after-WEAVE-ings: what is a spiritual life?

We spent some time talking last night about spirituality, what it is, how we have it (or don’t have it), what’s easy and what’s hard about our spiritual lives, etc. Some of us think of spiritual life as something other people have, some of us aren’t entirely sure what it means, for some of us it’s heady and for others of us it’s emotional, for some of us it’s easy for others it’s so difficult as to appear impossible. All of us admitted that it takes practice.

That sounds about right.

One of the difficulties with trying to talk about our spiritual lives is that they are so individual–our personalities, our backgrounds, our context, our knowledge all play into how we experience God and the life we build around that experience.

One description I used (which is admittedly incomplete, and breaks down almost immediately, but is the best I can do right now) is to think (but not too much, lol) about God as the air–always there, but rarely noticed until the moment we gasp for breath. Nurturing our spiritual life is a little bit like nurturing our awareness and gratitude for the air–being aware of its presence around and within us, and working with the air to continue to build that relationship. (see what I mean about the metaphor breaking down? Though I suppose our bodies work with air on a subconscious level….what we’re trying to do here is bring it to a conscious level.)

In order to nurture a relationship, we have to put in time and energy, right? We talk to our friends, we spend time with them, we do things together–can we also do that with God? It requires thinking a little more abstractly since God is not a physical presence, but I think it can be done.

So we’ll be spending the next few weeks exploring ways to nurture our spiritual lives, to connect our spirits and God’s Spirit. Some ways will be old–people have been practicing these disciplines for centuries. Some will be new–no one will have even heard of them (except you) until my book comes out next spring. Some may take time and lots of practice, some may come easily. The idea is not to add even more things to packed lives, it’s to change our vision and attitude so that our whole lives are spiritual practice. In a quote from the essay I handed out last night (stop by the office this weekend for a copy if you’d like one!): “it doesn’t take time, but it does permeate all of our time.”

See you next Wednesday!

peeking in on the Men’s Breakfast talk…Church and State

John is the speaker for the Men’s breakfast this morning. Here’s what he’s talking about…
In UK today is Guy Fawkes Day when kids all over the country light bonfires and set off fireworks to “Remember, remember the 5th of November” when in 1605 Guy Fawkes was arrested, tortured and executed for attempting to blow up King James I and all of Parliament in an act religious terrorism.
This led me to think on the subject of the “Separation of Church & State”, a foundational principle of the Constitution. Yet today we hear more and more about politicians and their religious viewpoints.
Recently I have heard media reports about “Do not support X. He will take his religion into the White House.”
At the same time I have also heard “Do support Y. He will take his religion into the White House.”
The subject has cropped up before but usually in isolated cases (Lieberman and JFK). Now it seems to be required of every candidate to showcase their faith values.
I find this fascinating and disturbing at the same time. While I can see that it is important to know a candidate’s values…are we now being asked to vote depending on religious affiliation as opposed to (or as well as) policy and strategy positions?
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As a history fan I have for a while now been interested in the culture, politics, and church in Germany in the 1930’s .Particularly in the various churches response to Hitler and Nazi beliefs. Many of the books I have read suggest that there are similarities between the situation then and now, i.e. high unemployment, global financial crisis, collapse of economies, wide spread unrest with “ the present situation”.
Can we learn anything from that time? How did the churches react?
Two short opposite examples.

“Stay out of it”–The Roman Catholic Church

According to new internal Vatican documents, released in 2005/6, the key issues for the church were:

1) Germany was the only nation in which the Pope did not have sole and exclusive power to appoint bishops. Since the Reformation the German RC’s had the right to choose their own short list of candidates. This list was send to Rome for “agreement“ or “alteration” and then there was an open vote. This situation was intolerable to Rome and there had been numerous attempts and schemes to end it.

2) This had caused political friction between Rome, the German church and the government. In certain regions, during 1870-80, the government banned the appointment of new priests and bishops resulting in thousands of parishes and numerous bishoprics lying vacant for years. This meant generations of Catholics had lived and died without ever having had priests, sacraments or instruction. Theologically this meant they were all damned with no hope of salvation. The Vatican was determined to avoid a repeat of that situation.

