Reformation Sunday (observed)

Ulrich Zwingli—Pastor and Reformer

Last week was the birthday of a very important person. My son turned 11 years old and of course he is a very important person, but I am referring to someone else. Martin Luther was born on November 10 and if he were alive today, he would be 522 years old. Luther is known as the father of the Protestant Reformation. He posted his 95 Theses on October 31, 1517, which is why the last Sunday in October is called Reformation Sunday. I had planned to preach this message I am giving today on October 30 in order to mark Reformation Sunday, but I wanted to finish the section in Luke 10 first. Martin Luther is arguably the best known of the reformers, but this morning I want to focus on a lesser known reformer—Ulrich Zwingli, the founder of the Swiss reformation.

To understand this period of reformation, we need to first understand the times. Zwingli was born in 1484, seven weeks after Martin Luther was born and eight years before Christopher Columbus landed in the Bahamas, accidentally discovering the Americas. During that time, the Roman Catholic Church held sway over all of western Europe. It was a powerful institution with unbelievable levels of corruption and immorality from the highest levels of the papacy to the lowliest priest. The vast majority of priests routinely broke their vows of celibacy with lovers and prostitutes. During Zwingli’s childhood, the church tried 13,000 people under the Spanish Inquisition and executed about 1000 of them. Luther is most famous for preaching against the sale of indulgences, by which anyone with enough money could buy their relative out of purgatory. Christ was re-crucified again in the daily mass. No one possessed a Bible except the highly educated priests who could read Latin. Salvation was by works, people worshipped religious relics and the Mother Mary. There was no other church but the Roman Catholic Church. It was a theological and immoral mess and was in dire need of reformation.

Zwingli was born of common stock, but his parents were able to afford to send him to the finest universities in Switzerland. In 1506, three years after Leonardo Da Vince painted the Mona Lisa, Zwingli was ordained as a priest. Martin Luther rediscovered the Bible when he began to teach it in the university. A similar thing happened to Zwingli. There is no real explanation for this other than to say that God placed a thirst for his word within Zwingli. He got a copy of a Greek translation of the N.T. and copied it line by line until he had his own hand-written copy. He used to carry this copy with him at all times and memorize it Even though it is right to commemorate a day like Reformation Sunday, we should never idolize any person because men like Luther and Zwingli had great faults. For example, after ten years of celibate living Zwingli  had an affair with a barber’s daughter.

It is easy to mark the start of the reformation for Luther. When he nailed his 95 theses on the door of the Wittenberg church, there was no turning back. Zwingli did not have such a dramatic beginning. He did not shake his fist at the Roman church. He did not stir up a lot of trouble for himself, but he did do something very radical. In the year 1519, two years after Luther’s start, Zwingli began to preach through the book of Matthew. Now to you and I, that is completely natural, but in that time it there was nothing natural about it. Priests rarely even read the Bible, let alone consider preaching or teaching from it. But Zwingli started at Matthew chapter one, verse one and began preaching through the N.T. Do you see what he did? He basically invented what we call expository preaching!  The preaching of the word was to become the central focus of the weekly worship for Zwingli. Up until that point the mass and the eucharist had been the central part of worship. Zwingli had rediscovered the Bible and he wanted everyone to join with him.

A few months later, another event changed his life. The Black Death broke out in Zurich and Zwingli tirelessly ministered to the sick and dying. He also caught the disease and nearly died. He thought he was going to die and wrote a hymn called the Plague Hymn. As I read it, you will be able to hear the section he wrote when he was convinced he was dying, and then the part after he was healed.

Plague Hymn

Help me, O Lord,
My strength and rock;
Lo, at the door
I hear death’s knock.
Uplift shine arm,
Once pierced for me,
That conquered death.
And set me free.
Yet, if thy voice,
In life’s midday.
Recalls my soul,
Then I obey.
In faith and hope
Earth I resign.
Secure of heaven.
For I am Thine.
My pains increase;
Haste to console;
For fear and woe
Seize body and soul.
Death is at hand.
My senses fail.
My tongue is dumb;
Now, Christ, prevail.
Lo! Satan strains
To snatch his prey;
I feel his grasp;
Must I give way?
He harms me not,
I fear no loss,
For here I lie
Beneath thy cross.
My God! My Lord!
Healed by the hand.
Upon the earth
Once more I stand.
Let sin no more
Rule over me;
My mouth shall sing
Alone to thee.
Though now delayed,
My hour will come.
Involved, perchance.
In deeper gloom.
But, let it come;
With joy I’ll rise,
And bear my yoke
Straight to the skies

If you recall, Luther waited many years before he got married, but Zwingli could not wait. He secretly married his wife, Anna Reinhart, in 1522. The next year he renounced his priestly vows and the year after that he and his wife officially declared their marriage to the public.

