Romans 8:28-30

Older than Dirt

When I say the name “Calvin” – who comes to mind?  First person many of us think of is that mischievous little boy in my favorite cartoon strip of all time: Calvin and Hobbes.

Or maybe you think of Calvin Coolidge, the 30^th president of the United States. But how many of you think of John Calvin?

 A little less than ten days ago, the world celebrated the 500^th birthday of John Calvin, one of the giants of the Protestant Reformation. 

If you were here a few months ago, you saw (and heard) Linda Buckley portray him during the Women’s Worship service. 

I couldn’t come close to repeating her stellar performance, but I thought that considering the fact that he was the Great-Grandfather of the Presbyterian faith, he should get some additional attention this summer.

A seminary professor who taught me a great deal about preaching urged his students to write at the top of each page of our sermon the question: “SO WHAT?” in big bold letters. 

That is, after every paragraph we should be asking the question “So what?”  What difference does what I just said make?

That probably is a question many of you ask during most of my sermons. 

But it is also appropriate this morning. I mean, it is certainly fitting to ask what possible difference a theologian born 500 years ago can make to us, when we live in a culture and church so unlike his?

So we ask: So what? Well, let’s see if we can together figure that out. First, the basics:

John Calvin was born July 10, 1509 in Noyon, France. His original name was Jean Cauvin and was raised in a staunch Roman Catholic family.

The local bishop employed Calvin’s father, Gerard, as an administrator in the town’s cathedral. His father, in turn, wanted John to become a priest and so at the tender age of 14, Calvin went to Paris to study theology at the College de Marche. 

But two years later his father decided Calvin would make more money as a lawyer than a priest (duh!) so he enrolled him in the University of Orléans to study law.

A few years pass and Calvin experiences a sudden religious conversion. Not much is known of the surrounding circumstances, but Calvin at one point describes the experience by:

 “God by a sudden conversion subdued and brought my mind to a teachable frame, which was more hardened in such matters than might have been expected from one at my early period of life.”

Interestingly, early in his career though, Calvin felt that he was really not cut out for the ministry.  He believed that he was too shy and sometimes too angry.  But God had other ideas.

In March 1536, when he was only 26 years old, Calvin published the first edition of his Institutes of the Christian Religion. Originally intended as an elementary instruction book for anyone interested in the Christian faith.

In August of that year he set off for Strasbourg, a refuge for reformers. Due to military maneuvers of the French army though, he was forced to make a detour to the south, bringing him to Geneva.

Calvin had only intended to stay a single night, but William Farel, a fellow French reformer residing in the city, convinced Calvin to stay and assist him in reforming the church there.  

Calvin wasn’t there too long before we was banished because authorities found his ideas too radical! As a result, in 1538 Calvin finally went to Strasbourg to lead a church of French refugees.

In 1541 the political and religious climate changed and he returned to Geneva. During his ministry in Geneva, Calvin preached over two thousand sermons.

Often, he preached twice on Sunday and three times during the week. His sermons always lasted more than an hour and he never used notes.  And you thought I went on and on and on…

The turning point in Calvin’s career occurred when Michael Servetus, a Spaniard who boldly criticized Christian doctrine – specifically the doctrine of the Trinity – was convicted of heresy by The Inquisition in Spain and ordered arrested and burned at the stake.

This did not endear Servetus in any way to Calvin, who was a strong Trinitarian.  Servetus then added insult to injury when he sent Calvin a copy of Calvin’s own Institutes of the Christian Religion heavily annotated with arguments pointing to errors in the book.

Well, on the run and on his way to Italy, Servetus stopped in Geneva for unknown reasons and attended one of Calvin’s church services.

Calvin immediately had him arrested and testified against Servetus at a Geneva court convened to decide his fate.

He was soon convicted and was once again sentenced to burn at the stake. 

Calvin and other ministers asked that he be beheaded instead of burnt (I’m not sure why), but their pleas was ignored and on October 27, 1553, Servetus was burnt alive.

After the death of Servetus, Calvin was acclaimed a defender of Christianity.

Calvin continued to write and preach to great notoriety but when he was about 49 years old he suffered from a bout of malaria and his health declined from there.

During the last few years of his life (he died at age 55) he suffered from terrible headaches, stomach ailments, insomnia, tuberculosis, hemorrhoids, and kidney stones among other illnesses.

He preached his final sermon on February 6, 1564 and died on May 27, 1564.

That’s his life and his death, but we still must ask “so what?” To more fully understand what John Calvin has done for Christianity we need to focus more on his writings and theology. 

His most famous book, a book that was encouraged reading when I was in seminary, was his Institutes of the Christian Religion, which I spoke of a few minutes ago. 

Then finally revised for the last time it was FOUR volumes of very dense theology (and no, I never read through it all).

The “first” edition, published in 1536, when he was only 26 years old, contained just six chapters. It was immediately deemed “a brilliant treatise of Reformed thinking.” 