3) Pope Pius XII took the position that he was “vicar of all Catholics world wide” and support or criticism of one nation over another was not possible as his primary duty was international pastoral care of his flock.

By the end of WW 2 absolute Papal authority had been established and the Vatican had taken minimal political participation.

“Complete Immersion”–The German Christian Movement
The German Christians were an inter-denominational pressure group of 600,000 Protestant pastors, bishops, professors and teachers of religion and laity with the stated aim of proving that “National Socialism and Christianity were not only reconcilable but mutually reinforcing.” The movement was based in the “Institute for the Study and Eradication of Jewish Influence on German Church” at the University of Jena.

Their main teachings were:

1) Church should be based on race and ethnicity.
2) Universal in that it was open to all Germans, exclusive in that it was only legally defined Germans.
3) Christianity is “universal” in the next world but “national” in this world.
4) Jesus was a descendant of Aryan invaders, not a Jew.
5) Paul was chiefly responsible for Judaizing Christianity.
6) Absolutely anti-Semitic and attempted to de-judiase Scripture and all aspects of religious life (even Christians descended from Jews should be purged from the church, no matter how long ago that ancestor lived).
7) Abandoned Old Testament and re-wrote the New.
8) Christianity/Jesus was the final rejection and destruction of Jewish faith NOT the culmination of it.
9) Church had to be anti-doctrinal and anti-creedal. Therefore anti-denominational and anti-ecumenical.
10) Church had to be “manly” a place for “warriors and soldiers “and all emotional “softness and femininity” was Jewish influence which had to be routed out and destroyed.

Although not technically supported by the Nazis, and sometimes even attacked by them, the German Christian movement was very influential throughout the War. It collapsed in 1944/45 and after the war all its members were re-absorbed back into German church life with no official penalties or correction of its teachings.

A third way: the Confessing Churches

We’ve been talking on the blog about this history, and the (relatively) small group of pastors, congregations, teachers, and Christians that stood against both these options and sought a third way–a way faithful to the gospel, not to a political ideology or an institutional religion. To learn more about that, follow our series on The Theological Declaration of Barmen, posted every Monday. The historical background, info about the people involved, and the way they worked is here, and the first installment of our study of the statement of faith they wrote is here. Check back each Monday for the next month as we continue to explore the faith they clung to and even died for, and what they have to teach us 70 years later.

WEAVEings: hunger and poverty

Last night Bill Weller talked with us about issues of hunger and poverty–which are, of course, interrelated. Hunger is a symptom of poverty, usually. Sometimes it’s the only symptom, sometimes there are others (homelessness, lack of clean water, limited access to education, etc).

Scripture is pretty clear that it is our task as the people of God to care for people in distress, to care for the poor, the orphan, the widow, to give bread to the hungry and water to the thirsty. The question is: how do we do it?

One of the most obvious ways is through direct assistance–we give food to people, or we support a food pantry or soup kitchen or other program that gives food to people. This is good and important and meets immediate needs. It doesn’t solve the problem of how come people are hungry, though.

Another way is through advocacy–we can lobby our government to stop allowing people to fall through the cracks, we can continue fishing people out of the river even as we go upstream and ask why they’re falling into the river in the first place. One action by a government can do more to help end poverty and hunger than thousands of meals given away. Access to education, childcare, job training, food assistance, affordable housing, etc can mean the difference between hunger and having enough.

A third way is through raising awareness–Bill talked about his students hosting a Hunger Banquet, for instance. In this awareness raising event, people experience the disparity between the poorest of the world (50% of the world population) and the 15% into which most of us fall. Knowing and seeing this firsthand is a great way to jumpstart our compassion and our willingness to act. Reminding people that 1 in 4 families in this country is food insecure, and even more than that when we start talking about the global south, while it may be depressing is still important. As long as we are able to close our eyes to the problem, no solution will appear.

