500 YEARS AGO

“500 YEARS AGO”

            October 31 is the 500^th anniversary of Martin Luther’s posting of the famous “95 Theses” for debate on the church door at Wittenberg, Germany, in 1517.  This event is generally cited as the beginning of the Reformation, the movement that sundered the 1000 year old Roman Catholic and produced the movement known as the “Protestants.”  Of course, in our modern, deconstructionist age, many historians believe that the events of October 31, 1517, never happened.  There is no doubt that  Luther had a number of theses that he wanted to debate with the church, but there is not much documentary evidence for the dramatic nailing of the theses on the doors of the Wittenberg church, calling for a church and public debate.  To paraphrase Marcus Borg, the events may not have happened in just this way, but there is profound truth in this story.

            I went back and re-read the 95 theses last week, and I was struck by their medieval nature but also by their invitation into the modern age.  Luther was greatly irritated with the church practice of selling “indulgences,” and his call to debate is largely centered on seeking an end to this practice.  Indulgences were pronouncements by the Pope and his hierarchy that would get an individual or a departed loved one out of  “purgatory.”  Purgatory was the place that some souls went after death, souls who were not yet ready to be with God.  To use a modern description, in purgatory one would see things a bit more clearly and have opportunities for personal growth before being allowed to pass through the pearly gates.  While it was not hell, which has permanent separation from God and the power of love,  it was not yet heaven either, where love and justice reign.  Depending on whether the local church needed to raise funds, purgatory could be a better or worse place for the soul to abide for awhile.   Whatever the state of purgatory or of the individual soul, indulgences permitted those still living on earth to buy the soul of their loved one out of purgatory and send them on to heaven.

            Firing Luther also was a sense of the sovereign and gracious power of God.  It appalled him to think that the church believed that it controlled salvation and access to God.  He could not believe that the church taught that people could buy their way into heaven.  Perhaps the most modern of his 95 theses is #27,  which says:  “They preach only human doctrines who say that as soon as the money clinks into the money chest, the soul flies out of purgatory.”  For all those luxury-loving preachers out there, Luther has called us out.  

            Indeed he came to believe the very opposite – we do not and cannot do anything to win the grace of God.  There are no programs, no seven steps to salvation, no church doctrine that will win over God’s heart and make Her bend towards us.  Though Luther did not think in terms of individuals cut loose to be on our own in terms of the ultimate meaning of life and of our own lives, the forces that aligned with his initial movement in this disputation with the church drove us into modernity.  The shift from life centered on community to life centered on individuals had begun.  Luther would never have placed the individual over the church in terms of conscience or of doctrine or even of salvation, but his engagement over taking some of the money bags out of the church’s hands led to a revolution which brought us to our modern predicament:  if there are no communal sources of truth, are we all left out on our own to figure things out?  The technological revolutions of the 20^th and 21^st centuries are taking us back to the questions which Luther (and Calvin) raised and wrestled with:  what is the source of the meaning of life?  What is the source of the meaning of my life? 

            Though Protestants gave up the hierarchy of the priesthood, we still are not yet ready to let go of the authority and power of the church to shape and bring significant meaning for individuals and for the larger world.  The story of the 21^st century will largely be the same story that Luther and Calvin engaged so many years ago:  what is the source of  truth?  Is it science?  Is it spiritual?  And what is the source of our meaning?  In its best days, science leaves the idea of meaning to others, but there is a growing sense that science is banishing the idea of “meaning.”   The difficult and dangerous truth is that we as individuals and cultures cannot live without a source of meaning.  There will always be a yearning for truth and meaning from outside ourselves, and that discovery and reminder from Martin Luther and others is one of the lasting legacies of the Reformation.  More on this next week, but check out the Reformation in this week!