Back in 2017,
at the 500th anniversary of the Lutheran Reformation,
the watch-word going forward for Lutherans
was that we ought to switch from celebrating the Reformation
to commemorating it.
This allowed us to more easily see ourselves as part
of the Body of Christ,
but not the whole thing,
and keeps us from getting stuck in the 1500s,
because ours is a living faith!
This means considering how the Reformation
-was in continuity with earlier Christians,
-the crisis of the Reformation period,
-and the continued relevance of the Lutheran Reformation.
Prayer
It must be stated clearly,
The Lutheran Reformation was Necessary.
After all there was much at stake:
-The practice of selling indulgences
shook peoples’ trust in God’s saving works for them.
-Questions of authority,
both secular and religious,
were up in the air.
-The purpose and point of worship
had become lost on many.
-The identity of our Lord Jesus Christ
had become hidden
by heady words
and arrogant pomp.
And so, Luther and his cohort called the Church to repentance.
-They pointed back to faithful ways of being Christian from earlier ages,
-called out dead ends in Christian thought and action,
-and innovated to see what the Spirit was now doing.
In fact, the Lutheran Reformation continues to be Necessary.
-The ideas the Reformers lived and died for still light our way.
-The Church is always reforming.
-The Gospel the Reformers confessed is still central to life itself.
1 Four centuries before Luther’s time,
the Theologian Abelard had introduced the idea of Limbo,
as a logical category between Heaven and Hell,
to pastorally account for the death of unbaptized babies
—but in the centuries that followed
the idea had grown into a money making scheme
—pay Rome
to get your relative out of the cosmic waiting room…
That was the stock and trade of
indulgence salesmen like Tetzel.
And it terrified people...
made them question their salvation,
slaughtered souls.
So Luther pointed back to St. Augustine,
who affirmed that we are saved by Grace…
Our Salvation,
our Justification,
our being made Right,
comes from God alone,
-we simply trust it to be true,
-live lives leaning into the trustworthiness of God.
And there are still terrified people out there
—people caught in an If/Then paradigm
—if I do this that or the other,
then I am deserving, worthy, safe…
The Religious will toss Tetzel’s shtick at you, “Are you REALLY saved?”
The Secular world will insist you must be a Human Doing
—always on the move,
always striving,
always coming up short…
But, ours is a Because/Therefore God
—Because God is Trustworthy and Kind,
Therefore, we are loved and accepted.
You are saved for Christ’s sake!
You are a human being,
made in the likeness of your beloved parent.
2 In the year 1054 Eastern and Western Christianity split
—ostensibly over doctrine surrounding the Holy Spirit,
and just six decades before Luther’s birth
there were not 1, not 2, but 3 popes in the West…
all this, a crisis of Authority…
The likes of Wycliffe in England
and Huss in what is now the Czech Republic,
urged local neutrality in these battles over authority
and searched for other sources of authority
—ways to discern who rightly upheld the faith.
Luther too searched
for a Mighty Fortress as a buttress for the faith,
and found Scripture as such a foundation.
Scripture experienced as Law and Gospel
—pointing out Injustice and Sin,
and assuring us of God’s unfailing love.
Scripture Alone rang with authority,
as nothing else in his age did.
Since those days,
Scripture has been co-opted in many ways
—everything from The Fundamentals written in 1910,
insisting the Bible to be a science textbook,
to Dispensationalists from Dallas Theological Seminary in 1948,
using it to predict the end of the world,
to all kinds of grave misuses,
upholding kooky conspiracy theories
and treating the Bible
the way a Pagan might treat a Spellbook
—all this, instead of simply letting Scripture be Scripture,
attesting to God’s faithfulness.
3 So often the Church dabbles with power
and finds itself poorer for it…
Some call Constantine’s elevation of the Church
to the status of Roman State Religion,
using it as the glue to hold together his empire,
they call it, the Church’s original sin.
Later, just as Constantine
inserted the State into the business of the Church,
Pope Gregory the Great returned the favor,
amassing secular power around the Papacy,
the Kingdoms of Europe.
Luther, on his good days,
clung to St. Augustine’s enormous work “The City of God”
where he tried to untangle the mess Constantine made
—Augustine tried to differentiate between
being a Roman Citizen
and being a Christian.
Luther described this distinction as the Two Kingdoms,
the Secular focused on Law
—restraining evil and encouraging the good,
the Sacred—the Church,
a messenger always delivering that love letter from God
—the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
Yet try as Luther might,
his ideas on this,
were skewed by the political realities of his day
the sacred authorities trying to assassinate him,
while the secular authorities kept him alive.
Over the ensuing centuries
those questions concerning Politics and the Church
keep coming up.
It is for the American Church’s benefit
that the Two Kingdoms-like compromise
of the Wall of Separation between Church and State, exists.
We can look to Lutherans in Germany in the 1930s,
accepting Nazi control of the Church,
as a cautionary tale.
When partisans ask Pastors
to preach politics from the pulpit,
when they say Churches ought to close up for a Sunday
and instead rally to Make America a Christian Nation
—we ought to remember St. Augustine’s Holy City,
and Luther’s Kingdoms
and Lord Acton famous maxim:
“Power Corrupts,
and Absolute Power
corrupts absolutely.”
4 There was a long history of standardizing worship
—especially by my favorite boogiemen
Pope Gregory and his henchman Boniface.
They squelched the indigenous Christianities
of Ireland and Germany.
Ignoring the simple description of worship by Justin Martyr some 5 centuries before:
We Gather,
Read Scripture,
Partake in the Sacraments,
and are Sent to serve our Neighbor.
Lutherans one generation after Luther
were also beset by imposed standardization of worship;
Lutheran Pastors were being martyred over refusing to comply,
and, before there weren’t any Lutheran Pastors left alive,
they asked the question:
What are things central to the Gospel
and what are indifferent things
—to use the Greek,
what is Adiaphora?
And today,
the Church is spread across the globe
and embraced by so many different cultures.
As such, worship questions go well beyond
“What translation of the Lord’s Prayer ought we use?”
or “What music is catchy?”
or “Green Book/Red Book?”
So, we do well to return to the font
dug long ago by Justin Martyr
—Gather, Word, Sacrament, Sending.
The Central Things that transcend indifferent things,
and we know always illuminate the Gospel.
5. Finally, the church regularly chases after certainty
—proof, not faith,
to understand God,
instead of stand under the cross
and see God as God is.
This was the case with Anselm,
who rolled out proof of God’s existence,
and Aquinas
who embraced a certain type of Greek Logic
as a road into the heart of God.
But there was another route
—St. Francis rebuilt the Church,
then tamed and tainted in so many ways,
by finding God in the least of these
—monks who lived in genuine poverty
—closer to God
than all the academics and politicians.
Luther too, was pushed
by those enraptured by certainty
—people he called Theologians of Glory
—pushed to the margins, like Francis,
and he was transformed
into a Theologian of the Cross.
He found God revealed only there
—in the person of Jesus Christ,
God crucified among us and by us.
And today,
there are still plenty of Theologians of Glory,
pointing to financial prosperity as the key to God’s heart,
and anchoring the faith in all kinds of assumptions
that have nothing to do with what God is really like.
Because,
when God shows up,
it is on the Cross.
If someone tells you that
“Jesus wants you to have a new car,”
or if they insist “God wants you to be ostentatiously religious,”
or if certainty or success is the name of their game,
you are dealing with a Theologian of Glory,
not a Theologian of the Cross.
As we commemorate the Lutheran Reformation let us:
-affirm its necessity,
-remember it as a return to the Church at its best,
and consider its ongoing message to the Church today.
Amen.
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