INTRO
In this series we will look into the distant past to see how a famous Religious movement unintentionally helped marginalize God and fragment our contemporary lives.
Over the course of 500 years, we will watch theology and money, power, science, and human creativity drift apart, then go to war with each other.
Not just because tracing this disintegration helps us understand contemporary conflicts.
Not just because of the strange beauty that can be found watching things fall apart.
And definitely not because we think some long-lost glory days held all things in perfect harmony.
We do this to give you permission to pay attention to the deep intuition telling you the things we seek to understand and use when we do things like science and politics, economics and art, really do want to belong together, to help you see that we cannot know and use these things well if we continue to ignore their desire for belonging.
We do this to fuel an imagination for wholeness. So for us, this peek into the distant past is not really about the past, but a future integrated in Christ.
STORY
With this whole series we are building off the work of a historian named Brad Gregory, so treat this opening as a kind of all-embracing footnote. If you want to explore any or all of this in greater depth, we will be linking his Book: The Unintended Reformation: How a Religious Revolution Secularized Society, in the show notes for every episode.
But before we get into the weeds with what all this means and why, let's start with some basic facts from the distant past: on October 31, 1517, a monk and college professor named Martin Luther sent to his Archbishop a copy of 95 Theses - which were 95 different points for debate Luther had drafted. It is also possible Luther nailed a copy of the Theses to a door at All Saints' Church in Wittgenberg, because This was the way University folk of that day would announced their intention to debate and allow others to begin formulating their arguments.
One of the key issues Luther wanted to hash out was the Church's sale of plenary indulgences - which were certificates church members could buy that, they were told, would reduce the amount of time they or their loved ones would have to spend in purgatory atoning for their sins. Luther also wanted to debate some of the finer points of connected issues like sin, guilt, punishment, faith, repentance, and forgiveness.
But this set of theses ended up being widely published and read, and started something much bigger than an academic debate. They ignited what history later named the Protestant Reformation, a religious and cultural movement that radically altered life in Europe.
To some within the Christian Tradition, the story of the reformation is told as a grave schismatic error. Other Christians tell this story as the moment Christianity rediscovered the pure gospel.
But, in 2021, for most in Western culture, the question isn't which of these stories rightly holds the facts together. The question is, "So what?"
For many, before they consider the Reformation with any seriousness, they need to be shown why they should care at all.
[MUSIC]
And this isn't just the case for those who are increasingly making sense of themselves and their world without religious faith. Many Christians wonder why they should care about the events of the Reformation. I mean, how much could things that happened 500 years ago possibly impact things that happen today?
Their world was so different from ours, why would anyone continue to care to understand the people of the distant past? What do monks and princes and indulgences have to say to those of us wrestling with technological isolation and overstimulation while trying to make sense of and navigate contemporary fights between Wall Street v. Main Street, Universities and Captial Hill?
To provide an answer as to why we should care, let's look at some other past events and see if they might end up being in some way similar to the events of the Reformation.
Say a person learns about another man who, when he was a boy, bravely, but just barely, rescued his younger brother from drowning after he fell through the ice on a frozen lake, then he married his high-school sweetheart but soon after suffered a terrible divorce, lost his business in the 2008 economic disaster, then re-married and started a mentoring program for underprivileged youth.
Now, all these facts, taken as they are with no further story to hold them, might lead that someone to feel something of the highs and lows the other man had experienced.
But then let's say the fuller story here is not just that someone is learning someone else's backstory, but they are hearing about these past events as they sit across from, and learn the backstory of, their own father.
Now, because they understand the events of the past shaped the man who shaped so much of the environment in which they learned to think and feel and act, those events generate more than empathy. They shed light on who they are, and why they are who they are.
Now, with that story holding those facts, that person doesn't just cognitively understand or emotionally connect with why the events of the past matter.
In a very real and important way, that story has shifted the very nature of the events -- to the point it's no longer even accurate to label them "past." They are present and alive and working in the way their mind processes complex information and how their gut responds to adversity, they way they show or fail to express romantic interest in another person, and on and on and on ... those historical events continue living in new event after new event of that person's life.
