Festival of the Reformation

October 28,2007

Revelation 14:6-7 • Romans 3:19-28 • John 8:31-36

Pilgrim Lutheran Church

West Bend, Wisconsin

Today we celebrate Reformation Day in commemoration of Martin Luther’s posting of the 95 Theses on the church door in Wittenberg, Germany on October 31, 1517. In our current pluralistic age and its ever-growing elastic definition of Christianity we must wonder as to the importance or even relevance of celebrating the Lutheran Reformation. Many in our day contend that doctrine, confession, is divisive and stifling whereas un-mitigated love and acceptance breads unity and fosters growth. Who needs the cobweb past of relic men whose words cut sharply between truth and error, between grace and work, between life and death, when we can forgo the difficulty of confession as we are lulled into a sentimental and generic Christianity devoid of solid substance, of an evangel which makes alive and free that which was once dead and enslaved to sin.

Though we are probably not aware of it, the Reformation has impacted the lives of every man ever since its inauguration. Whether you’re a Catholic, a Lutheran, a general Protestant, or a neo-evangelical, you’re life as a member of the body of Christ has been affected by the Reformation. It seems however, that among our day the importance of the Reformation has either been completely lost in a sea of relativistic church slogans and reductionistic theologies or grossly misunderstood by historians, philosophers, and theologians alike. Herman Sasse, a 20th century Lutheran theologian, author, and strident confessor of the unadulterated Lutheran faith helps us to clarify along with the scriptural witness the true import and meaning of the Reformation.[1]

The first pitfall is to view the Lutheran Reformation as a championing of the man Martin Luther, a kind hero worship. This romancing about the man Luther is indeed the most popular when we, the Lutheran Church is at its weakest. It’s much easier to focus on the commonalties of our faith then the differences. Hero worship avoids at all cost Jesus’ admonition to “abide in my Word.” It takes the road less traveled focusing its thoughts, like the Jews upon the grand personality of their biological father Abraham to the exclusion of the purifying and bondage severing Word of God. The heart and meaning of the Reformation is not found in the heart and psyche of Luther. May we never become like the Jews of old who rejected Jesus, stubborn and un-teachable and boasting of our own liberty, whispering to ourselves, “We have Luther as our father, and we have never been in bondage to anyone.”

The second pitfall is to view the Lutheran Reformation as a part of the Renaissance, that it sparked what would eventually be known as the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment was characterized by optimism regarding human nature, the triumph of reason and natural revelation, and that the essence of Christianity was morality, the Golden Rule. So to view the Lutheran Reformation in the light of the Enlightenment is to see it as a time of emancipation, that which freed man from institutionalized religion, from the big bad wolf of The Roman Catholic Church and made Christianity into a positive fountainhead for western culture. The problem with this view is that the Lutheran Reformation was opposed to the tenets of the Enlightenment and virtually everything that blossomed from it. It stood, with its biblical confession of man and sin, in direct opposition to the Enlightenment’s view, and that of today’s modern culture that man is essentially good and that within him lays a spark of divine goodness. Luther’s plain and simple words of the Small Catechism contradict all of what is passed off these days as contemporary Christianity when he explains the third article of the creed, “I believe that I cannot by my own reason or strength believe in Jesus Christ my Lord, or come to him…” The heart cannot give itself to Jesus. The will of man is in bondage only to do that which it has done from the beginning of man’s demise; to sin in thought word and deed. Indeed, The Lutheran Reformation held to the utter depravity of man, which had and continues to have no place in modern culture or the flavor of Christianity that is sold these days to the religious consumer. In the words of Luther’s great Reformation hymn, Dear Christians One and All Rejoice, “Fast bound in Satan’s chains I lay, Death brooded darkly o’er me, Sin was my torment night and day; In sin my mother bore me. But daily deeper still I fell; My life became a living hell, So firmly sin possessed me” (LSB 556 v.2). Only in the shadows and despair of man’s sinfulness can the glorious light of justification by grace through faith be understood. The Lutheran Reformation was and always will be a stumbling block to modern and progressive culture.

The third and final misconception of the Lutheran Reformation is that of the nationalistic interpretation. This view held that the Lutheran Reformation was essentially a German phenomenon and that it was a protest of the German man against the Roman churchly system. This view of the Lutheran Reformation has been most popular at times of Revolution and political turmoil, especially during the 1840’s and 1870’s. Even more so is that this interpretation took root during the time of Nazi Germany as many tried to make Luther a figurehead of the German nation and therefore a forunner of the infamous Adolf Hitler. Without a doubt this is utterly false and misleading. While it is true that in some sense where German Christians opposed the Roman Church’s taxation we see a rise of German Christianity at the time of the Reformation. However, Luther and other Lutheran Reformers were completely against the political aspiration of the German princes against Rome. There were many times that Luther opposed political unification (which would have benefited Germany) because of doctrinal concerns. Most assuredly, the Lutheran Church has always been tied to doctrine, not to a particular national or political agenda.

