Scary

The scriptures referred to are Romans 3:19-28.

For many people today is Halloween and I do not mean a contraction of All Hallow's Eve, the vigil before All Saints Day, when we commemorate the saints and the recently dead. I mean dressing up in costumes and putting up decorations that make light of death. It has transmogrified from Scottish and Irish traditions that celebrated the end of the harvest season to one in which people are symbolically whistling past the graveyard.

But for us, this is Reformation Sunday, the day a monk in Saxony nailed up nearly hundred theological points he wanted to debate. And even though nothing much else happened that day 500 years ago, it did light the fuse on a revolution in thought and religion and even secular society that still affects us today. We see it not as a day of confronting fears but of embracing faith. But if you go back to the beginning, what Martin Luther did had to be a very scary thing.

Perhaps not on October 31, 1517. He was just seeking a debate. But almost exactly a year later, when he returned to Wittenberg from his first encounter with a representative of the Pope, at the Diet of Augsburg, he had reason to be afraid. He not only didn't get his debate; he was a wanted man for not recanting his writings. Worse, in the next year, the church would argue that since the Pope was infallible on matters of faith and practice that anyone who disagreed with him was a heretic. And we all know what they did to heretics. That's scary. But worst of all, they appealed to canon law and said the Pope could not be deposed, even if he led multitudes to hell. That was so unChristlike that to Luther it meant that the head of the church, the only church he knew, was essentially a, if not THE, Antichrist. And that's really scary. Now what was he to do?

First, let us reflect on how, up to now, Martin Luther was a fearful man. After all, it was a near-miss lightning strike that caused him to bleat out a vow to become a monk, if St. Anne would spare his life. And as a monk he feared God so much that he actually hated him. He spent hours in the confessional, dredging up every misstep he could think of, driving his confessor to say, “Martin, go out and commit some sins worth confessing!”

But when he was assigned to teach the Bible and he actually read what Paul said about how we receive salvation, he was changed. Luther's fear of God was rooted in trying to follow all the commandments and to be morally perfect, something the monk knew was impossible. But in Paul's letter to the Romans, he reads “The just shall live by faith.” (Romans 1:17) Or as it says of God in our passage today, “he justifies the one who has faith in Jesus.” Faith or trust, the foundation of any relationship, is the key to being righteous in God's eyes. At first Luther believed this meant believing that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” In other words, it is faith in God's condemnation of you in his law. But later he realized it was faith in God's promise that we “are now justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus...” Everything is God's doing; we just accept the gift.

And the burden of guilt and fear that weighed down Luther was lifted. This was good news indeed. And that is what the word “gospel” means: good news. Luther, appointed not only to teach at the University of Wittenberg but to preach at its church, was keen to let his parishioners know this. And then the whole indulgences controversy arose.

Luther was appalled that his parishioners were paying for papal indulgences that were supposed to lift any punishment they or their loved ones were to receive in purgatory. There were a lot things wrong with that—95 to be exact—but basically it went counter to the gospel, the good news that Jesus took everyone's punishment for sin and that salvation is a gift from God that cannot be earned by doing so many good works or giving so much money to the church.

And bolstered by the plain sense of scripture, Luther spoke up. It is interesting to speculate how things might have gone had anyone actually debated his theses with him. But nobody would. He was simply told to recant and shut up, first at Augsburg and then, famously, at the Diet of Worms. And Luther, who, along with a lot of people, simply wanted to see the Roman Catholic Church reform itself, found himself excommunicated, declared a heretic and a criminal with a death sentence on his head. The man who became a monk out of fear now faced the full force of the official displeasure of the Pope and the Emperor, both Church and State...and he refused to back down. Unless he could be convinced by scripture and reason that he was wrong in how he read God's word, he would not not go against his conscience. Here he stood.

Now that he was a wanted man, Luther went underground. He was hidden by his prince, the aptly named Frederick the Wise. As he lived in Wartburg Castle under an assumed name, awaiting his books, what was going through his mind? He had not planned to replace the church, just reform it. But those in charge wouldn't think of it. What now?

