September 6 | Moments Almanac | Anabaptist

Welcome to Moments Almanac for September 6th. They called him Blaurock. Bluecoat. He'd been a Catholic priest once, part of a religious world that seemed settled and certain, but somewhere along the way, Scripture unsettled him. On the January ninth, in fifteen twenty five, in a small house in Zurich, Blaurock knelt before a fellow believer and asked to be baptized, not as an infant, but as a grown man confessing faith in Christ for himself. It was illegal. Four years later they tied him to a stake and burned him alive. He never took it back. On september sixth we remember one of the loudest voices of the early Anabaptist movement, a man who discovered that convictions become costly when they stop being ideas and start becoming obedience. Jorg Blaurock was born in fourteen ninety one in what is now Switzerland, educated at the University of Leipzig. He became a Catholic priest, but eventually he left the priesthood, married and traveled to Zurich, where the preaching of Holdritz Zwingli was challenging the established church. But for Blaylock and his friends Conrad Grable and Felix Mann's the Reformation had not gone far enough. Reading the New Testament, they became convinced that baptism should follow personal faith in Christ rather than precede it in infancy. Zurich's authorities ordered otherwise. So on january twenty first, fifteen twenty four, a small group gathered at Felix Mann's home. Blauck asked Grable to baptize him upon his confession of faith. Grable did, and Blauck then was baptized with others. It became a defining moment in the birth of Swiss anabaptism, but it also made them criminals. Blauck became an energetic preacher. He was arrested, beaten, repeatedly, banished, and driven from place to place. His friend Felix Mannz was drowned in Zurich by the authorities in fifteen twenty seven. Still, Blaurock preached. By then, Imperial authorities had made rebaptism punishable by death. In august fifteen twenty nine, Blaurock and his fellow believer Hans Langinger were arrested. On september sixth they were burned at the stake near Clausen. During his final weeks in prison, Blauch wrote hymns. Think about that, with death approaching. He was still trying to give the church something to sing. Acts five twenty nine records the apostles saying we must obey God rather than men. Blauroch discovered how expensive those words could become, but there is something uncomfortable about his story. The first people who persecuted these Anabaptists weren't the enemies of the Reformation, they were fellow reformers. Zwingli and these men had once opened the same Bible and challenged the same religious establishment. They agreed on much until obedience took them in different directions, and perhaps that's where Blaurock's story reaches us. The easiest convictions are to keep the ones everyone around us applauds. The harder ones are the ones that cost us approval, opportunity, friendship, or belonging. We may never stand before a stake, but our Christianity always costs us something. And maybe the question is, would I die for what I believe? Maybe the better question is, what am I willing to lose in order to obey? That's Moments Almanac for September 6th. I hope you'll join me tomorrow. Until then, take heart. Notice the scattered moments and share the grace.