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 500th 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 Pope’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 500th 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;” leading to his concluding No.
95: “And thus be confident of entering into heaven rather than through many 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
stake and so the friendly ruler of the Saxony area of Germany that included Wittenberg had
Luther kidnapped and taken to a safe hiding place, Wartburg Castle. During his confinement
he translated the New Testament from Greek into German in only 11 weeks. It quickly
became a best seller, with new print shops being created just to keep up with the demand.
In 1522 Luther returned to Wittenberg, still under a cloud, but immediately went to
work. To him it was more important to proclaim the Word of God than to worry about being
burned at the stake.
He examined church practices in the light of having faith in Jesus Christ and in light of
the authority given by the Bible. Changes to the worship service included:
 Being translated into the language of the people
 For Holy Communion the bread and wine was to be viewed as symbolic and not as
actually being changed into the body and blood of Christ. After all, Jesus was only
crucified once, not during each Mass. So, Under Martin Luther, worshippers began to
receive both elements during communion.
 The use of music changed. Previously only the priest and choir, if there was one, did all
the singing. Luther wanted all worshippers to sing God’s praises. In 1524 he published a
collection of hymns. Our hymnal includes 16 of his hymns, including his most famous,
“A Mighty Fortress is our God.”
 Finally, sermons became a more prominent part of the services. I have read that he was
a great preacher; 2300 of his sermons are still in print today.
Even so, Luther realized more Christian education was needed. So two works written by him
were published in 1529—The Large Catechism and the Small Catechism. The Large was
intended for pastors and adults. The Small was for children with the hope that it would be
studied at home under the guidance of the parents. They include interpretations of the Ten
Commandments, the Apostles’ Creed and the Lord’s Prayer. He later added explanations for
the two sacraments, Baptism and Holy Communion.
Today, the Presiding Bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, Elizabeth
Eaton, has asked Lutherans, over the next year, to study the Small Catechism anew as one way
to mark the anniversary. Martin Luther never intended to start a new church, he only wanted
to reform the Catholic church. But his followers grew in number and became known as
Lutherans. A new church was born.
In the January/February issue of Liberty magazine, an article appears entitled: “The
Search for Peace”. Its author refers to Luther’s translation of the Bible as his greatest legacy
and then concludes:
“Although Luther made many other significant contributions to religious history
and thought, most notably the establishment of a separate Protestant church—
something that he never could have envisioned when he set out to attack indulgences—
one thing is clear: Luther believed that each person should determine truth through
individual conscience based upon the Word of God…Ultimately, it led to the great
discovery of Paul’s message of justification by faith alone. By the time Martin Luther’s
remains were interred in the Castle Church in Wittenberg on February 22, 1546 ‘all
medieval institutions’ had changed as a direct result of his theology.’”
My eighth grade catechism book took four chapters to cover the life and work of Martin
Luther, concluding with this paragraph:
“Naturally we don’t worship Luther as a saint; he was far from perfect. No man
but Christ was ever perfect. But we honor Luther for his great contributions to the
church. We are thankful that God used him to cleanse the church. We remember him
because he called the church back to the Bible, particularly to the New Testament,
where men can know the real truths of God in Christ.”
It was indeed the 95 Theses that began a revolution leading to the great Reformation, the
cleansing of the church, returning the church to the Word of God, making the Bible accessible
to the masses, making worship more meaningful to the laity and teaching with clarity the
theology of the cross, that we are justified by faith as a result of God’s grace. Thus, the posting
of the 95 Theses was a very big deal, MAKING the 500th anniversary of their posting a very big
deal, worthy of a yearlong celebration by this congregation, one named after the reforming
that began on October 31, 1517.