Think of how scary his position is. Not just for him personally but for all Christians who were under a corrupt system. Many had heard his criticisms and read his books and agreed with him. But just as there was no place for him in the Roman Catholic Church of his time, there was no place for those who believed as he did in God saving us by grace through faith. So does Luther dare start another church?

He was a monk and a professor. He was not an abbot nor a bishop nor the Pope. How does one go about reimagining and reorganizing an institution that existed for a millennium and a half and is involved in just about every aspect of people's lives?

And here's one of the things I most admire about Martin Luther: he did it on the fly! He was brilliant enough to come up with good solid solutions to the problems that arose in the Reformation. How many sacraments should there be? How should communion be offered? What about priestly celibacy? What about monastic vows? How are we to educate Christians in the basics of the faith? How are we to reeducate pastors? This is a long way from debating indulgences. But Luther was up to it, by, as I'm sure he'd say, the grace of God.

All the other reformers, like John Calvin who was 8 years old when Martin nailed his theses to the church door, had Luther as a starting point. The ground work had been done, the foundation laid for all the other Protestant churches that came after. They would take his ideas, use this one, reject that and tweak the other but the basic materials came from Luther's insights into faith, grace and scripture.

As I said, Luther was not alone in seeing that the church of his day needed to be reformed. But he was the one who was brave enough to not only say so but continue to say it when it became dangerous. In fact he was in more danger than when he took his vow to become a monk during the thunderstorm. The lightning bolt that prompted his change of profession was not targeting him. The people who opposed him were.

Yet Luther faced his fears and did what was necessary. One of the major strengths of the church is that it periodically undergoes reformation. When it gets too far from its original mission, from what Jesus envisioned, people start noticing and speak up and work to reform it. Usually this happens internally, such as the reforms that took place under Pope Gregory VII, or the ones led by religious orders such as the Cluniacs or the Franciscans. Nor is the church done reforming. The Protestant Reformation should not be considered the last word on the matter. There are now and always will be tensions between what sociologist Rodney Stark calls the church of power and the church of piety. The temptation to try to marry the kingdom of God with earthly nations or parties or personalities or ideologies has always been present. But that is always an unhealthy relationship, one inevitably headed for the rocks.

To switch ships and metaphors, it is not clear sailing for the church today. It is battered and taking on water. It has succumbed to the siren song of political power and steered right into the storm of temporal power plays. It has lost its moral compass and its compassion for those who are powerless. Lest we end up on the rocks of irrelevance and repudiation of God's principles, we need to listen to Christ's clarion call to love God and to love others and to preach the good news of his forgiveness and transforming grace. The ship of the church is not on a luxury cruise to give us a good time; it is on a search and rescue mission for those who are adrift and and wrecked and about to go under.

Like many today, Luther believed that he was living in the end times. The spirit of the Antichrist was abroad. Riots, revolts and wars were taking place. A plague broke out in Wittenburg. The Ottoman Turks were invading Europe. Society seemed to be breaking down. And many were blaming Luther's radical ideas.

But it wasn't the end of the world, though it was the end of the world as they knew it. And they weren't Luther's radical ideas; they were God's radical ideas, which the church had quietly buried under mounds of church law and unexamined tradition and bad theology and corrupt practices, and which were now being resurrected. What's radical is that God doesn't hate us sinful creatures but loves us. What is radical is that he doesn't want to send us to hell but sends us help in the form of his Son Jesus Christ. What is radical is that God in Christ has taken onto himself the painful work of reconciling us with him. What is radical is that we don't have to earn his love or forgiveness. We just have to swallow our pride and accept them as gracious gifts by faith in his Word and promise. Luther didn't create those ideas; he just rediscovered them in God's word and announced them to the world. And he didn't let the powers-that-be silence his proclamation of the good news. And then others began to proclaim it. And just over 20 years ago the Roman Catholic Church and the World Lutheran Federation officially agreed that Luther was right: we are saved by God's grace through faith in Christ.

But 500 years ago proclaiming that was scary. Doing the right thing when those more powerful than you try to stop you is always scary. It is much scarier than imaginary monsters. The antidote to fear is faith in the God who is love revealed in the teachings, life, death and resurrection of his Son, our Savior Jesus Christ. Jesus didn't let the threats of the powerful stop him. Luther didn't either. Nor should we.