Pentecost C Acts 2:1-21; Romans 8:14-17

June 3, 2001 The Rev. Beth Ernest

The Fire Begins

On Pentecost Sunday in 1876, one hundred and twenty-five years ago, an "event" was happening in Uppsala, Sweden. The Mission Society of Uppsala, a voluntary group of Christian lay people, asked to borrow the Lutheran cathedral to hold a special communion service. Invited to the communion service would be fellow Lutherans who had made a conscious decision to follow Jesus Christ, and were there with the blessing and recommendation of their parish pastors, pastors who likewise had made a conscious decision to follow Jesus Christ. Among the speakers was to be Lutheran pastor, Paul Peter Waldenström, the famous Greek scholar and editor of The Pietist, a magazine for Christians who wanted more from their faith.

The request to use the cathedral was flatly denied, as was the subsequent request to use the Church of the Trinity. Who were these mission people to restrict communion to people who had a personal, heartfelt faith in Jesus Christ? By virtue of Swedish citizenship, any Swede should be allowed to take communion. After all, by virtue of Swedish citizenship, everyone (except, of course, the small minority of Jews or Roman Catholics) was a member of the church, had been baptized, taught the catechism, had been confirmed, married and would be buried by a Lutheran parish pastor.

Denied a consecrated worship space, Waldenström agreed to hold the communion in the chapel of the mission society. Over three hundred believers were served the sacrament which used the Lutheran communion liturgy. Waldenström was disciplined, and made to give up his office as head of a Lutheran evangelical organization. Eventually, he gave up his Lutheran ordination. The fire that fueled a move to a free church was ignited. But the warm-up had begun a long time ago. (Karl Olsson, By One Spirit, p. 91-2)

What were the issues that led to this Pentecost worship? Why were many Swedish Christians dissatisfied with the state Lutheran church and its clergy? What kind of faith were evangelical Swedes looking for? What changes had occurred in society that made some people break out of the centuries old, unquestioned obedience to the church and voice their own opinions? And what does all that have to do with us?

The answers to these and other questions will be the subject of the next five sermons in a series on Covenant History and Heritage. Today we explore the fire that began this movement called first the Mission Friends, and then the Evangelical Covenant. Next week we look at the Atonement in yet another uproar caused by Waldenström. Then we move Unto a New Land, the story of the migration of Covenanters to the New World and the establishment of the American church. On June 27 we will hear stories which share the vision of where the Evangelical Covenant Church is headed today. And finally, on the first Sunday of July, the music of Nils Frykman will inspire us in a celebration of Swedish hymnody and his Old-Fashioned Love Songs. Certainly, we cannot wallow in details in only five weeks, but we shall try to hit the high spots!

I heard that America’s oldest living man died in his sleep this week at 107 years of age. His life spanned two centuries and two millennia. Think of all the change he saw in his lifetime! Yet, we would have to go back 300 years to get a picture of the rapidly changing world which set the stage for a religious awakening in northern Europe. What changes? The increase in agricultural technology, the spread of the Irish potato which provided better nutrition to farm families, and the introduction of the smallpox vaccine combined to bring about a 40% increase in population in Sweden between 1760 and 1810. (A Family of Faith, p. 11). Another change was the development of industry which would first slowly and then quickly beckon that excess population from the farms to the cities, or to sea and to places where the rigid social structures of the home village were left far behind. Young people who could not inherit a working farm sought permission from their pastor to leave their parish and go off to another to work as hired hands, or leave the country altogether. The new world was described as a rich, fertile land. Poor Swedish farmers dreamed of it as they ploughed their rocky, infertile soil and suffered the vagaries of drought and a short growing season. Their lives were hard, famine was common, and as they thought of the easy life in the new world, they wondered why God would make the life at home so difficult. One way to increase their income was to produce hard liquor, and liquor consumption soared in Sweden, along with the accompanying social ills. Many clergy also supplemented their income with potato brandy production.

A literacy law was passed in 1842 with the goal of teaching a minimal level of reading to the entire populace. Education had always been and remained in the hands of the church. Now, instead of vast numbers of people just reciting the answers to the catechism to the pastor by rote, children were taught to read them, and to read the Bible, and other Christian books and newsletters brought by men called colporteurs, (book sellers) who helped the pastors teach. And you can imagine what happened when people started to read the Bible, as well as other literature. They began to ask questions. They wondered why the parish pastor was on a different social level than they were, when Jesus was humble and poor and never set himself above his followers. They questioned the pastors who drank wine and ate good food, and lived in much better homes than they and enjoyed privileges they would never know and had great power over the common people. Why did many pastors have high-faluting, confusing answers for questions about God, but didn’t seem to live as if they loved God or found any joy in God? Why should they take communion from such a man, a servant of the Swedish king but not necessarily of the heavenly King? And come to think of it, why should they sit next to Olafsson there in the pew and take communion with him, when they knew he was carrying on with a servant girl, had a foul mouth, and had been seen publicly drunk every Friday night for the last five months? Shouldn’t communion be kept for those who choose to serve God, who say "yes" to having him in their hearts? How did just being born in a Lutheran country prepare you to share the body of Christ?

The colporteurs circulated from village to village, from farm to farm, holding meetings and eventually developed into a cadre of lay preachers. Upon occasion, communion was celebrated, a very strict violation of the law for which you could be imprisoned or exiled. With the literature of the colporteurs, common people were introduced to the ideas of men like Wesley the Methodist, and Spener and Francke, two German pietists. The German Pietist movement of the 18^th Century took hold in Sweden in the 19^th century. The basics of that movement are as follows: (and I quote from Karl Olsson’s A Family of Faith: 90 Years of Covenant History):

1. An intensive study of the whole Bible.

2. The spiritual priesthood of all believers.

3. The practice of Christianity, not merely its doctrine.

4. The limitation of doctrinal polemics.

5. An emphasis on practical piety in theological education.

6. Simplicity and directness in preaching. (AFF, p. 8)

These pietist ideas brought the faith down to earth, stressing a heart-felt relationship with Jesus Christ, and caused many Swedes to feel uncomfortable in their strict, cold, conformist churches.

