Brother Martin

Texts: Deuteronomy 26:1-10; Romans 5:1-2, 6-11

​    Today we are celebrating  the Protestant Reformation at 500. Day after tomorrow is the precise 500th anniversary of its triggering event. It was on October 31, 1517, that an obscure  German Augustinian monk, Martin Luther,  challenged the established church  to debate  several doctrines  he found to be  grossly un-Biblical  and  pernicious. Why  is it important for us  to observe this anniversary? Because,  as Scottish historian  Harry Reid puts it,   the Protestant Reformation  brought about  “the dangerous  birth   of the modern world.” 
    
​    We just heard a verse  from Paul’s Letter to the Romans,  that  “the proof of God’s amazing love is this: While we still were sinners Christ died for us. That verse spoke powerfully  to young Martin Luther. It changed everything. Because  he had been schooled in  a totally different reading  of  God’s ways with us. 

    Luther was raised in the piety of the Middle Ages.  This meant that he was continually preoccupied with  his sinfulness,  God’s judgment,  and the problem of  his  personal salvation.  The medieval church alternately played on  people’s hopes and fears:  hope  that they would attain bliss in heaven,  and dread  that they would instead be consigned to eternal punishment in hell.  The sensitive Christian was plummeted  into  a constant state of anxiety.  Young Martin was  a particularly sensitive and troubled Christian.

    In terms of the theology he learned,  he knew  he was in the wrong  before God.  The more he pondered  all he had done  that he ought not to have done,  all  he should have done  but hadn’t,  the more he knew  that God was even more aware of his sin and guilt  than Martin was himself.  Since God is “of purer eyes  than to behold iniquity,”  Luther could come to only one conclusion:  Before God,  he  didn’t stand  a chance.

    Now, the medieval church had a solution for Martin’s problem:  You could become “justified” – that is law-court language; it means  you could be  acquitted – (acquitted)  by doing certain  beneficial things  to make yourself  more pleasing to God.  You could be justified before God, the judge,  by doing  good works.  And there were many “works”  that a medieval Christian could do.  But most valuable of all, you could  elevate yourself, not remaining an ordinary, run-of-the-mill Christian.  Instead, you could become a nun  or a monk.  And that is what young Martin did. Here is how it happened.

    When he was a teenager,  one night  he was terrified during a thunderstorm.  Lightning struck nearby.  Fearing for his life, and even more  for his soul,  Martin Luther  fell on his knees, and cried out a vow to God  that he would take holy orders – would become a monk – if he was spared.  He was.  And off to the monastery he went.

    At first, Martin felt at peace.  But his turmoil returned  when he led his first mass.  He was suddenly stupefied in recognizing  that he, a puny, guilty creature,  was daring to address  Almighty God.  At once, he redoubled his efforts to become more worthy.

    There were other “works”  that a Christian could do.  You could do  charitable acts.  You could pray  special prayers, and beat on yourself – whip yourself – mortifying your flesh.  You could  go on pilgrimages.  You could fast.  So  Martin  did all that.  But still  felt no relief.

    He turned to the sacrament of penance for help.  And when Martin placed his hope in penance,  he did it with all his might.  He would confess his sins  for six hours at a time.  His confessor once became so exhausted  that he cried out through the screen:  “Brother Martin,  if you are going to confess so much,  why don’t you go out and do something worth confessing?  Why don’t you  kill your father or mother,  instead of  trotting out  all these  baby sins?”

    So for Martin, doing  “good works” just  didn’t work.  No matter how much he did,  the nagging questions remained:  Have I done enough?  Shouldn’t I have done more?  Am I worthy of forgiveness yet?  Martin couldn’t be sure.  He was worse off at the end  than  he had been  at the beginning.

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    Martin Luther’s problem  stemmed from the church’s theology.  It could be a problem also for some of us, emphasizing “good works”  as much as we do.  For instance,  consider tonight,  when a number of us  will be feeding  fifty homeless neighbors  through PADS.  But I trust  that none of us believes  that, by  doing  loving deeds,  we are somehow  saving ourselves.  That misunderstanding – the oppressive error of “works righteousness” – was what Brother Martin  aimed to help us  get over.

    Here’s how it happened for him:  Martin Luther finally discovered,  through  his long spiritual struggle,  that he himself  could do nothing  about his problem,  and that God  had done everything.  He rediscovered  Amazing Grace.  It was in the fall of 1513 – when he was teaching  Bible classes, first on the Psalms, and then on Romans – that he found the answer.

