Eph 2:1-10

Martin Luther. He had always seemed to me to be a one-dimensional figure standing in time, a statue of a portly body, a round serious face and funny little hat. I pictured him standing in one of two positions - at the wooden door of an ancient cathedral, hammer and nails in hand, posting on that door his opinion about the state of the church or five years later standing before an austere church body, feet firmly planting in his convictions, announcing, “Here I stand. I cannot, I will not recant. God help me. Amen.”

But then Oran and I had the opportunity several years ago to go to Wittenberg, Germany to see the cathedral where he posted his concerns and the pulpit where he preached, to peek into the house where he lived and see the table where he taught students. He became more real. Martin Luther was a very interesting and sometimes irascible man, the father of the Protestant reformation. I tell you this today, because we are observing Reformation Sunday, a day when the religious world made a major shift.

It all started in 1505. Luther was traveling from his home to the university at Erfurt, Germany. He was thinking about what I’m sure every college student is thinking about. He was thinking, “Will I be acceptable if I were to appear before the Judgment Seat of God?” Suddenly as if to answer his question, a violent storm came up and a bolt of lightning struck. He was thrown to the ground breathless and terrified. He began to bargain for his life. “St. Anne, help me. (St. Anne was the patron saint of college students.) Help me, St. Anne, and I will become a monk.” She did, so he did.

Such bargaining doesn’t make him unusual. Many of us when we get in a tight place want to make some kind of deal with the heavenly powers that be and then promptly forget our end of the deal when things are in order again. What was so unusual was that Luther, as a young man of great character, carried out his promise. To the anguish of his family who wanted him to become a wealthy lawyer, Luther took the monk’s vows of poverty.

It was a troubling time for Luther. He said goodbye to family and friends and all worldly possessions and entered the cloistered life. Even as a monk, he felt the terrible weight of his sins; he had repented of his sins but found it impossible to believe that he was truly pardoned. And the Prince of Darkness Grim - death - caused great trembling for him, hovering around every corner. Jesus Christ was pictured as the terrible judge ready to send the unfaithful into eternal damnation. Being a monk, you see, was considered a sure way to heaven, with preferential treatment at St. Peter’s Gates. Christians of that day believed that monks who lived an austere life in this would know eternity of bliss in the next and would watch the damned suffer everlasting torment. (I don’t know about you but that would not be my definition of heaven. And I doubt that it is God’s.)

Martin Luther’s first acute religious experience came with the terror of a lighting bolt. The second was like a bolt of lighting; he was saying his first mass and he realized that he was in the role of celebrating the very service by which God would appear in earthly form. He felt the terror of the Holy. He shuddered at the thought of having stood at the foot of an unapproachable God, of even presuming to approach God.

It isn’t the terror of the Holy but the terror of the unholy that we fear these days We have lost the sense of mystery that overwhelmed Luther in that day. “How can a person abide God’s presence unless that person is also holy?” Luther asked. So he began the pursuit of holiness. Whatever good works one could do to save himself, Luther would do - fasting for days, throwing off all blankets so as to nearly freeze to death, saying prayers around the clock, making daily confessions - sometimes for six hours at a time searching out every possible sin until his fellow monks got tired of him. I mean, really it was too much. I suspect even God thought so.

He sought through indulgences to pay for his sins and seek God’s favor. One day Martin Luther received a special invitation to come to Rome. He had imagined Rome to be the center of both piety and power for the church. What he discovered was that the church of his day was worldly and weighted down by corruption.

Among the church’s practices was the practice of granting indulgences on All Saint’s Day, November 1. On that day, the faithful came to hallow the saints and view their relics, thereby reducing their stay in purgatory for them-selves or others by 1,902,202 years and 270 days to be exact, an indulgence granted by the pope. Roland Bainton, authority on Martin Luther, has called the indulgences “the bingo of the 16th century church.” (Maybe it was the Christmas bazaar of the 16th century church or the annual garage sale of the 16th century) - the way of raising money for the church. We all know that ways of making money for the church can be more sacred than the sacred bones of the saints themselves. You don’t tamper with the church and its money. But Luther dared to tamper with it.

That was 490 years ago this Wednesday, in 1517, on the night before All Saint’s Day - the night of All Hallow’s Eve (from which this season’s festivities gets its name.) Martin Luther posted on the door of his church a rather extensive list of things he wanted to debate with other theologians. And indulgences were on the top of the list. All it took was hammer, nails, a piece of paper and the brilliant mind of a man of God to begin the change that would rock the medieval church.

The Reformation began quite by accident. You see, those ninety-five theses he posted on the door, he only wanted a lively debate- primarily about whether it was right to sell God’s forgiveness. But the printing press had just recently been invented. And you know how it is when the press gets hold of something! It gets spread all over the place. Just as with today’s copy machine, which gives rise to the obsession to copy every piece of paper in multiples or email which makes you want to forward every thought or joke to everyone else, so Luther’s paper was copied many times over. Even the pope got a copy. But the pope didn’t take him seriously.

Yet Luther was taking theology and the Bible seriously. Luther was, by this time, a university professor and a parish priest, living in a strange and wonderful period of history. It was a time in the life of the church and the life of the world when people felt the world was “with devils filled,” where people climbed up the stairs of St Peter’s in Rome and viewed relics as a means to get a few million years relief from purgatory, where the authority of the church and the pope went unchallenged and where salvation was for sale. In this kind of world, Luther took a close look at the matter of trying to buy forgiveness from God. And he took a close look at those words we read from Ephesians, “For by grace are you saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is a gift of God.” He declared that forgiveness is a gift of God and there is not anything on this earth you can do to earn it or buy it. And he began to live less in fear of judgment and more in gratitude for grace.

