Reformation A

Reformation Sunday, Year A

In the name of the Father, and of the +Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Brothers and sisters who are loved by God and called to be saints: grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

When I announced on social media that I was retiring from Active Duty and heading to seminary, I had a mixture of reactions from my military friends. One in particular, a devout Catholic, immediately engaged me in conversation. We had been in college together but had drifted apart after graduation. While Facebook certainly reconnected us, it was this announcement that rekindled our friendship. We’re now better friends than we were in college.

As he asked me questions about my process to becoming a pastor, 2 things became clear: 1) he very much wants me to convert to Roman Catholicism (he still does), and 2) he had been taught about Luther and the beginning of the Reformation very differently than I had. No surprise there. Since the very first conversations we had on the subject, we’ve come to a place of mutual respect, and we learn from each other… something I think Christians of all stripes need to do better. He and I may differ in our theology, but we do so in Christian love and brotherhood. I call him my favorite papist, and he calls me his favorite heretic. It works.

Last week he asked me a question about Luther’s 95 Theses, and I realized it had been probably since seminary since I’d read them. So, I went back and reviewed them again. I’m guessing most of you haven’t read them recently, if ever. It wasn’t required for my Confirmation Class. I don’t imagine many adult Sunday School classes study them. And that’s ok. They weren’t written for that. They were written for academic, scholarly debate. They were written to raise attention to what Luther considered abuses of power in the church, specifically about indulgences: this was a piece of paper, signed by the Pope, that guaranteed salvation for you or a loved one, even someone already dead, if you paid money to the church. “As soon as a coin in the coffer rings, the soul from Purgatory springs”… as the saying went. Please keep that in mind for the next few minutes.

In recognition of Reformation Day, I want to talk about Luther’s 95 Theses. No, I’m not going to read them all to you this morning. But I do want to read the first few and the last few. This is, after all, the document that started it all.

Out of love for the truth and from desire to elucidate it, the Reverend Father Martin Luther, Master of Arts and Sacred Theology, and ordinary lecturer therein at Wittenberg, intends to defend the following statements and to dispute on them in that place. Therefore he asks that those who cannot be present and dispute with him orally shall do so in their absence by letter. In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, Amen.

When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said, “Repent” (Mt 4:17), he willed the entire life of believers to be one of repentance.

This word cannot be understood as referring to the sacrament of penance, that is, confession and satisfaction, as administered by the clergy.

Yet it does not mean solely inner repentance; such inner repentance is worthless unless it produces various outward mortification of the flesh.

The penalty of sin remains as long as the hatred of self (that is, true inner repentance), namely till our entrance into the kingdom of heaven.

The pope neither desires nor is able to remit any penalties except those imposed by his own authority or that of the canons.

The pope cannot remit any guilt, except by declaring and showing that it has been remitted by God; or, to be sure, by remitting guilt in cases reserved to his judgment. If his right to grant remission in these cases were disregarded, the guilt would certainly remain unforgiven.

God remits guilt to no one unless at the same time he humbles him in all things and makes him submissive to the vicar, the priest.

The penitential canons are imposed only on the living, and, according to the canons themselves, nothing should be imposed on the dying.

To repress these very sharp arguments of the laity by force alone, and not to resolve them by giving reasons, is to expose the church and the pope to the ridicule of their enemies and to make Christians unhappy.

If, therefore, indulgences were preached according to the spirit and intention of the pope, all these doubts would be readily resolved. Indeed, they would not exist.

Away, then, with all those prophets who say to the people of Christ, “Peace, peace,” and there is no peace! (Jer 6:14)

Blessed be all those prophets who say to the people of Christ, “Cross, cross,” and there is no cross!

Christians should be exhorted to be diligent in following Christ, their Head, through penalties, death and hell.

And thus be confident of entering into heaven through many tribulations rather than through the false security of peace (Acts 14:22).

[taken from the website https://www.luther.de/en/95thesen.html]

So that was the first 8 and the last 6 of the Theses. The rest debate, in great detail, the scope and limits of the Pope’s authority, and the abuse that Luther considers this act of selling a piece of paper to purchase God’s grace and mercy. And to be honest, knowing what Luther wrote in his later years, I’m a little surprised at how respectful Luther is in the 95 Theses of the Pope and the others that he saw as responsible for these abuses. But Luther’s intent was not to divide the church, but to reform it. To correct the errors, corruption, and abuses that he was seeing with ever-increasing frequency. He never anticipated that his post on the door of the church in Wittenburg on that fateful October 31st would change the world so radically and drastically.

