Hebrews
7:23-28
October 28, 2012
Furthermore, the former priests were
many in number, because they were prevented by death from continuing in office;
but he holds his priesthood permanently, because he continues forever.
Consequently he is able for all time to save those who approach God through
him, since he always lives to make intercession for them. For it was fitting
that we should have such a high priest, holy, blameless, undefiled, separated
from sinners, and exalted above the heavens. Unlike the other high priests, he
has no need to offer sacrifices day after day, first for his own sins, and then
for those of the people; this he did once for all when he offered himself. For
the law appoints as high priests those who are subject to weakness, but the
word of the oath, which came later than the law, appoints a Son who has been
made perfect forever.
When you look at the state of your faith, what kind of
faith would you say you have? Is it one that makes a difference in your life, or one that just is in your life? Is it the kind of faith that leads you through difficult times, or one that leaves you in difficult times? Is it a faith of passion, or a faith of apathy? Whether you know it or not, the
Presbyterian way of faith is meant to be a faith of passion because it was a
faith born out of passion. The problem is that we don’t necessarily have that
same kind of passion that the originators of our tradition did.
The great irony for us today is that we honor and revere
our American soldiers who fight for our freedom as a country, but we have very
little appreciation for those of the Protestant Reformation who died to protect
an even greater, more important freedom—the freedom to read Scripture and to
let it shape our relationship with God. Without that freedom, this country
never would have become a democracy it is today. The fight for the freedom to
read Scripture literally changed the world, and the folks of Scotland who
risked their lives to create what became the Presbyterian Church were a large
part of it.
Let me take you back to Scotland in the mid-1500s to show
you what I mean. For a long time the Protestant movement had been growing in
Scotland, and was vying with the Roman Catholic Church. Many Protestant
reformers had been cropping up throughout Scotland, but few as powerful as a
man named George Wishart. Wishart preached throughout Scotland, urging his
fellow Catholics to read Scripture for themselves and discover the freedom of
faith that came through this practice.
As Wishart preached, a young man named John Knox stood
before the pulpit, claymore sword in hand, ready to defend Wishart against any
who might try to kill him for his words. The claymore was a popular sword among
the Scottish. It was the kind wielded by William Wallace centuries before as he
fought for Scottish independence. The claymore was a fearsome, two-handed sword
that struck terror in those facing it because it was so powerful, yet so light.
The year was 1545, and Wishart, Knox, and their followers
were moving through Scotland, preaching in each town they passed through. They
were on the run with the soldiers of Cardinal David Beaton, the Roman Catholic
archbishop of Scotland, hot on their tails. They were wanted men, and so in every
place they preached the Reformed faith they converted many, and they faced many
others who wanted to kill them.
Killing had been the way the Roman Catholic Church had
dealt with these reformers for years. Archbishop Beaton had executed Patrick Hamilton,
one of the earliest preachers of reform in Scotland eighteen years earlier.
Hamilton had been invited to a friendly theological debate at St. Andrew’s
castle. He went, hoping to make his point heard. He didn’t expect the kangaroo
court he faced, nor to be burned at the stake.
Beaton was brutal with the reformers, hoping to crush them by force, and
now his attention was upon George Wishart.
Eventually, Wishart was captured, and as Archbishop
Beaton reclined on cushions in an overlooking balcony, he watched the brutal
execution of Wishart in the castle’s courtyard. Soon afterwards, a gang of
reformers stormed St. Andrew’s and brutally killed Beaton, taking over the
castle. They then asked John Knox to become their chaplain. Eventually the
French, who were determined to keep Scotland Roman Catholic, blocked the port
with their ships and took over the castle. They captured Knox, and sentenced
him to serve as a galley slave rowing ships back and forth through the English
Channel.
Knox served as a galley slave for almost two years until
his release was secured. How would being a galley slave have impacted your
faith? Would you have complained that a good God wouldn’t let this happen?
