors), who were no doubt in attendance that day, and were among the first to pledge support to John Knox and the Presbyterian movement. In his autobiography, Knox refers to one of my ancestors, Patrick Ruthven, as "a stout and discreet man in the cause of God."Another one of my ancestors, William Ruthven, was at John Knox's side on his deathbed. The famous picture on the reformation wall (and on your bulletins) is Knox preaching to the assembled "Lords of the Congregation" and several of my family members are listed as being among them.

The struggles between Knox and the Lords of the Congregation and Mary of Guise (and later her daughter Mary Queen of Scots) continued for many years, with wins and losses (and loss of life) on both sides. But gradually, the reformation took hold in Scotland, and today, the Presbyterian church is the official church of Scotland. When my ancestors migrated to America along with many people of Scottish descent, they brought their Presbyterianism with them. The first pilgrims who came to America on the Mayflower brought with them a copy of the Geneva Bible.

John Knox wrote an eight volume history of the Reformation in Scotland. He became the pastor of St. Giles Cathedral in Edinburgh, the largest and most influential congregation in Scotland. He even got his wish and preached several times at St. Andrew's Cathedral, the church that gave him hope as a slave on the galley ship.

He continued to preach into his old age, until just a few months before he died, when the voice that once shook nations was barely a whisper. Those who heard him preach his last sermons said that the fire was gone from his voice, but not from his eyes, which still burned with determination when he turned in his sermon to matters affecting his country and his people.

It should be pretty obvious by now, I suppose, why John Knox is such an important figure for me--everything from my family connections in Scotland right down to my own ordination under the hands of a more recent "thundering Scot."

But perhaps you might be wondering why John Knox--or any of this 16th century Scottish fanfare, for that matter--holds any meaning for you? Protestants are no longer at war with Catholics (at least, I hope not). And very few people in El Paso today give much thought to people, places and events half a millennium away on another continent. So why is any of this important? Three reasons.

First: All of us stand in a tradition. Yours may or may not be Scottish, or Presbyterian. But no matter who you are, you stand in a long line of people who came before you--people with beliefs, spiritual practices, stories of faith and sacrifice that were handed down to you, prayed over you, hoped and dreamed for you.

Some of those people may be closer--a parent, a grandparent, a teacher, pastor or mentor who guided you on your path at a young age. Some may be distant--ancestors who brought your family here from another place, or ancestors who broke with their ancient customs and culture to forge new traditions and beliefs.

It is good and right for us to recognize and give thanks for those who prepared the way for us. It's good and necessary that we understand our lives as part of a larger journey--a path that twists and turns, sometimes splitting off in different directions, and sometimes rejoining with other paths, but always moving forward.

Before my ancestors were Presbyterians, they were Catholic. Before they were Catholic, they were Vikings who worshipped Thor and Odin. I don't know what they were before that. And I suspect that God is not yet finished with me, or my family, my children and their children. I hope they'll still be Presbyterians for many generations to come, but even more importantly than that, I hope they will still be moving forward, still seeking God and joining with God's people, to accomplish God's work in this world.

Which leads me to the second reason we do this every year: To remind ourselves that while we all stand in a tradition, we are never meant to be bound or enslaved by our tradition. We look to the example of people like John Wycliffe, Anne Locke, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and John Knox, precisely because they were brave enough to stand up and change course--to