[AI translation] Dear brothers and sisters, I can imagine that when you heard the Word read, you felt a little disappointed, as if it was not appropriate for the celebration of the Reformation. When we celebrate the 450th anniversary of the Reformation across the globe, when even today in Wittenberg there is such a huge international gathering to commemorate this glorious past: How does this word get here? Let me say from the outset that in the scene I have read from a small passage in the history of the people of God in the Old Testament, I see a symbolic teaching for our celebration of the Reformation today, and a very serious and very important teaching. You see, this passage sums up in a very special way the whole story from which it is taken. The whole essence of the history of the people of God is in this verse. Perhaps I might say the whole meaning. Because what is it all about? A people looking to a hopeful future are marching out of the land of Egypt, carrying the carcasses of one of their long-dead forefathers, Joseph, in the procession. So a living multitude carrying a dead one. A people moving towards the future, preserving its memories in a dead man. This strange procession that marches here is almost a symbol of the whole essence of the people of Israel, of God's people for all time - the people of Maia. One is that the only way to move forward on the road to the future is to honour the past. The other is that the only way to keep the memories of the past alive for us is to keep them moving forward into the future. This is what I want to talk about now.The historical context in which the passage is read is, I think, more or less familiar to all of us. The people of the Old Testament are in the process of exodus from Egypt, the house of service. A period in their history is coming to an end, a period of slavery, suffering and exploitation in Egypt. A period of much suffering and much wailing and lamentation and despair. Like a mighty torrent, this people is breaking out of the barriers, the barriers between which it was confined there in Egypt, to set out on a new and unknown journey towards the dimly glimpsed landscapes of a new and unknown future. They are animated by a long-ago promise of God, and their eyes are turned forward to the promised land. And among the throng of men advancing hopefully, they carry the carcass of a man long dead. The body of the ancient Egyptian viceroy, Joseph the Jew, one of the ancestors of the people. Why is this dead man among the living? Is he not preventing them from moving on? Is he not an unnecessary burden that brakes the legs and the wheels of the chariot? No, brothers and sisters, because these people are more deeply connected to the one whose body is being carried in that procession than we would even think. These people draw inspiration from that dead person. This corpse represents the power of the living God in their remembrance. For Joseph's name contains for them the historical memory of the mighty acts of God. For it was Joseph, they remembered, whom God had raised to high dignity through much humiliation, misunderstanding and imprisonment, in order to be the instrument of the wonderful deliverance of His people. It was Joseph who, on his deathbed, foresaw the future of this people. The fulfilment of the divine promises made to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob. He spoke to them that God would visit them one day and then bring them up from this land to the land promised to the fathers, the forefathers. Joseph also told them that when they departed from this place, they would take their carcasses with them and bury them in the promised land. As if to say that, if not his lips, at least his corpse should proclaim the message which he had already seen as God's promise for the future of this people.
Well, brothers and sisters, in a way, this is how we, God's wandering pilgrim people of today, carry with us the memory and testimony of our long dead reformers. These men who died long ago are dear to us: Martin Luther, John Calvin, Ulrich Zwingli, Philip Melanchthon, Henry Bullinger, Todor Béza, Peter Melius Juhász, Stephen Little of Szeged, Michael Staraeus - and I could go on and on with the great list - because these names almost contain for us too the historical memory of the mighty acts of God. It was through them, often misunderstood, mocked and very often persecuted, that God led His people back to the wellspring that had been almost completely blocked over the centuries. God's living revelation of Himself in the Scriptures. It was their experiences of faith that God used to bring many, many people since then into living fellowship with God through the same experiences. By way of illustration only, let me quote a few lines, brethren, from Martin Luther's self-confession of his own struggles of faith, when he writes (note, it is as timely as if it were your struggles of faith or my struggles of faith). Therefore I did not eat, drink or sleep. Others did not have a troubled conscience and did not torment themselves so terribly, but I was terrified of the day of judgment and damnation from an angry God. So I sought all kinds of help. I called on Mary and St. Christopher for help, but the more I tried, the more I became an idolater, because I did not see Christ, for the scholastics taught that we could obtain forgiveness of sins and salvation before God by our own good works alone. At first, every time I read and sang that psalm verse, 'save me with your righteousness', I was terrified. I was opposed to such verbs: the righteousness of God, the judgment of God, the work of God, because all I knew was that the righteousness of God meant His severe judgment. And now He of all people should deliver me from His own severe judgment? Then I would have been damned forever. This went on until, after long days and nights of brooding, I finally, by the grace of God, turned my attention to the inner context of the verses, and this in particular: the righteousness of God is revealed in the way it is written, 'But the righteous man lives by faith'. Then I began to understand the righteousness of God as the righteousness in which the righteous man lives by the gift of God, namely, by faith in Christ. Now I began to understand that the meaning of this saying, 'in the gospel the righteousness of God is revealed', is that this righteousness is the accepted righteousness by which the gracious God makes us righteous through faith, as it is written, 'the righteous man lives by faith'. And then I felt as if I had been completely born again. As if I had entered through open doors into the Garden of Eden itself."
