Monday Morning Music Ministry

11-7-22

Revolutions come and revolutions go. Thomas Jefferson noted – and implicitly advocated – that political and social revolutions need happen every generation, and their Trees of Liberty be watered by the blood of patriots.

It was an extreme prescription, but his was an era of extreme distress; of discontents, panaceas, and actions in the New World, in France and other boiling pots across Europe. Oftentimes revolutions are followed by counter-revolutions, as in France but mercifully not in the United States; and those counter-revolutions often are as bloody as the initial revolts.

When historians look back in the “come and go” mode a cynicism may be inferred; or a discounting of the issues and import of violent revolts. But in truth we must avoid such attitudes, not the least because we might become inured to the legitimate urgency of imminent revolts in our own day.

There are two main reasons we tend to dismiss the earthquake-aspects of earlier revolutions. One, the passage of time dilutes the details of history-bending events: we tend to classify them in the same way we record floods and plagues and migrations. More important, the changes wrought by revolutions, good and bad, settle into the reality of subsequent eras. Old complaints seem less legitimate when revolutions succeed.

When revolutions succeed in varying degrees, when the contending forces do battle and either claim victory or lick their wounds, revolutions routinely are reclassified by history as Revolts. Another truth about history’s revolutions and revolts is that they never occur spontaneously, nor without a host of factors long fermenting and brewing.

But what we call these days “perfect storms” summon the inevitable flash-points. Such was the case in Martin Luther’s time (as we recently marked Reformation Sunday, the anniversary of his nailing 95 Theses to the door of Wittenberg Church)… and is the case today. Let us be aware.

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Some people think that the Protestant Reformation began when the monk Martin Luther, upset with the corruption of the Papacy and the heretical selling of indulgences (in effect, paying a priest to elevate the dead into Heaven) aimed his challenges at the entire structure of the Church. And that Germany, and much of Europe, spontaneously erupted in flames.

In fact it was no such thing, and Luther meant no such thing… but, given time, it was close to what happened. Theological opposition to Roman (Catholic) authoritarianism was at least 200 years old when Luther acted. Rebellion – sometimes as innocent as wanting the Bible to be translated into the language of their people – stamped out clerics like John Wycliffe in England. Jan Hus in Bohemia, and William Tyndale in England. By “stamped out” I mean excommunicated. But so rabid was the hatred of the Catholic Church that Wycliffe’s body was exhumed and burned; Hus was merely burned alive; and Tyndale was strangled to death and then burned.

As often happens in revolutions, those sorts of flames of immolation result in firing up further rebellion.

So Luther had the examples before him: of ecclesiastical dilemmas, an intransigent establishment, and examples of protest – and martyrdom. But those Theses he announced were meant as a call to debate. An agenda for meetings. Topics for discussion. Posting such notices was one of the traditional purposes of that church door.

On the other hand, Luther courted disaster by alleging (with increasing fervor) the sins of the papacy (popes and their edicts and their mistresses and such), and the corruption of the Bible (man-made rules that supplanted Scripture). The Vatican and the Holy Roman Emperor dug in their heels.

Finally, the eye of Perfect Storm settled over the city of Worms in Germany, on the occasion of a Diet (an assembly of religious and secular leaders). Luther was detained; called before it; and, with his many books and sermons spread on a table before him, was ordered to denounce and renounce all he had written.

A Perfect Storm? With the Trees of religious liberty, freedom of thought, and the rights of citizens and Christian individuals watered by the blood of martyrs, Luther’s defense was a thunderclap, a nexus of history:

Since your most serene majesty and your highnesses require of me a simple, clear, and direct answer, I will give one, and it is this:

I cannot submit my faith either to the pope or to the council, because it is clear that they have fallen into error and even into inconsistency with themselves. If, then, I am not convinced by proof from Holy Scripture, or by cogent reasons… I neither can not nor will not retract anything; for it cannot be either safe nor honest for a Christian to speak against his conscience.

Here I stand. I can do no other. God help me. Amen.

Luther assumed he would be tortured and burned to death. In Washington’s Museum of the Bible is a letter he wrote the night before his defense, calmly commending his soul to God and discussing the disposition of his worldly belongings. But instead, that Perfect Storm swept him away, “kidnapped” by friendly princes, hidden for a time (during which he translated the Bible – horrors! – into the everyday language of the German people), and finally emerging as the putative leader of many things.

Those things, across the landscape of Western Civilization, included personal relationships with Jesus; access to Scripture; literacy; the respect for individual liberty; political empowerment; the Enlightenment. Assisted by the invention of printing and a political revolt of princes against the Holy Roman Empire, Protestantism (Protest-antism) spread. To some things Luther disagreed, or would have. He chose to reestablish, not tear down. The Modern Age began with the Reformation, and Luther rejected Modernism. In fact he characterized Reason as the enemy of Faith.

