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Missed Reformation Sunday?
Here is the link to the video sermon:
Reformation Article from Lutheran Witness October 2009:
October 31, 1517, the day on which Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the
church door in Wittenberg, is remembered as the beginning of the Reformation.
Luther protested the sale of indulgences, the then common church practice of
selling the forgiveness of sins.
His 95 Theses must rank with the Magna Carta and the Declaration of
Independence as a world-shattering document. Unlike the writers of other
pace-setting documents, Luther never intended that his theses would be so
decisively ultimate. The 95 Theses turned Luther into the great reformer. He was
not the first or the last to lodge a protest against church abuses, but five
centuries after his birth, his reforms are influencing even the successors of
those who rejected and condemned him.
In the nearly 30 years that Luther lived after that fateful day, he was
involved directly or through his associates in reforming the church and
society.
At first others were more aware of Luther’s world-shattering ideas than he
was himself. What was for him the solution to an internal religious problem
became for others a call for reformation. The printing press and the translation
of his views from Latin into German spread his views so quickly throughout
Europe that they soon came to the attention of princes, bishops, and even the
pope.
While Luther’s concern was the justification of the sinner before God through
faith without works, the church authorities understood them chiefly as a direct
attack on the church institution. This was so far from Luther’s mind at first,
that he even appealed to the two popes as dear fathers in Christ. His religious
concerns were, nevertheless, seen as treachery against the civil authorities,
since the church and empire were unified under the pope and emperor.
To protect this world, the authorities reacted to Luther’s concerns, first by
debate and persuasion. Then on June 15, 1520, hardly a full three years after
his original protest, he was excommunicated by Pope Leo X. After his courageous
stand before Emperor Charles V on April 17, 1521, at Worms he was, until his
death in 1546, an outlaw in most of imperial Europe. Bu this time Luther had set
forth in many writings his ideas of reform.
Because of his excommunication, Luther was put into the position of practical
reformer, not his by personal inclination and education. He was trained as a
scholar and teacher. His doctrine of justification, over which he had struggled
for many years before 1517, especially in connection with his lectures on Romans
and the Psalms, had unintentionally put him in opposition to the church’s
understanding of itself as the only dispenser of salvation. The church’s hold on
society from the humblest peasant to the emperor rested on this claim.
This claim on Christians was exercised not only by indulgences but by the
sale of masses for souls in purgatory, pilgrimages, prayers to the saints, and
the maintenance of monasteries. Luther’s opponents, as the documents show, were
not as concerned about his views on justification as about their negative effect
on church structures. In a sense they led him to see the implications of his own
teaching. This personal awareness turned Luther from a scholar with a solution
to a theological problem into a great reformer of church and society.
Many portraits and statues of Luther picture him holding the Bible in his
hand as he is preaching. Recognizing the Bible as the sole authority in church
life and making it available to the people in their language were some of the
first reforms.
Luther, like his contemporaries, recognized the Bible as God’s Word. However,
they saw the Bible and teachings of the church, that were collected in
tradition, constituting one authority, with the pope serving as the final
arbiter.
In a debate with John Eck in Leipzig in July 1519, Luther realized that
popes, church councils, and accepted church teachings often flatly contradicted
each other. Eck, wanting to show Luther that he was not a loyal son the church,
led him in the process to the conviction that the Bible was the final
authority.
Luther also insisted on the Bible’s literal interpretation. Through the
complex method of allegory, the priest exercised effective control over the
people. Now the people--without the priests--could understand God’s will for
themselves. This led later to Luther’s translation of the New Testament (1522)
and the Old Testament (1534). Translation of the Bible into modern language
began and has never stopped.
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