You can well imagine that what followed Luther’s new understanding and his super-sized post-it on the church door were some rather heated exchanges between Luther and church authorities. They charged him with denying the decree of the pope in the 1300’s that Christ and saints had given the church a treasure of merit. Luther answered with this cute, catchy jingle:

As soon as the coin in the coffer rings
The soul from purgatory springs.

But the church wasn’t into cute catchy jingles. It wasn’t long before Luther ended up before a church council which saw no other course of action than that he should recant his heretical views. We remember his famous, “Here I stand. I cannot. I will not recant.” Because he didn’t, he was banned from the church and from the empire. He became known as the “man who tweaked the nose of the pope.”

Well, we can paint a glorious picture and make Luther a hero, but he wasn’t perfect. Church historian Martin Marty calls Luther flawed and un-adorable. In truth, he was a multi-dimensional person, a real human being with warmth and mistakes, great brilliance and true humanness.

I love this story about how Martin Luther ended up getting married. It was after his ex-communication. Luther had been forced into hiding. During this time he worked on translating the entire New Testament in his mother tongue so the average person would be able to read it. It was while he was doing his extensive Bible study that he began to believe that God had ordained marriage, that even priests should marry. Monks didn’t need to, he said; they had taken a vow of chastity. Priests and nuns could, he believed. In fact priests, nuns and even monks were beginning to marry at this time. Nuns were fleeing the cloisters in large numbers. Some of those nuns, who for theological reasons felt they couldn’t stay in the convent, sought Luther’s help in fleeing. He arranged their escape, which could have gotten him in major trouble right there.

Listen to this plot; it would make for a crazy sitcom. Luther arranges for a butcher to deliver barrels of herring to the convent. The twelve nuns are slipped into the empty covered wagon as though they’re empty herring barrels being returned to the butcher. Now what do you do when you have to go to town with a covered wagons full of fugitive nuns posing as empty herring barrels. You can’t just dump them on the street corner and drive off. Luther feels responsible to find them homes, husbands or positions. There was one nun, Katherine von Bora, a not very pretty twenty-six year- old, former nun wearing the perfume of smoked herring, whose nuptial arrangements fell through and there she is. So Martin Luther decides to marry Katherine. I tell you, if I’d been doing their pre-marital counseling, I’d have probably told them to call the whole thing off. And if I’d been Katherine, I’m sure I would. Listen to his reasons for marrying her, besides the fact that she didn’t have anything better to do. Luther determined to marry

1. To please his father.
2. To spite the pope and the devil
3. To seal his witness before martyrdom (I don’t know what that means, but it doesn’t sound good.)

Are those good reasons, I ask you? But there was a big difference in Martin Luther after he married. For one thing, before his wedding he thought marriage to be a remedy for sin; afterward he learned it was a school for character. And another thing…I suspect he smelled better. Before marriage, he wouldn’t make his bed for a whole year. Just fell into it exhausted every night. But dear wife Katie changed his sheets - and him. This wife of a marriage of convenience became his dearest sweetheart and friend.

In this new role as devoted husband and father, Martin Luther takes on, for me, some qualities most to be revered. He did more than anyone else to determine the tone of family values in Germany that remain to this day. He and Katie had six children and took in eleven orphaned relatives. To pay for all the expenses, they took in student boarders, young students who hung on his every word, sat around the table writing down his every word as if they were juicy morsels of food being dropped into their plates.

Luther had a way with children. This great theologian, scholar, professor, author, renowned preacher and reformer almost always had a child sitting on his lap when he was home. He reminded others that we are called to be like children to enter the kingdom of heaven. One time he said, “Christ has made the children our teachers. I am chagrined that although I am ever so much a doctor, I still have to go to the same school with my children.” He also wisely observed that a wife can do more with children with one finger than he could do with two fists. Now I like this man.

A good Christian educator, he set a pattern for teaching Bible in the home. This man who handled massive theological issues and took on the whole Roman Catholic Church turned his attention to explaining the teaching of the Bible to children. He could retell the Bible with a freshness that made it come alive. As he told of Abraham preparing to sacrifice his son, Katie interrupted saying God would not have treated his son like that.” Luther replied, “Oh, but he did.”

Musician he was, too. He wrote “A Mighty Fortress Is our God” based on Psalm 46, which we read today. There was a long list of hymns he wrote. The father of congregational singing, he had his church practicing singing every week.

One more thing. Although there is no manuscript to prove it, it has long been held that he wrote “Away in the manger.” A grandmother loves him for that. It is also said that he went out one night during the Christmas season and saw a stately evergreen. The stars in the heavens seemed to be perched on top of the tree. Supposedly, the use of lights on Christmas trees began as Martin Luther put candles on the tree to represent for his children the stars in the heavens over Bethlehem at the time of Christ’s birth.

Good to know you, Martin Luther. You reminded the church of the priesthood of the laity, you brought the Bible to us - made it readable and exciting; you got congregations singing hymns (or at least some of them); you set the tone for real family values, and you made Christmas more sacred. You give us hope for the future by showing us that one person who is bold and rooted in God, scripture and prayer can re-form the church, make it vital again. Most of all, you reminded us loud and clear that our salvation is not anything we can buy but is a gift of grace to us through Jesus Christ. A gift of grace through Jesus Christ our Lord. Good to know you, Martin Luther. Good to know you.

Sermon preached by Dr. Charlotte D. Nabors
Central Congregational Church, Dallas, Texas
October 28, 2007