Yet – contrary to many of history’s evolutionary moments – his Reforms, the Reform-ation, had truly revolutionary effects.

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I referred to “today” above. How is our time like Luther’s?

We are at an inflection-point in history. Viewed large, there has been a conflict brewing – across many “hot” and “cold” battlefields – between the Individual and the Establishment. Since the Reformation and then the American Revolution, it has been the Individual on one side, and the power of the State on the other. The State has taken many forms: the Church; “royalty”; finance capitalism (as opposed to Free Enterprise); dictators; Communism behind many masks.

“Macro,” the Individual has fought and survived by the devices of Republican Democracy in civic life… through the Free Market in social life… through fundamental Christianity (whose center of gravity increasing moves south of the Equator). And the oppressive Establishment has with relentless acuity and insidious subterfuge waged war upon us through seductive appeals to sinfulness and selfishness… through attacks on traditional values and standards… through arguments in favor of secularism.

“Micro”? The great storms and tides of history are mirrored in the lives of each of us individuals. The sanctity of our families and the protection of our children are the battlegrounds of today – they are not separate, but essential to, the preservation of our Republic. Our culture turns more rotten by the day.

No battlefield – no squall of that storm – is too little or too local. Martin Luther, after all, when he made that history-bending defense, still saw himself as a lonely monk wanting to register some complaints, hoping that the Establishment might mend its ways. He had little realization that he stood atop a volcano, much less called down that Perfect Storm.

In our own “assemblies,” even with few people watching (except angels of Heaven and God Himself, remember) we must see clearly… decide to fight… act with integrity… and embrace truth.

Here we stand. We can do no other. So help us, God. Amen.

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I never fail to weep at the power of Luther’s words in his “Battle Hymn of the Reformation”:

Let goods and kindred go, this mortal life also;

The body they may kill: God’s truth abideth still –

His Kingdom is forever!

Click Video Clip: A Mighty Fortress

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An award-winning movie about the life of Martin Luther:

Martin Luther | Full Movie | Niall MacGinnis |

10-22-18

This weekend just passed covered the day we celebrate — or should celebrate and commemorate; a good time to re-dedicate — Reformation Day. October 31, anniversary of the day Dr Martin Luther nailed his 95 These to the church door at Wittenberg, Germany.

These 95 points of “Contention” with policies of the Pope and the establishment Roman Church are regarded as the sparks that ignited the Reformation, and the Protestant movement. There were reformers before Luther – preachers, theologians and Bible translators who were persecuted, tortured, and killed. The English John Wycliffe died a century before Luther was active. Hatred against him, for daring to adapt the Bible to the language of the people, was that his bones were disinterred and burned after his death. The Bohemian reformer Jan Hus was burned at the stake for his reformist beliefs. His last words, tied to the stake, before the flames consumed him, were “in a hundred years, God will raise up a man whose calls for reform can not be suppressed.“

It was 102 year later that Luther nailed his challenges to that church door.
Luther was persecuted, chased, went into hiding, and translated the Bible into the language of his people, the Germans. He sought reform, not revolution, yet revolution occurred: half of Europe caught fire with the belief that faith alone, by God’s grace, actuated salvation; and that people needed no intercessor with God except Christ. He was excommunicated. He married. He preached and wrote lessons… and wrote hymns.

It is my belief that, as last year we observed the 500th anniversary of the Reformation, the church — at least the Western Church, certainly the American church in virtually all its corners — is in dire need of reformation again.

More than that, we need to look to Martin Luther as a Hero of Conscience. He said when he was called on trial to recant his beliefs and writings,
“Unless I am convinced by proofs from Scriptures or by plain and clear reasons and arguments, I can not and will not retract.
“For it is neither safe nor wise to do anything against conscience.
“Here I stand. I can do no other. God help me.“

The time is coming in this contemporary world when Christians have it demanded of them to renounce their faith. That this is already a time of anti-Christian persecution, is abundantly clear. That, daily, believers suffer indignities and are asked to compromise their principles and forced to sublimate their voices, is a reality to committed Christians.

Some days soon Christians will have to suffer no longer in silence, or have the luxury of withdrawing into small groups and communities of believers. The Bible does not merely warn… prophets did not just threaten… but God promised this holy challenge to the saints of God in the End Times.

Can we, like Luther, have the spiritual strength to say: “For it is neither safe nor wise to do anything against conscience. “Here I stand. I can do no other” ?

I have two brief clips for Reformation Day: the first is the powerful “conscience” scene from the 1953 “Luther” movie starring Niall MacGinnis (nominated for an Academy Award).

Here I stand

The second is the “battle hymn of the Reformation” sung a capella by Steve Green. Myself, I can never sing this mighty hymn without choking up. Its final lines describe Luther’s trial… and foreshadow our own:
“Let goods and kindred go, this mortal life also;
The body they may kill: God’s truth abideth still,
His kingdom is forever!”

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Click: A Mighty Fortress Is Our God