(Note: This blog entry is based on the text for Three Celebrations, originally shared on October 29, 2020. It was the sixtieth video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)
How we celebrate
is as important as what we celebrate. What are you celebrating this week, and
how?
This is a week of three
celebrations.
First, the Dodgers won the
World Series! You probably already knew that, but it’s nice to say. It ends 32
years without a world series victory, something every baseball player dreams
about. It also happened in a year when the Lakers also won a national
championship, which also happened in 1988, the last time the Dodgers won the
world series.
I spent the last inning, as
did most people, stating the obvious: one at-bat to go, one out to go, one
strike to go…There it is!
Of course, this is 2020 so it
wasn’t surprising when something happened to stick a pin in our ballooning celebration.
The Dodgers got results during the end of the game that Justin Turner had
tested positive for COVID-19, and so, by previously agreed upon protocols, he
was taken out of the game and isolated. When the Dodgers won, however, he
pushed past security and went back on the field for the celebrations and the team
picture.
Who knows what any of us would
have done under the same circumstances, but his behavior put everyone with whom
he cam into contact at risk. Even if no one gets the virus, I think his act of
self-interest diminishes the heroic behavior of the team as a whole. It diminishes
our celebrations.
Second, this coming Saturday,
we will celebrate two events, Reformation Day and Halloween.
First, Reformation Day. There
won’t be costumes or lawn decorations, no specially themed movies or TV shows.
It will seem somewhat anti-climactic, or even unnoticed as most of our churches
will have celebrated it last Sunday, but it marks one of the most
history-changing events of human history.
I don’t think I’m exaggerating
or engaging in a little bit of Lutheran chauvinism here. A few years ago the History
Channel asked its viewers for their opinions of the most influential persons of
event of the past 1,000 years. Martin Luther was second. The invention of the
printing press was first, and it’s interesting that they both happened at about
the same time.
Martin Luther was a young man
on the move. His father wanted him to be a lawyer and be rich, and that’s where
young Martin was heading.
Luther was walking across a
field when he got caught in lightening storm. He prayed to his saint, Saint
Ann, as a good Catholic young man would, and said that if she saved him from
this storm that he would show his gratitude by becoming a monk.
He was not hurt and, much to
his father’s chagrin, he became an Augustinian monk.
The more he studied the scriptures,
however, the more he became absolutely convinced that he was going to hell.
Even when he spent an entire day praying, going to Mass and reading to the Bible
and coming to the end of the day and feeling good that at least he had spent
one day without sinning, that he had right then committed the sin of Pride.
His superiors sent him to
teach the Bible at the University of Wittenberg. And, he discovered a verse
where the Latin vulgate had translated the original Greek “metanoia” into the
Latin “poenitentia”, that is, “do penance”.
The church had been selling indulgences,
which Luther believed to be in conflict with the fundamental teaching of
scripture that we are put right with God through faith, through a gift of God’s
grace. Metanoia was better translated “to turn around, or repent” he said.
Indulgences were a promise of
time off from purgatory, the place for those who weren’t bad enough for hell,
but got good enough to be in heaven.
Doing penance meant you could
do good stuff to make up for the bad stuff. The Church was selling indulgences,
a good act, to get time off from purgatory for yourself or a loved one (‘cause
you wouldn’t want Grandma to be in purgatory, would you?) by buying yourself
time off. Luther looked to the statements of scripture and said the whole idea
of indulgences was ridiculous.
Paul, in one such statement, wrote:
*Romans 1:16-17
On October 31st, he
nailed 95 theses (plural of thesis, as when a Phd. Student comes up with an original
idea, or thesis, that he must successfully defend in order to qualify for his
degree) to the doors of the castle church in Wittenberg for academic debate.
He didn’t want to leave the
Catholic church, he wanted to reform it. He wanted to debate the idea of indulgences.
The Church, particularly the pope, who Luther saw as unnecessary, did not want
to hear it.
Under trial for heresy, the
punishment could have included excommunication, imprisonment, torture, and
death.
At the end of one of his
trials, in Worms, Germany, Luther was being tried before the emperor and was
accused of being vague in his defense of his written works. Luther replied,
“Since then your sere Majesty and your Lordships seek a simple answer, I
will give it in this manner, neither horned nor toothed. Unless I am convinced
by the testimony of the Scriptures or by clear reason (for I do not trust
either in the pope or in councils alone, since it is well known that they have
often erred and contradicted themselves), I am bound by the Scriptures I have
quoted and my conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and I will not
recant anything, since it is neither safe nor right to go against conscience.