He kept working on it, kept expanding it, and reshaped it so that it would be an introduction to theology for theological students – like me… oops!

He finally finished it in 1559, only five years before he died.  It is impossible to condense the theology contained in the Institutes into a short summary, but there is an oft quoted “Five Points of Calvinism” that seems to be the best we can do. 

There is an acronym to help you remember the five points: it is TULIP … not the flower, but stands for:

Total Depravity of Man: That our nature is basically evil, not basically good.

Unconditional Election: That God chooses or “elects” His children from before the foundation of time and then causes them to make the decision to seek Him out.

Limited Atonement: That the death and resurrection of Christ is only affective as payment for the sins for those who are God’s elect children… not the entire world.

Irresistible Grace: That when God calls a person, His call cannot ultimately be ignored.

Perseverance of the Saints: That once saved, always saved.

There’s no tiptoeing around the TULIPs!  But is that really what we base our theology on?  Ahh, wait, there’s more!

Calvin’s services were plain and simple. He placed great importance on the sermon and on scripture. His sermons were very logical and learned and as I previously mentioned - LONG.

Though he himself liked music, he distrusted its use in religious services believing that it distracted people from the matter at hand - the worship and the seeking of knowledge of God.

And so, a worship service true to Calvin’s practice would have no organ, no choir, no bells or other instruments.

All matters relating to worship came from the Scriptures - so psalms took the place of hymns in services.

Calvin also had a practical approach to evangelism – that maybe we should try. It is said that when he arrived in Geneva there were more bars there than any other European city.

So he advocated and succeeded in shutting down the taverns and replacing them with “evangelical refreshment places,” which served beer and wine. . . . and Bible study.  A sort of “theology on tap!”

Not surprisingly these were far from popular and even Calvin recognized that he had gone too far and the taverns were re-opened with due speed!!

Calvin didn’t stop there, though.  Some of his ideas would have made the Puritans proud (from whence came their own asceticism). 

For example Calvin was shocked at the conduct of Genevan’s found to have danced at a wedding. 

He encouraged a ban on swearing, gambling, and fornication.  Unexcused absence from Sunday worship was also frowned upon and could result in excommunication. 

And if you were excommunicated you were banished not only from the church, but also from the city as well. Blasphemy could be punished by death; and lewd singing could be punished by your tongue being pierced.

However, to be fair, Calvin also had nothing but positive remarks for the healthy sex lives of wives and husbands. Calvin believed that the fruits of the world -- good friends, good food, and yes, good sex -- were to be enjoyed. Calvin himself was especially fond of fine wine.

Then there was Calvin’s views on the sacraments and church government, which are still reflected in the Presbyterian church today.  Calvin defined a sacrament as an earthly sign associated with a promise from God.

He accepted only two sacraments as valid (the only two Jesus participated in): baptism and the Lord’s Supper (in opposition to the Catholic acceptance of seven sacraments).

He also completely rejected the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation (a belief that the bread and wine became the actual body and blood of Christ).

Calvin believed instead that the Spirit of Christ was present and it was that presence that nourished and strengthened us as we partook of the elements.

He understood it all as a mystery, saying that the Lord’s Supper was “a secret too sublime for my mind to understand or words to express. I experience it rather than understand it.”

Calvin also felt that church organization should be modeled on the early church as described in the New Testament book of Acts.

 There were to be no bishops. All ministers were equal. They had to preach, administer the sacraments, and look after the spiritual welfare of the people.

The elders were twelve men (patterned after the 12 Apostles) whose job was to oversee everything that everybody did in the congregation.

Then there were the deacons who were appointed to care for the sick, the elderly, the widowed, and the poor.

Does that sound familiar?  Of course it does.  We have Calvin to thank for much of our church polity.

That is not to say that many of Calvin’s beliefs weren’t controversial.  The truth is, Calvin’s views were so controversial within Protestantism they led to many of the subsequent schisms that are still dividing Protestants today.

But, with the possible exception of Martin Luther, no man has had a greater impact on the theology of the Protestant Churches in general and Presbyterian churches in particular, than John Calvin. His collected works fill 58 large volumes.

Calvin is associated with the rise of modern education and the conviction that citizens ought to be educated and that all people ought to be able to read the Bible. 

Calvin was one of the first to advocate a social gospel that imparted responsibility for the wider community beyond the individual believer.

He envisioned a church in which elders and deacons shared governance with ministers.  And the view that God was sovereign and his love for all creation.

Calvin has influenced our love and study of scripture; our understanding of the sacraments; the importance of sermons based on scripture; the importance of an educated clergy AND an educated congregation; a shared ministry between clergy and lay people; and a love of God who is all powerful and all encompassing.

Yes, we certainly have much to be thankful to John Calvin for: 500 years old and still kickin.’  Thanks be to God!

AMEN.