Trying To Avoid Geneva

Trying To Avoid Geneva

He went where he didn’t want to go.

IN 1536 John Calvin no longer felt safe in his native France, so he left for Strasbourg, a free city situated between France and Germany that had declared itself Protestant. On his way there he stopped for the night in Geneva, Switzerland. Just two months earlier Geneva had given its allegiance to Protestantism as a result of the labors of William Farel, who had been ministering there for three years. That evening Farel met Calvin and immediately asked him to join in leading the church in Geneva. Calvin declined, saying he wanted to go to Strasbourg to study and write. Farel thundered at him that unless Calvin joined him in Geneva, God would bring down curses upon him. Somewhat intimidated by Farel’s pronouncement, twenty-eight-year-old Calvin agreed to stay, even though his preference was to go on to Strasbourg.

Calvin’s initial stay in Geneva, however, was short. In January 1537 Geneva’s Council of Two Hundred zealously enacted a series of ordinances prohibiting immoral behavior, gambling, foolish songs, and desecration of Sunday with no thought as to how they would be enforced. In July the council ordered all citizens to assent to a confession of faith. In November the council ordered banishment for anyone who refused to swear to the confession. This was more than the man on the street could stomach, and in the city council election three days later, a majority of anticlerical councilmen were elected.

The new city council and Calvin and Farel locked horns when the council ordered the two pastors to administer the Lord’s Supper to everyone, regardless of their spiritual condition. On Easter while preaching in separate churches, both Calvin and Farel announced that they would not give the Lord’s Supper to such a rebellious city. Many in the audiences drew their swords, and without the aid of friends, neither pastor would have made it safely home.

The Council of Two Hundred met the following day, April 22, 1538, to decide their fate. The meeting stretched into a second day, at which time the order was given to Calvin and Farel to leave Geneva within three days. Farel went to Neuchâtel, and Calvin returned to his original plan and went to Strasbourg.

In Strasbourg Calvin became pastor of the Church of the Strangers, a French refugee church. There he met and married Idelette deBure, the widow of an Anabaptist. Calvin was content in Strasbourg and probably would have spent the rest of his life there had it not been for the Roman Catholic cardinal’s efforts to bring Geneva back into the fold of the Catholic Church. In 1539 the cardinal wrote to the Genevans, inviting them to return to the pope. No one in Geneva felt qualified to answer the letter, so it was sent to Calvin to respond, which he did very effectively.

Meanwhile Geneva was not doing well in his absence. A new election had placed the city government back into the hands of friends who feared that the only way to save the city from anarchy was to bring Calvin back. As a result, in October 1540 the Council of Two Hundred voted to invite him back to Geneva.

Once again Calvin’s personal desire was not to go to Geneva. He wrote to a friend, “There is no place in the world which I fear more; not because I hate it; but because I feel unequal to the difficulties which await me there.” And once again it was through the counsel and persuasion of Farel, who himself was not invited back, that Calvin was convinced to return.

He returned to Geneva in September 1541 and ministered there the rest of his life, making Geneva the center for the Reformed faith.

Reflection

John Calvin spent most of his life in a place where he would rather not have been. Yet he was convinced that God wanted him in Geneva, so that is where he ministered. Do you put geographical limitations on where you will serve God? We will always be happiest when we are in the center of God’s will, regardless of where that may be.

With my authority, take this message of repentance to all the nations, beginning in Jerusalem.

Luke 24:47