Pentecost 21

500th Anniversary of the Reformation

St Peters Ballarat
29 October 2017
Texts: Deut 34:1-12
1 Thess 2:1-13
Matt 22:34-46

This coming Tuesday marks the 500th anniversary of the Reformation. It will be five hundred years, half a
millenenium, to the day since Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to a church door in Germany. He was
protesting mainly against the sale of indulgences, the idea that donations of money could buy forgiveness of
sins for yourself or your family members, but was also interested in wider questions about grace, forgiveness
and repentance. In particular he wanted to stress that we are saved by Gods grace alone, by God alone.
Although he sought only to put this trust in Jesus Christ at the centre of peoples faith again, seeking renewal
of the church, he also inadvertently launched 150 years of division, war and destruction that engulfed mainland
Europe and England in a series of civil and religious wars, as well as creating the Lutheran, Baptist and other
churches, including the Church of England (we are painting in broad strokes here!)

A sermon to mark this occasion could easily go on for 95 minutes, one minute for each of Martins theses. I
want here only to draw your attention to five things about our Anglican Church, all the way from Canterbury
Cathedral to our little churches across the Diocese, that we owe to Martin Luther and the Reformation. First,
we owe it to the Reformation that our worship is in English, a language that everyone can understand, and not
in Latin. The Reformers were determined that everyone should be able to praise God, and pray to God in their
native tongue, that everyone should be able to read Gods word in their own language, and so read there plainly
that we are saved by Gods grace alone. Of course, the Roman Catholic Church now does the same, but only
in recent times. My wife Selina and my mother-in-law, both Roman Catholics, remember going to mass in
Scotland in which the entire service was in Latin. The Book of Common Prayer and its predecessors made
sure that English was the language of worship within a generation of Luther first nailing his theses to the
church door.

Secondly, we owe it to the Reformation that we receive communion in two kinds, not just the bread. The
church in the Middle Ages stopped giving the chalice to lay people who were thought unable to reach the
required level of purity. Only clergy partook in the wine. Lay people received only the bread, and then it was
placed directly on their tongues to preserve its purity. The Reformers rejected this understanding. The 39
Articles (1571), a little summary of the Anglican faith that used to be printed in the back of every Book of
Common Prayer, puts it like this: The Cup of the Lord is not to be denied to the lay-people: for both the parts
of the Lord's Sacrament, by Christ's ordinance and commandment, ought to be ministered to all Christian men
alike. We owe it to Martin Luther that we are all able each week to obey Christ properly, to remember his
sacrifice fully, to indicate physically our unity by sharing in the one cup, to share also in the cup of salvation,
to feel Christ as close to us as his blood in our blood.

Thirdly, we owe it to the Reformation that we are a church governed by synod, by church parliament. From
some angles this may seem more a curse than a blessing, but the Reformers were determined to form a church
which was not ruled by bishops alone, but in which bishops, clergy and lay people all had a voice and in which
their sometimes conflicting views and interests could be balanced by the need for mutual respect and regard
in order to get things done. For example, it is thanks to the Reformation that the bishop cannot simply abolish
life-time tenure for clergy in the Diocese if he thinks it is a good idea. It is a decision that needs to be made
by the whole synod of the diocese, all the clergy and all the lay representatives. Same with the ordination of
women a few years ago. A bishop cannot simply do as he or she likes. They need the support of their synods.
We are a church that is episcopally led, but synodically governed.

Fourthly, and I say this with a certain level of self-interest, we owe it to the Reformation that I can be married.
No small thing! In fact, as my father and grandfather were both priests, I owe it to the Reformation that I am
here at all (as did my father before me). This is of course important only because it embodies the
determination of the Reformers that distinctions between clergy and lay people should be reduced. No more
clergy up here and laity down there! Less should be demanded of clergy for example no more compulsory,
enforced celibacy and more should be expected of laity they too have vocations and gifts of the Spirit and
ministries that are part of the church. It is not just the priest who ministers, we are all baptised, we all share in
the priesthood of all believers, we all have a ministry that we exercise for Gods glory and the service of Gods
kingdom.

Lastly, we owe to the Reformers that we Anglicans are obliged to think for ourselves. The Pope does not make
decisions for us in matters of faith or ethics; the word of God alone, sola scriptura, does not make decisions
for us, as some Protestant churches claim. We are obliged to exercise the judgement of our own God-given
conscience, using the traditions of the Church and our reason to interpret Gods word. This is also why it is
sometimes said that when 2 or 3 Anglicans are gathered together there are 4 or 5 opinions. The intent is noble,
even if the outcome can from time to time be frustrating!

Of course, this is only half the story about our church. We are a church that is both Catholic and Reformed,
both Catholic and Protestant. There are things like the centrality of the sacraments, the threefold order of
bishop, priest and deacon, the commitment to the doctrine of the creeds of the early church, and so on, which
mark us out as catholic. And some of the upheavals in this diocese over the last fifty years or more are due to
the fact that different people give different weight to these catholic and protestant aspects of our church. We
shall speak of these catholic elements another time. For they are as important as these Protestant ones. But
today is a day to remember with thanks Martin Luther and all the other Reformers, not least English Reformers
like Thomas Cranmer, Nicholas Ridley and Hugh Latimer and others, whose theology and whose sacrifice for
Christs sake have given us such important foundations for our church today, and an awareness that God is
always at work, reforming the church through the Holy Spirit. Thanks be to God.

(Chronicle version)
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