Cas and Zack - Two Blokes from Heidelberg
Sermon Preached by
The Rev. Dr. Andrew Stirling
Sunday, October 30, 2011
On a bus tour through New York City this past summer I encountered one of the most engaging and delightful tour guides that I have ever heard in all the places that I have ever visited, typical New York. Unlike all the other guides who had taken us on some of the tours of major buildings and pointed out great architects and taken us to Grants Tomb, etcetera, this one was a running commentary, the likes of which you would never have repeated.
For example, on the Upper West Side we drove along Central Park. When the bus stopped she pointed out not some of the great buildings, not some of the magnificent edifices that were there, but the fact that Jerry Seinfeld lived in that building, and Jerry is a really nice guy when he's in New York.
I wondered if he wasn't a nice guy when he's not in New York but I didn't want to challenge her! Then we went on to another building and she talked about, that was the place where Lauren Bacall lived and told a few stories about Lauren.
Then we drove past a restaurant and she says that is the restaurant where in the movie Harry Met Sally and all that goes with that movie, I don't want to talk about here. It was one of those incredible tours that Marial and I will never forget.
It was incredible because it connected people with the places. It was emotional and emotive and in its own way had its distinct power. For you remember the places because you remember the people. You can identify with the setting because you know the characters.
It was masterful really. In so many ways places are remembered. Things take on their power by virtue of people. There's hardly a day goes by when I don't come into Timothy Eaton Memorial Church and feel that very same tug on the heart.
For in a sense we're all surrounded by a cloud of witnesses. Next Sunday we will remember by name those from our church who have lost their lives in the service of wars. Every single year at our congregational meeting, the most emotional moment is the moment when we read the In Memoriam of those who have gone before us.
But even more than that, we remember and we think about those who have gone before us and borne the faith and have given witness. It is not as if the Christian faith just arrives from a pillar in the sky and lands down in front of us as if somehow we then all of a sudden just accept it for what it is.
We know that the faith and the witness that we have has been borne by people before -those who have been our forbearers and predecessors. We are the recipients of their witness, that they have given us something that is powerful, and that we are not dependent purely on ourselves or on just the moment or just the present for what we have received.
It has come to us and it has come to us through the witness of the ages, from the first Apostles to all those who have borne faith since. That witness forms who we are. This is Reformation Sunday. It is the day when those of us in the reform tradition and in Protestantism remember those who have indeed borne witness before us and whose testimony has carved the landscape of our souls.
It is they who have passed on to us the faith that we have received. The reformation was a movement that wanted to do a number of things to bear witness to the faith in a time of uncertainty, to proclaim the supremacy of scripture as the authority for the church, to uphold the sovereignty of Christ above all powers, above all principalities, above all religious institutions.
To uphold the priesthood of all believers, and the belief that the Holy Spirit imbues each of us with a ministry and a witness to bear. Although there are some who thought that they were schismatics or they were heretics or that they were divisive or simply fanatics, the fact of the matter is they sought to proclaim Christ and his word.
And two such characters from that reformation have affected me in the last few weeks. These are two men who are in many ways part of the reformation but they are obscure and hardly known. Unlike the greats in pantheon of the reformation, Luther and Calvin and Melanchthon, and Zwingli, unlike those who were even the Proto-Reformers, the ones who pave the way, Erasmus and Hus and Tyndale and Wycliffe.
Other than those who would pick up the mantle of the reformation and to change it in many countries such as the great John Wesley, these two names are hardly known. If I were to poll you this morning and mention their names and ask you whether you'd even heard of them before, my guess is you probably wouldn't.
Yet, we are here today because of their witness. The two people were young men, very young men, to which I refer, Zacharias Ursinus and Caspar Olevianus. Neither of those names probably ring very loudly in your own mind.
They were too young in many ways but each of them was part of a movement that profoundly affected the reformation. Zacharias who we will call Zach was a person who was born of Polish descent. He became consumed with a passion for the Christian faith and in his young age decided that it was time for him to make a true commitment to Jesus Christ. He did this by studying with the great Melanchthon who followed in the footsteps of Martin Luther.
He was a brilliant scholar who studied Hebrew and knew the biblical text at the very depths of its sources. Caspar Olevianus, who has no relation at all to the white thing that pops up from pumpkins in Halloween and comes and says, boo!
This Casper was born in Trier. He was somebody who was very clever. He was born to a very famous father. He studied with some of the great intellectuals. He studied first of all law, and then after law decided to study the works of the greats like Calvin and Beza.
He was somebody who had learnt from the greats of the reformation and he was passionate about them. Zach was a Lutheran. In many was Cas was somebody who was a Calvinist.
But the two of them came together at the University of Heidelberg. At the University of Heidelberg they were deeply moved to write something. What they wrote constituted a foundation for us in our faith. It was the famous Heidelberg Catechism.
This Heidelberg Catechism was in fact brought about because of elect Frederick III who felt that there was a need for young people to know the substance of the Christian faith. He wanted them to be filled with knowledge of the Christian faith. Scholars have suggested that this Heidelberg Catechism had the intimacy of Luther that it had the compassion of Melanchthon and it had the fire of Calvin.