For Zwingli, the gospel also had many social applications. At the time, a major source of the Swiss economy came from mercenaries who hired themselves out to fight for other countries, especially France. Zwingli was appalled at this practice and thought it was a waste of human life and a source of pride and greed for money. Here is a section of a sermon he preached against the mercenary system. “The situation is very serious, we are already contaminated. Religion is in danger of ceasing among us. We despise God as if he were an old sleepy dog … Yet it was only by his power that our fathers overcame their enemies because they went to war for their liberties, and not for money … Now, puffed with pride, we pretend that nobody can resist us, as if we were strong as iron and our foes slack as pumpkins.” How do you think the people responded to his care for these soldiers? They fired him as their pastor! Eventually he ended up in the city of Zurich and was able to convince the city council to abolish mercenaries from their town.

Though Luther worked from Germany and Zwingli from Switzerland, it seems obvious that the Holy Spirit was working in several places at the same time to bring the badly needed reformation. There are several things which all the reformers had in common. First, they all believed in sola scriptura—that the Bible alone is the final source of revelation from God. In affirming this they were also rejecting any other source of authority, including the pope and church councils. Second, they all affirmed that salvation only came by faith in Christ. This was asserted unambiguously in the third of Zwingli’s 67 theses: Hence Christ is the only way to salvation for all who ever were, are and shall be.

These two foundational principles are the very core of what it means to be evangelical. What a shame that these reformers risked their lives for their belief in Scripture alone and faith in Christ alone, only to have about one-half of all protestant churches reject these very foundations three hundred years later. You know full well that you cannot walk into any church and take this for granted. Most of the world thinks we are foolish and arrogant when we claim that the Bible is the only source of truth. Please remember to remind such people that it is not you who are claiming the Bible is the only source of salvation truth, but the Bible makes this claim for itself.

The Holy Spirit was obviously working in the lives of these men and those around them and even though they were fearlessly tearing themselves from the tyranny of the Roman church, these great thinkers and brave men did not get along very well. Luther and Zwingli routinely called each other names. Luther was especially unkind and thought that Zwingli was no better than a madman. What makes matters worse is the fact that their disagreements were about things which we would label as minor doctrines today. Luther and Zwingli were brought together in 1529 in an attempt to unite the protestant reformation. They agreed completely on 14 foundational articles of faith and only disagreed in one area—the Lord’s Supper. He rejected the catholic mass which taught that the bread and the wine actually became the body and blood of Jesus, but influenced by his priestly traditions, Luther believed that Jesus was actually present in the elements of communion. Zwingli held to the memorial view and believed that the elements were symbols of the body and blood of Jesus. He believed, as we do, that Jesus was speaking in metaphorical terms when he said, “This is my body”. Zwingli even rejected the silver goblet and replaced it with a wooden one. Instead of having the pastor serve each person separately, Zwingli had his congregation pass the bread and cup to one another.

For all of his strengths, the worst of Zwingli’s actions were against the Anabaptists. Conrad Grebel and Felix Manz were two of his students and protégées. They felt as strongly as anyone that the church desperately needed to be reformed, but they began to have disagreements with Zwingli. You see, Zwingli did not think that Luther was going far enough in his reforms. He wrote to Luther saying,  “You would have cleansed the Augean stable, if you had had the images removed, if you had not taught that the body of Christ was supposed to be eaten in the bread.” In other words, Zwigli thought Luther still looked to much like a roman catholic. But Zwingli’s students, Grebel and Manz, did not think that Zwingli was going far or fast enough in his reforms. As they studied Scripture, they came to believe that infant baptism was not Biblical and that believer’s baptism was the only correct doctrine. They began the Anabaptist movement—which means to ‘baptize again’. Grebel, Manz and several others baptized one another in defiance of church and city laws. Since these actions threatened the authority of the church and the state, they were seen as treasonous and Anabaptists were labeled heretics. Zwingli helped direct the proceedings that sentenced Felix Manz to death. Manz was drowned in the Limmat River on January 5, 1527.

