Calvin at 500 -- FPC sermon excerpt

“It’s not about you.”

That’s the first line of Rick Warren’s mega-best-selling book The Purpose Driven Life. “If you want to know why you were placed on this planet,” he goes on to say, “you must begin with God.”

This is a very God-centered agenda, one that is based on the belief that you cannot discover your life’s purpose by starting with a focus on yourself. Instead, you have turn to your Creator, and discover the reason God has put you in this world.

It’s not about you. It’s all about God.

So where would Rick Warren get such an idea? It’s hard to say, exactly. But if you pick up this particular thread of Christian thinking and tug on it, you’re going to find yourself face-to-face with a 500-year-old man named John Calvin.

Famous for his pointed beard, plain dress, and stern expression, Calvin seems to be the antithesis of a laid-back, California-cool pastor like Rick Warren. But both men believe that knowledge of self requires knowledge of God. And both believe that God was acting in love when he created the world and everything in it. “There is not one blade of grass, there is no color in this world,” said John Calvin, “that is not intended to make us rejoice.”

Maybe Calvin wasn’t such a cranky Calvinist, after all.

Born on July 10, 1509, he turns 500 this year, and his birthday is the reason that people around the world are pausing to pay him some respect. Born in France, he was a brilliant young man who intended to be a Catholic priest, but ended up entering the field of law. After encountering the writings of Protestant Reformers such as Martin Luther, he had a conversion experience — he said, “God subdued and brought my heart to docility.”

Breaking away from Catholicism, he left France and settled in Switzerland as an exile. In the year 1536, Calvin published one of the greatest theological works ever written, The Institutes of the Christian Religion. This major book of Christian theology begins with God the Creator and ends with reflections on civil government, and it stands as one of the most important expressions of Reformation thought.

Not bad work for a 27-year-old.

Calvin’s writings impressed the people of Geneva, Switzerland, so he was invited to move to that city and help with the reform movement there. Calvin’s workload in Geneva was staggering: He pastored a church and preached daily in it, wrote commentaries on almost every book in the Bible, authored dozens of Christian pamphlets, trained and sent out missionaries, and influenced the schools and the civil government.

I’m not surprised that he suffered from chronic migraine headaches!

The city of Geneva became a magnet for Protestant exiles from all over Europe. One of them, John Knox of Scotland, described Calvin’s city as “the most perfect school of Christ since the days of the apostles.”

So what made Calvin and Geneva so magnetic?

For starters, Calvin emphasized the sovereignty of God, and wrote that “God is Lord over all!” (Institutes, 1.14.3). Sovereignty means supreme authority, rule, power, and independence, and for Calvin, God is sovereign. Calvin stressed that no human being — whether king or bishop — could demand our ultimate loyalty, and his approach attracted people who were suffering under the authority of oppressive churches and governments.

Calvin’s belief in the sovereignty of God has shaped Christian thought through the centuries, and it had a dramatic impact before the Second World War. At that time, in Germany, a group of faithful Germans took a stand against Hitler in a statement of faith called The Theological Declaration of Barmen. They rejected the attempts of the Third Reich to “become the single and totalitarian order of human life.”

These faithful Germans gave ultimate loyalty to the Lord alone. And some were imprisoned and even killed for their beliefs.

Calvin also stressed the importance of grace, and claimed that salvation is possible only through the grace of God. He believed that nothing earthly can save us, and he criticized the Catholic Church for becoming a religion of salvation-by-works. Since God is Lord over all, human beings, human works, and human institutions cannot manipulate or control God in any way. We cannot be saved by anything but the grace of God, which is a completely free gift to those who trust in Jesus Christ.

Punch-lines and Empty Places -- FPC sermon excerpt

A woman was walking down a street and saw a frail and wrinkled old man rocking happily in a chair on his porch. She called out to him as she passed by. “Hello there!” she said. “I couldn’t help but noticing how happy you look. Tell me … what’s your secret for a long and happy life?”

