So it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God who shows mercy. For the scripture says to Pharaoh, "I have raised you up for the very purpose of showing my power in you, so that my name may be proclaimed in all the earth." So then he has mercy on whomever he chooses, and he hardens the heart of whomever he chooses. You will say to me then, "Why then does he still find fault? For who can resist his will?" But who indeed are you, a human being, to argue with God? Will what is molded say to the one who molds it, "Why have you made me like this?" Has the potter no right over the clay, to make out of the same lump one object for special use and another for ordinary use? What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power, has endured with much patience the objects of wrath that are made for destruction; and what if he has done so in order to make known the riches of his glory for the objects of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory—including us whom he has called, not from the Jews only but also from the Gentiles?
As indeed he says in Hosea, "Those who were not my people I will call "my people,' and her who was not beloved I will call "beloved.' "And in the very place where it was said to them, "You are not my people,' there they shall be called children of the living God."
Have you ever wondered why we are called “Calvin” Presbyterian Church? According to what I read in our records, we were given the name in the late 1950s. Before then we were the Harmony and Zelienople Presbyterian Church. We were given the name because in the 1950s we had a reunion of two Presbyterian denominations, which then put our church and Park Presbyterian Church in the same denomination. That meant we couldn’t be the Harmony and Zelienople Presbyterian Church, since there was another Presbyterian church in our denomination several blocks away. So the presbytery gave us a new name, and, voilá, we became Calvin United Presbyterian Church. When we had a reunion again of two more Presbyterian denominations in 1983, we became Calvin Presbyterian Church (USA).
Now, what you don’t know is that our name has bugged our music/youth director, Bruce Smith, for some time now ☺. He has told me repeatedly that we should not be named after dead white men. Of course, after I preached this sermon one of our members told me that perhaps we could wait 50 years and rename it the David Bruce Smith Memorial Presbyterian Church☺☺! At any rate, Bruce has lobbied hard to rename the church after our qualities, rather than after John Calvin.
I don’t us to debate Bruce’s thoughts this morning, but I did think that it might be worthwhile to talk about who this man is that we are named after. We are named after John Calvin. So, what was so special about him? You’ve heard of him, but do you know what he did and why he is so revered among Presbyterians and millions of others who are part of the Reformed tradition? In truth, learning about Calvin will tell you a lot about who we are and why we are the way we are.
Calvin is important because his ideas shaped much of the “Reformed” movement, which was a Christian movement begun in Switzerland in the middle of the 16th century, and that spread throughout the world. You probably don’t realize how many denominations emerged out of the Reformed movement. All Presbyterian churches are Reformed, as are churches that are part of the United Church of Christ, the Reformed Church of America, the Christian Reformed Church, the Dutch Reformed Church, the Disciples of Christ, the Christian Missionary Alliance, the non-denominational evangelical movement, and so many more. The numbers of Reformed Christians worldwide rivals the Roman Catholic Church.
John Calvin was born in France in 1509, and his name was originally Jean Cauvin. He later Germanized the name to John Calvin after moving to Geneva, Switzerland. We tend to think of him as a contemporary of Martin Luther, the great German reformer, but he never actually met him and was 26 years younger. In many ways, Calvin was part of a second wave of reformers.
As a young boy his father wanted him to become a priest. His mother died when he was six years old, and so he grew up with a very strict and domineering father. Calvin became a chaplain in the cathedral of Noyon, France when he was around 13. That sounds awful young to us today, but when the life expectancy is only around 40, 13 doesn’t seem so old. As a chaplain he mainly did small tasks during the mass, but it also made him something of a semi-priest. In his late teens his father sent him to both the University of Paris and the University of Orleans so that he could study theology. As the reformation movement grew, and as things became much less stable in France in the religious world, Calvin’s father decided that his son should study law, not theology. Calvin, though, loved theology much more then law, and was especially taken with reading the Bible. His law studies helped him to develop a very disciplined and logical mind, which you can see reflected in his Institutes of Christian Religion, a massive volume that discussed everything from sin to grace to predestination to the structure of the church. Despite being trained as a lawyer, Calvin remained a theologian, even publishing theological books as a student.
