Sunday, July 28, 2019

The Gospel of John Movie (2003)


This dramatization of The Gospel According to St. John is a work of art, beautifully staged and acted, the words coming directly from Sacred Scripture, the American Bible Society’s Good News Bible, nothing omitted and nothing added. A viewer can read along with the movie. Simply summarized, it is a pure proclamation of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, God incarnate. It begins with creation, placing Jesus, the Word, with God and actually being God, at the creation, and ends with his post resurrection, pre ascension, appearances to the disciples. Scottish actor Henry Cusick and Canadian actor Daniel Kash are excellent as Jesus and Simon Peter. Christopher Plummer is the narrator.

I don’t remember when I first heard of the movie or watched it, but I found it very helpful a dozen or so years ago with Lutheran Confirmation classes of students around age 12. They were spellbound. And I found it to be a perfect aid and conversation stimulator in an Adult Bible Study of John’s Gospel.  The faintest praise I have read is an Associated Press quote on the DVD box: “Thought Provoking Entertainment.” I suggest it may also be, for some viewers, Life Changing Entertainment resulting from belated realization of who Jesus was and is and what He did and does, and what He asks of his followers.

This Wikipedia article gives details of backers, artists, cast, and musical score and points out the one controversial and sometimes questioned scene in the movie, the silent presence of Mary Magdalene at the Last Supper. I would guess she was not present there, but the Gospel of John certainly considers her a prominent member of the close followers of Jesus. And, in writings of the first century and earlier, it was not unusual to omit mention of women. The scene at the Wedding at Cana, Mary, Mother of Jesus, instructing the servers to “Do whatever he tells you,” the dialogue with the woman at the well and her resulting evangelization of her community, the interactions with Mary and Martha, and the important role of the women at his resurrection all speak to the importance and prominence of the women followers of Jesus.

Check out the movie. If you get through Jesus’s dialogue with the Samaritan Woman at the Well in John Chapter 4, I predict you will be hooked and will end up watching the movie more than once. And of course, it is no longer necessary to buy the DVD (photo above) since the movie is free on Amazon Prime (Average Rating of 4.5) and on YouTube as well.

Sunday, June 9, 2019

Pentecost 2019 - Eight Years Catholic


Introduction

I was received into the Catholic Church at Pentecost 2011 and, in 2016 wrote a blog post titled Pentecost 2016 – Five Years Catholic. Three years later, I wrote this one without first reading the earlier one. There are a couple of common themes and some new current thoughts, but I just enjoyed going back and reading the earlier one and think it was better. I believe there is a lot of truth in the (approximate) words of Flannery O’Conner: “I don’t know what I think until I read what I wrote.” But, here goes with the current thinking.

Becoming Catholic

It is common among Catholic Christians, and Christian Catholics, to share how and when and why we became Catholic. Some are so-called “cradle Catholics,” born to Catholic parents, baptized and confirmed in a Catholic church, perhaps educated in Catholic schools and married in a Catholic ceremony and sometimes with little knowledge about or interest in other Christian faiths. 

Some are convicted, converted, and reborn former atheists or agnostics drawn into the Church by the Holy Spirit. 

And many are "converts," former Baptist, Lutheran, Presbyterian, Methodist, Episcopalian, Pentecostal, or whatever Christians who became convinced that the Catholic Church, with all its warts and wounds and problematic history, really is the Church that Jesus established and left people in charge of when he returned to the Father and is the Church with which they want to be in full communion. They too  usually credit the Holy Spirit with motivating their move.

The Question of Authority

Many in that latter group had come to believe that the Catholic Church has divinely assigned authority, under Holy Spirit guidance, over theological issues and argue that the Church is not a democracy subject to the whims of its “members,” many of whom may be still more conformed to the world than transformed by the Holy Spirit. (And, yes, some Catholic leaders with that authority have been imperfectly transformed also, but they still bear the responsibility and are accountable for their actions.) 

I have generally put myself in that “looking for authority” group, having been baptized Baptist and having served and worshiped in Baptist, Presbyterian and Lutheran churches, experiencing some discomfort with so-called Baptist Distinctives, Presbyterian Predestination, and Lutheran open discussion and votes on current theological issues such as  requirements for ordination and holy matrimony. 