It is written in 52 questions and answers. The idea was that this Catechism which is really just in a sense a body of literature so you can learn. This catechism was designed to be used every single Sunday for 52 weeks.
The idea was that every member of the church would be in church 52 weeks of the year. Now doesn't that shock you? In each of the 52 weeks of the year, you would have one question answered and then as a group would discuss the question and the answer by looking at Holy Scripture.
Even preachers were to preach on the question and the answer in their sermons. I've gone back and I've looked at this because this is now being written and translated into 30 different languages. It is a powerful document.
It's been adopted by many of the great confessions of the church from Dort to Westminster. It has been an amazing thing. It begins though with the first question, and in a sense the first question sets the tone for the Heidelberg Catechism. It goes as follows:
Question: “What is the only comfort in life and death?” The answer: “That I with body and soul both in life and death am not my own, but belong onto my faithful saviour Jesus Christ who with his precious blood has fully satisfied for all my sins and delivered me from the power of the devil.”
It goes on to talk in such tones all the way through with question and answers. What is my security,? What can I trust in? how should I learn? How should the church be governed? How should we relate to one another? How am I saved? What is the source of my being? and so on and ends with an amen.
But what did these two have? What did Zach and Cas these two blokes, pardon my Englishness, from Heidelberg have? Well they had a belief that scripture informs the life of believers. In the passage that Margaret read so beautifully and also did the minute message this morning, there is this incredibly sense from the Apostle Paul that what people needed was for the door of the word to be open to them, the door of the word.
He was writing to a church that was full of schism and division. The Colossian church had all manner of heresies and false teachings. It really was crumbling at its core and the Apostle Paul knew that he needed to elevate in a sense the word that had founded it in the beginning, to reignite a passion for the word in the hearts and the minds of its people, to bring them back to the place that was their source of authority and wisdom.
“I pray for you says Paul that the door of the word may be opened to you.” He knew, that word was the source of the Colossian church's life and it has ever been thus, and will always be.
It is that word alone that can heal the broken hearted. It is that word alone that can restore us in uncertain times when we do not know which path to follow. It is that word that guides us and provides a light for our path and an inspiration for our hearts and minds.
Zacharias and Casper wanted that word to be in the hearts and the minds particularly of their contemporaries at the University of Heidelberg, but also in the hearts and the minds of young Christians who are coming along.
For our congregation we need to concentrate on this model from Zach Cas.
The word needs to dwell in our hearts says Paul in Colossians. It needs to infuse everything that we do and believe. It is our guide. It is our source. It is our strength. But Paul goes on. He not only says you notice that there is a reason for us to have a word that is opened to us, but that our words should be spoken in such a way that they continue the word of God.
This is the power of witness. He says, then I pray for you that the word, the word might be on your lips and you might speak graciously and that your words might be, and this is a fascinating phrase, seasoned with salt, seasoned with salt.
Paul knew the power of words. He knew that a word of witness that was wise and caring could reach out to those beyond the church and to draw them in. He also knew the power of words that are destructive and hateful and vile could do damage to the church and its witness.
He wanted above all for the words the people speak to be gracious. What did he mean by gracious? Is gracious just some sort of 19th century English construct of a gentleman who walks with a cane and fancy clothes, or a lady, who walks through her manor and happens to say nice things to people in sort of a gratuitous way?
Often we think of graciousness like that as if it is a cultural phenomenon and there's nothing wrong with that. Sometimes we think that graciousness simply means always saying something nice to somebody or being genteel.
Well it is that in a cultural sense. But in the context of Colossians, it's a lot more. To speak the word of grace is to speak of Christ. It is to speak of his love. It is to speak of the power of his gospel. It is to bear witness not to ourselves but to him.
That's what Paul wanted that Colossian church to focus on and all its schism and all of its divisions and all of its problems, speak of Christ and let the words of grace come from your soul. But then he says something else.
And Timothy Eaton this we need to hear, “let your words be seasoned with salt.” He is talking about purity of words, sincerity and righteousness of words. He knew that again in bearing witness to those outside the church in particular that the Colossians needed to have language that was filtered through the power of the Holy Spirit that spoke in a meaningful and a righteous and a compassionate way.
We need to do that. This must be our way forward that salt must season our language and that in our language we speak only with the graciousness. The graciousness of Christ, and that we allow him to give us the words to say.
For indeed there are many words that can be spoken. And having been spoken in anger or revenge are hard to take back. But a word that is seasoned with the salt of the gospel can bear fruit and bring people to faith.
One of the greatest scholars of words in all our culture is Dr. Wilfred Funk, a well known publisher of dictionaries. Who has not read Funk & Wagnalls to keep them on the line?
Funk is great. He was asked once, what are the most expressive words in the English language. This was his list and it's fabulous. The most bitter word is alone; the most tragic, death; the most revered, mother; the most beautiful, love; the most cruel, revenge; the most peaceful, tranquil; the saddest, forgotten; the warmest, friendship; the coldest, no; the most comforting, faith, faith.
For those who wrote the Heidelberg Catechism everything was faith. Sola fides, by faith alone. For those who wrote the Heidelberg catechism it was a call to faith. For faith always will be the most comforting, the most strengthening, the most unifying and the most healing thing in the world. The two blokes from Heidelberg had it right. Amen.