Church and State: Rituals

Text: Mark 7:1-8

 

I.         In a world where being born in a region determined your religious faith, the Christian approach was novel

            A.        Christians taught a message from God to bring people into the church - Mark 16:20

                        1.         It wasn’t just taking people at their word. It was confirmed by God through the miracles that accompanied the early teachers.

                        2.         Becoming a Christian was an act of faith in the message - Romans 10:17

            B.        It was a two-way dialogue where people reasoned - Acts 18:4

            C.        It divided the audience into those who accepted and those who rejected the message - I Corinthians 2:12-16

            D.        Recall that the blending of church strived for a homogenous society

                        1.         This dividing of one’s audience conflicted with that goal

                        2.         The preaching of the Gospel was suppressed and replaced with rituals

II.        The role of rituals

            A.        It is through ritual acts that a society was bound

                        1.         “The Navajo medicine-man conducts an act; he makes the sand painting, and in it the tribe is bound together.” [“The Reformers and Their Stepchildren”, p. 135]

                        2.         There is no room for personal religion. It is the societal acts that matter because these weld the people into a unit.

            B.        Plato’s “Laws”, “Let this then be the law. No one shall possess shrines of the gods in private houses, and he who is found to possess them and to perform any sacred rite not publicly authorized, shall be informed against in the ear of the guardians of the law; and let these issue orders that he is to carry his private rites to the public temples; and if he does not obey, let such a penalty be inflicted as to make him comply.”

                        1.         Having a private expression of religion deflects from the use of religion to tie the society into a whole.

                        2.         Notice the concern wasn’t in teaching, but focused on the acts

III.       When Constantine blended the church and state, it wasn’t difficult to modify acts of worship into rituals

            A.        The Roman Catholic Church developed sacraments to be preformed

            B.        For instance, the Lord’s Supper was altered

                        1.         Instead of being done at the table, it became an altar

                        2.         It had to be done by a priest instead of members of the church

                        3.         “Take and eat” (Matthew 26:26-27) becomes an act of imparting by the priest. (They can’t have members acting on their own initiative.)

                        4.         A mystery is added that the bread and wine change into the body and blood of Christ when done by a priest.

                        5.         Thus, the Lord’s Supper is changed into the Mass through a series of seemingly insignificant changes.

            C.        Baptism can’t be done by any Christian, it has to be done by a sanctioned priest who use a precise set of words to conduct the sacrament

            D.        Over time, the sacraments are seen as essential for salvation.

                        1.         Since the sacraments have to be administered by church approved officiants, then the church is essential for salvation.

                        2.         A sacrament of Orders was created whereby only those approved by the church could become priests.

            E.        To be clear, baptism is essential to salvation (I Peter 3:21). Christians are commanded to partake in the Lord’s Supper (I Corinthians 11:23-26) and ignoring a command will put you at odds with God.

                        1.         What changed is that it was declared that it had to be done the church’s way by the church’s ordained people or else you could not reach heaven.

                        2.         Add to that, the Roman Catholic Church did all in Latin, which the common person didn’t understand, so it became a pure act of mystery.

                        3.         Remember where we started? The common man responded to the preaching of the gospel to create personal faith within. And it became a series of mysterious acts done by the state church that a person is told gives him eternal life.

IV.      This is why those who opposed the state church were vilified. It took the power from the state church to mold the masses into single entity

            A.        In 1025, “heretics” from Liege were arrested as they fled to Arras. At their trial, they said, “There are no sacraments in the holy Church by which one can attain unto salvation.” [“The Reformers and Their Stepchildren,” p. 143]

            B.        In 1112, the church set itself against “persons who deny that the substance of the bread and of the wine which is blest by the priest at the altar is actually changed into the body and blood of Christ” [“The Reformers and Their Stepchildren,” p. 144]

            C.        These heretics held “that the sacrament of baptism does not help little ones unto salvation.”

            D.        In Antwerp, a man named Tanchelm came on the scene, who “dared to agitate against the sacraments of the Church.” He declared, “It is nothing that the priests make on the altar.”

                        1.         He was so influential that almost the whole bishopric of Utrecht followed him

                        2.         A church “trouble-shooter” names Norbertus straightened things out. On a dark night as Tanchelm was cross the Schelde River, “a faithful cleric, driven by a pious zeal, bashed him in the head so that he died.”