So how then are we to think of the Lutheran Reformation? To view the Lutheran Reformation in its proper light is to view it as an episode in church history. We believe and we confess it every Sunday that there is “one, holy, Catholic, and apostolic church which has existed throughout the ages. The history of the church is not the history of men, but rather the history of God guarding and taking care of His flock through the means of His Holy Word preached and His Sacraments administered. The church, although hidden from our eyes, as it is an article of faith, is a reality that transcends national or political movements. The Reformation, properly speaking, is one of the great events in the history of the Church where God brought the light of His Gospel to the forefront.

And so, the heart of the Reformation was not simply a return to the “good book,” to the Bible. After all, a church can acknowledge the sole and absolute authority of the Scriptures, interpret it, and apply it to its hearers with great rigor, but fail all the while to proclaim and give the evangel. The Lutheran Reformation was therefore a particular kind of return to the Bible. The Lutheran Reformation is in essence a rediscovery of the Gospel. Through the confessors of the Lutheran Reformation St. Paul’s words that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, is again the message which the church, believes, teaches and confesses before a dying and lost world. The Lutheran Church as a daughter of the Reformation lives solely by the forgiveness of sins as it lives as a body, a fellowship, forgiven and redeemed sent out into the world to proclaim in both word and deed that forgiveness, that grace which it has freely received.

And so, we still need the Reformation because all the misconceptions that we have noted and all the teachings that fail to distinguish between Law and Gospel, in the end, throw us back on our own works, our own spiritualities, our own decisions as they rob Jesus Christ of His work, as they rob contrite sinners of the one thing that can provide comfort—the peace that we have with God purchased by the blood of His crucified and resurrected Son. As Luther explains in the Large Catechism, “Everything in this Christian community is so ordered that everyone may daily obtain full forgiveness of sins through the Word and signs appointed to comfort and encourage our consciences as long as we live on earth.”[2] You see, not only has God accomplished salvation for all in His Son, but He now delivers it to you in the appointed means of Word and Sacrament. The Gospel and the Sacraments which set men free is what the church is built upon, it is the marks of the church. Through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit God gives faith to His children. This faith lives not in a nebulous vacuum; rather it lives as it lays hold of the gifts, as it lays hold of Jesus who is the gift.

As long as there are those who would attempt to move the Church away from its foundation, from the justification of sinner by grace alone through faith alone, we will need to contemplate the Reformation and confess it as that time in history when God brought His church back to the faith of the apostles, prophets and martyrs. As long as there are those who desire to reorder the church as that which plays to the felt-needs of its “target audience” and seek numerical growth at the cost of the article by which the church stands or falls, that is the article of Justification, we will need the voices and confessors of the Reformation. For it is only through the preaching of Law and Gospel and the administration of the sacraments according to Christ’s command, that He builds His church. The church does not grow by flashy programs, gimmicks, or applied business models. It grows as the people of God hear and receive the gifts of His Son Jesus Christ and through the joyous reception of such gifts tell others that here in the hearing of the Word and reception of the Sacrament they too will receive life eternal. As one missionary commented, “mission work is simply one beggar telling another beggar where to find food.”

So it is that in every age that attempts to take for granted the Reformation we must hold fast to the truth of the Reformers and the faith which they confessed, the faith which they gave their lives for. The noted confessional Lutheran theologian Charles Porterfield Krauth in his monumental work, The Conservative Reformation and its Theology leaves us with some words we should ponder:

When the Festival of the Reformation shall come and shall wake no throb of joy in her bosom, her life will have fled. For if the Reformation lives through her, she also lives by it. It has to her the mysterious relation of Christ to David; if it is her offspring, it is also her root. If she watched the ark of the Lord, the ark of the Lord protected and blessed her, and when it passes from her keeping her glory will have departed. Let her speak to her children then, and tell them the meaning of the day. In the pulpit, and the school, and the circle of the home, let these great memories of men of God, of their self-sacrifice, of their overcoming faith, and their glorious work, be the theme of thought, and of word, and of thanksgiving. The Festival of the Reformation is at once a day of Christmas and of Easter and of Pentecost, in our Church year; a day of birth, a day of resurrection, a day of the outpouring of the Holy Ghost. Let its return renew that life, and make our Church press on with fresh vigor in the steps of her risen Lord, as one begotten again, and born from the dead, by the quickening power of the Spirit of her God. Let every day be a Festival of the Reformation, and every year a Jubilee.[3]

In the Name of the Father and of the Son+ and of the Holy Spirit. Amen

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[1] See Herman Sasse, Hear We Stand: Nature and Character of the Lutheran Faith. Lutheran Publishing House, Adelaide, Australia, 1979. (First Edition was in 1938).

[2] Luther’s Large Catechism in The Book of Concord (Kolb/Wengert: Fortress Press: Minneapolis) Article III p438:55