Sermon by Fr Peter Wolton, United Benefice of Holland Park, Bible Sunday, 29 October 2017
Sermon by Fr Peter Wolton, United Benefice of Holland Park, Bible Sunday, 29 October 2017
"I do
not make war on dead men"
So said
Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor, as he stood by Martin Luther’s grave in
Wittenberg in 1547 in response to his troops question, “Shall we exhume
Luther’s body and burn it?”
Within eight
years Charles had abdicated. He was the last holder of the office that had
lasted 731 years. No more would there be joint leaders of Latin Christendom.
This coming
Tuesday the church commemorates the 500th anniversary of Luther’s 95 theses,
supposedly pinned on the church door of Wittenberg, denouncing many practices
of and calling for reform of the Church.
A historian
has described Luther as an Augustinian monk who took a hammer and chisel to the
cracks of the edifice of Latin Christendom and kept hammering with massive blows
until it sundered.
Today I am
not about to give a history lesson.
Rather I
want us to do two things:
First that
we reflect on Luther's gift to our understanding of God,
Second, the
Reformation’s special message to us today.
Our
understanding of God:
Before
published his 95 theses, Luther was much given to confession, so much so that
the leader of his monastery is reputed to have exclaimed in exasperation:
“Look here
Brother Martin. If you are going to confess so much, why don’t you do something
worth confessing? Kill your mother or father! Commit adultery! Quit coming here
with such flummery and fake sins!”
Luther may
have been extreme but he also reflected the church’s approach at that time,
worshipping a God who was believed to punish us for our sins, and who achieved
his purposes through pain and suffering.
Such belief
are graphically displayed on the pre Reformation Doom painting in a Suffolk
church of Wenhaston:
St. Michael
and the Devil weighing the souls of the departed against their sins.
The Elect
are sent through a gate to heaven, (a narrow gate), whilst the damned go to
Hell where they a devoured by fire and horrible beasts.
The odds of
being saved were exceptionally small. Indeed one priest of the time calculated
the odds of salvation as 1 in 30,000. So indulgences which were prepaid prayers
for the dead were sold to help the dead progress more rapidly through
purgatory, maybe the equivalent of the recent mis-selling of Payment Protection
Insurance (PPI). And we all know what happens to organisations that mis-sell
PPI.
In Luther’s
view the church had become about saving souls and placating a stern punishing
God, rather than displaying God’s love for his creation.
It was when
studying Romans that Luther made an astonishing discovery, He realised we were
never going to be able to do enough to merit God's love and salvation. But through
the gift of faith we can be declared righteous by God. This is the process by
which we are acquitted, changed, and renewed by the virtue of divine promise
and grace.
This love
and favour of God towards human beings is unmerited.
Our
relationship with God right is like a healing process. As long as the cure is
incomplete, God is willing to overlook our sins.
“Luther had thrown
wide the gates to a new understanding of God,
A God who
loves rather than punishes. A God of Grace:
The
mnemonic
God’s
Reward
At
Christ’s
Expense.
And so the
chisel was placed in the crack. The Reformation was part of many changes in
society across Europe. Blessings flowed but also division and acts of unspeakable
cruelty by others claiming to know the same Lord.
Three
particular blessings:
A God of
love was made accessible, the father in the prodigal son.
Second: the
Bible became available in countries’ own languages as did prayer books and
services.
The role of
the priest changed, no longer mediating between God and his people, celebrating
Mass in Latin with his back to the people. And the role of the laity was
greatly enhanced.
Back in Wenhaston
the Doom painting was no longer in keeping with the new understanding and was
plastered over and only revealed again until 1892.
Now to the
Reformation and its message. Is there a special message for us today?
The
Reformation was made possible by the new technology of printing. A message
could now be distributed so much more widely, quickly and accurately.
We too live
in an age of momentous change, spurred on by, I suggest the polarising
influence of social media. An individual can have a global audience. Their
message can come to us directly. A characteristic of this age is short
attention span. Considered arguments are replaced by black and white. No grey
areas. Trump, Brexit and Catalonia show the power of the chisel being placed in
the crack and being repeatedly hammered.
It is
against this backdrop, this current noise, that the Christian message of God’s
grace, as made known to us through Martin Luther, and proclaimed by St. Paul in
his many letters such as to the people of Colossae that we give hearty thanks
to God, this Bible Sunday.
This message
of God’s grace gives us clear direction, and is the solution for polarised
peoples:
Let us
conclude and remind ourselves of the message to the Colossians:
“Above all, clothe
yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And
let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in
the one body. And be thankful.”
Fr. Peter Wolton
29 October 2017