[MUSIC]
By Winter of 1521, Pope Leo the 10th had excommunicated Martin Luther. Which, the Pope believed put Luther outside of the Church. Because up to this moment that is exactly what excommunication had meant. But this time, another Church grew up around Luther, called the Protestant Church. Some princes and kings and heads of Europe's institutional life would join forces with the Protestants while others would reinforce their commitment to the Catholic Church. And once this became a full institutional rift, The Reformation spread beyond politics and religion and impacted all other key areas of institutional life -- like economics and education -- and by the end of the next few centuries, nothing would ever look the same again.
Over the next few weeks, we will make the case that the story that best holds together the facts of the Reformation is very close to something like one person sitting down and learning about the events that shaped the personalities of their own parents.
Even though Luther's Theses and their fallout was all long ago, in this series, beginning with the following conversation, we'll explore why the events of the Reformation are not dead and buried with history textbooks for caskets, but but are still living, in us, and continuing to shape the way our own world unfolds.
DISCUSSION [Auto-Generated Transcript]
Julius: Welcome back to all things as we pick up on a new series today, once again, this is Julius
Wilson: ...and Wil.
Julius: ...Wil.
Wilson: The gesture was great. I wish people could have seen when, when you handed it over to me to introduce myself,
Julius: That’s right. There was a very elaborate hand gesture on Zoom as if to present…
Wilson: it was a f-a flourish. I feel like flourish is the word that I, I feel like…
Julius: It certainly was. That's a great word. Well, we've, we've just…coming out of this story we've kind of addressed how though we tend to view history as something that's kind of like disconnected or something that happened in the past…we’re starting to make the case for how history has a lot to…not just show us about like ourselves in terms of like drawing parallels, but like directly we can trace threads as to like where we are and how like our view of the world and how we interact with one another.
How we interact with the world is shaped by these events in history. So we're talking today to start off this series, we're talking about the importance of the reformation as an event.
And so I want to pose the question of this was obviously like a massive historical event for the church, but in what ways does that story and that event matter Like, does it matter just for the realm of religion or does it, is it something that like ripples over into how the rest of like a philosophy or realms outside of just Christianity have been shaped?
Wilson: And in response to that question, what I'm going to do with the listener you listener I'm going to deposit a check that we will gradually cash over the course of this whole series. But what we hope to show as we cash that check is, is how the reformation doesn't just matter for religious folks or people who are still in the church, or for some reason are interested in philosophy or religion or religious history that this shapes.
So like every dimension of our lives. And I think of it like. When people first start to kind of connect with history meaning like th they make the kinds of connections that gives it some force or some power and like taps into like deeper levels. And like, we start to make the connection on just on one dimension.
And then it's, it's kind of like a connection with the chain of dominoes, you know, you start to see, oh, Well, when Martin Luther did this, then that started this and then that, and dah, dah, dah, dah. And that's where if we just see that dimension, that's, that's why we would think, okay, for those of you that still care about the church or still care about religion or whatever it may be, maybe we could see how those connections there, but how does that domino stream connect to me?
If you're outside or, you know, Not interested for whatever reason. And to answer that, I would say we've got to move beyond just dominoes because yes, there is that, you know, there are those direct cause and effects links, but, but larger, what we're talking about is that the history doesn't matter to us now, just because, you know, the Domino's.
And, and that chain of dominoes happened to fall into a domino that involves me. It's a whole paradigm shift and what we're trying to, the case that we will make as we move through this. That what happened at the reformation shifted began a process of shifting something much, much bigger. And so there to see what we're saying, I think you get it beyond the dominoes.
Think thank more like glasses that if, if you have a certain like prescription.
prescribe prescription or set of lenses over your eyes, it shapes how you see the whole world. And. The, the Christian faith at the time of the reformation was such an institutionalized worldview, meaning it shaped how they understood and thought about every single thing.
And the effects of it were not that we just took the glasses off or we threw them away. Is it shaped now the glasses that we're wearing? And so we'll, we'll trace, we'll trace on the domino level, the effects between. You know, not just, and we will start with religion. We'll start with God. I think as our next episode, how, how God was thought of previously and how we, and the many different ways we can think of God now and how that's affected and how radically different those things can be.
But we'll see. You know that chain of how, how that shaped our theology, but we're also going to look at how, what happened in the reformation shaped the way we do politics shaped the way we do schooling and education. And so shaped the way that now we think about what knowledge is and how you obtain it, and what, what would provide valid evidence for trusting something economics money, how we, how we even think of value and ascribe, things of value, and then trade things of value after a handful of episodes when we've changed.