In my case, that search for authority was not based on belief that the Catholic Church majesterium is and always has been right all the time or to relieve me of responsibility for having a well-informed and well-formed conscience, but to acknowledge the authority and to say to those Catholic leader/servants, “It is your responsibility to open yourselves to The Holy Spirit and to understand, explain, and defend true theology. Get to work!”

Building Christian Unity

There is a second key issue I sometimes forget that increased my interest in the Catholic Church, and that is the fragmentation of and competitive squabbling among Christians and the resulting damage to the witness of the Church. I was reminded of it by the Daily Mass readings for June 6, 2019. 

First was from Acts 23:6-11. The “Jews,” the Chief Priests and the whole Sanhedrin, Pharisees and Sadducees, had been assembled to confront Paul, recent Christian convert and troublemaker, and hopefully hasten his martyrdom. But Paul was a very smart guy, a Jewish Roman citizen, well-educated and familiar with the Hebrew scriptures and all the political and theological current issues.

Paul went right to the dividing issue, resurrection, which the Pharisees believed in and the Sadducees rejected: "My brothers, I am a Pharisee, the son of Pharisees; I am on trial for hope in the resurrection of the dead." With that comment, the unity of the anti-Pauls was destroyed: "When he said this, a dispute broke out between the Pharisees and Sadducees, and the group became divided. “Martyrdom delayed! 

And then, in the Gospel reading, there was this from Jesus’s “High Priestly Prayer,” part of his John 17 farewell to his disciples: Lifting up his eyes to heaven, Jesus prayed saying: "I pray not only for these, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, so that they may all be one, as you, Father, are in me and I in you, that they also may be in us, that the world may believe that you sent me."

Note the last phrase, the evangelistic purpose of Christian unity: “…that the world may believe that you sent me.

I first got interested in the idea of Christian unity while living in Japan (1992-1995), enjoying worship and service at St. Paul’s International Lutheran Church, and seeing the confusion, in a nation that was 2% Christian, caused by the multiplicity and diversity of mostly western groups claiming the name of Christ. I specifically remember a co-worker telling me that, yes, his relative is a Christian, a Mormon, and another co-worker, asking me what is going on when he sees a Christian church in the USA on TV and someone is putting his hand on another’s forehead and the latter then falls to the floor unconscious. Well, how does one explain away those difficulties people face in believing that the Father sent the Son?

So, a second important reason for my interest in Catholicism, beyond the structure and authority, was that I wanted to cast a vote in favor of Christian unity by submitting to and being received by the Church that Jesus established and left someone in charge of, promising the Holy Spirit as guide.

Moving in the Right Direction

I have no expectation that all Christians are going to join together in the Catholic Church anytime soon, but I do have a reasonable expectation that all Christians, Catholics included, may eventually obey the two Greatest Commandments and replace criticism and competition with love for each other. After all, the key theologies expressed in the Nicene Creed and the Lord’s Prayer, both recited at every Catholic Mass, must be of primary importance and must provide some common ground that can keep most of us from arguing more complicated issues which may not be resolved for hundreds of years. 

Resolving Complicated Issues

The primary complicated issue is differences in understanding of The Lord’s Supper, Holy Communion, Eucharist, that, as explained in John Chapter 6:52-71, has been a dividing issue since the very beginning. It may keep us from full communion but need not prevent cooperation in love and service. A key point for meaningful dialogue in the direction of Christian unity in Truth is that concerned Christians in all faith traditions should be able to respectfully explain not only why they believe as they do but also why those in other faith traditions believe as they do. None of the beliefs are without some, sometimes misunderstood or out-of-context, Biblical foundation.

The "Full Gospel" Church

I have some hope that more and more Christians will recognize that my occasional somewhat tongue-in-cheek description of the Catholic Church as the “full-gospel church” has some merit and will investigate. After all, we have The Triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, the promises of salvation and resurrection, the Greatest Commandments and Great Commission, The Great Cloud of Witnesses, the saints, daily and frequent Sunday Masses, Church Fathers, Martyrs, seven Sacraments, The Real Presence, Mary the Mother of God whom “all nations will call blessed,” Women’s Sodality, Men’s Knights of Columbus. St. Vincent de Paul Society, abbeys and convents, monks and nuns, pilgrimages, and enough optional personal practices of piety to suit any taste. 

