Faith Works 10-7-17
Jeff Gill
Reform, renewal, and restoration
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Western Christianity has a very significant commemoration coming up at the end of October… but first, a few more immediate notes of interest for our local faith communities.
Tomorrow, on Sunday afternoon Oct. 8 just as many worship services are concluding, there's a chili cook-off at the Canal Market District from Noon to 3 pm, which is also serving as a fundraiser for Citizens for Children Services. Pay $10 and you get a chance to sample a variety of chili recipes; kids 10 and under are free, and there's special food ready for them. Lots more going on (cider, face painting, silent auction), and worth a stop on your way home from church.
In a bit more than three weeks, we will mark the 500th anniversary of an event that didn't really happen the way we tend to think of it. Sigh. So many of these, but the historic reality is worth our consideration.
Traditionally, it has been said that on the eve of All Saints' Day, October 31, 1517, Martin Luther went to the castle church of Wittenberg and nailed his "95 theses" (or arguments or assertions) about repentance and forgiveness in the sight of God to the door. It makes a great visual, and both religious art and modern cinema have tried to evoke that dramatic act, a now former monk boldly putting his defiance under a mallet and nail to place it right where it confronts the churchly powers he sought to reform.
And indeed, the Protestant Reformation dates itself to that day. What we don't know for sure is if Luther finished writing them on that day, or handed them off to a courier, or if they were copied off and posted on that day by a sexton, a church custodian who would have nailed the notice up. What makes it both more and less dramatic is that the church door was the internet of its day, the municipal message board, the public display area for all manner of official acts. Posting upcoming weddings, announcing festivals and holy days, declaring new laws or ordinances: they all went up on the church door. Being nailed there was not defiance itself, but a declaration to any and everyone that this is what you wanted known, what you were associating yourself with.
The 95 Theses, in English translation, are easy to find online, and worth a read. Making some allowances for the language of the day, and understanding a bit of the theological backstory involved, you can still step up to that door and read for yourself on what grounds this preacher and teacher was seeking to upend the traditional order of things. I recommend that activity to anyone, regardless of their denominational affiliation or religious interest, for the posting of the 95 Theses was a watershed moment in intellectual as well as religious history for the Western world.
If you promise to read them in full on your own, I will say this: the 95 Theses assert that the processes of forgiveness and reconciliation through the church on earth had come to do violence to God's intention, and needed to be reformed. Martin Luther didn't argue, as one can start to think looking backwards through the telescope, that all of the understanding and interpretation of grace and redemption can take place merely between any one believer on their own and God. His Protestantism was not the modern consumeristic model of hyper-individualism, but the church Luther envisioned was more catholic (if not Catholic) than many tend to assume. Luther was social and communal and ecclesial in ways we are still, 500 years later, trying to come to grips with. We need each other, that learned and anguished monk knew, wrestling with his demons in Wartburg Castle and seeking forgiveness in private prayer, in our hymn singing and sermon hearing and acts of prayer and praise in community.
My own favorite of the theses is the 62nd, where Martin Luther reminds his readers at the church door: "The true treasure of the church is the most holy gospel of the glory and grace of God." Not the built-up treasury of the saints saved up for the church hierarchy to spend as they will, but as a legacy held in trust together, for all humankind.
There are both Catholic and Lutheran congregations marking what we've learned, and where we still fall short, each year around "Reformation Sunday." Many different Christian bodies look back to Luther and marvel at his courage and clarity. May we all do that this year as we approach Oct. 31st.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; tell him about your hopes for reform and renewal of the church at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.