We talked quite a bit as well about what to do when food aid is not effective–for instance, when we send American grown (and government subsidized!) grain to a village where people are hungry, we often undercut the market for local food, putting local farmers out of business. Often we give away food at first, but then start charging for it later–after local producers have gone under and the population relies on food assistance. How can we better use our dollars and sense to ensure that communities are able to feed themselves?

For more information, a few resources Bill talked about are:

Bread For the World

The Friends Committee on National Legislation

Sojourners

Enough: Why the World’s Poor Starve in an Age of Plenty

WEAVEings: faith in public life

Tonight Rick Johnson kicked off the Compassion-Peace-and-Justice series at WEAVE with a class about how faith and public life intersect. In the conversation, we acknowledged that we don’t want to be the people trying to create a theocracy, we don’t want to be the people stridently pushing our single-item agenda at the expense of others (or at the expense of the God of love!), and we also don’t want to segregate our faith from our political lives. Remembering that the greek word polis is a particular kind of community arrangement, politics (from the root polis) is about how we live together in community. In other words, “politics” and “partisanship” are not the same thing. Our faith should definitely inform politics–how we live together–even as we keep partisanship out of our faith community. We seek the kingdom of God, and that is our agenda…not a particular party or ideology.

We were reminded tonight that the agenda of the kingdom of God is about justice–in the sense of everyone having a place at the table, everyone having enough (not in the sense of punishment or retributive leveling). Over 2,000 verses of the Bible are about economics, justice, and caring for the poor and oppressed. That’s a lot of God-talk about something we often prefer to avoid. The arc of scripture is toward justice and compassion, and within that arc we strive to live our faith lives in the public square.

We talked for a long time about our human propensity to “mine Scripture for tidbits that will fit our particular agenda.” I’m sure we can all think of examples of this kind of proof-texting, where we take a few words or maybe a verse out of its context and use it to prove our point. This is done by people of every ideology, of every partisan stripe…and it’s not okay. We have a whole library of Scripture (66 books!) for a reason. If it were so simple and black and white, we’d have just a few chapters and be done with it. Instead we contend with stories, biographies, rules from ancient cultures, letters, visions, and the mythology of a people, and we work to interpret it in light of the love of God made known to us in Christ, for our time and context. It’s a big job, not one easily reduced to a few words taken out here and there.

We also talked about how many in our culture seem to believe that faith and politics should never mix. The difficulty, of course, is how much of Scripture is devoted to political issues. Most of the prophets and a fair chunk of Jesus and Paul’s teachings have to do with how the government cares for (or doesn’t care for) its people, with how the community is organized, with God’s concern for the poor and oppressed. How can we disregard all of that in order to keep our faith in its Sunday morning box? Well….we can’t, really. Jesus calls us to follow him wherever he leads, and he spends an awful lot of time hanging out where the leaders are, calling them out on their anti-kingdom-of-God actions and policies. What does following Jesus mean in our day?

What do you think? How does your faith inform your public or political life? How does your faith affect your understanding of the economy, the role of government in helping us work toward the kingdom of God, etc? What do you think a community that pleases God would look like? What would you like to learn more about so that you can more readily put your faith into action?

WEAVE-ings: prayer, grace, and predestination

Last night at WEAVE we started off talking about some of our difficulties with prayer–does God actually change things when we pray? If not, why do we do it?

That led us into a long conversation about predestination (the idea that God chooses who is saved long before we come into the picture, so we cannot earn or lose our salvation), God’s love and justice, whether justice and punishment are the same thing, and the nature of grace.

I know we’ve talked about all these things before, but it’s so interesting to continue the conversation! Of course, the greatest difficulty with this conversation is that we can never know for certain who is right…God is mysterious, and we see only a little bit, through a glass dimly.

So–continue the conversation here. What do you think? What does prayer do–either to God or to us? How does prayer help you, as the pray-er, or as the pray-ee?

What do you think about grace? Is it Irresistable (as the Reformed tradition teaches) or do you have to accept it in order for it to work in your life? What does being saved have to do with how you live now? What does how you live now have to do with being saved? (a subtly different, but different nonetheless, question!)

