11-12-18<\/p>\n
The recent observation of Reformation Sunday \u2013 for those who did observe \u2013 sent me back to study some of Martin Luther\u2019s works. I guess in the fashion that we review the stories of the Nativity and the Passion and Resurrection on their holy-days: not as often as I should.<\/p>\n
My set of Luther\u2019s works is eight volumes, mostly collected sermons, and his commentaries and fascinating \u201ctable talks\u201d run to even more. They are fresh and constructive \u2013 instructive \u2013 today. I have also recently watched two German films on his life, Reformation<\/em> and Luther and I<\/em>. They can be seen on one of my addictions, the foreign-language cable channel MHz Choice, which offers hundreds of drams and comedies and mysteries and documentaries from European countries, all subtitled. (Not a commercial, but my recommendation!) The two new Luther films are separate \u2013 one is told through the life-story of his wife Katharina von Bora, and has a valuable feminist perspective \u2013 and clearly rank in excellence with two previous theatrical biopics.<\/p>\n Regular readers here will know that I was born Lutheran, graduated to Pentecostalism, but recently have experienced a tug back toward liturgy. <\/p>\n The liturgy \u2013 organized worship service, with regular modules including prayers and songs each representing a different aspect of Christ\u2019s mission; and adaptations for different parts of the church calendar \u2013 grew cold to me as a child. Indeed much of the twentieth-century church peeled itself away from \u201cold-fashioned\u201d worship.<\/p>\n I noticed how people in my congregation memorized songs and prayers, almost by osmosis, and sleepily drifted through \u201cworship.\u201d In some other corners of the Protestant world, traditional music was abandoned. Folk music, southern gospel, Christian rock, Contemporary Christian Music, and pop filled the void. Many Catholic services sounded like coffee houses; and churches everywhere largely became come-as-you-are parties, even to pastors in Hawaiian shirts and cargo shorts.<\/p>\n And so forth. These were all likely inevitable results of the American culture \u2013 increasingly secular as well as informal \u2013 and, frankly, the Reformation itself, five centuries ago. With people theoretically free to interpret Scripture for themselves, such things are to be expected, given human nature. In error? Not necessarily\u2026 if Christians adhere to Scripture as assiduously as did Martin Luther.<\/p>\n But Martin Luther was unique. A moody genius, hard on himself, a tireless scholar. He never meant to split from the Catholic Church, only to reform it\u2026 but it was not to be. He was excommunicated, fled for his life, translated the Bible from Latin (a heresy to the Pope), and his complaints, the 95 theses, and his sermons spread across Europe, attracting princes and peasants and all classes in between.<\/p>\n Eventually the Protest-ant movement fractured into theological divisions; some revolts took on social and political aspects. Luther had to step in against violence and desecration of icons. The side-effects of his reforms spurred literacy, publication of books and pamphlets, political liberty, and the Enlightenment.<\/p>\n But. We have to remember that Martin Luther called Reason the enemy of Faith. <\/p>\n In many senses he was the last of the Western World\u2019s pre-Moderns. He must be seen, despite the intellectual fires he ignited, to have been of the Gothic world, not the Renaissance. To understand this, we must remember that his motto was \u201cBy Scripture Alone.\u201d Therefore he directly runs afoul of the contemporary world.<\/p>\n As a dedicated Protestant, of whatever stripe, I cannot myself be comfortable with Mariology, veneration of saints, and other aspects that Luther beheld as extra-Biblical or anti-Biblical. However\u2026 what would he say about the Protestant church of the Western world today?<\/p>\n The religious straws that broke the back of the Augustinian monk Luther were selling indulgences to \u201cpurchase\u201d the souls of dead relatives from Purgatory. There was no Purgatory; the coins of peasants were kept by corrupt priests, or expressly funneled to the St Peters Building Fund in Rome. Similar \u201cworks\u201d were imposed upon the illiterate masses \u2013 penance, reciting words, good deeds, all ways to bribe God. <\/p>\n Luther had discovered the verse, \u201cIt is by faith, not works,\u201d and it revolutionized his life. It became the ammunition to defy Rome\u2019s corruption,<\/p>\n But 500 years later \u2013 widely, but not everywhere; I know \u2013 Christ\u2019s church holds up works and deeds and programs as means to Salvation. \u201cSeed faith\u201d offerings\u2026 \u201cPrayer hankies\u201d\u2026 obligatory service\u2026 attendance, participation even in well-meaning charity causes\u2026 political correctness substituting for the Gospel\u2026 mandatory participation in social causes\u2026 pledge drives and vision statements\u2026 Relativism replacing relationships with Jesus…<\/p>\n How different are these things than the indulgences and man-made rules of the corrupt Roman church of the 1500s? Not much.<\/p>\n I am certain that Luther would be revolted by much of the church today, even among his own followers; but also, still, by the Catholics. When he argued for the \u201cpriesthood of all believers,\u201d it was not for people to lord over each other, but to serve one another.<\/p>\n The Christian church today \u2013 at least north of the Equator, generally, and in \u201cfree\u201d countries \u2013 is too often a collection of clubs or virtual museums or social circles, where the Gospel is obscured by materialism. If Christ Himself returned today, I suspect we often would find Him in bars, slums, and dirty malls, not Crystal Cathedrals and opulent mega-churches. He would not likely be joining in \u201cDirt Bike for Jesus\u201d races or fried-chicken socials. <\/p>\n The point is \u2013 Luther\u2019s point, just like Augustine and St Paul and other fervent exegetes \u2013 was that God created us; but we always try to create God, and His Son Jesus, in our<\/em> image. That\u2019s not how it works.<\/p>\n