Down this chain of dominoes. And now this chain of dominoes, you know, theology dominoes, and how economics dominoes, and, and now knowledge and education dominoes, and then politics and power Domino's that the cumulative cumulative effect of that will be to lead us to see, oh, it's not just Domino's, it's also like the glasses things that this, because.
You know, because of what happened back then, it has shown it is just so shaped the world that we're in and it affects the way that we see absolutely every area of life. Now, harking back to the story, like the way, you know, growing up in your parents' home. Shapes everything about how you, you think of like yourself, your world, what, what you do feel and what you think about those things that you feel all of that associated by the home that you grew up in.
You know, that when we're talking, what we're tracing here is like the culture of the Western household and how profoundly that, that whole household began to shift back then. And so radically influences who we are and how we see things. Right to then make the case. That understanding that helps us come to hopefully clear as clear as a way for a more truthful understanding of who we are. And so gives us some sort of insight and guidance into how we could become who we want to become.
Julius: Hmm. So diving into the specifics of the reformation as a grand event that affects everything, everything that comes after it Can, can we talk about I mean, reform movements don't come about unless like people perceive that there's something that needs changing, that there's something broken or corrupt that needs fixing what exactly were the leaders of this movement reacting against in how the church was doing things in the time?
Wilson: It's fairly common knowledge that one of the major things Luther was reacting against was indulgences and what he perceived as kind of a an earning of our salvation by doing things that impress God which in Christianese is works righteousness. But I think it's. Enlightening necessary. Good for us to really understand that, to go a little bit further back and kind of challenge the what, what history and philosophy of history has pretty thoroughly debunked recently. it's been called the great man theory of history, which is, you know, Hey, there's this one incredibly significant personality, say like a Napoleon or a Martin Luther and this personality by, by the force of just strictly that their, their personality, they change the course of this whole Western culture.
Everything like that. Now, Luther is, is an incredibly significant figure, but Luther's critiques and what Luther didn't said. I mean, it's, he was a match. We could say that for sure. But. Even even a lit match, doesn't create the kind of explosion that the reformation caused if there weren't, if there wasn't powder strewn about already, you know?
And so to challenge the kind of like. Great man, individually, this, this powerful individual personality changed everything theory. It helps us to see that there was a general dissatisfaction that had been brewing for a good long. And when I say good long while, I mean, centuries, and that general dissatisfaction is kind of like the.
There was strewn about, there was, there was in the air so that when Luther as this kind of like fiery personality, when that match is struck, that's why it doesn't just, you know, and then burn out. But there's a massive boom. So going back a couple of centuries in general, we could just say as, for a while, the church had just got pulled into playing the game of power, the way the world plays the game of power.
A few concrete instances of this would be starting around this period in the centuries before the reformation. Generally the culture is starting to think about power and states and politics in new different ways. And it's the beginning of what we now like live in what we understand as a nation state.
And, and those sorts of political ideas are just starting to germinate and blossom. And there were some other local princes rulers. Royal families that notice there's some things that are shifting here and being opportunistic people. If we, if we play this right and really go forcefully, we could seriously extend our power and our influence.
And so they're taking these sorts of ideological political shifts and, and trying to extend their power, their influence. And it became a threat to not just the established powers, but I mean, think about the people on the ground. It it's by. Invasion by, by taking over by you know, just forcing and violence.
And so in general, everybody knew something needed to be done. And just like, today's still the Pope, even though the Pope was, you know, the head of the, you know, the the head of Christendom, the Pope in theory had no. Temporal power or what we might think we might use the word secular had notes, secular power unless it had moral implications and this definitely had moral implications, something definitely needed to be done.
And with the way things are set up, people kind of looked to the Pope. So the Pope handled this situation. Take care of, of some people that in general, most people thought, Hey, this dude, these people, they need to be put in their place, but the way they did it tarnished the Pope and not, not just the individual Pope, but the papacy, it tarnished the people's ideas of the whole, the whole office.
And I mean just when you, when you hear stories, The Pope being ultimately responsible for something like a dude being sewn up in a sack with poisonous Vipers and thrown into the ocean. You can't help but wonder like, is this really the one that we want to be heading up the church? And this trickles down through a general moral decay, that's moved throughout the whole administration of the church. They'd been, they'd been practicing for awhile. The, the practice what's called simony, which means selling a church office. So you could sell a priesthood or you could sell, and even more importantly, Seat and as politics and temporal worldly power and the religious systems got more and more intertwined for a lot of local princes, they needed the income that came from having an office, like a church, Bishop position.