“I smoke three packs of cigarettes a day,” he replied. “I drink a case of whisky a week, eat nothing but fast food, and never, ever do any exercise.”

“Wow!” said the woman. “That is amazing. That must make you really happy! And just how old are you?” she asked.

“Twenty-six.”

For hundreds of years in Germany, Lutheran pastors would begin their sermons on Easter Day with a joke. The custom even had formal title: It was called “the paschal joke.” In the Lutheran tradition, the empty tomb and resurrection are seen as God’s great joke on the world. We laugh and sing because God laughs and sings when he raises Jesus from the dead.

And you know that since every good joke requires a surprising punch-line, the end of the Easter joke includes the biggest shock of all: Jesus … has been … raised!

The problem with today’s resurrection story is that it doesn’t surprise us. It doesn’t shock us. It isn’t even very funny. Mark tells us that on Easter morning, Mary Magdalene and two other women encounter a cold and empty place when they show up at the tomb. It is very early in the morning when they arrive, and after seeing a young man and hearing about the resurrection they go out and flee from the tomb, for terror and amazement have seized them; and they say nothing to anyone, for they are afraid (Mark 16:8).

Terror and amazement have seized them. They are afraid. They are scared by an empty space. There’s nothing funny about it.

As you might imagine, Mary is feeling pretty awful. She has already suffered the crucifixion of her friend and teacher Jesus, and she is mourning his death deeply. Now she goes to his tomb to pay her respects, and what does she find? Nothing. A deserted place.

I think the poet Robert Frost captures her emotion well when he points out that the most frightening of empty places are always close to home. He writes,

They cannot scare me with their empty spaces,
Between stars — on stars where no human race is.
I have it in me so much nearer home
To scare myself with my own desert places.

I bet you know what he is talking about. Mary Magdalene certainly does. Each of us, at some time in life, has to struggle with an empty space, a desert place.

- We feel it when we get the message that we are being laid off, and have to clean out our desk immediately.
- When we open our statement from the mutual fund company, and discover that our investments have tanked.
- When we realize that we owe more on our mortgage than our house is worth.
- When we open the thin envelope from the college admissions office, and learn that we have been rejected.
- When we get the call from the doctor, saying that the biopsy has come back with a cancer diagnosis.
- When a spouse says she is leaving, a boyfriend says he wants to break up, a partner says there is no future in the relationship.

These are empty spaces. Desert places.

Mary and her companions are seized by terror and amazement, and they retreat into silence, saying nothing to anyone. They feel like they have traveled to a space between stars, where no human race is. Yes, it’s true that the mysterious young man in the tomb has said to them, “Do not be alarmed; you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has been raised; he is not here” (v. 6). This is good news — the Easter morning good news of resurrection life. But the women cannot grasp it, at least not yet.

They hear what the man is saying, but it falls flat. They don’t get it. It doesn’t work as a punch-line. It doesn’t cause them to laugh and sing.

And that’s maybe where we are as well, in this time of political uncertainty and economic crisis. We are ready for a good news punch-line, an upbeat report, a story that lifts our spirits and gives us hope. But day after day, we keep hearing news about empty spaces and desert places. The cover of the current edition of Newsweek contains a cross, and in the cross are the words, “The Decline and Fall of Christian America.” It reports that the number of Americans who claim no religious affiliation has nearly doubled since 1990, rising from 8 percent to 15 percent.

In a very real sense, that’s the way life often is. More emptiness than fullness. More decline than increase. More fear than joy. More failure than success. More separation than reunion. Mary Magdalene felt it when she went with her friends to the tomb of Jesus. And so do we.

But suddenly, when we least expect it, here comes the Easter punch-line: “Jesus is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you” (v. 7). The young man in the tomb says that Jesus is alive … but he is moving ahead of us, always ahead of us. He will appear when we least expect it, and surprise us with his resurrection life.

There is nothing predictable about the way that the Risen Jesus will behave. He is going to sneak up on us, just like the funniest of jokes tend to do. You never see the big laugh coming.