    In the Scriptures, he found  that God  is the gracious, merciful God,  that God  does not require  that we first become  worthy people  before  loving us,  but that God loves us  even when – even though – we don’t  deserve it.  God  loves  the un-worthy.  “While we still were sinners,  Christ  died for us.”  

A great burden  was lifted off  of Martin Luther’s shoulders.  The oppression of his soul, of his life,  dissolved.  In and through the Bible, and particularly  in the letters of Paul,  he rediscovered  the heart of Christian faith:  “While we still were sinners,  Christ  died for us.”  

    And so,  on October 31  in 1517,  Brother Martin  walked to the front of the castle church at Wittenberg, in Germany,  and tacked up on the cathedral doors  ninety-five theses – ninety-five arguments – that he wanted to bring to church leadership’s attention  for debate  and  for the potential  re-formation of the church’s teaching.  The medieval church  wasn’t ready for his message.  Not then.  Although it is  now.  And we are  its liberated  inheritors  and beneficiaries.     

Now, let me be clear. Luther’s  argument  was with  the medieval church, not the current  Roman Church. Contemporary Catholicism  has learned  from the Reformation. So much so  that, in our time,  among the most  eloquent proponents  of  justification by grace through faith  have been  Hans Küng  and Henri Nouwen,  both  theologians of the Roman tradition.

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    Now, I realize,  all that I have said  may come across  as a mere  church history lesson. About  the past. But it’s much more than that. Luther’s gains  are always  at risk. Christian  self-satisfaction  and complacency  can always tip us  into  works-righteousness.  But even more,  the Reformation story is germane  because  we  are in a similar time  right now.

Phyllis Tickle, in her important little book, The Great Emergence, says  that about every 500 years  the Church  finds it necessary to hold a giant rummage sale. It has to clean out the attic.  Some things are important to keep. But  the church needs to dispense with  things that used to be treasures, but no longer are, are no longer  are compelling. The practices and customs of older generations  have lost their traction. The new  must be allowed to emerge.  500 years before the Protestant Reformation, there was the Great Schism  when East and West came apart,  Orthodoxy separating from Catholicism, Byzantium  from Rome. 500 years later, “the dangerous birth of the modern world”  what we call  the Reformation. And now, 500 years after that,  we are in a new time of  great upheaval. The certainties of modernity  have fallen apart.  We find ourselves in a post-modern era.  The Christian mega-narrative no longer holds sway in our culture. The verities and pieties  with which  many of us were raised  are  no longer persuasive. Just one example,  what did everybody do  on Sunday mornings  sixty years ago  when Trinity UCC began?  Well, that time  is over.  Habit and duty  no longer serve.  What now?  How shall we  reinvent ourselves?  Or better,  how might God’s Spirit  reinvent us?

    There are probably  two main ways of looking at this cultural transition. We can see it  as tragedy. Or  we can see it as challenge and opportunity. God-given  challenge and opportunity. Our tradition helps us here. Theologian Paul Tillich extracted from our history  what he called  “the Protestant Principle,”  which is   that we are  finite, not infinite;  mortal, not immortal; sinners, not saints; fallible, not infallible.  Protestantism, at its essence,  is a protest  against  any absolute claim  made  for  a relative reality.  We are “The Church, Reformed, and [thus]  always  re-forming.”  Being re-formed.  The Reformation  must  continue.  Which really  is our guide  here at Trinity UCC  with  all these things are before us  in a transitional time.

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Now, this wasn’t exactly the sermon  your stewardship committee had in mind  for this season. We dedicate our pledges for 2018  two weeks from today.  So let me pause  with a brief aside.  Martin Luther used to say  “There are three conversions necessary:  the conversion of the heart,  the mind,  and  the purse.”  The third conversion, he suggested, may be  the most difficult one.  Now,  does that mean  our pledges for Christ’s ministries through the church  are means  to our salvation?  No.  That would be  “works righteousness.”  That Luther struggled  to overcome.  No. Our giving  and our pledges express our gratitude to God.    

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In conclusion, I have a gift to share with you.  It’s the mature Luther’s definition of faith.  This is what Christianity  became for him  after he had re-learned  God’s love for us  beyond what we are, and despite how we are.  “Faith,” he wrote,  “[Faith]  is a lively, reckless confidence  in the grace of God.”  Can you remember that.  It’s worth committing to memory. Can you say it with me,  Luther’s definition  of faith?  “Faith  is a lively, reckless confidence  in the grace of God.”  Amen.

- with thanks to Roland Bainton and Robert McAfee Brown