How many people have since entered almost into the Garden of Eden itself through the same experience of faith! Yes, brothers and sisters, the experience of the great Reformers was that God's grace is not to be earned or deserved, but simply accepted, received by faith. For God, for the merit of Jesus, is already waiting with ready grace for all those who truly want to turn to Him. I tell you, this great experience of the Reformers has helped many a searching soul ever since to find happily the way to reconciliation with God. The Reformers bore witness to this grace so powerfully that, by its inspiring power, Christianity, the people of God, dared to set out on a whole new path towards a whole new future. The famous 95 theses that Martin Luther nailed to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg 450 years ago today, as a polemic against the indulgences, became the instrument of an outpouring of the Holy Spirit, as a result of which we are here today, and as a result of which there is evangelical Christianity all over this whole earth. You see, brothers and sisters, this is why we cling to the memory of our Reformers. And that is why, 450 years later, we still carry their "carcasses" with us: their writings, their testimonies. Luther's little catechism and his hymns, which we ourselves sing and will sing in this service. Calvin's Institutio, our ancient creeds, the Heidelberg Catechism and the Second Helvetic Creed, because we want to continue on the road to the future by honouring this great past in a great and grateful recollection, and by treasuring the precious heritage of the Reformers.
Brothers and sisters, this is only one of the messages of this word, for however much we may cherish this past, it is only when it points us towards the future that it becomes truly valuable, a living value. Look: the body of Joseph, which the wandering people carried with them in the exodus, was not something that was like a chariot to them. It was not something like the mummy of an idolized forefather, but this corpse was a testimony to the Living God and the power of the Living God. God's past promises and deeds were interwoven through him with God's present promises and deeds, pointing the way to the future. By feeding on the roots of the past, God's people grow and move forward into the future. It is, of course, conceivable that a false sense of piety for Joseph's corpse could have kept these people from moving forward. It could have been that Joseph's tomb would have been turned into a cult pilgrimage site to which they would have returned again and again and again. Just as there are so many tombs in this land where pilgrims return to pay their respects to the memory of great men of old. But that is when the treasures of the past become cultic and rigid dogma, preventing us from moving forward into the future. Joseph's carcasses, however, were precisely not a hindrance but a stimulus, an inspiration to move on. When they looked at him in the despondency of their wanderings, they could think that he was still with us, that we were carrying the body of someone who had already seen the future towards which we were now heading. Let us go on, then, boldly in the direction in which this corpse from the past is pointing.
This is also the true appreciation of the legacy of the Reformation. To carry this past with us as one that helps us onwards, forwards, towards the future. Martin Luther and John Calvin and the others are not Protestant "halo saints" for us, to whose memory we sometimes make a pilgrimage back to the 16th century. Their works and their writings are not mummified dogmas that have once and for all solidified for us the ultimate truths, but their whole life's work is a great inspiration to dare to go on courageously on the path of a life of faith nourished by the grace of God, in a form appropriate to a modern world. Dare to be modern Protestants, dare to be progressive Reformed and progressive Evangelicals.
Let me now present, brothers and sisters, only two ways of this progressive life of faith, inspired by the Reformed past, which are the most topical and the most urgent for us in this modern world: one is to serve the ecumenical future towards which Christianity is today moving forward throughout the world. That is, the ministry of the great fraternal encounter and the great spiritual unity of Christians and Christians of all denominations. Someone might now say: but this is not a Reformation legacy, because the Reformation was the opposite of this great spiritual unity! The Reformation was the beginning and the cause of the disintegration of Christianity, which had hitherto been almost united, and of its fragmentation into many small sectors. Brothers and sisters, few of you know that neither Luther nor Calvin had this in mind. Luther intended those famous 95 theses to be a very standard discussion paper in his day, on the basis of which he, as a fanatically loyal son of the Roman Pontiff, wanted to start a dialogue to save and purify the much feared Roman Church. The great Reformers did not want a new church, nor did they want another church, but they wanted to save and purify the old one. They did not break away from the old one, but it threw them out. And that is how this otherwise very well-intentioned polemic provoked bitter resistance, and the Reformation provoked the Counter-Reformation. And thus began a sad, fanatical struggle within Christianity, the fires of which were so hot even in my childhood that even a simple position as a parochial schoolmaster was governed by the denomination of the person who held it.