Since Vatican II, we even celebrate Mass in the language of the people as recommended 500 years ago by Father Martin Luther. And, we offer bingo to seniors for fellowship and entertainment, though I’m not sure where that came from. Finally, we have the 700+ page Catechism of the Catholic Church which explains the faith in four sections (Creeds, Sacraments, Christian Living, and Christian Prayer), topics that should sound quite reasonable to any Christian and to any agnostic or atheist interested in Christianity. At least the last two should sound reasonable, and those are good starting points. 

Common Ground

Oh, and back to that first, perhaps confusing sentence containing the terms “Christian Catholics” and “Catholic Christians.” I intend the first to imply those cradle Catholics who are experiencing continuing conversion, spiritual growth, and perseverance and the second to imply Christians for whom reception into the Catholic Church has been one major event in their continuing conversion, spiritual growth, and perseverance. We all have something in common, wherever we are right now, the importance of sharing that continuing conversion, spiritual growth, and perseverance. 

Friday, March 8, 2019

The Penitential Psalms & Lent


Morning Prayer seems most beneficial when it results in some searching beyond the provided texts and “learning” of some new things about Sacred Scripture, theology, or Church history. The quotes around that word in the previous sentence suggest that I don’t usually remember much from such searches and depend on some personally written summary I can refer to later. There is joy in organizing and summarizing information in a way that will be useful. So, here is one such simple summary.

Today (3/8/2019), one of the Morning Prayer readings is Psalm 51. I was inspired (or inclined) to look it up in the Catholic Study Bible, 2nd Edition (NABRE) and found this commentary: “A lament, the most famous of the seven penitential Psalms…” The first word of Psalm 51 in Latin is Miserere (have mercy).

For the record, here are the seven Penitential Psalms including a key phrase from each:
  • Psalm 6: Have pity on me Lord, for I am weak (vs. 3)
  • Psalm 32: Then I declared my sin to you; my guilt I did not hide (vs. 5)
  • Psalm 38: I acknowledge my guilt and grieve over my sin (vs 19)
  • Psalm 51: Have mercy on me God, in accord with your merciful love (vs. 3)
  • Psalm 102: Lord, hear my prayer; let my cry come to you (vs. 1)
  • Psalm 130: But with you (Lord) is forgiveness and so you are revered (vs. 4)
  • Psalm 143: Show me the path I should walk, for I entrust my life to you (vs. 8b)

All seven have traditionally been identified as Psalms of King David, famous for his adultery, murder, disobedience, and love of and by God.  No wonder these Psalms are associated with and used during Lent!

I was aware of the Penitential Psalms but not of the first documentation of Christian recognition of them nor of recognizer Cassiodorus, sixth century monastery founder and author of Exposition of the Psalms. An interesting quote is in this link about the exposition: “Cassiodorus, like many patristic commentators, saw the psalms as the necessary starting point for Scriptural study: one should learn the psalms first, he suggests, and only then move on to the New Testament, for they serve as preparation for it.” Anybody out there who has “learned the Psalms?”

And according to this link, the seven were part of Jewish liturgy as early as the third century and have sometimes been associated with the Seven Deadly Sins.


And below is some penitential music, Miserere Mei.



Friday, January 25, 2019

THE Bible Story

Many of us raised in a Christian church know lots of Bible stories. We know about the sins of Adam and Eve, Abraham's willingness to sacrifice Isaac, the leadership of Moses and Joshua, Samuel's anointing of Saul and David, David's killing of Goliath, the wisdom of King Solomon, the birth and ministry of Jesus, the resurrection story, Paul's Damascus Road story, problems in the early church, etc.

But we may be unable to see the forest for the trees and not have a clear view from the 50,000 foot level of how all those stories comprise THE BIBLE STORY, the theology of the Christian faith, the narrative that begins with the creation stories of Genesis, continues with the choice of a people and promise and arrival of The Messiah, Jesus Christ, and ends with experiences of the early Church, the continuing "Body of Christ." All that story can rightly be called The Gospel, the good news, focused on Jesus Christ, God in flesh, Savior of the world.

