Martin Luther. The monolith of his influence casts a vast shadow across every conceivable corner of western Christian thought.
 
Martin Luther, founder of the German Reformation, and the historical figure who traded insults with Pope Leo X.
 
Martin Luther, the man who on October 31, 1517, raised a defiant challenge to indulgences with his 95 theses.
 
The symbolic power of the man’s name can hardly be overstated, but to become enamored with the ideas he espoused, to know him only as a formidable mind, to lose the person striving for salvation, is to employ him as an icon for our own purposes. We would whisk him away from Worms to be used as a powerful piece in our struggle against Roman political and religious influence. History, as I see it, is all too often construed as a series of Machiavellian machinations to achieve some end. I suppose I am too sentimental to be a real historian, concerned as I am with the unstated emotional currents and, theologically speaking, with personal conversion.
 
So what’s the bottom line? Where am I heading with this? Before, Martin Luther was the giant figure with whom we are familiar today, he was a defiant son who became an Augustinian monk. But behind his drive to consume the theological wisdom of his day, were the doubts that ate him up. We should never forget that this man lived in fear of salvation. In fact, I imagine that it drove him. Where I am neither as driven nor monastic, I am well acquainted with fear. This was the crack in the door that helped me to begin to appreciate Martin Luther as a human being coping with the difficulties of sin on a daily basis in addition to the theological achievements that are no less a part of his legacy.
 
Seeing Luther as a human being, however, was in no way inviting me to compare myself with him. Between the two of us, “slacker” is a title that would be reserved for yours truly. By the age of twenty-four, in 1507, he had been ordained to the priesthood, and by the time he was my age he had received his doctor of theology and was lecturing in Wittenburg. It would take extraordinary focus to so impress his peers and move so quickly within the Church. It would take the most ardent pursuit of God’s love to propel someone so young into such a serious and demanding call despite his father’s desire that he be a lawyer.
 
Perhaps because of all his grand achievements, it is rare indeed that we think of Martin Luther as a young man. How he must have been, who he would have been like. Could I compare him to anyone that I had ever met? It is a rare thing to know someone so eager, in so much haste to make their mark on the world. Not me certainly. My younger years marked me with the habit, that persists, of trying to make as little mark as possible. In some ways, the Luther that I have come know, through his own translated words, has served to make him less approachable rather than more. His confidence and urgency are more than daunting even to the remote observer, such as myself. This excerpt from his open letter to Leo X offers a taste of what I mean:
 
All this [being the conduct of the Roman Curia and other representatives of the Roman Church] is clearer than day to all, and the Roman church, once the holiest of all, has become the most licentious den of thieves, the most shameless of all brothels, the kingdom of sin, death, and hell. It is so bad that even Antichrist himself, if he should come, could think of nothing to add to its wickedness. (588, The Freedom of a Christian)
 
Is this the voice of diplomacy and understatement? I don’t think so. It is the voice of prophetic witness. This is the voice of a man who caused waves by his absolute testimony of the Truth and was willing and able to ride those waves.
 
It’s the sort of thing I prefer to respect at a distance. Better to not be the recipient of that kind of heat. After all he’s not making me squirm in my chair, or raising my blood pressure. I can chuckle and call it hyperbole. But in the energy and conviction he projects in his writing, we catch a glimpse of the man behind the words. And it looks a bit like an angry man and conveys a sense that he means no exaggeration. It concerns the most important business of all, salvation. It is no accident then that Luther uses the image of Jesus cleansing the Temple when addressing Pope Leo X about the state of the Roman Church. The Roman Church, in Luther’s mind, has utterly defiled its calling to be the true vine of Christ. He’s telling us it must be pruned. There isn’t any doubt that the point was well made, but the conviction with which Luther expresses himself tells us something. It is clear that Luther takes the business of souls very seriously. And more specifically, one human soul, his own.
 
I have no doubt that Luther would take today’s Gospel to heart. Why else would it have been chosen for today. But why? “Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me.” This message isn’t compromising, which is the kind of language Luther would understand. I doubt the ability to compromise was even part of his constitution. Probably at least partially because of this tendency, we know that his early years as a monk were filled with fear of salvation. How was he to abide in Christ if all his good works could not ultimately cleanse him form sin? Despite his ascetic lifestyle he could not convince himself that he would not be pruned from the true vine that is Christ. If he could not meet his own standards how could he meet those of his Lord?
 
Have we not all known, at some time or another, that crawling fear that attacks in the night, when we are most prey to our doubts? It is without relief or mercy. It is a hell of its own. This is how I imagined Luther’s nights when he sought relief through mortification and asceticism. And yet there was no relief, no surcease. In my experience there are two ways to respond to this kind of gnawing fear: descent into paralyzing depression or a determined attack against the source of one’s fear. I think we know which Luther would have chosen. I feel that I know him better for this struggle. It is something we have shared at least to some small extent.
 
Luther, through his academic and prayerful efforts, was able to find the key to his personal salvation, that is Justification by Faith. The precepts of Humanism and the study of scripture offered to him a more complete understanding of Jesus’ words in the Gospel today: “You have already been cleansed by the word that I have spoken to you.” He realized that no action of his own no matter how meritorious could gain him the release that he was searching for. The agency and the will are God’s through Christ. The irony of this realization, or perhaps the paradox, lies in the fact that so much work preceded the moment of enlightenment. This was not as Bonhoeffer was wont to say, “cheap grace.” Without the desire to be saved, truly and utterly saved from sin and death, Luther might never have reached the moment of insight. I see this as is the truest testimony of what is meant by abiding in Christ in the Gospel. Living is work, not sitting around on your butt. Luther knew this, though those who hear his doctrine often forget this simple fact. For Luther, the work was a foregone conclusion. For those of us who have inherited the fruit of his labors, it sometimes easy to succumb to a less laborious process. The leaf of the vine that does no work turns brown and dies, but without rain no matter how vibrant the leaf it too will soon die. God’s influence is that rain.
 
For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return there until they have watered the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be, that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and succeed in the thing for which I sent it.

These words from Isaiah tell us about the character of God’s on earth. The cycle of rain and snow continues forever.
 
Luther’s work, like God’s influence, did not end with the insight that brought him out of despair. Once his personal demons were mastered by the rain of God’s loving Grace, his prophetic witness really kicked into high gear. I am convinced that God’s word was in Luther, but one is left to wonder how God’s purpose was fulfilled. It is easy enough to accept that God wished for Luther to win free from the doctrine that was keeping him from feeling God’s love. But it is frightening to imagine that God’s inspiration channeled through Luther’s energy and conviction were intended to divide the Church so decisively and for so long. I don’t propose to answer that question one way or another, though I am inclined to accept that the division was God’s will. But I am buoyed by the fact that God’s love is continuing to reach to those who truly wish to know him through the sometimes impediments of doctrine, habit, and short sightedness. This is the message of hope and life that persists through the Chaos that followed the so called Protestant Reformation. This message of hope is also a word of warning: to listen for the dissenting, solitary voice; to be critical of our own practices; and to continuously consider how we exclude.
 
In Martin Luther, we were given a person who spoke according to the truth in his heart without fear of being silenced. In him the rain of heaven fell to earth rekindling and renewing the Spirit of Christ among us. So in Martin Luther’s own words as we sang them today: “We will not fear, for God hath willed his truth to triumph through us.”