Reformation Sunday October 30, 2016 Reformation Lutheran Church, Reiffton Reformation 500: What’s the Big Deal? Remarks prepared by Donald F. Smith, Jr. Esquire On October 31, 1517, a 33-year old priest in the German small town of Wittenberg posted a document that featured 95 thesis or argument points. Others then had the document printed and distributed widely across Europe. A revolution in church doctrine was to follow. The priest was Dr. Martin Luther. Who was he and why was this posting such a big deal that we plan to mark the posting’s 500 th anniversary? First, about Martin Luther. In 1483 he was born to peasant parents in Eisleben, Germany. At the age of 13, Hans, his father, determined that Martin should become a lawyer, to achieve wealth and then Martin would be able to provide for his parents. So to prepare him for law school, the young lad was sent to a school 40 miles from home where he had to sing for his dinner. And a good singer he was. If law had not been chosen for him, he thought he would become a musician. Eventually, he entered the University of Erfurt, graduating in four years. Five months after graduation he began the study of law. His future seemed secure. On July the 2nd, 1505, Martin was returning to school from visiting his parents for a week and was about a mile away from completing his 50 mile return-trip when a severe thunderstorm opened up. A lightning bolt struck near Luther, causing him to be thrown to the ground and blinding his eyes by a blaze of light. He believed the God of judgment was angry at him, and he was afraid to approach God on his own. So he called out to the patron saint of miners, since his father was a copper miner. “Saint Anna, help me. I will become a monk!” He survived the storm. Believing Saint Anna had saved his life, he entered an Augustinian monastery two weeks later. He was obedient monk, determined to earn his way to God, through hard study, self-denial and pain. He fasted frequently. He confessed his sins even more frequently, at times making up sins he had not committed. Recognizing Luther’s scholarly brilliance, his superiors sent him to seminary and two years later he was ordained a priest. Even so, he could not love God. How could he love a God who was angry with him, who would condemn him to hell? Eventually, he became a professor at the University of Wittenberg. It is written that he was a forceful teacher of the Bible and became quite popular with his students. In the Spring of 1513 he was preparing a series of lectures on the Book of Psalms, often coming across the word “righteousness,” meaning free from all sin, worry and guilt. Luther could not bring himself to think that he would ever be righteous. To better understand the word “righteousness,” though, Luther turned to Saint Paul’s Letter to the Romans, specifically the first chapter, verses 16 and 17: “I am not ashamed of the Gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile. For in the Gospel a righteousness from God is revealed, a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written: ‘The righteous will live by faith.”
Upon reading that passage, Luther came to realize that to have peace, to have salvation, one need only to accept God’s love. We are justified, made righteous, by our faith in God and not by our good works. With that discovery, Luther felt the burden of guilt lifted from him, and he spent the next four years giving sermons, lecturing and writing on what was called the New Theology and later came to be known as the Theology of the Cross. That theology came to question a long standing church practice. At the time, the Church believed that when a person died he went to purgatory, a way station on the way to heaven. In purgatory, the person suffered from his sins until he had atoned for them or until his family and friends did good works to shorten his stay. That’s where the selling of indulgences comes in. An indulgence was a slip of paper bearing the Po pe’s signature. Buying an indulgence was considered a type of good work, one that would shorten a person’s stay in purgatory. How much it shortened the stay depended on how much was paid. Also, a person could buy an indulgence to buy themselves assurance that their sins would be forgiven. You can imagine that this was an incredible fundraiser for Pope Leo who was desperate for money to build St. Peters. Luther became distressed with this practice. This was not faith in Christ; it was faith in a piece of paper. Tomorrow actually marks the 500 th anniversary of Luther’s first sermon questioning the Church’s practice of selling indulgences. Following that first sermon, he gave several more against the practice over the next year leading to the posting on October 31, 1517 of the 95 Theses. That posted document was titled: “Disputation on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences.” Point by point, Luther made his case in a manner that he would have learned in law school. For example, he wrote: Theses No. 6: “The pope cannot remit any guilt, except by declaring that which has been remitted by God and by assenting to God’s remission…” In other words, the pope cannot forgive sins; it was Christ who died on the cross to forgive the sins of the faithful. Or Theses No. 86: “Why does not the pope, whose wealth is today greater than the riches of the rich, build just this one church of St. Peter with his own money, rather than with the money of poor believers?” I imagine that argument point produced some black smoke in Rome! Or Theses No. 94: “Christians are to be exhorted that they be diligent in following Christ, their Head, through penalties, deaths, and hell;” lea ding to his concluding No. 95: “And thus be confident of entering into heaven rather than through m any tribulations, but rather through the assurance of peace.” Boom! As one writer has noted, Martin Luther thereby “created shockwaves that were to travel through all of Germany, the whole of Europe and the history of Christianity.” The 95 Theses were followed by Luther writing many pamphlets, sermons and scholarly tracts. The pope was not pleased. We do not have time to describe the lengthy period of trials and appeals that Luther had to undergo. A couple points though. When Luther refused to renounce his views, because they were based on scripture, the pope excommunicated him in 1520. In that same year, however, of the 208 books published in Germany, 133 of them were written by Luther. He was always at risk of being burned at the
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