The reason for always keeping THE BIBLE STORY in mind when we read Sacred Scripture is that it keeps us from going off on tangents, from grabbing verses or stories out of that overall context and drawing misleading lessons from them. No matter how deeply we dig, we must always remember the big picture, the context, and make sure our conclusions and positions make sense in that overall context of theological truth.

The chart below is an attempt at visual presentation of THE BIBLE STORY, from the pre-creation chaos, through the revelation of God, to the one holy, catholic, and apostolic church, the continuing Body of Christ, into which we are invited today. Here is not just one verse out of context but thirty one, carefully chosen to illustrate the major parts of that important story.




Since the chart is not readable in this post, it is broken into three sections below for improved legibility. There are a title block, a left side, BC so to speak, and a right side, AD so to speak. To download and print the entire document in readable size and resolution, use this link.

Title Block


I'll begin with two fundamental teachings of the Catholic Church about the Bible, and about the relationship between the Old and New Testaments.


Left Side (BC)


The left side of the chart covers creation to the prophetic promises of the Messiah, the Anointed One, the King, Jesus Christ.

The theological truths taught in the ancient creation stories are that God created all, His creation was good, and that humankind messed it up. Then God chose a people out of the resulting chaos and revealed himself to them as not one of many gods (polytheism), not even the most important god of many (henotheism), but the one and only God (monotheism). And then prophets Isaiah and Jeremiah began to announce the promise of a Messiah and a new way of living, of being washed clean, of the end of war. These sixteen verses are chosen to illustrate that revelation of God resulting in realization by the people.


Right Side (AD)

The right side of the chart covers the incarnation, God in flesh, the ideal King, fully God and fully human, coming and dwelling among us. He heals and teaches and gathers followers, disciples, some of whom become apostles. He teaches prayer, the greatest commandments, the Great Commission, and promises the Holy Spirit. He establishes and teaches the Sacraments. Then he returns to the Father and leaves his Apostles in charge. Under the promised guidance of the Holy Spirit, they build, lead, and guide the early Church, dealing with issues as they arise, under the promised Holy Spirit.

And that is THE BIBLE STORY, admittedly over-simplified, illustrated by just thirty one verses. Anytime we take deeper dives into Sacred Scripture, it is helpful to remember where we are in this miraculous story and make sure we consider that context in our search for understanding.



















Wednesday, November 21, 2018

Gospel According to St. John: Unique


I'm not very skilled at digging deeply into Sacred Scripture, finding new meaning and writing paragraphs about a verse or two. But I love looking at the Bible from a 50,000 foot view, so to speak, and detecting patterns, themes, characteristics, and differences. So, here are thoughts and observations about the Gospel According to St. John which St. Augustine apparently Tweeted was "shallow enough for a baby to wade and deep enough for an elephant to swim."


The chart below is an illustration of a simple difference among the Gospels, what they say about the ancestry of Jesus.

Mark is the earliest and shortest and has a wonderful beginning: "The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ." So, if we had any doubt about what the Gospel of Jesus is, Mark makes it clear. Mark doesn't, however, say anything about the birth or ancestry of Jesus. He just gets right to what happened.

Matthew, generally viewed as a Gospel targeted at a Jewish community, has a beautiful birth story with wise men and flight to Egypt and traces Jesus's ancestry back to the patriarch Abraham, who begat Isaac, who begat Jacob, who begat the heads of the 12 tribes of Israel.

And Luke, generally viewed as targeted to a community of Gentiles, relates the Annunciation, the Visitation, the Nativity, the Benedictus, and traces the ancestry all the way back to Adam, father of all.

The writer of John had more time to think about the theology of Jesus and a Trinitarian God and copied the first words of Genesis, placing Jesus "In the beginning," with God, and the same as God, at the creation.




Word counting is a great way to identify major themes in books of the Bible, and it is truly wonderful if one has software such as Bible Works which will do all the counting. Here are some important words in John, in each case having as many or more appearances in that Gospel than in the other three combined. A good way to explore use of these words is to use an online searchable Bible to find the uses of the words and meditate on them.