Thank God that history has moved beyond this phase, this sad house. Today, even in the Church of Rome, the Reformation is increasingly dominant. And in Rome today, Martin Luther is no longer spoken of as an incarnation of the Antichrist, but as a prophetic preacher, as a deeply religious man of faith. So now is the time - no, it is not, it is the time - to finally begin and continue what Luther wanted to begin. So the dialogue between the different denominations, the search for an ecumenical way. The reconciliation of opposites, the possibility of learning from each other. This is what the reformers wanted. Only the time was not ripe for it. Today it is all the more so. And you know that there are already such dialogue meetings at the highest level between the most different churches, between Roman and Protestant churches, where the aim is not to deepen the gaps, but to bridge them. And you, for your part, do not know how you can contribute to this? By doing your utmost to get as close as possible to Jesus, because that is how you get closer to the other brother of the other denomination who wants the same thing: to get closer to Jesus. You can contribute by living in a purer and more self-conscious biblical faith, because this will bring you closer and closer to the other brother or sister who is also striving for the same thing: a purer and more self-conscious biblical faith. This is how we move further and further towards the future towards which our reformers from the past are pointing.
Then, brothers and sisters, I could mark another way of progressive Protestant faith-life with Luther's gesture, which could be expressed in this way: out of the monastic cell and into the world! Or Calvin's oft-quoted motto: "All to the glory of God!" This is the great realisation, which today, thank God, we are also talking about more and more, that the Church is not for itself, it is not for its own edification, but that the Church is for the world. It is for the human world in which it lives. It is also a Reformed insight and heritage that the people of God, emerging from a monastic piety, withdrawn from the world, preparing only for salvation in the hereafter, are called to a life of faith that is realized in service for the good of humanity. In this modern age, the Church of Christ has to fulfil a formal function like that of a modern hydroelectric power station. You know, its task is to transform the energy of the water, its flow, through turbines into electricity, and to send it out as light and warmth through a network of wires, to the wind, to the wind, into everyday life. Well, then, the Church of Christ, like such a modern hydroelectric power station, transforms the current of God's Word into the light, the warmth, the power of goodness, of love, of peace, and carries it out through a network of wires of the service and witness of the faithful into everyday life: into houses, into homes, into factories, into workplaces, into the streets, out into the world. But this requires that we all, without exception, consciously live out what our Reformed ancestors also so strongly emphasized: the principle and practice of universal priesthood. For our Reformers were the first to stress that there is no distinction in the Church between the clerical and the lay element, but that we are all priests. The word lay has been perverted in the course of history. In contrast to the theologically educated and ordained ministers, the word 'lay' has come to mean the army, the mass of the simple faithful who are unacquainted with theology - and that is not the meaning. The word "lay" comes from the Greek word "laos". And the word laos in the New Testament is a special designation for God's chosen people. The Laos are the people of the Lord, as distinguished from other peoples, for whom the word "ethnos" is used in the Bible. Thus, the Laos is the army, the spiritual generation, of those called by the Spirit of God out of the ethnos, called to salvation and believers. Through Christ and in Christ we are all Laos: the people of the Lord. Now, a layman is someone who belongs to this laos. One who belongs to the people of God, by faith, through faith in Christ. A member of the children of God, of the tribe of God. If anyone says that I am a layman, he has borne witness. He has testified that he belongs to the community of those redeemed by Jesus. So, brothers and sisters, let us take the word layman in its original sense, purified by the Reformers, and let us be laymen. - But in the true sense of the word. For it is an honourable title. Can there be a greater dignity, a greater honour for a man than to belong to the chosen people of God?! God has only one people, His Church. And in this there is no distinction of rank, or any other distinction, between the members. No one, however learned a theologian or ordained a bishop, can be more than what is meant by the word "layman".
It is to this community of the laity, the people of God, that the Apostle Peter said the words I have just read from the Bible. Take note, then, that you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, to proclaim the mighty works of him who has called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. That is, that you may proclaim, that is, that you may be followers of Christ in such a way that you may be of use to the people around you. This is the church of the future. For the church of the future is the church of the laity, and it is towards this future that our reformers from the past point.
The people of God are marching, carrying with them the body of Joseph, long dead, as a sign that the only way to truly move forward on the road to the future is to honour the past, and that the past becomes alive for us as it helps us forward to the future.
Amen.
Date: 31 October 1967.