Would you fall into despair? Knox became even more passionate about the
Reformed faith he had learned from Wishart. After his release, he went to
Geneva, Switzerland and studied with John Calvin, eventually, returning to
Scotland with his heart afire, ready to spread this new Christian faith. He did
so, but often under the threat of death. His prior experiences didn’t diminish
his faith by making him more fearful. It deepened his faith and made him
unafraid of death. Through his efforts, Scotland eventually became a cradle of
Reformed faith, what we call Presbyterian faith, and through the faith of the
reformers of Scotland the faith of the world changed.
It’s hard today to imagine the passion these men had for
their faith. They didn’t just engage in mild speculation about what was right
and what was wrong, the way we might discuss religion today. They were willing
to die for their faith. This is so hard for us to understand today because we live
in post-Reformation times. In our culture, because of the freedoms secured by
men like John Knox, we have the freedom to worship where we will and believe
what we want. We can worship here, in a Roman Catholic church, in a Buddhist
temple, a Jewish synagogue, or a Muslim mosque. Back then they were willing to
die for this privilege. They faced an entirely different world.
The Presbyterian tradition was created as a passionate response
to the Roman Catholic Church that had become apathetic. That tradition had
become a tradition of rules, rituals, and requirements. This was not the Roman
Catholic Church of today, which was changed by the Reformation. The Roman
Catholic Church of Knox’s day made faith and salvation a matter of doing the
right things, giving to the right places, and obeying the right rules. The
Church had corrupted the message of the Gospel, teaching people that all that
mattered was the Church. The Church was
Jesus Christ in the world. There was no individual faith. There was only obedience
and obligation to the Church. As a layperson, you had no right to read
scripture for yourself, have your own ideas, and serve God in your own way. The
Church was all that mattered. And people like Hamilton, Wishart, and Knox were
willing to die for the freedom to live their faith and their commitment to
Christ in a new way.
What was it about the ideas of the Reformed faith that
captured their hearts and minds so much? There was a lot, and it is impossible
to go into all of them in the confines of one sermon. Basically there were
three issues that captured them: the sovereignty of God, authority of
scripture, and the priesthood of all believers. Let me talk about each one and
share with you what they meant for them and for us today.
The first idea that truly captured these early reformers
was the idea of the sovereignty of God. What does that mean? It means that God
alone is good, and God is the only one who matters. To truly understand this
you have to insert yourself back in to the context of the 1500s. The Church saw
itself as Christ’s embodiment in the world. The Church was Christ, and
therefore the representatives of God on earth. What the Church said through the
pope and its bishops was considered by the Church to be the Word of God. The
reformers like John Knox, John Calvin, and Martin Luther did not believe that. They
believed that we each had a right and an obligation to go straight to God and
surrender our lives to God alone. God was the one who mattered, not the church.
Or at least the church didn’t matter in the way God did. The church could shape
us and help us draw closer to God, but it could not save us. Going to church
was a response to God. We go to church because we need a community of faith to
keep us accountable to God, but even more to nurture our faith as we go
straight to God. The church connects us with God through prayer, worship, and
love.
The whole point of the idea of sovereignty of God is that
God saves us because God loves us, and this love isn’t connected to our good
deeds. It is connected to God’s grace and love. We don’t merit salvation. God just
gives it to us as a gift. God has chosen us to be saved and spend eternity with
God simply because God loves us. God is all that matters, God is our center,
and God loves us. So, we need to respond to God with our lives and share that
love with others.
The second idea of the Reformed faith that captured Knox
and the others is the authority of Scripture. Why is this so important? Again,
remember what the Church of the time taught. It taught that it was the
authority, not the Bible. So they could make up theologies and beliefs that ran
counter to Scripture. So, even if Scripture (and specifically Paul) says that
we are saved by God’s grace, not by anything we merit, the Church felt free to
tell everyone that they were really saved by giving to the Church.
The Reformers believed that Scripture should be the
authority, not the Church. And they
believed that it was the duty of every person to read scripture and to hear
directly from the Bible what God wanted. What captured the reformers’ passions?