When you read the 95 Theses, you can’t help but notice that Luther continually points to Scripture. You see, he recognized that the corruption and abuses he was witnessing were coming from fellow humans, who are, after all, sinners. (Romans 3:23 “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God”) Luther recognized that even the Pope himself was vulnerable to sin, which meant that he had to look to a higher, incorruptible authority - the Word of God.

The Gospel reading for today reinforces that concept: “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” This certainly gave Luther a solid footing on which to stand. The Church could not argue that the Holy Scriptures were wrong; they could only argue Luther’s interpretation. Luther himself would use this to explain to the Roman Emperor himself why he would not take back any of his teachings or his criticism of Rome. Here’s the last part of that speech at the Diet of Worms on April 18, 1521: “...I cannot submit my faith either to the pope or to the council, because it is clear that they have fallen into error and even into inconsistency with themselves. If, then, I am not convinced by proof from Holy Scripture, or by cogent reasons, if I am not satisfied by the very text I have cited, and if my judgment is not in this way brought into subjection to God's word, I neither can nor will retract anything; for it cannot be either safe or honest for a Christian to speak against his conscience. Here I stand. I cannot do otherwise. God help me. Amen.”

In this speech, and certainly in those final sentences, Luther defied the highest secular and religious authorities in the world. This seemingly unremarkable German monk was standing up in front of people who, quite literally, made the law and operated above it whenever they wanted. They could slaughter him in public and be widely celebrated. They could simply make him disappear and no one could have resisted them. Worse, the Church could curse him to hell for eternity… or so they thought. They misunderstood their own authority even as they tried to wield it over him.

In the days that followed, while Emperor Charles V considered whether to arrest Luther and burn him at the stake as a heretic, Luther was “kidnapped” by friends of his and taken into hiding. During that period is when he translated the Bible from Hebrew and Greek into the language of his people - German.

This is how the Protestant Reformation began - with one man standing on the principles of the Holy Scriptures and the incorruptible truth it speaks to the world. I can’t imagine how terrified Luther must have been, to refuse to obey the authority of the Roman Emperor AND the so-called “Vicar of Christ” - the Pope. His boldness in the face of their authority is simply astounding.

By his example, Luther has given all of us the principle that God’s Word is truth, and it is definitely liberating. In order to know this truth, we must abide in it. Another one of those words we don’t really use: “abide”. We often use “to remain” as an alternate, but it’s more than that. “To dwell”, “to endure”, even “to stand” are other meanings for this Greek word as John uses it. Jesus says this in the context of describing not just disciples, but true disciples. How to truly be his disciple? Abide in his word. Remain in his word. Dwell in it, endure in it, stand in it. I daresay if we’re going to be in Christ’s Word with that kind of steadfastness, it’s going to take more than just the boring sermon on Sundays.

In this day and age when the world tells us that there is no absolute truth, but only “your” truth and “my truth”… stand on God’s truth. Otherwise the world will have you twisted in knots. If you are going to stand on the word of God, abide in it, it will mean you have to give it enough time to really know it. You’ll have to do more than just scan it. You’ll have to study it. You’ll have to wrestle with it. You may even have to discuss it with other Christians. But it will take that kind of “being in” God’s Word for all of us if we are to be able to stand against a world that seems to reject God’s Truth with increasing frequency and volume.

When we engaged in the Fresh Eyes for Mission summit, it was, if you think about it, an effort to reform ourselves. As Luther believed that the Church should be in a state of continual reform, I think he would have been pleased by our efforts. Our first Vision Point: Be a Great Commission Church, is going to demand that we grow as disciples before we can make new ones. So, fellow disciples, let’s follow Christ’s instructions from today’s Gospel. Let’s truly be His disciples. Let’s abide in His Word, so that we will know the truth, and the truth will set us free. Then, standing on His Word, let’s see where He leads us.

In the name of the Father, and of the +Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.