                        3.         It didn’t stop the teaching, however. In 1163 a band of his followers were burned for teaching “that they consider all men who are not of their sect to be heretics and infidels; that they spurn the sacraments of the true Church and say that they only have the true faith and that all others are worldly men and under condemnation. They say that the body and blood of the Lord is nothing, ridiculing the Mass and calling it by awful names, for which reason they do not patronize it ... They deride the Confessional, saying that one ought to lay bare his heart to God and not to any man. They condemn indulgences and penances ...” [The Reformers and Their Stepchildren,” p. 145]

            E.        In a trial of heretics seized at Trier in the 1200s: “Many of them are well-versed in Scripture, which they possess in Teutonic translation; others repeat baptism; others do not believe in the body of the Lord; others say that the body of the Lord can be constituted by any man or woman, ordained or otherwise, in any dish or goblet and at any place; others hold that extreme unction is not necessary; others minimize the pontificate and the priesthood; others say that the prayers for the dead do not help; others neglect the feasts and work on the Church’s festivals and eat meat in Lent.” [The Reformers and Their Stepchildren,” p. 147].

                        1.         All of these deal with sacraments of various sorts

            F.        Not participating in the sacraments marked a person when he didn’t show up at any Mass.

                        1.         Some would suddenly have a “call of nature” after the Mass started.

                        2.         Some held the wafer in their mouths and spit it out later.

                        3.         All to avoid being spotted

            G.        These so-called heretics countered the Church’s ordination by having lay people do the things expected of a priest. They conducted the Lord’s Supper, marriages, and funerals, but their emphasis was on teaching the Gospel, saying that salvation was based on responding to God’s teachings.

                        1.         This is what led the Roman Catholic Church to try and suppress this

                        2.         In a directive from Trier in 1277, “We command, firmly and strictly, that preaching is not to be permitted to the untaught, such as the Beghards or Conversi, or any other ... in villages or streets”

                        3.         From Verona in 1184, “Since some folk under a kind of piety joined to a denial of the apostolic dictum ‘How shall they preach unless they be sent!’ sustain their right to preach, therefore we place under anathema all who whether forbidden or unbidden ... make bold, whether in private or in public, to preach.” [“The Reformers and Their Stepchildren,” p. 151]

                                    a.         Note the twisting of Romans 10:14-15 by claiming only the state church could send out preachers.

            H.        This led to attempts to get the Scriptures out of the hands of the common man

                        1.         In 1203, the bishop of Liege decreed, “All books containing the Scriptures in Romance or Teutonic tongue are to be delivered into the hands of the bishop, who will then return those which in his judgment should be given back.” [“The Reformers and Their Stepchildren,” p. 151]

                        2.         The Council of Bezieres in 1233-1234 and the Council of Terracona in 1234 forbade the Bible in languages of the lay person.

                        3.         In 1369, Emperor Charles IV issued an edict given to him by the Church prohibiting the use of any German book discussing the Scriptures.

                        4.         It didn’t work.

                        5.         One way to hide from the inquisitors was memorize the Bible in the vernacular.

                                    a.         On inquisitor, Etienne de Bourbon, a Dominican monk, said, “They know the apostles creed excellently in the vulgar tongue; they learn by heart the Gospels and the New Testament, in the vernacular and repeat them aloud to one another ... I have seen a youthful cow-herd who had lived but one year in the home of a Waldensian heretic who had attended so diligently to all that he heard that he had memorized within that year forty Sunday Gospels not counting those of the feast days ... I have seen some lay-folk so steeped in their doctrine that they could repeat by heart great portions of the Evangelists, such as Matthew and Luke, especially all that is said in them of Christ’s teaching and sayings, so that they could repeat them without a halt and with hardly a word wrong here or there.” [“The Reformers and Their Stepchildren,” p. 152]

                        6.         “They say that the Holy Scripture hath the same effect in the vulgar tongue that it hath in Latin; for this reason they celebrate [the Lord’s Supper] in the vulgar tongue and give the sacrament ... They read the Gospels and the Epistles in the vernacular, explaining and applying them in their own favor and contrary to the statutes of the Roman Church ... They teach that every saint is a priest.” [“The Reformers and Their Stepchildren,” p. 152-153]

                                    a.         Shocking as it may be, that is what Peter said - I Peter 2:9-10

V.        The leaders of the Reformation stood against sacraments initially, but as they established their own state churches, we find sacraments creeping back in to differing extent.

            A.        Lutherans have their rituals and clergy

            B.        The Church of England is filled with rituals, almost as much as the Roman Catholic Church.