How do you deal with the mystery of God and the idea that we don’t have control over so many of these things we wish we did?

 

update: I came across this quote from Desmond Tutu’s book “No Future Without Forgiveness” this afternoon, and it reminded me of last night’s conversation. emphasis added is mine…

“God does not give up on anyone, for God loved us from all eternity, God loves us now and God will always love us, all of us good and bad, forever and ever. His love will not let us go, for God’s love for us, all of us, good and bad, is unchanging, is unchangeable. Someone has said there is nothing I can do to make God love me more, for God loves me perfectly already. And wonderfully, there is nothing I can do to make God love me less. God loves me as I am to help me become all that I have it in me to become, and when I realize the deep love God has for me, I will strive for love’s sake to do what pleases my Lover. Those who think this opens the door for moral laxity have obviously never been in love, for love is much more demanding than law. An exhausted mother, ready to drop dead into bed, will think nothing of sitting the whole night through by the bed of her sick child.”

learning to pray

At WEAVE we have been talking about, learning, and practicing prayer. For today’s after-weave…learning from the masters (the psalmists!) and bringing their form into today.

One of the ways we learn to pray is by praying the words that the faithful have prayed for centuries. The Psalms are so wonderful for this, as they encompass the full breadth and depth of human experience, emotion, spirituality, and conversation with God. They offer us words for praising, confessing, thanksgiving, supplication, intercession, dedication…and they have been spoken, sung, set to instrumental music, made into art, etc, for thousands of years.

Today try praying through the words of the psalmist through Psalm 19.1-4 and Psalm 29, both in word and song.

The heavens are telling the glory of God;
and the firmament proclaims his handiwork.
Day to day pours forth speech,
and night to night declares knowledge.
There is no speech, nor are there words;
their voice is not heard;
yet their voice goes out through all the earth,
and their words to the end of the world.

~~

You, divine beings! Give to the LORD—
give to the LORD glory and power!
Give to the LORD the glory due his name!
Bow down to the LORD
in holy splendor!
The LORD’s voice is over the waters;
the glorious God thunders;
the LORD is over the mighty waters.
The LORD’s voice is strong;
the LORD’s voice is majestic.
The LORD’s voice breaks cedar trees—
yes, the LORD shatters
the cedars of Lebanon.
He makes Lebanon jump around
like a young bull,
makes Sirion jump around
like a young wild ox.
The LORD’s voice unleashes fiery flames;
the LORD’s voice shakes the wilderness—
yes, the LORD shakes
the wilderness of Kadesh.
The LORD’s voice convulses the oaks,
strips the forests bare,
but in his temple everyone shouts, “Glory!”
The LORD sits enthroned
over the floodwaters;
the LORD sits enthroned—king forever!
Let the LORD give strength to his people!
Let the LORD bless his people
with peace!

after-WEAVEings: prayer

John is teaching a class on Wednesday evenings right now, and the topic is prayer: what is it, what’s it for, how do we…etc. Last night the class talked about the Lord’s Prayer and what it teaches us about God and about prayer. A few highlights before we get to the really interesting part….

“Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be your name…” — right off the bat, we start by acknowledging God is much bigger and much holier than we are, we are but a moment, a grain of sand, in the vastness of God. And yet God knows and loves us like a perfect parent. So from the very beginning of the prayer, God is other, God is big, yet God is close.

“give us this day our daily bread…” — not “give us this day our daily lobster bisque” or “give us a week’s supply of donuts” but give us this day our daily BREAD…survival food. And not enough for tomorrow, or for next year, or for retirement, but for today. Give us today what we need to live today. This is a very in-the-moment, living in the present, do-n0t-worry-about-tomorrow prayer. It calls to mind the Israelites in the wilderness, being given manna every morning but not being able to keep any for the next day–learning that God provides what we need for today, and tomorrow will bring worries of its own (as Jesus says in Matthew 6).