And so they could literally just buy it. That was Simon that you could buy the office over the counter in Rome. But some of these princes got so kind of overextended living beyond their means that to continue to have the and think like celebrities, you expect them to have a lavish lifestyle. People expected their princes to live lavishly.
And so they got so overextended that to continue to be able to live the way that people expected them to they had to hold two or three offices. So you would have, you know, people that you have to all sorts of. That in the parish system for the Catholic church, it's really concretely tied to a specific locality, but when, so when you have somebody that has. different bishops seats. And those bishops seats are tied to specific places. That person can't be three places at one time. And so you would have an official overseer who wasn't actually doing the job of overseer and like in a Bishop is supposed to be like a pastor to pastors. And so when that is, when that care's not given the whole thing just ended up devolving.
And you see there, like the connection between. Good administration. And on the ground spiritual health, it would get to that place where you would have, you know, a priest that didn't, he maybe didn't even understand the words of the mass. And there are stories of priests just getting up there and just mumbling nonsense, literally nothing because they didn't, they couldn't read the liturgy books.
They couldn't pronounce it or. Or hold mass correctly and there's no Bishop there to actually correct. To train, to oversee. And, and so just there's there was a whole complex of things for centuries that are roaded people's trust. And that's what it comes down to. I mean, similar to the kinds of things that are, are fermenting, our contemporary desires for reform.
It's a, it's an erosion of trust and. Again, and the main point in this is to set up, to see like why even if Luther was like, you know, even if he is a big match, know, even if he a butane lighter still, if there's not explosive gas in the air, that flame is only gonna go so far. And this is all this stuff that had been there and there had been, there had been reform movements for a good long while several they had called counts. To try to change things they had, there'd been a whole movement called the conciliar movement. One of my favorite books came out of this the imitation of Christ by Thomas a campus. He was part of what it translated. You know, they said it in Latin. Latin's awesome. But it translated it's the modern devotion.
And he was part of this. It was in, it was the kind of it was, it was a monastic but unofficial monastic movement to try to reform the church grassroots from the inside, but what it comes down to, is there a handful of post. Especially, and then because of them and how they place the people around them, like six discs, the fourth Leo, the 10th Alexander the sixth, there was, there was a string of Pope's to be fair to them, they were very, very good at some things, but they were just good at the wrong thing.
For that office, you know, had they been princes or politicians? History might remind them, remember them as geniuses, but because they were supposed to be leading the church, it actually ended up at roading people's confidence for a good while before Luther shows up on the scene.
Julius: Right. So all of these conditions, right. That led to. The, the, the match lighting or the explosion happening, these seem like kind of valid things to be, to put it lightly, like, worked up, worked up about that. It's like, like erosion of trust, moral decay, like definitely needed to be done.
Exactly. Yeah. Church like ma mob boss. Pope's tossing people with snakes into the ocean.
Like it does, it does sound like, okay, something does need to be done. This needs fixing this is broken. But it, it feels as though, or you will, depending on where you land on like the theological spectrum or what, like tradition. I like, which part of the Christian tradition you identify with, like the, the reformation can be either seen as like a tragic event or like the event where we got it right.
Where we got the gospel. Right. But I think we're trying to make the case that maybe it's not quiet.
Wilson: It's it's, it's a quite a bit more complicated. Yes.
Julius: Yeah, that there are complicated, like massive implications for the way that the reformation happened. So even given the validity of some of the ways that like the ref, like some reform needed to happen, can we talk about With some of the pitfalls of how the reformers may have done things that led to employee like that led to implications that rippled out that were less than positive for how we're doing things in the church.
Now.
Wilson: So the way I'm going to answer that question, hopefully my answer itself is clear, you know, understandable. But if you understand what I'm going to say, especially for those of our listeners who are Protestant, it might complicate some of the story for us. The intention there. Well, I will say there is intention there, and I want to just name that upfront two cards on the table and not have that be a secret.
The intention there is because I don't is tied to the fact that we have some deep, deep symphony. And these are not secret. If you listen to more than one episode of the podcast, or even just paid attention to the titles, but we have deep sympathies with the deep strands of the Catholic Orthodox faith.