May God help me. Amen."
This may seem like a mild argument,
but to those hearing it or hearing of it was mind-blowing.
Luther lived when the Church
and its teaching were everything and in everything. One of its teachings, in a
time when the Church and the State were almost indistinguishable, was that both
the pope and the emperor were put in their positions by God. To go against
either one was not to enter into a dialogue over a reasonable disagreement, but
to go against God.
I think you can draw a
straight line from Luther’s idea that the individual is responsible for acting
on his or her own conscience, not the dictates of those in authority, to the idea
of democracy in the West.
Luther was convicted and, at
one time, the pope declared that anyone who murdered Luther would not be
sinning.
Luther came along at the right
time, however. The German princes were promoting nationalism, a breaking-away
from the Holy Roman Empire, so they protected Luther. They figured that
anything that weakened the Roman church would weaken the Roman empire.
And, the printing press had
just been invented. Luther’s 95 theses were printed in bulk and in two weeks
were being read in Spain! That was viral media in those days.
And, in the course of the Reformation,
Luther brought in revolutions.
Does your congregation sing during
worship? Thank Martin Luther. He brought in congregational singing, which had
previously been done by monks. He declared the freedom of priests to marry, something
for which I am grateful. He translated the Bible into German, the language of
the people, and for the first time in 1,000 years, people could read the Bible
in their own language, not Latin, the language of the educated which were at
the time pretty much only priests. Principles of translation he invented are
still in use today.
Today we say that the church
is always reforming. It is in no less need of reformation than it was in 1517.
It constantly needs to be called to scripture alone as the only source of our
belief and conduct, to teach salvation through faith alone through God’s grace
alone.
We seek reformation of our
lives as well as of our congregations and our Church.
That brings us to Halloween
Was there anything significant
about October 31st, in 1517, that Luther chose this day to nail the
95 Theses to the church door? This was not an act of vandalism. The church door
was a public bulletin board, and he knew that a lot of people would see them
there.
All Hallows Eve was to be celebrated that
evening. It was the night before All Saints Day, a day for the celebration of
all the Saints, a big deal in the Roman Catholic Church. Luther chose this day
because he knew that the church would be packed.
You know those round glowing
things above the heads of certain people in Christian art? That’s right, “halo’s”.
They are there to show that the person under them is a saint, or holy, or
hallowed, as in “hallowed be thy name”. All Saints Day was, therefore, All
Hallows Day. The night before this day was All Hallows Eve, shortened over time,
to Halloween.
Christians in the Middle Ages believed
that the forces that defy God were allowed to come out at night to scare
Christians. Christians would dress up to mock them and to mock-scare each
other.
At Midnight, these forces were
required to return to whatever hole they came from because it was the beginning
of All Saints Day.
Then, they were mocked. Today, in our secular society, people celebrate
them. They pretend scary things are fun in order to convince themselves that
they are not scary at all. Yet, people are frightened, especially when left to
themselves.
This third celebration is our
culture’s celebration of the forces that oppose God of evil.
Halloween used to be fun, now it has gotten
very dark and is way more about what adults want than about what children want.
Most children have difficulty separating what they see from what they feel, or what
is true.
People now decorate their
lawns, they invest in elaborate costumes, they seek out terror as
entertainment. They spend an enormous amount of money on the decorations, the
parties, the costumes, etc.
Christians, those who believe
and are baptized have nothing to fear, and we also have something to real to celebrate:
our salvation. Without anything to celebrate in terms of our salvation, we have
everything to fear.
[What do you think? What are you
celebrating this week, and how? Share your thoughts in the comments section
below and we’ll respond to every one.]
Paul writes,
*Ephesians 6:10-18
Notice that salvation has
nothing to do with us. We put on the armor of God.
We are set free from sin, death
and the power of the devil, by God.
Our baptism service actually
contains an exorcism. Our sponsors are asked, or we are asked if we are old
enough, to renounce all the forces that defy God. We do. Those forces now have
no power over us. None.
This is why we celebrate and
praise God this week and every week, forever. The victory of God over everything
that hold us back from being free from sin, death, and the powers of all the
forces that defy God, to know the abundant life that truly is life, in a living
relationship with the one true living God, has been won.
We have nothing to fear. We
have several real things to celebrate this week: faith, baptism, and salvation,
all gifts from God.
No comments:
Post a Comment