And now the really good stuff: “lead us not into temptation…” — we talked a little about who is doing the leading and what is temptation? Why would we need to ask God not to lead us into temptation? Isn’t the point that we lead ourselves into temptation just fine, and God doesn’t want us to give in? Eventually we came around to the realization that: a) When Jesus was baptized, it says that the Spirit descended on him and then led him out into the wilderness to be tempted. So yes, God does lead people into temptation–at least Jesus, anyway; and b) the word translated “temptation” in Aramaic is a word that means “diverted from true purpose” or “whipped about like a flag in the wind” or “focus on the flashy rather than the real” or some such idea. So in many ways, that squares with the kinds of temptations Jesus experienced in the wilderness–to perform and to get glory for himself rather than to follow the path that points always to God and God’s purpose.

Thought of this way, lead us not into temptation sounds like a pretty good prayer, really–because we’re not asking God to please give up those tricksy ways where God somehow steers us in front of chocolate cake and someone who dropped 100 dollars or even whether to shop on amazon.com. This is not “God, please don’t use me for your next Job experiment.” This is “God, lead us in your path, away from the desire to put appearance ahead of substance, away from the desire to seek our own gain instead of yours.”

This led to an interesting discussion of what prayer is for–should we be asking God to do all these things, or should we be allowing ourselves to be the answer to prayer? In other words, the difference between a child asking a parent to do something for them vs asking for help using the skills they already have to figure out the next thing. Sort of a “do this please” compared to “can you help me do it.” When do we ask God for direct intervention, and when do we ask God to make us an answer to the prayers of others? And when do we just go and do it, rather than asking God anything at all?

No one came up with an answer to these questions…and, of course, they lead to further questions that relate to the book almost Christian (which we’re discussing on Wednesdays). if the purpose of prayer is not for us to talk to God, but to learn to use the skills we’ve already been given, then why involve God at all? Can’t we do that without ever spending time with God?

I think the answer may be found in the story that precedes the Lord’s Prayer. The disciples come to Jesus, who clearly has an active and deep prayer life, and say, “Lord, teach us to pray.”

What do you think? How do you pray? What parts of the Lord’s Prayer really resonate with you? Which parts are hard? Do you skip any words when you say it? Do you find yourself repeating any of it to yourself? What is prayer for?

WEAVEings “beyond Calvin”–where’s Waldo?

In southern Europe (mainly Italy today), of course!

The Waldensian Church, today a member of both the Ecumenical Council of Geneva and the World Alliance of Reform Churches, traces its origins to the Waldensian movement founded by Peter Valdo (Pietro Valdo) of Lyon (1140-1217). In 1173 Valdo, having abandoned his life as a merchant and given all of his goods to the poor, dedicated his life to preaching along with his disciples who came to be known as the “Poor Men of Lyon”. In 1177, after being warned several times by Bishop Guichard, he was expelled from the city because of his clearly anticlerical sentiments, yet this banishment had an effect opposite to that intended, and in fact served to disseminate Waldensian doctrines throughout the south of France. After a brief period of dialogue during which the Roman Catholic Church attempted to reabsorb the movement (the Third Lateran Council of 1179), at the Council of Verona in 1184 the movement was officially condemned and its adherents ex-communicated, thus forcing the Waldensians to go into hiding to escape from the Inquisition and from periodic massacres. Despite this persecution, the movement soon spread outside its area of origin, reaching into northern Italy (the Poor Men of Lombardy) and Bohemia, where it was introduced by Valdo himself. An underground network of contacts protected believers, who were able to meet for worship in secret in private homes, and made possible the spiritual assistance provided by itinerant preachers called “barbi” (the source of the term “barbetti” often applied by Roman Cathoics to the Waldensians).

Caught up in the crusade launched by Pope Innocent III against the Albigensians of Provence, the Waldensians of that region paid the price in blood to the forces of religious intolerance and were totally eradicated. The few survivors made their way to Pellice, Chisone and Germanasca valleys in what is now north-west Italy and, to some extent, to the French side of the mountains. Today, they are still to be found in those areas, where they speak a Provencal dialect and profess a Protestant faith.

