David Teems - Godspeed: Voices of the Reformation

GODSPEED

A DEVOTIONAL BY DAVID TEEMS

GODSPEED
VOICES OF THE REFORMATION

Copyright 2017 by David Teems

All rights reserved.

No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, except as may be expressly permitted by the 1976 Copyright Act or in writing from the publisher. Requests for permission can be addressed to Permissions, The United Methodist Publishing House, 2222 Rosa L. Parks Blvd., PO Box 280988, Nashville, TN, 37228-0988 or e-mailed to .

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been requested.

ISBN 978-1-5018-4715-8

Girolamo Savonarola, May I Love You, Lord, trans. John Donnelly, Review for Religious, vol. 52, no. 2 (March/April 1993): 24146. Used by permission.

Ancient language fonts were developed in the public domain for scholars who comprise the Society of Biblical Literature, including SPTiberian for Hebrew, SPIonic for Greek, and SPAtlantis for transliteration.

17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 2510 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
MANUFACTURED IN CHINA

To those lives discarded, lost, or broken
in the name of God, then and now.
To the disillusioned. To the refugee,
the wanderer searching for home.

Christ is the cause why I love you. Why I am ready to do the uttermost of my power for you, and why I pray for you. And as long as the cause abides, so long lasts the effect: even as it is always day so long as the sun shines. Do therefore the worst you can to me, take away my goods, take away my good name; yet as long as Christ remains in my heart, so long I love you not a whit less, and so long are you as dear to me as my own soul, and so long am I ready to do you good for your evil, and so long I pray for you with all my heart: for Christ desires it of me...

William Tyndale, THE OBEDIENCE OF A CHRISTIAN MAN, 1526

It is a word you might use to bless someone at the beginning of a journey or some new enterprise, often with the anticipation of difficulty or peril. It was William Tyndale, with his 1526 ENGLISH NEW TESTAMENT, who introduced the word godspeed into the English language. Tyndale lived in the shadows of death. Hounded by a very large, widespread, and oppressive religious body, he lived with the understanding that each day could be his last. Yet far from crippling his efforts or restraining his spirit, it gave him clarity and deepened his resolve. It sharpened his natural gifts as well as his aim, proving, as it did with most of the reformers, that Christianity is always at its best when under fire. Tyndale and reformers like Tyndale were alive in ways that were not possible under fairer conditions. He understood that every day was a gift, that every word was a gift, that neither should be wasted. It was an economy many of them lived by.

Their words have magnificent reach. That just means they are relevant. To an uneasy America, to an anxious Western culture, the voice of reform, though white around its muzzle, never ages. It offers comfort, hope, and instruction, today, as it did then. Some of the questions the reformers were forced to ask themselves, we find ourselves asking.

What are we to think?

How are we to proceed?

How are we to reckon our faith against monstrous acts?

GODSPEED addresses these and other questions, though not in the way you might expect. What impresses me the most about reformers like Tyndale, Luther, and othersthough they could be harsh in their attacks on their oppressorstheir words were often cast in more precious metals, and with a higher, more precise focus, offering you and I ways to rediscover a God of love in an uncertain world, to radically rethink life and faith under a new model.

This little book doesnt pretend to be a history, and it doesnt always behave like a devotional. The lives that traffic these pages dont sit quietly by as on a pedestal to receive our praise. That is not how they are tuned. Though they have long earned their retirement, they have more to offer than that. They are a sober lot, and they are fascinating for it. Their voices are flush and immediate and speak to us with an authority and precision only death or the presence of death might liberate in a man or a woman, with power and range to inspire after five hundred years.

In GODSPEED: VOICES OF THE REFORMATION, you will hear primarily from William Tyndale. He has earned center stage. Then there is Luther. The perennial Luther. He can be rather loud. There are the forerunners John Wycliffe and Jan Hus. Thomas Cranmer, Anne Askew, Ulrich Zwingli, the two Johns, Calvin and Knox, queens Anne Boleyn, Katherine Parr, and the great Elizabeth. There are others. My advice is to lean in as you read. I have done my best to amplify their words in the light and warmth they intended, but it is their voice and the life and substance of their words that matter, bidding you with each days entry a warm, heartfelt, and trustworthy Godspeed!

Franklin, Tennessee

WILLIAM TYNDALE

Where the spirit is, it is always summer.

PARABLE OF THE WICKED MAMMON

Living daily with the threat of death liberated the gospel in William Tyndale in marvelous ways, known and unknown to him. It was vibrant, evergreen, weightless, like his English. It made a high music in him. In this passage, Tyndale comes close to saying the unsayable. We are given some sense of his inwardness, the serenity, the possession, the profound hush of his spirit, its soft sparkle. He is aware how close death is. He lives with it, and just outside it. When his heart rose, the English rose with it.

May you know Tyndales summer and the life that fills it, that warms it and gives it light.

The Lorde no dout is a sprete.
And where the sprete of the Lorde is there is libertie.
2 CORINTHIANS 3:17, WILLIAM TYNDALE NEW TESTAMENT 1526