Homily for Martin Luther's Feast Day

As delivered on Thursday 19 February 2009 at the Episcopal Prayer Service at Asbury Theological Seminary...

I want to thank this gathering for the honor it is to address you with a homily. I don’t know a lot about the customs, traditions, orders, and page numbers, but you have graciously allowed me to share my thoughts tonight. In fact, my ignorance is multiplied by the fact that I could not ascertain our allocated scriptures in time to prepare something meaningful, thus we will remember Martin Luther on this, his feast day. At any rate, Thanks very much.

In the late nineteen eighties, rock music in the mainstream was ruled by massive bands that would only play to sold out stadiums. Their lyrics and artistry had devolved to the point where all evidence of the artisan was faded out in order to keep records off shelves and money in the calloused hands of the musicians themselves as well as in the callous pockets of those in the music industry. But simmering beneath the surface, primarily on the college campuses, but also in the small towns, in the poor areas of big cities something was afoot. This was not new: good modern music has always come from these places in some way shape or form. Out of this undercurrent came a few people that ultimately reshaped rock music in their image, regardless of the fact that it was not their intent. One of these figures, one Kurt Cobain, kicked and screamed the whole way towards changing the entire popular music culture. This process happened frightfully quickly, which is why you still hear people grumbling nonsense about how Poison could have gone on forever if it weren’t for that skinny twerp. He was a reluctant rock star indeed, deeply resenting the success that got him to where he was on the cultural stage. And yet, Cobain soldiered on for a time before his suicide, creating some of the most memorable music of the nineteen nineties. Cobain’s influence is till felt today among the many strains of popular rock music, a fact that he himself would regard as absurd. After all, he was just a punk rocker from Aberdeen, Washington.

Why would I talk about Kurt Cobain when this is Martin Luther’s feast day? I just could not let this day go by with noting the tangential similarities of early nineties rock and roll and the beginnings of the Protestant Reformation, that’s why. But do forgive me, as Cobain and Luther are, in fact, very different people; Luther’s formidable mind might explode if he heard the accented twos and fours of rock music’s back beat, and Cobain’s already addled soul would never have been able to withstand the pressure of the medieval church’s outlook on the justice of God.

But Luther was himself a recalcitrant reformer in many ways, was he not? He was not so excited about becoming a monk. He was not convinced that he should become a Doctor of theology. He was not necessarily intent on starting a “Western Protestantism.” Luther was a man of his time, a time of debate and reform within the Catholic Church. But Luther was also a man of conflict and talent. Indeed, there are a great many stories of Luther’s monastic and conflicted piety: confessing all day and night to the dismay of his confessor, living in the constant fear and even secret hatred of the God that damned sinners each just one example of the poles in which Luther existed. Luther is that sort of person that returns the gift of integrity to a dying system, a type of person that has existed since humans could tell each other about each other, a type of person that is certainly found in the person of Jesus, and certainly the type of person that all Christians are allowed to be. Indeed, Luther gives us yet another human model on how to stand in the face of the false and stubbornly yet lovingly defend that which is true, that truth we find in the Gospel, which is available to all of mankind.

Time does not permit to elucidate the contribution Herr Doctor Luther has given the Western Church. This is a prayer meeting and not doctrine class, nor Church History Class. I will not be giving a careful and nuanced explication of Luther’s notion of justification by faith alone, nor any of the other theological precepts we now cherish as part of our Protestant theological heritage and orientation. Rather, I wanted to note three of Luther’s theological concepts that we may take for our Christian journey on this night and perhaps throughout our hopefully many years in service to the master.

1) Corum Deo: “in the presence of God: Luther’s complaints with the scholastic theologians of the medieval period were many, but he certainly hated the idea of a God that existed solely as proposition, or as some unifying theory. No, God refuses to sit within the confines of human categorical analyses. To Luther, God is always with us, always in our business, always advocating for us, always working his justice and mercy. For us as seminarians, may we take this idea and run with it! Never may we allow our studies permit us to confine God to our minds and research papers and rob Him of His person. For it is that triune community of Godhead and personality that is worth worshipping tonight, not some lofty and disengaged ultimate ideal.
2) Christus pro Me, pro Nobis: “Christ for me, for us”: Luther never actually systematized a theory of atonement, which may be due to his never having written a formal systematic theology (much like one John Wesley, so when someone says Wesley didn’t do one, just say neither did Luther!) and was much more interested in writing in a more ad hoc, even pastoral manner. But one reality Luther was convinced was that the actions taken by Jesus on the cross were efficient for me and for us. Even though the work of salvation is that of the Godhead, we live in the reality that a savior has worked for us. That reality is present as the Kingdom, and we forget at our peril the personal as well as the communal components of the fact that Christ was on the tree for us.
3) Anfechtung: “dread, anxiety”: An interesting component to Luther’s theology is the struggle of the believer. It strikes me as a bit too German for my tastes, my sunny British blood is a little uncomfortable with this notion that the life of the Christian is lived in the dread anxiety of temptation and on watchful guard from the enemy’s snares. But it is a matter of perspective, which is to say that my Teutonic brother has a point. Christian life is a struggle: against the evil of this world, the injustice we face, and certainly the sins that we still commit whilst in the process of being made more like Christ. We must realize that our faith does make life difficult on some level, but those other two aspects we talked about steel us and encourage us for the difficult tasks given to us.

As a fan of Wesley, I am fan of Luther as we owe a lot to his efforts. Indeed, my work here at Asbury might look very different without the Reverend Doctor. So on his feast day, I suppose I would thank him for riling everyone up and nailing those theses. As a former punk rocker myself for my part, Luther remains a favorite for being so strangely, delightfully, and earnestly subversive. Thanks Martin. An thanks to all of you for Listening!