Luther
October 29, 2017
We were in deep trouble. I, along with two of my best friends, were called into our high school principal’s office. Someone had stuffed pop cans down an open drain and caused the pipes to back up and flood the gym. Did we see who did this? I answered, “Yes.” Could I name who it was, I answered, “No.”
The principal was very angry and threated us with detention and suspension. I told him that I couldn’t tell him because he had a reputation of flying off the handle and being unreasonable. My friends looked at me like my head was on fire and the principal fixed me with an icy stare… and then smiled.
“You’re too honest, Lindon.” He said. “That’s a rare thing.”
Martin Luther never wanted to start a new branch of Christianity, he wanted to tell the truth about the church of his day and age to get it to change. Instead, he launched the Protestant Reformation which resulted in whole new expressions of the Christian faith.
Luther was the son of a miner. He had a contentious relationship with his father. The father wanted to provide his son with the best education. Luther was supposed to study law, but he was a bit superstitious. He was walking home when a powerful storm came upon him. He hid in a ditch and prayed to Saint Anne, saying if he survived the storm, he’d become a monk. He survived, and joined with the Augustinian monks.
Augustinian monks are extreme in their discipline. Lots of fasting, confession, work, and study. Luther took to it like a goose to water. His abbot actually complained about him, essentially saying, “Luther, you don’t have to confess all the time.” But Luther raged with a fierce and troubled conscience.[1] He was very smart. He would confess his sins, and then he would feel pride, which is a sin. So back in the confessional he’d go. He’d come out and then realize that he had only talked about the sins of commission, which are the sins you commit; he did not mention the sins of omission, which are the sins you commit by not doing the right thing in a situation. So back in the confessional he’d go. I’d hate to have been Luther’s abbot.
Luther told his truth all the time. He hated the sale of indulgences. The Catholic church at the time sold indulgences for the renovation of St. Peter’s Cathedral in Vatican City. These are church-sanctioned “Get out of Jail Free Cards” like in Monopoly, only it wasn’t jail, it was hell. And this was for real. The church actually wanted to you buy your way out of hell. The most famous seller of indulgences was John Tetzel, a fiery preacher and chief travelling salesman of indulgences. Tetzel was not the most moral or pious man. Luther saw other rule breakers, like how clergy vowed to remain celibate, but weren’t. How normal people couldn’t read or hear the Bible in their own language, as Latin was the only language the church used. Luther spoke out against fellow clergy and then began translating the Bible into German.
As he was studying the Bible, he had a conversion experience. He wrote about this experience, saying, “At last, by the mercy of God, meditating day and night, I gave heed to the context of the words, namely, ‘In it the righteousness of God is revealed, as it is written, ‘He who through faith is righteous shall live.'” There I began to understand that the righteousness of God is that by which the righteous lives by a gift of God, namely by faith… Here I felt that I was altogether born again and had entered paradise itself through open gates. There a totally other face of the entire Scripture showed itself to me.”[2]
For Luther, it was all about the grace of God gained through faith. Out of that faith, we respond with our actions. We cannot earn grace, we cannot buy our way into heaven. There is nothing we can do to earn God’s love. We only have faith in it, and then out of that faith we act. All of the legalisms of the church of his day reminded Luther of the faith of Jesus’ day. There were all these rules that religion placed on people, but Jesus states in today’s scripture, “Love God with all your heart, soul, and mind and the second is like it: love your neighbor as yourself. On these hang all the law and prophets.”
Jesus isn’t pulling these from nowhere. In the first part, Jesus is reciting the Shema, the centerpiece of the morning and evening Jewish prayer services found in Deuteronomy 6:5. In the second part, Jesus is quoting Leviticus 19:18.
It is here that Luther and Jesus can’t go with the flock. They just can’t do it anymore. So Luther writes his 95 Theses and posts them on the door of All Saints Church in Wittenberg on October 31, 1517. And the thing goes VIRAL. It rails against the abuses of the church. It slams the sale of indulgences. In #50 in the Theses, Luther writes, “Christians are to be taught that if the pope knew the exactions of the indulgence-preachers, he would rather that the basilica of St. Peter were burned to ashes than built up with the skin, flesh, and bones of his sheep.”[3] People go nuts for this! It creates a political fire storm which continues to burn 500 years later.