One of the strangest parts of Zwingli’s life came at the end of his life. The Roman Catholic church did not like the reformation which started the protestant church, so they began a counter-reformation to defend the catholic church. Unfortunately their disagreements resulted in taking up of arms. In October of 1531, the protestant army of Zurich was attacked and soundly defeated by a catholic army twice their size. Zwingli was killed that day in the Battle of Kappel. The statue of Zwingli in Zurich pictures him holding a Bible in one hand and a sword in the other. His sword and helmet,in which you can see the fatal blow, are also on display in Zurich.

This period of reformation was so necessary, but it was obviously led by sinful men who made great mistakes. Despite their sins, we are the benefactors of all their efforts and we can learn much from Zwingli’s life.

1. What the reformers gave their lives for, we take for granted. No matter who you are talking about, the reformation was fundamentally about rediscovering the Bible and its core doctrines of Christ and salvation. They lost prestige, possessions and in some cases, their lives over the priority of the Bible. We all have 5-10 Bibles in our home and how many of them gather dust? These men could not conceive of going days and weeks without reading and studying the word of God and neither should we.

2. Don’t ever fall for the lie that there are many paths to God. The gospel of salvation through faith in Christ was largely lost for a thousand years until the reformation. Look at #4 of Zwingli’s theses: He who seeks or shows another way errs, and, indeed, he is a murderer of souls and a thief. Zwingli was looking 500 years into the future and was speaking to our generation. Don’t water down the gospel. Don’t fall for the lie that there are many paths to God. Zwingli said such a belief makes you into a murderer of their very soul.

3. Never underestimate what one obedient person can do. Zwingli nor any of the reformers set out to be famous. Each of them was merely a single person walking in obedience to the Lord. Most of our lives are quite ordinary. We may not make it into any history books, but that doesn’t matter, does it. The only thing that matters is your faithful obedience to the Lord. I don’t care if I am remembered in this life, I only desire to hear my Lord say, “Well done, good and faithful servant. Enter into your rest.”

4. Never underestimate the ability of power to corrupt. The three great reformers, Luther, Zwingli and Calvin, all have blood on their hands for trying to wield too much power. Zwingli thought that the Anabaptists would do much more harm than good, so he used the power of the civil authorities to execute his fellow believers. I know this was a radically different time and place and I cannot tell you that I would have done it any differently, but in this age we must never use violence to spread the gospel. We should be willing to die for the gospel, but never kill for it.

5. Choose your battles wisely. The Anabaptists were courageous men and women, but I would never choose to die over the doctrine of baptism. The Anabaptists and the other reformers agreed on the core doctrine of salvation by faith in Christ. I have shown you this diagram before. I call it the concentric circles of certainty. In the middle circle are your core beliefs—those that you truly are willing to die for. Baptism, though important, should not be in the middle circle. Our statement of faith has twelve points. I divide it right down the middle. The first six would go in the middle circle and the last six should be in the second circle. This is one of the strengths of the EFCA—we major on the majors and not on the minor doctrines.

6. The church must be in a constant state of reform. As I said before, the gospel was largely lost for 1000 years and was rediscovered in the 16^th century. The gospel could be lost again in a single generation. If we are not diligent, the tendency is to slip into disbelief. The world wil increasingly try to get us to deny the exclusivity of the gospel of Christ. But if we have a mindset of personal renewal and church-wide reform, we will stay strong and true.

If Zwingli showed up this morning, what we he think? He would recognize th preaching of the word. He would be glad to see the Lord’s Supper practiced regularly. He did not like instrumental music, so he might not like that part. But I think he would see a young community of believers who are attempting to stand on the word of God while trying to love one another and their neighbor. May we honor the memory of people like Zwingli because they sought to honor our Lord.

Rich Maurer

November 13, 2005