The "I I am" (which looks like 11 AM) deserves special consideration because the double emphasis, use of the pronoun "ego" which translates "I" even with the inflected verb (eimi) which translates alone as "I am" is understood by scholars and theologians as a reference to God identifying himself, at the burning bush, to Moses as "I AM." (Exodus 3:13-14) Every religious Jew hearing that phrase from Jesus as in, "I AM the way, the truth and the life," heard it as a claim to divinity. Believers bowed in awe and unbelievers charged blasphemy.

It is worthy of note also that the word usually translated as testify or bear witness is the Greek word from which we get the English martyr. For the early Christians, bearing witness as Stephen did often resulted in martyrdom.

A review of the use of "believe" can increase understanding of the fact that belief in john goes far beyond mental or intellectual belief to "believing in" or conversion or a change in direction of ones life. Here is an easy link to the list of 83 occurrences of "believe" in John.


John was written around sixty years or so after the resurrection, probably to a well-grounded Christian community that knew well the stories of the birth, baptism, and transfiguration, and the parables and celebrated the Eucharist routinely. Therefore those stories were not told again, though we do have John's remembrance of the baptism, the Last Supper with Foot Washing, and John 6 explaining the significance of the Eucharist.

We have already mentioned in the first diagram that only John begins the Gospel of Jesus at the creation. It is worthy of note that John includes no parables or exorcisms but is organized around Seven Signs usually followed by long discourses by Jesus about key principles of the faith. One thing we can be especially thankful for is that all four Gospels begin the resurrection story early in the morning or at dawn on the first day of the week, Sunday.


Below is an index of sorts of the content of John, chapter by chapter. The seven signs are in chapters 2, 4, 5, 6, 9, and 11. The three extended dialogues, Jesus with Nicodemus, Jesus with the Samaritan Woman at the well, and Jesus with the woman caught in adultery, in chapters 3, 4, and 5, are very interesting and simple while being theologically deep. Major events are in the third column. For a good story that could be expanded into a movie, read the Chapter 9 full "Crime Scene Investigation" aimed at identifying the culprit in the Sabbath healing of the man born blind. Jesus only appears at the beginning and at the end of the story. And, finally, the discourses which are all familiar to us from Gospel readings at Mass.


Jesus and his followers spent a lot of time walking an area of around 900 square miles. In the Gospel of John, that includes three trips between Galilee and Jerusalem. No wonder Jesus instructed them, in Luke's Gospel, to not carry anything with them. And no wonder that the writer of John declared that Jesus did many other signs not recorded in the Gospel.

The three trips "up to Jerusalem" are quite different from the single long journey in the other Gospels and are the basis for Church teaching that His ministry was three years. Note the two Bethany's, one across the Jordan where John baptized Jesus, and one a suburb of Jerusalem.



Here are 24 key verses from the Gospel according to St. John including presence of Jesus at the creation, the incarnation, teachings about Mary, use of "believe," and importance of the "I AM."

John – A Few Key Verses
1:1
 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
1:14  And the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us, and we saw his glory, the glory as of the Father's only Son, full of grace and truth.
1:29  The next day he saw Jesus coming toward him and said, "Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.
2:5  His mother said to the servers, "Do whatever he tells you."
2:11  Jesus did this as the beginning of his signs in Cana in Galilee and so revealed his glory, and his disciples began to believe in him.
2:19  Jesus answered and said to them, "Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up."
4:13-14  Jesus answered and said to her, "Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again;  14 but whoever drinks the water I shall give will never thirst; the water I shall give will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life."
5:24  Amen, amen, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes in the one who sent me has eternal life and will not come to condemnation, but has passed from death to life.
6:35  Jesus said to them, "I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me will never hunger, and whoever believes in me will never thirst.
6:56  Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him.
8:12  Jesus spoke to them again, saying, "I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life."
10:14  I am the good shepherd, and I know mine and mine know me,
12:44-45  Jesus cried out and said, "Whoever believes in me believes not only in me but also in the one who sent me,  45 and whoever sees me sees the one who sent me.
14:6  Jesus said to him, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.
15:1   "I am the true vine, and my Father is the vine grower.
17:20-22  "I pray not only for them, but also for those who will believe in me through their word,  21 so that they may all be one, as you, Father, are in me and I in you, that they also may be in us, that the world may believe that you sent me.  22 And I have given them the glory you gave me, so that they may be one, as we are one,
19:26-27  When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple there whom he loved, he said to his mother, "Woman, behold, your son."  27 Then he said to the disciple, "Behold, your mother." And from that hour the disciple took her into his home.
20:30-31  Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of (his) disciples that are not written in this book.  31 But these are written that you may (come to) believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through this belief you may have life in his name.