Luther continues to tell the truth. He writes of the distinction between a theology of glory and the theology of the cross. The theology of glory calls evil good and good evil. It presents itself as a full and complete account of reality, leaving little if any room for debate of difference of opinion and expecting of their adherents unflinching belief and loyalty.[4] It’s about power and control. All you need to do is say the right words, and obey. That’s it. No thinking required.
The theology of glory builds itself up, making huge buildings and rich clergy. The antidote to this is the theology of the cross which permits doubt and self-criticism to play a vital role in faith. Central to the Theology of the Cross is the primacy of love; the demand for justice, especially toward the underprivileged; the insistence upon forgiveness, and a prophetic orientation toward truth and a vigilance against hypocrisy and oversimplification.[5] Luther lifted these virtues up, even as he failed at them. Luther was brash and wrote against his enemies which also included a tract called “On the Jews and Their Lies” which was later used to justify the atrocities of the Nazis in WWII.
Despite his failings, Luther welcomed debate as he was highly conscious of the complexity and mystery of the world and was rightfully skeptical of systems that explained the world too easily, especially when those explanations were backed up with force like armies, papal bulls, and inquisitions.[6] His resulting work is paradoxical and not systematic like Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion, which builds brick-by-brick. Luther had a dim view of humanity, thinking us completely fallen, even human reason. Our only hope was an imperfect faith in the perfect grace of God. His style is very personal, writing about the inner state of the soul, which Calvin has little to say about. Luther is also more moderate than Zwingli, especially in the sacraments. While Luther and Zwingli agree that there are only two, baptism and communion; Luther takes the stance of Consubstantiation, meaning the spirit indwells the communion elements; they are more than a sign and symbol as Zwingli thought, but not the actual body and blood of the Catholics.
Luther marries, has children. He produces a mountain of work. His translation of the Bible in German comes out and it shapes the language and the culture of Germany. In telling the truth he started the Reformation which was never his intention. He wanted to reform the Catholic church, he didn’t want to break off from it. Yet that’s what happened.
Luther is the daring trailblazer for the movement, Calvin was the careful thinker who bound the various Protestant doctrines into a cohesive whole. Zwingli is the unsung hero who took Luther to the next level and sought to free the church from idolatry and point directly to Christ our Lord.
Luther gives me hope because we don’t have to be the best, smartest, or even the bravest leader… sometimes all you have to do is tell the truth. Telling the truth shapes the world. I wonder why we don’t. Maybe it’s because we’re 70% water, and water takes the path of least resistance. We don’t want to rock the boat. But what if we’re not in the fishing boat of Christ like we think but instead in a pirate ship that’s plundering the poor? That boat deserves to be rocked. Tell the truth. Start small. Maybe it’s speaking up against bullying. Maybe it’s listening to another tell their truth. This past month, the hashtag #MeToo was been trending, posted by women who have been sexually harassed or sexually assaulted to raise awareness of just how wide-spread the problem is. Telling the truth is a powerful thing. Maybe if someone is making fun of someone else, just speak up. Start small. Who knows what the Spirit will do!
May we try to live ethically. May we try to root out any corruption in our life together. May we sink the plundering pirate ships and return to the humble fishing boats of the early church. And in all things, give thanks to God.
I think the quote that best sums up Luther and is applicable to us all is one by Shane Claiborne, “Being a Christian is about choosing Jesus and deciding to do something incredibly daring with your life.” Luther was daring just by telling the truth. Mistakes were made. Yet he managed to rise above and point others to a more authentic Christian life that what was being offered by his time and context. May the same be said of each one of us. Amen.
Works Cited
Gonzalez, Justo L. The Story of Christianity, Volume 2: The Reformation to Present Day. Harper One, 1985.
Hall, Douglas John. The Cross in Our Context; Jesus and the suffering world. Augsburg Fortress Press, 2003.
Janz, Denis R. A Reformation Reader: Primary Texts with Introductions, Second Edition. Fortress Press, 2008.
MacCuloch, Diarmaid. The Reformation: A History. Penguin Books, 2003.
[1] Luther’s own words, found here: https://www.monergism.com/thethreshold/sdg/MartinLutherConversion.pdf
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