(Preached on Sunday, October 25, 2009)
For we hold that a person is justified by faith apart from works prescribed by the law. -Romans 3:28
It was October 31, 1517, All Hallow’s Eve (or as we call it today, “Halloween”). The local priest was pounding a paper, listing 95 debating points on the door of the church. This door functioned as the bulletin board for the academic community in Wittenburg. All the local scholars were sure to check it out. But more than that, tomorrow would be All Saints’ Day and the church and church yard would be packed with local people. On that day Duke Frederick the Wise, the local noble man, would put his substantial collection of sacred relics (pieces of bone from long dead saints, parts of the true cross, and a variety of other holy artifacts) on display in front of the church. That always attracted a crowd. This local priest was Martin Luther. And his actions this day are the proverbial “shot heard round the world” that kicked-off the Protestant Reformation.
A few years later, in 1520, as a result of this action, and many more published writings, Martin Luther would find himself in the cathedral in Worms, Germany, standing all alone, a solitary figure facing the emperor of the Holy Roman Empire and his court, on trial for heresy. Representatives of Pope Leo V would lead the prosecution team. Luther would go to Worms thinking he would finally have his opportunity to face-off against his adversaries in the church in open debate. Instead he would discover a rigged trial where he was only given the option to recant all his writings or suffer excommunication from the one true church, headed by the Pope in Rome. Looking at all of his writings spread out on the table before him, Luther uttered those now famous words in clear and measured tones, “Here I stand. I can do no other. God help me.”
Those were not the words the Emperor or the Pope wanted to hear. Desiring to extinguish the fire of reform which was threatening to blaze out of control all across Europe, they declared Luther guilty of heresy and an enemy of the empire. But the spirit of reform had already taken firm hold and was actually the fruit of the work by many, many courageous people of faith, long before Martin Luther nailed those famous theses to the door of his Church. The abuses by the Church that Martin Luther sought to correct had been percolating in the life of the Church for more than 200 years. In the 1300s, John Wyclif in England felt that the Bible should be translated into English so that everyone, priests and laypeople alike, could read and study it directly. But he was branded a heretic and his efforts to translate the scripture into the common language of the day were stifled. In the 1400s in Czechoslovakia, Jan Hus agreed with Wyclif about the Bible, but also believed more should be done: Worship should also be in the language of the people rather than in Latin, so that they might truly understand it. Again the established Church authorities did not like his teachings and this time they pronounced him guilty and executed him. However his followers were stronger in Czechoslovakia and the reforms were actually instituted, resulting in the Bohemian Church.
These were just two of the many, many efforts at reform that continued to blossom and take shape throughout the church in Europe before and after Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the church door October 31, 1517. None of these movements desired to separate from the Church. All of these reformers loved the church. But they also had all come to see that the church, in a variety of ways, had grown distant from the people of the church, and that too many practices of the church actually kept people from God rather than drawing them closer, or had actually grown into means of abusing the people, instead of caring for them as God’s children.
Martin Luther, for example, by grappling with his own overly developed sense of guilt (someone has said that if here had been a medieval version of The Guinness Book of World Records, Luther would have been listed under guilt) finally came to a tremendously freeing understanding of the grace of God which wiped away our guilt, through his study of the Letter to the Romans. The passage we read this morning became a key passage for Luther to understand the freedom and equality which was offered to all people by the gracious forgiveness of God through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus the Christ.
As Martin Luther and other reformers, like John Calvin and Ulrich Zwingli in Switzerland, taught this emphasis on freedom in the gospel suddenly, the doors to the church were opened wide. People streamed in. Laypeople were invited to share the administration of the church – its theology, worship, and pastoral care. And all Christians were invited to go out into the world and share the good news with others.
No longer was the message of the church only for people’s souls, as if the life of this world didn’t matter. The Protestant Church cared about people’s minds and bodies as well. The church took notice of where people lived, how they talked, what they ate, the kind of work they did. Luther borrowed barroom tunes, put new words to them, and made them hymns. Church authorities were outraged, but the people loved them and came back to church with renewed vigor because finally there was something for them. They took their newfound faith into the streets and their homes, into the fields and mountain villages. A revolution swept first through Europe and then through the world. Because it was now okay to think, science and the arts flourished and brought in the Age of Enlightenment. The feudal system, which had locked the poor into eternal poverty, was broken. Equal rights for all people began to be a concern. People were whole again.
As Protestants, we are inheritors of this faith. We believe in the priesthood of all believers, whereby each of us can talk directly with God and each of us can take Jesus directly to others. Yet today, society again says that the church should only concern itself with people’s souls; that religion, at most, should take up only a corner of people’s lives. The church has largely accepted this role. Laypeople again let church professionals do most of the spiritual work, and most people live the greater part of their lives in servitude to some job. Far too often the church finds itself supporting the status quo and no longer has its revolutionary edge as did the early followers of Jesus, who were always bumping up against the established authorities of the day because they kept advocating for the freedom and equality of all people, not just a small, chosen few.
One of the core values held by all the early reformers was summarized in the phrase: “Ecclesia reformata sed simper reformada,” or in English, “The church reformed but always to be reformed.” As I already stated, the early reformers did not want to break away from the church. For most it was a result which led them to seriously question their faith. Nevertheless they saw the need for change, for transformation. At the same time they realized that the church would always need reforming. For the church was an earthly, human institution. As such it would always be imperfect.
To assist with this need to always be reforming – changing, growing, evolving – the church needed to be constantly doing theology. Robert McAfee Brown in his book The Spirit of Protestantism makes the following observation about the role of theology in the church. “There is one piece of corporate misinformation about which many Protestants seem to be agreed: since (a) theology is a dull business, (b) it can safely be left to the specialists who (c) disagree so much anyway that their claims and counterclaims do not really matter.” Brown contends that theology is not just for the “specialists,” but the proper task of all people in the church. He points out that theology is really just “words about God” or “talk about God” and all talk about God leads one to more deeply and strongly love God with one’s mind. Because of this the Protestant reformers highly valued education, both for the clergy and for the laypeople. After all, “clear theology comes from clear minds” and requires “highly disciplined thought.” This lead the reformers to start many colleges and universities in Europe – a practice which our ancestors in the United Church of Christ continued in this land, founding such colleges as Harvard, Yale, Ursinus & Elmhurst.
This is our heritage. These are the roots from which we have sprung. In the United Church of Christ we have moved to reclaim these roots in an active way with a renewed emphasis on the truth that God is still speaking. Let us also remember the witness of the Reformers that through Christ God continues to forgive, heal and restore us as God’s own children. Let us remember that it is good for each Christian to read the Scriptures and grapple with the meaning of the Word of God for our own lives. Let us remember that the Holy Spirit continues to work in the life of the church and in the life of each and every one of us. Let us each reclaim our role as active partners in God’s church: reformed, and always reforming.