Faith Works 10-28-17

Faith Works 10-28-17
Jeff Gill

The other Luther
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Katharina von Bora is not going to get as much mention as I'd like to see her get tomorrow.

Not in my Sunday sermon for Reformation Sunday, not in many others, I'll guess. October 31 is the 500th anniversary of the publication of Martin Luther's 95 theses, his list of statements in dispute of certain doctrines of the Christian church of his day, so from 1517 to 2017 we have a significant event in the history not just of Western Christendom, but of world civilization.

Martin Luther began his protest of central authority and closely-held belief systems five centuries ago, and in the half-millennium since we've seen Western thought shift to a more individualistic, privacy-oriented, personal way of looking at thought and faith and responsibility. Some might even argue we've gone too far down that road, and I'm sure there will be a few sermons on that subject tomorrow.

But when this Augustinian monk and theology professor started asking questions about repentance, penance, and forgiveness . . . and turning on his own authority to the Bible to read passages like "the just shall live by faith" in a new light, he opened up a path for individual believers "to work out your salvation with fear and trembling."

Luther changed how Christians read their Bibles, aided by the new technology of printing which made Bibles more available to everyday people, and with his translation of the scriptures into German he inspired English translators like Wycliffe and Coverdale, leading to the King James version in our own language.

For more about all of this, check out the comprehensive website www.luther2017.de/en where you can get lost for hours (trust me).

What you have to hunt around to find, though, is more about Katharina von Bora. A well-born young girl sent to a convent for an education, who chose to become a nun, but who caught the fervor of the growing Protestant Reformation around her and married Martin Luther at the age of 26.

They had twenty years together, and six children; she cooked his food, brewed his beer, started businesses like a fish hatchery that helped pay the bills during the tumult of the times as her husband wrote and preached and led his growing movement — but he also respected her opinion, her thoughts, her mind. He called her his "My Lord Katie" without irony, and turned to her as a collaborator in his household, his work, and his writing.

Scholars are still slowly putting more pieces together of how Lord Kathy inspired her husband: almost all we know of her is from what Luther wrote, and how his students would occasionally note her asides in their recording of the master's "Table Talk."

When Luther died, he made Katharina his sole beneficiary and guardian of their children. Today, that sounds utterly normal; that itself is one small sign of how her role and their marriage has influenced Western norms in the centuries since. Suffice it to say that Luther's will was unusual in its day, and much remarked upon, as was the nature of his marriage during his life.

The Protestant Reformation changed not just religion, but how we think and relate to each other in the world that grew from those changes 500 years ago. Katie von Bora played her own significant role in those transformations, and is well worth honoring today, along with that fellow she chose to marry.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; he's not Lutheran himself, but he speaks Lutheran fairly well for a non-native. Tell him your tales of Reformation at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.