Reformation Day, 1999
SPEAKER: Michael P. Andrus
Today is a holiday for many Americans, but it is a Holy Day for Christians. This is Reformation Day, the 482nd anniversary of the Protestant Reformation. On October 31, 1517, a 34-year-old monk named Martin Luther nailed a treatise containing 95 spiritual concerns on the door of the University Cathedral in Wittenberg, Germany, to protest corruption in the church of his day. That set off a reform movement which produced the Protestant church, a movement to which every one of us is deeply indebted today. Martin Luther is one of the giants of the Christian faith.
Luther lived at the height of the Italian Renaissance. European economies were expanding, some of the greatest art and literature the world has ever seen was being produced at an unheard-of pace, science was emerging from the Dark Ages, and the world was getting smaller. Just 25 years earlier, Columbus had discovered the New World. Michelangelo had just completed the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Leonardo Da Vinci was an old man but was still inventing many of the things we take for granted today–the pump, the transmission, the monkey wrench, the scissors, the machine gun. Progress was being made in nearly every area of human endeavor, but along with that progress, humanism and secularism were pushing God into the background. There are some amazing parallels between Luther’s day and ours.
The Renaissance Church, like the church of many ages, began to reflect its culture instead of moldingit. The Popes became art collectors and library builders, got involved in political issues like the reunification of Italy, and devoted themselves to erecting incredible monuments, like St. Peter’s Cathedral. At the same time, they gave little spiritual direction to the church; in fact, corruption and immorality were common at the highest levels of the church.
For example, the same year Columbus discovered America, Rodrigo Borgia became Pope, adopting the name, Alexander VI. He had at least one child and probably two before becoming Pope, and many afterwards. He issued papal proclamations making his children legitimate and appointed them bishops in the church.
This was the atmosphere in which Martin Luther grew up. Trained as a lawyer, one day he got caught in a terrible lightning storm and vowed to become a monk if his life was spared. He joined a monastery and became extremely ascetic in his drive to find relief for his tortured conscience. In 1510 he was sent to Rome to represent the monastery and came away very disillusioned with the secular tone and blatant immorality he saw in the church. While walking on his knees up Pilate’s staircase, allegedly brought to Rome by the Crusaders, he realized how hopeless were his efforts to find justification through good works and religious rituals.
Two years later, having earned Master’s and Doctor’s degrees in theology, Luther was appointed Professor of Theology and parish priest in Wittenberg. While preparing lectures on the Book of Romans he underwent a major spiritual conversion. The key was the concept of righteousness, which he finally understood as not something God requires of man but something He gives to man. He came to realize that justification is by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone. Nevertheless, he continued to wrestle with the fact of God’s wrath and doubts about God’s grace in his daily life.
Eventually a friend told Luther, “God is not angry with you, but you with God.” That friend pointed to Paul’s affirmations of grace in the book of Galatians, particularly the statement in Galatians 3:11: “Clearly no one is justified before God by the law, because ‘The righteous will live by faith.’” Luther is said to have responded at first, “I can’t believe Paul believed this as firmly as he talks.” Yet gradually the grace of God took root in his heart. Late in life he wrote, “There was a time when I thought about the wrath of God a lot. God help me to never think about it again, but only of Jesus Christ, in whom we see the mercy of the Father.”
While Luther was saturating himself in the Scriptures and giving himself unrelentingly to preaching and teaching the truth, Pope Leo X was beginning to sell indulgences to raise money for St. Peter’s Cathedral. An indulgence promised remission of the temporal punishment for sin, or a shortened time in purgatory, in exchange for a fee. One peddler of indulgences in Luther’s town was known for a poem,
“When the coin in the coffer rings,
the soul from purgatory springs.”
When some of Luther’s own parishioners showed up with indulgence certificates, he hit the ceiling. He went to the University Church and nailed a protest on the door of the church.
This document, called Luther’s 95 Theses, was a series of challenges to the Church to clean up its act. It was written in academic Latin and was designed to stimulate debate in the Wittenberg University community. But within two weeks someone had translated and printed it in German, and it began to circulate far and wide. Within a few months Luther was summoned before the papal court under suspicion of heresy. The Pope issued a proclamation giving Luther 60 days to repent or be excommunicated. He burned the proclamation in the market square of Wittenberg and then threw the entire canon law into the fire. At the Diet of Worms in 1521 Luther was given a final chance to recant. He refused.
Luther was a man of God who reminds me much of the Apostle Peter. He almost always spoke too quickly and often acted before he thought. Everything he did, he did with enthusiasm. He can be accused of brashness, of vindictiveness, of vulgarity, even of obnoxiousness at times, but one can never accuse him of spiritual apathy. Always an activist and sometimes a radical, he urged specific reforms upon his superiors in the church. He was not reticent to question tradition or to challenge the religious establishment. He needled the church over inconsistencies in her theology.
Many of the older people reacted against this rebellious upstart, but his home became a meeting place for young people who admired his candor, became convinced by his logic, and were captivated by his Christ. Luther was heartened by this enthusiastic response from the younger generation. He wrote in the year after his fateful action in Wittenberg, “I now confidently hope that the true theology of Christ which those men who have grown old in their sophisticated opinions reject, will pass over to the younger generation.” Young people should hold this man up as a hero.
Luther was not only a courageous reformer; he was also a great theologian, a brilliant linguist and Bible translator, a gifted interpreter, and, not least, a great composer. Of the 371 chorales attributed to Bach, as many as 45 were written and/or composed by Luther. So significant was his contribution to sacred music that a Jesuit priest who opposed him asserted that Luther had murdered more souls with his songs than with his sermons. I think we would say he saved more souls with his songs than his sermons.
Luther’s greatest chorale was “Ein Feste Burg.” He broke tradition by writing it in the vernacular and in the major key so that the common people could sing along with joy and confidence. Its theme song, A Mighty Fortress is Our God, is a tribute to the grace of God. Let’s sing it in the only manner that is fitting, by standing.
DATE: October 31, 1999
Tags:
Reformation
Luther