Nicolas Cop Out

The gorgeous solemnities of the day wound up with a horrible autodafé of six Protestants: they were suspended by a rope to a machine, let down into burning flames, again drawn up, and at last precipitated into the fire. They died like heroes. The more educated among them had their tongues slit. Twenty-four innocent Protestants were burned alive in public places of the city from Nov. 10, 1534, till May 5, 1535. Among them was Etienne de la Forge (Stephanus Forgeus), an intimate friend of Calvin. Many more were fined, imprisoned, and tortured, and a considerable number, among them Calvin and Du Tillet, fled to Strassburg.

This is how one historian summarizes the context under which John Calvin wrote the first edition of this cool calm three hundred page exposition of the Gospel. He is in exile from his own country and in danger of losing his life because he helped write an inflammatory speech delivered by his friend and professor, Nicolas Cop. As is often stated by scholars, Calvin did not leave with Cop right after he delivered this inaugural lecture to the University faculty. Calvin got out of town the night before. (Smart man!) In the speech Cop presented a case for the Protestant reforms. You might say that Calvin, choosing the best side of valor, Copped out.

As for me, I just learned last week that an angry mob of twenty or so again middle-class, middle aged men and women are meeting secretly in comfortable living rooms to talk about others in the congregations who desire to change from one Presbyterian denomination to another. While they are strategizing to keep control of the future, they are only incidentally criticizing me for stirring up discontent and writing about their particular sin the congregation's weekly newsletter that has a circulation of around 200 readers.

 

They have become in league with a committee in my presbytery who had the authority to remove me from this pastorate if they can find evidence that I am fanning the flames of discontent and thereby fomenting schism.  This process can also take away my ordination as a minister of the Gospel. Worse than that, they can blame me for the congregation splitting in two. I trust the reader will draw the clear analogy between the mobs in Paris and my harrowing battle with the forces of complacency and petty bickering.

This morning, while standing in the shower, I took a quick but thorough inventory of all my limbs; they remained attached to my body. My back was free from the wounds associated with flogging. My neck had no rope burns. My head was affixed to neck, which was attached to the rest of my aging body. I checked the church calendar for the forseeable future and a torturous death at the hands of an angry is not mentioned.

I stand to lose my chosen career after more than three relatively peaceful decades pursuing it. Instead of leaving with a few books, little money in my purse, and only one change of clothing, as many of the refugees in Calvin’s day did, I might lose a few thousand dollars a year from my otherwise modestly generous pension and will be barred from ever being a Presbyterian pastor again. It is not the gallows I face. It is a reasonably comfortable retirement taken a couple years before I had planned to take it. It is a future in a hostile denomination that no longer wants my services or a reasonable faithful denomination that does not need my services. 

Being the petty little narcissist I am, fit only to be called a Christian by God’s mercy and finished work of Jesus who purchased my full pardon, I am anxious about my prospects and depressed by the state of my suffering. OOOOOh, people are meeting in secret saying unflattering and mostly untrue things about me. OOOOh, scary, scary, they are hoping to blame me for dividing of a lack luster congregation that has been in a carnal power struggle between a number of egotists for decades before I even knew the congregation existed. Even when they were under no stress, they ate up and spit out the past seven pastors who tried to lead them into deep spiritual waters.

John Knox of Scotland was arrested, banished, and sentences to a prison ship where he rowed while chained to a bench, deep in the bottom of a ship. I stand with him in his persecution. (Reader, please note that this is scarcasm.) I am not able to show physical wounds but my self esteem been under constant assault and I have lost many a sleepless night worrying about my career and my pension.

What do I learn from Nicolas Cop? Very little, I’m afraid. Like me his heart was right but he settled for a comfortable life over against a life of richer meaning and faithful witness for the truth. At forty, while serving the royal family as their personal doctor, he dies too young, but not as one who had his life taken at the hands of angry wicked men. His life had a season of courage sandwiched between years of mundane accomplishments.

This imbalanced proportionality of perceived sacrifice for the entire “Renewal Movement” with the Presbyterian Church (USA) needs to be recognized by congregations who lost their property and ministers who lost their jobs. Suffering Christians throughout the world today, are testifying for Christ. This is costing them their lives, their family, and their possessions; but, it is not costing them their faithful witness. No one or nothing can take that from us, we must willing remain silent for our Christian witness to end. Even given the coward I am, "For Zions sake, I cannot be silent; for Jerusalem's sake I cannot be still."