The Protestant Reformation, which the Waldensians joined without hesitation, made possible a period of reorganization within the movement culminating in the Synod of Chanforan (1532) during which a Confession of Faith of a Protestant stamp was adopted, along with a church structure in line with those of the Reformed Churches of the time. Pastoral ministry was instituted, churches constructed for worship, and a Synodal model of church organization adopted.

With the coming of the Counter-Reformation, persecutions increased again. The Waldensians of Provence were exterminated during the first half of the 16th century, while in the second half of that century, Waldensians who had moved into Calabria and Puglia in southern Italy were massacred or dispersed. Emenuele Filiberto of Piedmont, unable to destroy the communities in the Waldensians valleys because of the tenacious resistance of their inhabitants, was forced to accept the “Treaty of Cavour” which guaranteed freedom of religion within the valleys but blocked any possibility of expansion outside those valleys. The treaty, however, did not stand in the way of further persecutions and in 1655, hundreds of Waldensians were killed during the “Piedmontese Easter”. In 1686 the Piedmontese and French troops of Vittorio Amadeo II and Louis XIV penetrated the valleys where, having exterminated a large part of the population, they incarcerated survivors in Piedmontese prisons. This period, thus, saw the rise of a forced migration of Waldensians into Switzerland and Germany, both predominantly Protestant areas. In the summer of 1686, a small group managed to return to the valleys from Switzerland during the “Glorious Return”. While the movement was completely eradicated in southern France, the Waldensians of the valleys were able to secure a treaty from the Pedmontese government in 1690 and there followed a period of relative peace and security. The Enlightenment, the French Revolution and the Napoleonic era created problems of a doctrinal nature within all religious faiths, but for the Waldensians this was quickly followed by a renewed religious commitment in the second and third decades of the nineteenth century. The “Lettere Patenti” issued by the house of Savoy in 1848 finally guaranteed freedom of action and civil rights to Waldensians.

Today, the annual Synod represents the governing entity of the Waldensian Church. The Synod is made up of pastors and lay people who elect a seven person governing board (named Tavola Valdese) under the chairmanship of the Moderator. Each office is elective and all have a limit of 7 years.

WEAVE-ings “Beyond Calvin”–Heinrich Bullinger

Heinrich Bullinger (July 18, 1504 – September 17, 1575) was a Swiss reformer, the successor of Zwingli as head of the Zurich church. In 1519, at the age of 15, his parents, intending him to follow his father into the clergy, sent him to the University of Cologne, just as the Luther affair was on everyone’s tongue. Bullinger felt that he needed to decide the issues for himself, and began a systematic program of reading and eventually concluded that Luther was more faithful to the church fathers and the Bible than other theologians.

In 1522, Bullinger returned home, accepting a post as head of the school at Kappel, though only after negotiating special conditions that meant he didn’t need to take monastic vows or attend mass. At the school, Bullinger initiated a systematic program of Bible reading and exegesis for the monks there. In 1527, he spent 5 months in Zurich studying ancient languages and regularly attending the Prophezei that Zwingli had set up there. While there, he impressed the Zurich authorities and in 1528, at the urging of the Zurich Synod, he left the Kappel cloister to become a regular parish minister.

He married Anna Adlischweiler, a former nun. His marriage was happy and regarded as a shining example. They had eleven children and all their sons became pastors.

After Zwingli’s death, Bullinger quickly received offers to take up the position of pastor from Zurich and soon after also became Senior Pastor for the area. He kept this office up to his death in 1575.

Bullinger’s greatest theological contribution was his writing which later became known as the Second Helvetic Confession. Written in 1561 as a private exercise, it came to the notice of the elector palatine Frederick III, who had it translated into German and published in 1566. It gained a favorable hold on the Swiss churches in Bern, Zurich Schaffhausen St.Gallen, Chur, Geneva and other cities. The Second Helvetic Confession was adopted by the Reformed Church not only throughout Switzerland but in Scotland (1566), Hungary (1567), France (1571), and Poland (1578). Later it was also influential in America through its use as a major work at Princeton Seminary, and it is now included as one of the documents in the PC(USA)’s Book of Confessions.

