Difference between revisions of "Sermon for October 6th, 2019"

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Isaiah 55:6-11 (OT page 685)

6 Seek the Lord while he may be found,
    call upon him while he is near;
7 let the wicked forsake their way,
    and the unrighteous their thoughts;
let them return to the Lord, that he may have mercy on them,
    and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.
8 For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
    nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord.
9 For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
    so are my ways higher than your ways
    and my thoughts than your thoughts.

10 For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven,
    and do not return there until they have watered the earth,
making it bring forth and sprout,
    giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater,
11 so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth;
    it shall not return to me empty,
but it shall accomplish that which I purpose,
    and succeed in the thing for which I sent it.

John Wycliffe: The Morning Star

If you don't speak Latin, and if you were able to hear and understand the words of the scripture passage we just read, you have one person to thank more than any other: John Wycliffe.

John Wycliffe was not a Presbyterian, and he lived almost 150 years before the start of the 16th century Reformation that gave birth to the Protestant movement, but he is often called the "Morning Star" of the Reformation.

The planet Venus is the original "morning star," and it shines most brightly in the night sky just a few hours before dawn. It has long been a signal to sailors, travelers, and astronomers that the darkness is almost over, and a new day is about to begin.

In the same way, Wycliffe was a lone beacon of light in a dark time for the Christian church (the end of the medieval period). He was also a harbinger, a precursor to several new converging eras of social, political, artistic, cultural, scientific and religious renewal: The Renaissance, the Reformation, and ultimately the Enlightenment.

Of course, Wycliffe alone was not responsible for all these movements. In his own lifetime, his key ideas were rejected and condemned by the church, by his peers, and by his country. But in the centuries that followed, these same ideas found widespread acceptance by religious leaders, academics, philosophers, and political theorists.

When Abraham Lincoln, in his famous Gettysburg Address, spoke of a "government of the people, by the people, and for the people," he was quoting John Wycliffe.

So who was this man that was so ahead of his time? I can't possibly do justice to all his contributions in the remaining 15 minutes of this sermon, but I want to give a quick sketch of his life, and then focus on just two of his ideas that are still very much a part of our church DNA today.

“Englishmen learn Christ's law best in English. Moses heard God's law in his own tongue; so did Christ's apostles.”

I believe that in the end the truth will conquer.

As a later chronicler observed, "Thus the brook hath conveyed his ashes into Avon; Avon into Severn; Severn into the narrow seas; and they into the main ocean. And thus the ashes of Wycliffe are the emblem of his doctrine which now is dispersed the world over."