It was the rights of everyone to let God be the lord of their conscience, not
the church. They wanted to give everyone the freedom to discover God for
themselves.
By the way, this is why preaching is so important in the
Presbyterian Church. Preaching is a measure and reflection of this freedom. It
was the belief of the reformers like Knox that in each time of worship Scripture
should be read so the people could hear it, and then it should be made clear
through preaching. It was the right of everyone to hear scripture explained,
taught, and explored. This is why preaching is so central to the Presbyterian
faith. It also marks the difference between pastors and priests.
A priest always presides over a sacrifice. A pastor is a
shepherd and guide. In the Catholic faith, the central part of the church
service is the Mass, which they see as being a mystical reality in which the
sacrifice of Christ on the cross is renewed through an unbloody sacrifice. In
other words, the Mass is a re-sacrifice of Christ on the altar—what we call a
communion table. The priest presides over a sacrifice, just as Jewish priests
and priests of other religions preside over animal sacrifices. Pastors,
instead, are teachers trained to understand Scripture and to help us understand
it. We do not need to make a sacrifice in worship because we believe Christ
already was sacrificed once and for all 2000 years ago, and he doesn’t need to
be sacrificed again. As our passage says: “Unlike
the other high priests, he has no need to offer sacrifices day after day, first
for his own sins, and then for those of the people; this he did once for all
when he offered himself.”
Sometimes we people take for granted how central preaching
is to the growth of faith. For example, there once was a man, a grouchy,
grumbly man, who belonged to a particular church. One evening at a church
dinner, as the people sat around the table and discussed events of the church,
the man blurted out, “I just wish we didn’t have to hear all these sermons! I’ve
been coming to this church for thirty years, and I can’t remember one blasted
sermon. It’s all a waste of my time!” Everyone sat in stunned silence. How do
you respond to a statement like that? Eventually, his wife smiled, took his
hand, and said, “Yes, yes, dear. I know,
I know. Still, we’ve been married for forty years, and I’ll bet you can’t
remember one of those dinners I cooked for you every night for those forty
years. But they’ve kept you well-fed and healthy. It’s not whether you remember
the sermons. It’s how well you’ve digested them that matters.”
The Scottish Reformers were willing to die for our right
to hear God’s word, to digest it, and to have our lives be transformed by
it.
The third idea that captured the passions of these
reformers was the idea of the priesthood of all believers. You may have heard of this. It is the
idea that comes straight out of our passage for this morning, which tells us
that since Jesus is the high priest who has been sacrificed for our sin, we no
longer need to have a priest mediate between God and us. We can go straight to
God. We are our own priests in the service of the high priest Jesus Christ. In
other words, we have the power to offer a sacrifice to God on behalf of
ourselves, and that sacrifice is ourselves—our sin and our lives. As part of
the priesthood of all believers in Jesus Christ, we can offer ourselves as a
sacrifice to God, and Jesus mediates on our behalf to the Creator.
The ramifications of this are that we do not need to go
to a priest for confession. We can go straight to God. We can be forgiven by
God directly. Now, does this mean we should never confess our sins to a
pastor? According to John Calvin, not
exactly. Calvin said that while we can take our sins directly to God through
Christ, there are times that confessing to a pastor or member of the church is
the best way because it just helps us spiritually to know we’re forgiven. Other
times it is better to confess in front of the whole church community. The
point, though, is that no matter how we confess to God it is a direct
confession.
The larger ramifications of this are that our devotion in
prayer should always be to God, and because we are part of the God’s
priesthood, we have a right and a calling to serve God throughout our lives. We
are called by God to serve in love, and calling we can discern for ourselves in
prayer. And this calling to serve God comes to us no matter what age we are or
situation we are in. Being in the priesthood of Christ means being a person of
prayer, devotion, and service.
Ultimately, these three ideas—sovereignty of God,
authority of Scripture, and priesthood of all believer—has a simple
message: That we’re all called to form a
Scottish form of faith—a faith of passion that leads us to devote our lives to
God.
Do you have that kind
of faith?
Amen.