Read the Gospel According to St. John at one sitting. It won't take that long, unless you start reading all the footnotes and references.






Tuesday, March 27, 2018

Reading the Bible, Cover to Cover


In a recent morning prayer group discussion, the difficulty of cover-to-cover reading of the Bible was mentioned. The problem is that after the stimulating stories of Genesis and Exodus, it is easy to get bogged down in the legal details of Leviticus and lose interest. Even if an ambitious reader survives Leviticus, Deuteronomy looms ahead.

It reminded me of an exhibit I created a decade or so ago outlining where in the Old Testament to find stories of various events and including a suggested order of reading if one just wants to get the narrative without the digressions into legal issues or side stories. Please excuse my exclusion of the Deuterocanonical Books since this chart was created during my Lutheran years.

The chart features a little segment across the bottom just above the timeline suggesting an order of reading of books for one who just wants to get the story from creation through the patriarchs and favorite son Joseph, enslavement in Egypt, deliverance from slavery by Moses, wilderness wandering, entrance into Canaan led by Joshua, the period of judges including Deborah, Samson, and Samuel, the first three kings, Saul, David, and Solomon, division of the kingdom, civil war, defeat, exile, return, and rebuilding by Ezra and Nehemiah. The books that are not key to that narrative are above this segment on the chart. It’s a great story. Here is a clip of that suggested order of books. 

For Christians, it is important to remember to look for Jesus even in the Old Testament. To quote the Catechism of the Catholic Church, “All Sacred Scripture is but one book, and that one book is Christ, because all divine Scripture speaks of Christ, and all divine Scripture is fulfilled in Christ.”  And there is the famous quote attributed to St. Augustine: “The New Testament is in the Old Testament concealed; the Old Testament is in the New Testament revealed.” (My apologies to our Jewish friends who have an entirely different view of the Hebrew Scriptures which we have co-opted and renamed.)

Anyway, here is the chart. If it helps, use it. If not, ignore it. And, yes, I am sure it can stand some improvements and fine tuning. I think Leviticus is probably misplaced.



Sunday, October 29, 2017

Reformation Lamentation

I just finished reading A Column of Fire, the third of Ken Follett’s volumes of historical fiction set in the Middle Ages. This one portrays life in the 1500’s in the wake of Catholic Priest Father Martin Luther’s October 31, 1517, courageous attempt to inspire reform of his church.

Follett’s novel and all the current celebration of the 500th anniversary of Father Martin’s action inspired me to review the Reformation years as described in my Lutheran Seminary textbook, The Story of Christianity by Justo L. Gonzalez. Follett’s thousand or so pages are an elaboration of probably a dozen or so in the textbook, mostly focused on the people driving and caught up in the competition between Catholic “Bloody Mary” Tudor, Protestant Elizabeth I, and Catholic Mary “Queen of Scots” Stuart, potential successor put to death on orders of Elizabeth.

Elizabeth and Mary Tudor were half-sisters and Elizabeth and Mary Stuart were cousins so I suppose one could say it was just a murderous family squabble. A summary statement from Gonzalez: “The total number of those executed for religious reasons during Elizabeth’s reign was approximately the same as those who died under her half sister Mary Tudor though it should be remembered that Elizabeth’s reign was almost ten times as long as Mary’s.” The heroes of Follett’s story are those suffering the persecution and fighting for religious freedom.

The Gonzalez text relates the burning at the stake, in Calvin’s Geneva, with Calvin’s consent, of Michael Servetus, a Spanish physician condemned by both Protestants and Catholics for heresy. Servetus is credited with having argued “that the union of church and state after Constantine’s conversion was in truth a great apostasy.” I think Servetus was exactly right and that it was that union, entangling the Church, the Body of Christ, in political intrigue and granting it political and temporal power, even the power to identify, label, and condemn to death heretics, which nurtured corruption and finally triggered the destructive reformation of the sixteenth century. Well, at least Calvin is reported to have argued for beheading rather than burning Servetus because it involved less suffering.