Eventually, in the late 1520s, he quietly declared himself to be a Protestant, and decided to leave France. France had become a dangerous place for Protestants. Unlike Germany, where the king protected Protestants, or Switzerland, where the city-states of Geneva, Bern, Basel, and Zurich had declared themselves independent of the Roman Catholic Church, the king of France had instituted harsh repressions of Protestant activity, including the translation of the Bible into French. Violators could be persecuted, imprisoned, beaten, or even executed. Calvin set out to go to the city of Strasbourg, where he sensed there would be great openness to his ideas, but French soldiers blocked the way. Instead, he went to Geneva, a city of 10,000 on the end of Lake Geneva and near the border with France.
Calvin hated Geneva, and for the most part Geneva hated him. Having been ordained as a chaplain in France, it was logical for him to become a pastor, especially when you take into account his theological and biblical backgrounds. So Calvin became a pastor in Geneva, but it didn’t take long for Calvin to wear out his welcome. Calvin had very strong opinions, especially in writing. Face-to-face he was very accommodating, but in print and preaching he could be personally critical of those with whom he disagreed. The issue that tore apart his relationship with the Genevans had to do with communion. Calvin was adamant that communion should be celebrated every Sunday, and whenever the Word of God was preached. He believed that the tendency of the Swiss to have communion only periodically both went against scripture, and was done only because they saw weekly communion as “too Romish,” or too Catholic. Calvin didn’t believe in throwing out the baby with the bathwater, meaning that not everything the Roman Catholic Church did was to be considered evil. So he argued vociferously for weekly communion. The Genevans, in response, made life difficult for him as they criticized his preaching, theology, and personal habits.
Three years later he gladly accepted an invitation by the church in Strasbourg to become a pastor there. It was in Strasbourg that Calvin found an audience for his ideas. He was warmly accepted, and their acceptance of his ideas caused Christian reformers in Switzerland, Germany, and France to take notice. After three years there, the church in Geneva decided that all was forgiven, and asked him to return. Calvin was reluctant, but to him following God’s calling was much more important than doing only what he wanted. So he returned. He never quite fell in love with the Genevans, but he spent the rest of his life there. It was from Geneva that his fame really spread, and he influenced millions through his writings.
So what were the ideas that Calvin cared about, and that became central to his theology and faith—that became central to our theology and faith? Calvin had very definite opinions about church life and how the church should be structured. While I certainly could offer more detail on his ideas, his ideas about church life could be split into seven different areas.
First, Calvin believed strongly that the Roman Catholic Church of the time was no longer grounded in scripture and had substituted a thousand years of human tradition for it. He believed that in scripture, and especially in Paul’s letters, we can find clear guidance on how the church should be structured and what it should believe. For instance, he believed that everybody should have the right to read scripture for him- or herself, while the Catholic Church restricted that right for clergy and those in religious orders, and banned the translation of the Bible into common languages. Calvin also believed that the church had stopped being grounded in scripture, which is Divine authority, and had been ruled too much by the pope and the College of Cardinals, which were a human authority.
Second, he believed that the church needed to get back to being grounded in God’s Word. This sounds a lot like number one, but it’s a bit different. He believed that scripture, not the teachings of the church, should guide everyday life. He saw the Catholic Church’s teachings as being overly concerned with the preservation of the institution than with guiding people to God.
Third, he believed in equality between the clergy and the laity, and that the church should be a democracy, GROUNDED IN SCRIPTURE AND THE SPIRIT, in which clergy and laity lead people to live in God’s grace. So, he did not believe in a hierarchy in which popes, bishops, and clergy were above laity. He believed that clergy and laity were equal in faith, but that we had different tasks. Laity were to lead the church in practical matters. Clergy should lead the church in spiritual matters. And the two should work together to bring together the spiritual and the practical in the life of the church and daily life.
Fourth, he believed that the church should be a l’escole de Dieu, or a “school of God.” He saw that as being the church’s primary function, even through worship. He believed that religious, theological, and spiritual learning was a lifelong task, and that whenever a person says, “I’ve made it so I don’t need to learn anymore,” he or she is simply wrong. He did not believe that what we learn in church saves us. Salvation was in God’s hands. He believed that because we are saved, we should respond to God’s love and grace by learning all we can in order to draw closer to Christ , become more open to the Spirit, and discover how to serve God in life. If he were alive today, and witnessed so many people who believe themselves to be spiritual but not religious, he would probably be perplexed. He would wonder how people could expect to be self-taught in spiritual matters in much the way we would be perplexed with a person who claims to be the equivalent of a college graduate despite being self-taught. His question would be, “How do you learn about God without a place that teaches about God?”
