Feast of Richard Hooker

On October 31, 1517, Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses to a church door in Wittenberg, Germany and changed history forever. Churches of various shapes, sizes, creeds, and doctrines celebrated that event this past weekend as October 31st, Reformation Day, fell on a Sunday. Churches born out of the Protestant Reformation include the Lutherans, the Presbyterians, the Congregationalists, the Reformed Churches, and our own, Anglicanism.
Luther didn't start his protests with the thought of beginning a whole new branch of Christianity, instead it was his hope to reform the Roman Catholic Church from within. Ultimately, that proved to be impossible and so Protestantism was born and within it various denominations took hold. In England the battle between the Romans and the Protestants was particularly ugly, and so, in 1559 Elizabeth the First enacted two pieces of legislation known as the Elizabethan Settlement that attempted to assuage a civil war and find a bridge between the Roman Catholics and the Protestants in England. The fighting, of course, continued. It wasn't until the late 1590s that a theologian arose who was smart enough and savvy enough to make the via media, the middle way, make any sense. And even then, the fighting went on.
Richard Hooker was born on or around Easter Day in 1554 and died on November 3rd, 1600. He was ordained a priest in August 1579 and spent his 21 years of ordained ministry serving the Church of England in various capacities amidst some of the most tense controversies in English history. His most important work is the eight volume “Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity,” but the one that really matters, the one that a normal person might take the time to read, though no one in their right mind would preach these days as it would take nearly two-and-a-half hours to cover, is his sermon “A Learned discourse of Justification.”
In an earlier sermon, Hooker said, “I doubt not but God was merciful to save thousands of our fathers living in popish superstitions, inasmuch as they sinned ignorantly” basically stating that he hoped to see many of his Roman colleages in heaven some day. A Puritan preacher took him to task claiming that because the Roman Catholics did not believe in justification by faith, they couldn't get to heaven. In his discourse, Hooker attempts to answer that challenge and argues that just because one doesn't rightly understand the way in which God saves us, it doesn't mean that one cannot be saved anyway.
This is why I like Richard Hooker. He takes to heart Jesus' high priestly prayer when he asks that his disciples might be “completely one so that the world may now that God sent Jesus and loves his disciples just as he has loved his only Son.” It seems appropriate to me that we remember Richard Hooker on the day after one of the ugliest election seasons in history. We have been inundated with attack ads that would lead you to believe every person running for office from County Commissioner to Governor of Alabama is a closet racists who steals taxpayer money and runs around on his or her spouse. It was unbelievable the vitriol. It seemed as though the candidates forgot that their opponents were human beings and saw only an ideology they disagreed with.
In that regard, not much has changed since the time of Luther and Hooker. But thanks to Richard Hooker we have a fighting chance, an opportunity to see God's love in and for those we disagree with. We don't have to get it all right. We won't get it all right, but God loves us enough to look beyond our mistakes and see only the perfection of his Son. God looks past our divisions and calls us to be one body in Christ united by the one Spirit of God. May we be reminded today that we are more than our beliefs and ideologies. May we be reminded that those with whom we disagree are loved and saved by God. And may we be reminded that Jesus prayed that we might be one so that the whole world might come to know the love of the Father.
Spread the Good News. Jesus Christ, the Son of God, unites us and nothing can separate us from his love. Amen.