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July 9 , 2006 John Hus Sunday

As best we can document, John Hus was born in the year 1369 in the Bohemian village of Husinec , or Goosetown. As was the custom of his day, he was known at the University of Prague as Jon of Husinec, later shorten to Jon Hus, or John the Goose. It is sad that most Americans connection with John Hus today is that his being burned to death is the source of the popular saying “your goose is cooked” for when your luck has run out and you are about to pay for whatever it is you have done or failed to do.

John Hus was born in a family of modest means who could afford him some local schooling. His educational success at the local level allowed him to enter the University and become a Roman Catholic priest. While Hus confessed he initially sought to become a priest for the secure living and “fancy apparel” priests wore, he underwent a gradual but profound conversion experience that led to his martyrdom. You see, John Hus was not a typical medieval Catholic priest whose job consisted of daily praying the Mass in Latin and miraculously turning bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ. And hearing individual confessions and granting the confessee forgiveness of their sins upon completion of the penance he, the priest, imposed. Standing last weekend, in St. Peter's Basilica in Rome, I couldn't get over—even being a former Roman Catholic, how there was not one pulpit to preach the gospel from in that vast space, but there were a dozen or so large wooden confessional booths, marked italio, or francais, or espaniol for pilgrims to receive forgiveness of their sins in the very heart and center of Holy Mother Church. And I confess I was grateful to see in St. Peters all the magnificent frescoes, statutes, tapestries and inlaid gold and silver work purchased and commissioned for from the sale of indulgences. Indulgences is a fancy name for selling tickets into heaven and John Hus fought against this practice. But I digress…

John Hus' full time job was to study and then preach the Gospel in his native Czech language in Bethlehem Chapel—a large auditorium still standing in Prague today. It was in this capacity as a preacher of the Word that in Hus' words: “The Lord gave me knowledge of the scriptures.”

And once that happens you are not the same.

John Hus received the ultimate cross for a follower Jesus Christ that of being killed for being true to that knowledge the scriptures gave him about what it means to be a follower of Jesus Christ.

And as is often the case with martyrs, Hus became bigger in death than in life with far ranging influence as a man who first proclaimed what later Church Reformers echoed: that all doctrines and beliefs must be tested by scripture, and that Jesus Christ, not the Pope, is the head of Christ's church.

As spiritual descendants of John Hus, we Moravians proclaim in our Ground of the Unity “The Triune God, as revealed in Holy Scripture of the Old and New Testaments is the only source of our life and salvation; and this scripture is the sole standard of the doctrine of faith…and therefore shapes our life.”

In one of his writings Hus declares: “From the earliest time of my studies, I sent up for myself the rule that whenever I discern a sounder opinion in any matter whatsoever, I gladly and humbly abandon the earlier one. For I know that those things I have learned are but the least in comparison with what I do not know.”

And like Hus, in Our Ground of the Unity we also confess we are in continual search for sound doctrine, realizing as Hus did, that what we do not know is greater than what we do know. That there are still truths we cannot yet bear to hear, but that Jesus will send us the Holy Spirit, the Advocate, when we are ready and we will know the truth and be set free from our error. Two examples of this are how the Holy Spirit has guided the Church with respect to completely reversing our position on slavery and the role of women in the life of the Church and world.

Hus is most remembered for advocating worship reforms even the Church who burnt him at the stake, eventually adapted over 500 years later at the 2 nd Vatican Council—worship in the native language of the people rather than Latin; hymn singing by the worshippers; and receiving both the bread and the cup for Holy Communion. Reforms that make the worshipper an active participant rather than a passive spectator in worship. Let us continue our worship, our partaking of both the bread and the cup remembering Jesus has promised to be present here with us. And let us be thankful for the courage and faithfulness of John the Goose who first began, what we 591 years later, continue.

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