The result of point number four leads to his beliefs about point number five, which is that pastors are primarily teachers and preachers, and pastoral visits should be focused on restoring people to a right relationship to God. You can see this belief reflected in the robe I wear each Sunday morning. My robe isn’t a liturgical robe like priests wear in the Roman Catholic or Episcopal traditions. It is an academic robe, much like what your professors in college wore on your graduation day. In fact, the three stripes on the sleeve of my robe are “doctor stripes,” which say that I’m a doctor. To be a doctor literally means to be a “teacher.” So my role, at its core, is to teach you. My task, according to Calvin, is to spend my days learning so that I can teach.
Sixth, Calvin believed in ecclesia reformata, semper reformanda. Knowing that you don’t read Latin, let me translate: “the church reformed, always being reformed.” He believed that the church of his time had been transformed and reformed beyond the Roman Catholic Church, but that as Christians we have to always be open to continual reformation. In other words, there’s never a point at which the church is in the “right” place. It needs to adapt, change, and be transformed and reformed in light of cultural and historical changes. What does that mean on a practical level? It means that as a church we always have to change and adapt to how our culture changes. It’s the reason why Calvin Church has changed so much over the years. When we adapt what we do, we are literally following Calvin and becoming Calvin’s Presbyterian Church.
Finally, he believed that worship should revolve around teaching scripture and leading people to live lives in which they respond to God’s Word in every part of life. In other words, there’s a reason why I try, when I preach, to stay with what the passage for the day says, rather than just saying whatever I want. It is in being grounded in scripture that we become sure we aren’t just creating our own religious beliefs.
So, on a personal level, why should Calvin matter to us 500 years later? What does he have to teach us on a personal level, beyond what he says about church? There are four basic lessons we can get from Calvin that havve to do with how we live our lives:
- Life is a labyrinth, and only God can lead us out. Calvin believed that life is incredibly confusing and complex, and that when we live it alone in our own way, we get lost. When we get lost, only Christ and the Spirit can lead us out. The answer to life’s labyrinth is to become open to God in everything so that God can lead us to live the right ways. Through a combination of prayer, scripture reading, and worship, we can discern God’s guidance and calling in life, and they can lead us to the right kind of life. Calvin believed that too many people ignore God, and it’s for that reason that their lives fall apart.
- We need to give our hearts promptly and sincerely to God. Calvin believed that the way out of the labyrinth started with giving our hearts completely to God. This concept, which is so difficult to explain, was so central to Calvin that he drew a symbol for it and made this symbol his personal seal. You can see an example of it on the cover of this sermon, along with more contemporary versions.
- Knowledge and experience of God go together. Calvin believed that the person who didn’t care about learning about God could not experience God. A disciplined program of learning, that includes reading scripture daily, is central to learning about God, discovering where God is working in life, and learning how to serve God. But Calvin didn’t just believe that scripture alone could teach us. We needed to read anything that teaches us about God (within limits) because that learning leads us to experience God, and we need to learn from people who know God.
- We need to trust completely in God’s grace and mercy. I think that if Calvin were alive today, he would be confused by the question so many evangelical Christians ask others, which is “Are you saved?” He didn’t believe we could know for sure whether or not we are saved. Instead, he believed it’s all up to God, and our task in life is to simply trust in God’s goodness, grace, and mercy. He believed that God was a good God, and that God makes decisions based on love, so we don’t need to fear whether or not we are saved. Instead, we are to trust that we are saved, and to live our lives in response to God’s grace. As the apostle Paul said in our passage for this morning, “So it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God who shows mercy.”
So, as we close on Calvin, let me pose four questions for you from John Calvin—questions that, depending on how you answer them, may determine how well you live your life:
1. To what extent do you let the Spirit and Christ lead you in life?
2. Have you given your heart to God?
3. How committed are you to learning about God?
4. To what extent do you trust God?
Amen.