And we're convinced that that, that still has so much good to offer our. And so with like one foot in our moment, in our time and place 2021 Western culture, there's a need for reform. And we're convinced that an important part of that reform is recovering things that have been obscured lost so that we can continue to offer that well in the world.
Right. So when I go into this story about Luther. And our take on Luther, which I think is, I think it's a truthful one. It's definitely by, by the scholarly historical material, it's a defendable position, but, but we'll tell it in this way to hopefully yes. Challenge, especially some of our more like very convinced Protestant brothers and sisters challenged the idea that, Hey, of course, something needed to be done.
And of course, what we did was what needed to be done because there was no. It definitely went awry there, definitely some deep unintended consequences of how Luther, Calvin and others went about it. That is creating exactly the conditions we're experiencing today that are making us feel the need for reform.
So I'm going to complicate the story hopefully to help us see where are some missteps and where are some things that we can look for so that if we're going to maybe we'll actually reform and not just further split the body of.
Julius: Okay.
Wilson: I'll say it this way. Luther started off as a genuine reformer,
Julius: Yeah.
Wilson: And even in his tactics and his way, he went about it at the beginning, he was intending to reform you.
We've got to remember. We remember Luther as you know, the Protestant, but Luther for the, the formative years of his life was an incredibly devout Catholic. He. Was raised Catholic. He entered a Catholic monastery on a very rigorous, very stern Augustinian monastery. He became the Catholic chair of biblical theology and hinge in his universe. And he began working out his critiques and his ideas as a Catholic priest and a teacher in a Catholic school. And that's, and that's not just saying, oh yeah, of course he had to be because that's the only institution that was around. But he was really in his heart. A Protestant from no, no, no. He was Catholic in his heart.
And the places like when he begins to critique indulgences, he does it from. The very Catholic foundation. It's, it's the deep roots of the historic Christian faith. They give him grounds to push off on to critique the way like indulgences were being sold and how certain, and even, even the idea of indulgence is tied to something. That's true about the Christian faith. You go back a couple centuries before the roots of indulgence has come from. I think it was Pope Clement, but all he did all he really emphasizes is the fact that in the body of Christ we're in this. And we can carry each other's burdens. And sometimes if, and it's, it's true and it, it, it, it is spiritually true.
Like if, if I'm in a moment when I'm incredibly weak, dry weary, but Julius is spiritually strong, Julius can help carry me. And, and what they're beginning to emphasize is this Christian Catholic and Catholic, they're being honest, you know, universally Christian, understanding that if. You have some strength and some merit, you can grant that to me and help me as a, as a weaker brother or sister right now.
That's good and true. And in what Luther uses is that deep, true Catholic Christian thought to push off on how indulgences have warped and twisted that teaching. And he calls out. The churches in certain ways, the way the church has bowed to power and money, but he does it from like the, what he had been given by the church.
And even as far as his tactics, he does it as a reformer. He works out his theology. He works out his ideas about faith and grace from a biblical Augustinian standpoint and openly in his lectures for decades. He talks about this stuff. And when he gets to. Like the worst abuses of indulgences were being carried out in the parish, right next door, the parish of Mainz right next door to Luther.
So Tet soul is the guy, the preacher that he was just really, really good at terrifying people. And then really, really good at convincing them that the solution is just to give the church some money. And so you would hear all the coins plopping in his pot at the end of his sermon, right? This is Tesla is doing this right next door to Luther.
Luther is working out his. Openly. And then when he hears about how this is happening, he begins to reform the way a loyal member of the church would seeking the good of the body of Christ. He calls for debate. He calls for action. He asks the bishops, can we meet and talk about this? This is a serious ordeal, but he's ignored.
And this is part of what, and this is what trickles down from the way that those few Pope's had been leading things. They were great at the wrong thing. And so that shapes the culture. And so when Luther is calling them to good things, the bishops ignore him. And this, this is the pattern for the first bit, because they just assume, you know what?
Yeah, Luther he's fiery he's this and that, but he's only up there in that kind of, it's a relatively insignificant parish over there and what's now Germany, you know, and they thought he was ignorable. And they didn't start to pay attention until they realized, oh, there's a lot of gunpowder in the air. So when he lights, this match stuff is happening.