So, I find little to celebrate about the Reformation but much to lament.

I lament that union of Church and State which actually was finalized under the Emperor Theodosius I who decreed that all citizens of the Roman Empire were to be Christian. That, of course, led to lots of mass baptisms without the benefit of catechesis, either before or after the event, never a good idea.

I lament the Church corruption that was nurtured and grew in that atmosphere of temporal power and motivated Martin Luther’s posting of a formal list of grievances. Lord Acton spoke the truth: “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men…”

I lament Henry VIII’s “Dissolution of the Monasteries” of England, Wales, and Ireland. It was worse than it sounds.

I lament the torture and killing, by Protestants and Catholics, of thousands of Protestants and Catholics, for heresy. At least during the early years of persecution of the Church, Christians were being killed and burned by pagan rulers and not by "professing" Christians. 

I lament the killing of those poor folks who were not "Protestants" because they followed neither Luther, nor Calvin, nor Zwingli, nor Knox, but who decided that baptism was valid only if by total immersion of professing believers, received such a baptism, and then suffered death by "the third baptism," drowned at the hands of "Protestant Christians."

I lament the Thirty Years War, fought over enforced geographic religious divisions based only on political and personal considerations, “Christians” fighting “Christians,” which resulted in the death of approximately 20% of the population of Germany.

I lament that even a hundred years after the Thirty Years War, thousands of Protestants were expelled from Austria and became refugees, some settling in Georgia and South Carolina and founding a bank. Google it if you want the details.

But that is all ancient history. Most of all I lament the current fragmentation of The Church, The Body of Christ, that is the residue of that violent reformation. I lament the existence of hundreds, some say thousands of "denominations" differing and sometimes arguing, criticizing, or condemning each other over theological fine points.

I lament the consumer market that has developed for faith seekers. Now I can seek, or even organize, a church that suits me rather than seeking to be part of a global Body of Christ with a common universal statement of belief and common resources and worship practices. It becomes all about me when I do that.

I lament that even within "denominations," we are fragmented into thousands of little churches sprinkled around the country, sometimes within blocks of each other, many struggling to pay their bills and their pastors, if they have pastors, many with little Christian Education or outreach, sometimes clinging to the past and serving as hospices for their declining memberships.

There is power in unity and in numbers and in working together in ministry in highly visible churches sitting on high ground and attracting curious multitudes just as Jesus attracted the multitudes. The early Middle Ages "powers that were" had the right idea, huge cathedrals as the centerpieces of the towns, though Father Martin certainly had valid complaints about the fund raising methods used at the time to finance some of those cathedrals.

I do, however, celebrate the religious freedom that gradually evolved over the past five hundred years and that most of the world enjoys today. Now most Christians can just focus on Jesus and not worry about political power and persecution even as we lament that part of the world is still trapped in a Middle Ages mindset, willing to imprison and kill people over theological issues. Unfortunately, the world still needs heroes fighting for religious freedom. 

I just look forward to the day that freedom brings us together rather than further separating and dividing us.
Isaiah 2:2-4  In days to come, The mountain of the LORD'S house shall be established as the highest mountain and raised above the hills. All nations shall stream toward it; many peoples shall come and say: "Come, let us climb the LORD'S mountain, to the house of the God of Jacob, That he may instruct us in his ways, and we may walk in his paths." For from Zion shall go forth instruction, and the word of the LORD from Jerusalem. He shall judge between the nations, and impose terms on many peoples. They shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks; One nation shall not raise the sword against another, nor shall they train for war again.
John 17:20-23  "I pray not only for them, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, so that they may all be one, as you, Father, are in me and I in you, that they also may be in us, that the world may believe that you sent me. And I have given them the glory you gave me, so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may be brought to perfection as one, that the world may know that you sent me, and that you loved them even as you loved me. 
Ephesians 2:19-22  So then you are no longer strangers and sojourners, but you are fellow citizens with the holy ones and members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the capstone. Through him the whole structure is held together and grows into a temple sacred in the Lord; in him you also are being built together into a dwelling place of God in the Spirit.