I am not going to talk about today’s passage although it’s a really great one (note: it was John 4:46-53). Instead I’ll take you back in history to 1517 and to a man name Martin Luther who also believed, to the extent that well, this Roman Catholic Cathedral is now a Lutheran one.
This is how the story goes:
On the Eve of All Saints, Day, October 31, 1517, Augustinian Father Doctor Martin Luther, professor of Scripture at the University of Wittenberg, Germany posted an invitation to debate on the door of the Wittenberg Cathedral. This marked the beginning of what we call the era of reformation.
Luther’s invitation to debate contained no less than ninety five points, or theses, concerning the sale of indulgences. Luther had cleverly chosen this particular date for posting his theses because the coming holy day would bring many of the community to services. In other words, his statements were sure to receive wide exposure. And they certainly did.
In the preceding months what had happened was, that Archbishop of Mainz had authorized a Dominican Friar, by the name of Johann Tetzel, to sell indulgences. Indulgences were pieces of paper declaring that the deceased person for whom it had been purchased had received total forgiveness of sins and therefore a release from Purgatory.
Now they were to be sold in order to finance the construction of a church, St. Peter’s basilica and that apparently was what broke the camel’s back for Luther.
In order to understand why things went the way they did and why you are now attending a Lutheran service rather than Roman Catholic mass in this church this is the background: As we Lutherans really like to remind our Roman Catholic friends Luther actually began as a faithful son of the Roman Church. It was precisely because of this that, like so many others of his age, he was deeply concerned about his soul's salvation.
Also like many, Luther was extremely frightened that because of his sin the righteous and angry God would cast him into purgatory or hell. Martin Luther seems to have had rather a sensitive nature which seems to have made him remarkably and painfully aware of his sinfulness. That, coupled with his rather impressive knowledge of Scripture, had led him to a growing awareness that he was condemned by God's law and in desperate need of help.
This is how he described it himself:
“I felt that I was a sinner before God with an extremely disturbed conscience... I did not love, yes, I hated the righteous God who punishes sinners, and secretly, if not blasphemously, certainly murmuring greatly, I was angry with God, and said, "As if, indeed, it is not enough, that miserable sinners, eternally lost through original sin, are crushed by every kind of calamity by the law of the decalogue, without having God add pain to pain by the gospel and also by the gospel threatening us with his righteousness and wrath!"”
The word Decalogue refers to the Ten Commandments just in case you haven’t come across it before. In other words, Luther knowing his Bible and the Ten Commandments felt crushed under it’s weight.
What Luther felt to be the response of his church to his agony was to teach that he was to trust in his own love, holiness, and good works. The problem was that this flatly contradicted the teaching of the Bible. It has to be added, though, that this was not exactly the view of the church either, grace did enter the picture in the Roman Catholic Church, as well. However, after intensively studying Paul’s letter to Romans what Luther finally then came to realize was that struggling sinners are directed to Jesus Christ alone and it was “the” revelation to him that changed everything.
What Paul’s letter declares is that Jesus Christ has already paid for all our sins by His death on the cross. And from this follows that to all who put their trust in Jesus Christ alone as Savior, God gives full forgiveness and heaven as a free gift.
Later on this is what theologians then have started to call justification by faith. It simply means that God loves us and saves us not because of who we are or what we do, but because He created us and we are His.
Now, because the 95 theses were a direct continuum from Luther’s theology regarding justification by faith they were also a direct challenge to the Papacy and what was even worst to the economic system enriching the Papal treasury. Thus, the reaction was swift and severe. The Pope initiated proceedings to have Luther tried for heresy; proceedings that very likely would have led to his execution. Luther, however, with the support of the Wittenberg faculty, appealed to elector Frederick III of Saxony for protection and got it, too.
In the years that followed, Martin Luther protested through his preaching, teaching, and writing the teachings of Rome and called for a Reformation of the Church. Luther's desire was never to start a new Church, but simply to restore the Catholic Church to its original purity. As time past, thousands supported Luther's movement, not necessarily because they were supporting Luther the man, but because they agreed with his teachings.
Although Luther did not intend to begin a separate Church, that was the unavoidable consequence of his challenge. By 1530 Germany was divided between communities loyal to the Pope and those following the reforms initiated by Luther. Nowadays there are over 70 million professing Lutherans worldwide.
And this brings us to today. In Finland, during the past week and a half, thousands of members of the Finnish Lutheran Church (around 30 000 people) have left the church as a response to a debate on television about homosexuality. The conservative point of view came across very strongly in the debate and the actual view of the Church not so much. Thus, people who think that condemning homosexuals for their sexual orientation is wrong have left. Mind you not all have left because of this but for most it seems to have been the straw the broke the camel’s back.
In case you wonder in actual fact the Lutheran bishops have agreed that homosexuality is accepted and homosexual unions as well and that these unions should also receive prayer or and this is the big question even perhaps a blessing. No one is ready to call homosexual unions marriage, though, but other than that the bishops no longer agree with the conservative view.
Our church seems now to find itself in a pretty similar situation with how it was when reformation started. The question is still what really is the core message Jesus had for humankind? And what is the good news, the Gospel?
I see it like this: the four gospels include several stories of Jesus encountering and wanting to make contact with people others regarded as impure, criminal or to be condemned. And those encounters were filled with love and acceptance. In our time and in this society this would mean homosexuals, beggars from Romania, Finnish gypsies, people of different color and/or faith, people who have been to jail and so on.
Also, in the gospels there is this little comment about looking first into our own selves before we go judging others and something about casting the first stone…
The good news is - and I’m not making this up this really is is what the church does teach based on the Bible - that God loves us exactly as we are and does not make distinctions. The good news is shat His son died for all sins, all! And the good news is all of this has nothing to do with how we behave or don’t but with God’s own character, God’s “personality” as it were. It is all about grace. It is all about undeserved mercy for all. Absolutely all.
Could we who ultimately are the church, please start living as if this really was true? Because, you know, it is.
I then continued with the prayer which was the in my last post.
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