But at that point it was too late and you see the. You see the transition and Luther, where he moves from genuine reformer and you watch, and at the beginning, you, you read a sermons, you read his tracks, he's thoroughly Catholic, but it's like the, the being ignored. And then the kind of opposition, he felt forced him into becoming the later Luther. And that's when it becomes incredibly problematic to where in his thing. I think with faith Luther found something that he was a very melancholy. I mean, I would not be at all surprised to learn. He was an Enneagram for just a depressive melancholy beating up on himself constantly internally, you know, maybe a one, maybe a one, but but he found something in faith that touched his private.
Right. But then he universalized that in a way that became problematic because he, he, he led us to a system where we ignore where, where, yes, we see that faith is important for Paul, but he led to an understanding of faith where we ignore some other parts that are just as important to Paul. Like Ephesians two is a classic faith passage.
And it says, you know, it's by faith. You've been saved, not, you know, anything else. It's by faith in the grace of God. But in that light, it's like one sentence. It's one thought flow. The whole point is this is the faith that unlocks it. That allows us to do good work. And he, he says so far and this isn't like a, Ooh, this is a nice side.
Benefit is good. Works to Paul it's. It's central to who we are. He says, this is for you were created for good works. This is what you are made for, and this faith flours into it. But Lutherans up, setting up a dichotomy, a problematic where faith and works are seen as like in opposite. And this isn't just problematic for like an internal theory like this.
This is integral to the internal consistency of the whole Christian story. About about God's good creation leading to goodness and truth. And so it should, if salvation and faith is happening as it should, that goodness should flow out of us. Right. And, and, and if we can become these basically terrible people, but it all gets wiped away and it's okay.
W w you eventually. Right. Begins to crack and down the road, you start to see more and more people as the culture is shaped by this way of thinking, finding it totally irrelevant in con dismissible. Right. And, and this is how it plays out in Western culture. I mean, when it gets to the point that Luther calls the book of James, an epistle of straw, because James.
Too on the nose about doing good things. And when you have, when you have a Bible scholar moving to the place where they're calling a book of the cannon straw and kind of wishing, and it's also anti-Semitic to that was another part of, of Luther's reasons for his, it was a two, it was two Jewish. And that should tip us off that.
Okay. Maybe he found something that helped him in some way, but as far as like a whole system, there, there are some things here that are putting up some warning flags that should give us
Julius: yeah, yeah.
Wilson: And the bottom line with all of this is as it moved from, from reform
Julius: Huh.
Wilson: and doing it as a reformer within the church to a schismatic use, then see Luther and the reformers play the same power games.
And that's one of the most, the biggest ironies of the whole thing is the church playing the power games for centuries is what led to the condition. Right where there's powder in the air, the desire for reform and those reformers end up playing the exact same power games. We, we know Luther and Calvin's names, not because they had the best ideas and not because they were, we know Luther and Calvin's name to a large degree because Lutheran Calvert, Calvin had.
Princes and city councils get behind them and support them
Julius: yeah.
Wilson: There were some, some of these groups that were part of, you know, these these local princes that were seeing an opportunity to extend their power. And th that saw Luther. If we could get him on his side, get him on our side, he could help us with this too.
And so Luther escapes with his life because of the prince that, that scurries him off to his castle, hides him away and princess stuff and distributes it for his own agenda too. And, and Calvin becomes Calvin because Geneva basically gives him the keys to the city and says, run our city. And because these worldly powers back, these people this, this is why they're called. Magisterial reformers. Cause they, they had worldly powers get behind them too. And, and it's not very long before Luther. Irony of ironies. You know, it's not very long before Luther is putting down a peasant, revolt in violent is calling for he didn't himself, like take up arms, but called for and gave permission to violently, put down a peasant revolt.
And you have Calvin sentencing people to death and Geneva that it, that again, just begins to erode the genuine respectability authority of, of the church because they got caught up in the same old.
Julius: Yeah.
MEDITATION
Given the current divisiveness of our world, especially over matters of religious belief and practice, it becomes very tempting for Christians to either gloss over the failures of the church, or to treat them in a way that would feed cynicism and the false belief that we can totally jettison the past and start from some Radical Zero.
But there is no starting from Zero. As the twentieth-century writer William Faulkner, put it in a book titled Requiem for a Nun, "The past is never dead. It's not even past."
Which sounds so counter-intuitive, but it sounds this way not because what Faulkner wrote is not true. It sounds this way because of the current state of our intuitions.