WEAVE-ings “Beyond Calvin” — Zwingli

Zwingli was born January 1, 1484, just weeks after Luther. Unlike Luther, he went to the university and studied humanities (philosophy, languages, etc) and then became a priest in 1506 (Luther became a monk in 1505).

In 1516, Zwingli began to cease holding church teaching at the same level as Scripture–he decided to study only Scripture and, if necessary, the ancient church fathers and the first few creeds (Apostles, Nicene). In 1519 he abandoned the lectionary and began preaching straight through books of the Bible, beginning with Matthew, then Acts, then all the epistles, then the Old Testament. In the process, he preached against such church traditions as fasting (and he held a big sausage dinner during Lent!), clergy celibacy (and he secretly married in 1522), images (such as icons, which he removed from his church building), music in worship (and he threw the organ pipes out the window!), and indulgences (he ordered an indulgence seller out of town before he even had a chance to hawk a single piece of paper).

Zwingli argued that anything NOT explicitly in scripture should be prohibited. This is different from Luther, who believed that anything not prohibited in Scripture should be allowed. I have heard this described using this analogy: Luther went through the drawers and removed things he didn’t like…Zwingli dumped out all the drawers and only put back what was in the Bible.

Zwingli’s five main issues were:

• Idolatry (we put trust in created things rather than in the Creator)
• Providence (not chance!)–this is where predestination comes in, and Zwingli believed that God elected who God wills, including people who have never heard the gospel or who lived before Jesus…
• Scripture is the only authority, not church tradition or other human inventions
• “True Religion” as opposed to ceremonial piety–in other words, pray to Christ, not to saints or Mary; focus on the Word not on the sensory experiences around you (therefore no art or music in worship)
• External Kingdom, not privatized morality–everything in the world is God’s, including the political sphere, home, work, economy, culture, social trends, etc. “No dimension of human existence can be excluded from the claims and promises of the gospel.” He was very into morality, but did not believe Christianity could be boiled down to something private.

RE communion, Zwingli said that the Mass was an abomination and a distraction. The Lord’s Supper should be partaken of by all, and should be treated as a memorial and not as a ceremony full of reverence for bread. The bread and wine, according to Zwingli, help us remember Christ and to become a part of the Body of Christ–they are not the physical body of Christ (transubstantiation–the Roman church’s teaching). Zwingli and Luther were unable to reconcile their disagreement in this area (Luther said that the physical presence of Christ was in-with-and-under the bread and wine, that they were clothed in it, and Christ was “really” (physically) present in the bread and wine. Zwingli says that when we participate in the Supper we remember, and re-member, Christ who is physically present at the right hand of God, not in bread.).

Zwingli also worked with (or took over, depending on your point of view) the political figures in Zurich to reform the city according to the word of God. This was a whole-life reformation, not just a theological dispute inside the walls of the church. Unfortunately, this also meant that when it came to people disagreeing with him (as some of his early students, who came to believe that he did not go far enough or fast enough in his reforms, did)…he was not inclined to speak out on their behalf. Former students of his who believed he did not reform the sacraments or ecclesiology enough became Anabaptists–people who believed in adult rather than infant baptism–and this heresy was not tolerated in Zurich…these Anabaptists were often executed by drowning in mock-baptisms as Zwingli and his colleagues looked on silently.

In 1531, Zwingli went out to battle (over his theological ideas!) and was killed. When the Catholic opponent discovered his body, they quartered him, then burned him, then mixed the ashes with dung so there was no chance of keeping them as a relic. Talk about a memorable death!

Do you see anything in Zwingli’s thought (or life) that is particularly thought provoking? anything that seems familiar? Zwingli is one of our major Reformed ancestors–the first of the Swiss reformers who helped form our theological tradition. We obviously don’t agree with all his ideas (umm, death by drowning for your opponents? really?), but some probably resonate. What resonates for you? What questions do you still have?

Join us next Wednesday for another glimpse into the less-well-known characters that helped form our tradition during the Reformation period!