The Word Above All: Zwingli’s Legacy in Zurich

🏔Zwingli and the Swiss Reformation

Reformation Series – Article 10

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The Reformation of the Pulpit

If Luther’s Reformation began with a hammer strike, Zwingli’s began with a sermon.

On New Year’s Day, 1519, in the city of Zurich, a young priest stood before his congregation, opened his Latin Bible, and began preaching from Matthew 1:1.

Not a passage chosen by the lectionary, not a message prescribed by Rome — but the first verse of the New Testament, preached in the people’s language, explained line by line, verse by verse.

The city grew still. The people leaned in. The Word spoke.

That morning, the Reformation in Switzerland began not with protest, but with proclamation.

Zwingli’s pulpit replaced papal decree; exposition replaced ritual repetition. And as the Word of God rose over Zurich, idols began to fall.

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The Word That Reformed Worship

Zwingli’s conviction was as clear as it was uncompromising: “Whatever lacks the Word of God has no authority.”

He believed that reform must begin not with human ingenuity, but with Scripture rightly preached and faithfully obeyed.

As the months passed, his sermons began reshaping the city.

Indulgence sellers fled Zurich. Relics were removed from sanctuaries. The Mass — long treated as a repeated sacrifice — was restored as the Lord’s Supper: a covenantal meal of remembrance and thanksgiving.

Worship returned to simplicity — the Word read, sung, and preached. Congregations prayed and sang psalms in unison. Zwingli stripped away the spectacle to reveal the Savior.

“Those who worship Him,” Jesus said, “must worship in spirit and truth” (John 4:24).

Zwingli’s reformation was that truth rediscovered.

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The Marburg Colloquy: When Reformers Collided

In 1529, Zwingli and Luther met face to face at the Marburg Colloquy, hoping to unite the Reformation’s scattered movements.

They agreed on nearly everything — Scripture’s authority, salvation by grace, faith alone, the priesthood of all believers. Fourteen points of unity, one point of fracture.

That final point was the Lord’s Supper.

Luther held to the real presence of Christ “in, with, and under” the elements — a mysterious but tangible union.

Zwingli believed Christ was truly present — but spiritually, not physically. To Zwingli, the Supper was a covenantal sign, a visible sermon of invisible grace.

The meeting ended with tension, not triumph.

But history would show that both men were striving to honor the same Christ — one emphasizing mystery, the other meaning. Both wanted the table to belong to the people, not to the priests.

Even the Reformers, it seems, needed grace to reform their unity.

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The Pastor and the Soldier

Zwingli’s courage was not confined to the pulpit.

In 1531, when political tensions erupted into war between Catholic and Protestant cantons, Zwingli marched with his flock as chaplain and soldier. He believed a shepherd should not flee when his sheep faced danger.

At Kappel, he fell — a Bible in one hand, a sword in the other. He was forty-seven.

His body was desecrated by his enemies, but his legacy could not be silenced.

In Zurich, the Reformation lived on under Heinrich Bullinger, who continued his mentor’s work. In Geneva, John Calvin would take Zwingli’s principles of Word-centered worship and theological clarity and build them into the framework of a Reformed world.

Zwingli’s death was not defeat; it was seed.

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The Word Above All

Zwingli’s enduring gift to the Church was his unwavering conviction that the Word of God must rule the Church of God.

He gave the Reformed tradition its backbone — worship shaped by Scripture, not sentiment; doctrine anchored in revelation, not ritual.

Under his influence, Zurich became a beacon of reform — not through revolt, but through revival by the Word. Printing presses multiplied sermons and catechisms. Preachers were trained, congregations equipped, families reformed.

From Zurich to Geneva, from Geneva to Scotland and beyond, the cry spread:

“Preach the Word.”

When the pulpit was reclaimed, the Church was reformed.

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Legacy and Lessons

Zwingli was bold, brilliant, and at times too brash. He could speak with the sharpness of a sword and the zeal of a prophet. Yet his passion was holy: to see Christ’s voice, not man’s, govern the Church.

His reformation began with a sermon and ended with a Scripture — the same Word in both his hands and his heart.

The Swiss Reformation reminds us that reformation begins wherever God’s Word is opened and believed, whether in a cathedral or a kitchen table.

The Reformation in Zurich began not with a sword, but with a sermon.

And it continues wherever preaching is prized above personality, and truth above tradition.

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Application

Personal: Submit every thought, decision, and desire to the authority of Scripture. The Christian life is reformation lived daily.

Ecclesial: Let preaching lead the Church. When the pulpit is governed by the Word, the people will be governed by grace.

Cultural: Reform begins not in rebellion, but revelation — when truth confronts comfort and the Word is allowed to speak again.

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The Last Word

While Luther’s hammer struck Rome’s theology, Zwingli’s pulpit reformed its worship.

He taught the Church to listen again — not to councils or ceremonies, but to the voice of God.

In Zurich, the Word rose and idols fell.

In Geneva, it would take root and build a new world.

And in every faithful pulpit today, that same Word still speaks, still reforms, and still sets hearts ablaze.

✒️ The Pilgrim’s Post