To feel the truth of Faulkner's words, think of one instance from the past that greatly influenced the personality of one of you primary care-givers.
And now think about how their personality has influenced the way you think and feel.
The past may be confusing, and is often painful. So we understand why people would be tempted to try to barricade past events up in history, to burn all the systems and traditions we've inherited, sever all ties, and start from some radical Zero.
But just imagine you look at some part of your parent's personality or one of their habits and decide, I never want to be like that, and then work to never be like that. You're not actually severing all ties from that personality trait or habit, you're actually forming and strengthening a new bond with it. Defining yourself in some kind of rebellious relation to that very thing you think you are leaving behind.
On a larger scale, even seeking to burn down traditions and jettison inherited ways of thinking is not a break with the past, not really. It is a reaction to what from the past is still present and alive.
And every time we try to break with everything that came before, we start from a place of nieve ignorance, which is the perfect condition for us to invent new traditions and methods for the same old mistakes. This almost guarantees we are going to justify new ways of perpetrating the same evils. Just look how the Reformers ended up captive to the very same worldly powers as those they were reacting against, and either justifying what they'd done, or being totally unaware of it, because they were so sure they were right about God and definitely were not like those other people.
So we will not gloss over the failures of the past, nor will we tell the story in a way that could feed cynicism or childish rebellion.
Which is a challenge, but we found an inspiring Guide in St. Ignatius of Loyola. He lived and taught right in the middle of the Reformation's tumult. And one of his most enduring practices that came through him in this season, is called the Examen.
The point of the Examen is to become more aware of God's presence and unconditional love in the midst of whatever happened to constitute our day. And this is also, we believe, the key to hearing the truth about something like the Reformation in a way that could lead to something redemptive.
So, let's spend the next couple minutes practicing the key moves of Ignatius' Examen. They're really quite simple.
First, just find as still an environment as you can, quiet your mind to the best of your ability in the moment, and begin to review the events of your day.
Don't judge the events yet by trying to take your mind to what you thought was most exciting or significant, or by dismissing events because they seem too ordinary. Simply let the memories come.
Then, invite God to show you where God was present.
And ask God to help you understand how you responded - not just to the event, but to God's presence.
That's it.
We tend to begin by noticing the obviously good and redemptive things, but, just like jogging or smiling or any number of other simple acts can have huge effects if habituated, over time, the Examen helps us develop the skills to become aware of evidence of God's presence in moments and acts we would have previously totally overlooked.
With practice, we start to notice some small and insignificant acts would not have happened without God's help - like simply staying silent instead of blurting something funny but unhelpful.
And then, with even more practice, our instincts for God sharpen to the point we begin to recognize God's presence in moments of darkness and regret.
And so, slowly, the practice can help fill us with the conviction that absolutely nothing can take us to a place where God's presence and love is not real.
And the truth this practice shows us, is not just true on the personal level. In a personal way, the Examen invites us into a truth that permeates every level of reality.
So, in light of the fuller story of the Reformation, and remembering this practice was developed in the middle of it's cluster of conflict and failures, we can see, one of the things Ignatius was teaching Christ's people, is how to view things well.
So as this series progresses, we invite you to treat it as an extended, corporate, examen of consciousness. Let it be training in our awareness of, and response to, God's presence even in the middle of our own confusion and sins.
Because the real hope for a future united in Christ is not centered in our awareness of how the past is still in us, and our perfecting ourselves by deciding not to be like those fools, but simply our faithful response to Christ's presence and love as it permeates our mess.
If this is who God is and what God does, what would God be doing in you?
And the third [article of the rule of faith] is the Holy Spirit, by whom the prophets prophesied and the patriarchs were taught about God and the just were led into the path of justice, and who in the end of times was poured forth in a new manner upon [people] all over the earth renewing [humanity] to God.
How is the Spirit present in this moment and this text, leading you into the path of justice and renewing you in God?
How is the Spirit pulling you into the biblical narrative, where two histories, ours and God's, always intertwine, but where God is always the primary actor, but who also always acts like we see Jesus act.
So how is the Spirit present now, in your reading, in this moment, inviting you not to escape the difficulties of a fallen creation, but to join God in moving it toward a splendid vision of creation's renewal through communion with God?
How is your engagement of this difficult text becoming the occasion for you to see and join the story of the world going out from God, and returning to God?