May 22, 2017
Devotions: Personalities of the Reformation: John Knox

John Knox was born around 1514, at Haddington, a small town south of Edinburgh. Around 1529, at age 15 he entered the University of St. Andrews and went on to study theology. He was ordained in 1536, but became a notary, then a tutor to the sons of local lairds (lower ranking Scottish nobility). Around Scotland, there were many people angry with the Catholic church. The church owned more than half of the real estate. The church gathered an annual income of nearly 18 times that of the king. Many Bishops and priests in the church were political appointments. Many of the priests lived lives of consorting with concubines and siring illegitimate children. While these events were happening in and around Scotland, there were others bringing Lutheran literature into the country. The church called it “heresy” and tried to suppress it. Sometime around 1540, John Knox was influenced by converted reformers, and joined in the Protestant movement. Through a series of events, Knox would be arrested and imprisoned. He would flee to England, and then to France, and finally to Geneva where he would meet John Calvin. Calvin would call Knox a “brother…for the faith”– and Knox was equally impressed with Calvin.

Back in Scotland, Protestant congregations were forming with great vigor. From this movement a group calling themselves the “Lord’s of the Congregation” were vowing to make Protestantism the religion of the land. They compelled Knox to return to Scotland, which he did for a short time, but was soon forced to return to Geneva. He soon began to write some of his most controversial publications such as Admonition to England, and Appellations to the nobility and Commonality of Scotland. In the later he extended to the people the right and duty to rebel against unjust rulers. Knox returned to Scotland in 1559, and he again deployed his formidable preaching skills to increase Protestant militancy. Within days of his arrival, he preached a violent sermon at Perth against Catholic “idolatry,” causing a riot. Altars were demolished, images smashed, and religious houses destroyed. Knox and five of his colleagues would go on to write a Confession of Faith, the First Book of Discipline, and The Book of Common Order—all of which cast the Protestant faith of Scotland in a distinctly Calvinist and Presbyterian mode.

Knox would finish out his years as a preacher in an Edinburgh church, helping to shape Protestantism in Scotland. During this time, he wrote his History of the Reformation of Religion in Scotland. Though he remains a paradox to many, Knox was clearly a man of great courage: one man standing before Knox’s open grave said, “Here lies a man who neither flattered nor feared any flesh.” Knox’s legacy is large: his spiritual progeny includes some 750,000 Presbyterians in Scotland, 3 million in the United States, and many millions more worldwide.
(adapted from JOHN KNOX: Presbyterian with a Sword, from christianitytoday.com website)

Here is how one writer put the influence of John Knox in history:

– Knox was a man who ‘hit-it-in the face’. Knox once stated, “Railing and sedition they are never able to prove in me, till that first they compel Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel, St. Paul, and others to recant; of whom “I have learned plainly and boldly to call wickedness by its own name, a fig a fig, and a spade a spade.”
– On another occasion Knox stated, “What I have been in my country, albeit this unthankful age will now know, yet the ages to come will be compless to bear witness to the truth. And thus I cease, requiring of all men who have anything to object against me that they will do it as plainly as that I make myself and all my doings manifest to the world; for to me it seems a thing most unreasonable that, in this my decrepit age, I should be compelled to fight against shadows and howlats that dare not abide the light.”

We may not know a lot about the Presbyterian church, and understand their ideas such as predestination – or Calvin’s ideas of Christ’s presence (or lack of) in the Lord’s Supper – but we can learn a lot from the people who made it their life’s work to reform the Church of Jesus Christ.

Pastor Dave

Please bring in diapers and paper towels to donate to Trinity’s Table.

May 21, 2017
Easter 6A

“If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever. This is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, because he abides with you, and he will be in you. ”I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you. In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me; because I live, you also will live. On that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you. They who have my commandments and keep them are those who love me; and those who love me will be loved by my Father, and I will love them and reveal myself to them.” John 14:15-21

As a culture, we are not terribly good about talking about loss. I don’t know if it’s because it challenges the eternally optimistic stance we are encouraged to take, counters our celebration of youth and opportunity, or reminds us of our own mortality. But for whatever reason, we seem as a culture to lack the resources and emotional wherewithal to acknowledge the losses we, and those around us, suffer. Not sure what to say when confronted by a friend who has recently suffered the loss of a loved one or gone through a divorce, we turn away, leaving the person feeling all the more isolated.

Given that we are in the Easter season, it may help to remind our hearers that in John’s story it is Thursday, the evening before the crucifixion. After sharing a meal with his disciples and offering them an example of selfless love and service, Jesus is now preparing them for his departure. He is about to leave them and they are distressed. This is what the threat of loss does — it shakes up our sense of safety and security. In response, he has already told them — in last week’s reading — not to worry, that he was going away to prepare a place for them. But they are still upset, for the fear of loss is not so easily defeated. And so he tells them that he will not leave them orphaned, abandoned, or alone. Instead, he will send to them an Advocate, the Holy Spirit.

Two things…as we think about how this sense of the Spirit’s work… First, Jesus describes the Spirit as “another advocate” — Jesus was the first! Jesus, that is, came along side us in the Incarnation that we might come to know and see the otherwise invisible God. (John begins his Gospel just here in 1:1-18.) Second, when we come along side each other to comfort and encourage and when we act like Jesus, we are living into the Holy Spirit’s invitation and very being.” (David Lose, working preacher website, Communities of the Spirit, May 20, 2014)

“If all of you keep on loving me, you all will guard, watch over, preserve and protect my commandments. And, the Father will give you another advocate…the Paraclete…the Spirit of Truth. The One who holds onto, keeps, possesses my commandments and is guarding, watching over and preserving them is the one loving me.” This is how we would literally translate these words of scripture if we followed the Greek language as they imply. It begins with loving Jesus, not just once in a while, but every day, day after day, through good and bad times, in all aspects of our lives. And part of loving Jesus is guarding and protecting the commandments and the words of scripture. It is something we are compelled to do out of love, not out of blind obedience. And in doing this, the Holy Spirit will fill our lives, and fill the churches where we guard, protect and preserve the commandments. And once we are people empowered by the Holy Spirit, then the works we will do in the name of Jesus and his words, will be great works.

Pastor Dave