Religious meetings which brought together more than one’s old household and were not in a church building or run by a pastor were illegal meetings. Swedish law considered it dangerous for lay people to discuss scripture or pray together, as they were not trained to do so and could only lead each other astray (The Conventicles Act). Yet, think about it—people were being taught to read. Education brought questions and some degree of confidence in finding answers. Increasingly, such groups formed and provided meaning and devotion in ways formal church services did not. People found they wanted to be more involved in the practice of their faith.

Voluntary organizations of Christians sprang up throughout the early 1800’s. People discovered new interests, like domestic and foreign mission and temperance—a huge issue due to all that hard liquor being produced. Christian newspapers, tracts, and literature multiplied. Attempts were made by the Lutherans to train lay leaders since groups of Christians met whether it was illegal or not, and they learned that if they didn’t, Baptist or Methodist or even Mormon teachings could possibly creep in, as new evangelists arrived in Sweden from abroad. But a tight control was not to be had.

Can you see that all these factors converged to shake up what had been a very ordered society and set the stage for the fire of God to ignite and renew the people of Sweden? Revival swept through the country in the 1860’s, 70’s and 80’s as it did in our own country in the Moody revivals.

At the center of this renewal in Sweden was the idea of conversion, that being a Christian meant making a choice; consciously turning from an old life to receive new life in Christ. This idea hammers at the very walls of Christendom, that is, the idea that one is Christian simply by being born into a Christian society. People caught up in the renewal movement wanted to raise up a fellowship of the converted within the Lutheran church. They weren’t trying to become something else—indeed, they would have been suspicious of people who went off and joined some other denomination—but they did want to see their clergy live faithfully and speak God’s word plainly. They wanted their congregations to be a free society, a fellowship, a covenant of people who chose to be Christians, not a forced community of citizens who were made to follow Lutheran rules and teachings lest they be reprimanded or punished.

And there was something else they wanted—they wanted Joy! The people who influenced the changing theological climate of Sweden had gone a step beyond pietism, which could be a bit austere and legalistic. English Methodist pastor George Scott, who became an important evangelist in Sweden, and Carl Olof Rosenius, a Lutheran layman, had been influenced by the Moravians of southern Germany and Bohemia. The Moravians were people who had joy in their faith, a lilt in their step, and a spirit in their music. In Sweden, ordinary people came together in small groups for Bible study and sharing their faith, and they found this joy. One need only open an old Covenant hymnal to feel that joy with them.

The fire continued. Societies of mission friends sprang up, and for some, began to replace worship. Communion was sometimes served. Common men—tailors, cobblers, farmers, found a voice and began to travel as colporteurs. Many parish pastors became convinced of the need for a closer kind of Christian fellowship. The pen was put to paper and the voice to song, and hymns expressing the joy of Christian faith and the friendship of Jesus were written, often to be played to the accompaniment of guitars. The classes mingled in these democratically organized conventicles, and the fire of God’s Spirit continued to heat up.

Mission friends discussed their similar view of conversion with the Baptists, but could not agree on baptism. They were not willing to forego infant baptism, offering instead the freedom of choice, as the Covenant still does today. Indeed, freedom was a big part of the early Mission Friends, who respected the right of Christians to study God’s word and make their own decisions, as do their counterparts today. By 1878, there were many groups of mission friends who decided to join together to form the Swedish Mission Covenant, uniting for mission in other countries, for evangelization in Sweden, and for the education of pastors and mission workers (SMF Website).

Immediately they started building—a mission to Belgian Congo was soon launched and a theological school in Stockholm was soon completed. The Swedish mission to Congo, later Zaire, and now again, Congo, has helped shape Christianity and health care in that country to this very day and has worked cooperatively with the Evangelical Covenant Church of America, whose formation we shall learn about in the weeks to come.

For today, let’s carry these thoughts with us: What is the nature of the church? Is it a free society of those who choose to follow Christ, or a group of people who identify culturally with the Christian faith? In our country today, we see the confusion that has set in when we talk about being a Christian nation yet is populated by citizens who know nothing of the Christian faith, often believing they are Christian because their parents were, or they were baptized long ago. Such confusion presents unique opportunities to explain the Gospel as a way we consciously choose, and invite our neighbors to examine that choice.

Let us also carry with us the importance of an educated and active laity. Perhaps we cannot imagine what it would be like to be denied access to scripture, to have our opinions not only put down but forbidden, to be told we may not gather in peoples’ homes to discuss religious ideas. But God has given us gifts and invites us to explore and develop them. God has given us faith, and invites us to share that faith in ways that are edifying to the larger community and in more personal relationships. God gives us freedom to use our brains and to sharpen our ability to discern the truth. When we think this way, the role of clergy changes from a theological bouncer at the gate of faith to the encourager and "builder up" of the saints, a very biblical model!

On that first Pentecost, the fire of the Holy Spirit blew through the hall where the early disciples gathered. The church and the world were never the same after that. Centuries later, the fire of the Holy Spirit blew through Sweden, and for many ordinary people, for many educated and skilled people, for many tired and weary people, for many hopeful and visionary people, for many people then and for generations hence, the world was never the same after that. Praise God for it! Amen.

Olsson, Karl A. By One Spirit, Covenant Press: Chicago, 1962.

Olsson, Karl A. A Family of Faith: 90 Years of Covenant History, Covenant Press: Chicago, 1975