Reformation 2020: Revelation 14, John 8
Out of all academic subjects, history is the most neglected. You know the quote “Those who fail to learn history are doomed to repeat it”. History is easy to neglect. We treat it as simple facts and figures. Why try and memorize all of history if we have it recorded in books that we can look up any time? Well, typically we don’t take the time to look up history if it doesn’t match up with what we see now.
History is often treated then as a mere science. We might ask if you can quote all of our former presidents in the same way we ask if you can remember a whole multiplication table. But there are no lack of “facts” about history for us to recall. Simple facts and details aren’t what make history worth studying. More important is learning history as an Art, learning to understand how people thought and why they acted as such in history.`
The Reformation that we are celebrating today is a perfect example. It’s one thing to be able to remember that it revolved around Martin Luther around 1517. So what!? What about it? Why was it important? There are a lot of ways to answer that, but let me give you an example from history.
Earlier we heard a short reading from Revelation
6 Then I saw another angel flying directly overhead, with an eternal gospel to proclaim to those who dwell on earth, to every nation and tribe and language and people. 7 And he said with a loud voice, “Fear God and give him glory, because the hour of his judgment has come, and worship him who made heaven and earth, the sea and the springs of water.”
I don’t think this strikes us much today when we hear and learn it. But, there’s a reason it’s a reading for the Festival of the Reformation. When Martin Luther died, it was preached at his funeral that this angel, this messenger, who preached an eternal gospel for all people was none other than Martin Luther himself. Most Christians today would scoff at the notion of this Revelation prophecy to be about Luther, especially if they’re not a Lutheran Christian. But learning history is much less about the facts of what happened, and more importantly, “why?”.
Regardless of who this prophecy is really about, why were they so confident after the Reformation to identify this angel with the man Martin Luther. Well, precisely because just as this Revelation passage describes, he reminded the Whole Western Church what this Eternal Gospel of Jesus was really about
At that time, most were swayed by their poorly educated priests to seek penance, indulgences, outward acts to help secure their salvation with God. The common people then did not grow up singing the words of “Jesus loves me, this I know.” The people weren’t taught the confidence of salvation like we do today. It was understood among them that it was to each one of them to earn God’s favor.
It was most notably Luther who came along, and as a scholar who was to study the scriptures, realized the message of salvation through Jesus Christ taught clearly through the Scriptures was not consistent with the teaching of salvation by works that was regularly taught to congregations.
In this way, Luther served as a fine and exemplary prophet. Now, when we normally think of a prophet, we think of someone who God has specially spoken to or revealed himself to. Luther would never say God approached him. He didn’t need a special dream or Revelation moment from God. He had all of God’s Word as his finger tips. In an age where few had access to or could even read the written scriptures, Luther as a scholar might as well have God’s very voice in his ear. And having heard God’s voice and recognizing it, he did the only thing he could do, obey it and preach it to others, as all the prophets of the scriptures did before him.
You would think the people would have been excited to have a prophet among them! That is, until you recall how most prophets were treated in the Scriptures. God sent prophets when his people weren’t following his word. Those who are disobeying often do not love being corrected, no matter who is sent to them and what they say. Even when God’s own Son, God himself came to preach to the people, many would not listen. We heard more about Jesus and the Pharisees. The Pharisees were focussed on their own outward righteousness, believing they could truly live pure enough to earn God’s favor. It’s not unlike the acts of penance and the purchasing of indulgences we know of during the Reformation. They thought they were someone as direct descendents of the great Abraham. These who felt they kept the Law better than anyone didn’t take kindly to Jesus’ telling them that they were slaves to their sin and needed to be set free.
But he wasn’t just there to tell them about their sin, he was there to share the real solution. He as the Son had come that all may be set free, and he was preaching this to all people. In a way, Jesus himself might have been the first to fulfill this Revelation of passage of an Angel, or more literally, a messenger, since Jesus is much more than just an angel, who had an eternal Gospel to proclaim to all peoples and languages.
Ironically, these Pharisees who hated him most helped accomplish this salvation in putting him to death, unknowingly offering to God the greatest sacrifice of all time. God would allow his prophets to face suffering, but it would never silence God’s voice to the world. We saw that with the Apostles after Jesus’ time. Especially St. Paul, who for the sake of the Gospel, was willing to be treated as a traitor by his fellow Jews who did not believe. He was beaten several times, almost to death, and thrown in prison. But it would not stop God from using St. Paul as his voice. He wrote many fantastic letters that we know today, clearly preaching Jesus as means of being saved. We heard a great example from Romans 3 earlier.
For there is no distinction: 23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24 and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, 25 whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith.
1500 years or so after Jesus and St. Paul, God continued to have his voice and his Gospel preached to his people. The Roman Catholic Church at that time had emulated the Pharisees teachings more than Jesus’. Now I said earlier that Martin Luther came along like a prophet, I don’t say that meaning to disagree with great verse from Hebrews God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son. In that sense, Luther was just showing Jesus’ voice to the people of his time.
Luther did not go about bringing corrections to the Church out of an arrogance that he was sent by God. He did not speak against the Pope out of a desire to be a rebel disobey authority. Luther was from being a sinless man, but God worked through him to Reform his church out of Luther’s trust in the scriptures as God’s Word and his boldness to teach and act according to it alone. He desired to be obedient to the Roman Church as much as he could, but as St. Peter confessed famously in the Book of Acts (5:29), there comes a time when We must obey God rather man.
Luther didn’t just teach and lecture, but he went about important work ensuring that coming generations would have access to God’s Word. He did the painstaking word of translating the scriptures in to Deutsche, German, the language of the common people. It wasn’t a literal translation, it was to be a teaching tool, reducing the more difficult teachings down for the common man to grasp, and then to hear their trained pastor preach on further.
But even a simplified Bible is still a large book and daunting to understand, so he wrote his Famous Small Catechism, a book which easily could be entirely memorized by a family and taught at home. It wasn’t a replacement for the scriptures, it was to help the people understand key teachings so they would always trust in our Lord Jesus Christ alone for salvation, and never be duped into believing it came by their penance or purchasing indulgences.
The whole Christian Church today, not just us Lutheran Christians, have benefited greatly from Luther’s Work in the Reformation. Though there are still false preachers who mislead people in trusting in their own works for salvation, by and large there is a strong understanding in all the Church today of our salvation coming by Grace, through Faith, in Christ Alone.
Now, was Martin Luther really the fulfillment of the Angel preaching the Gospel that was described in our Revelation Passage. No, I don’t think he’s the literal fulfillment it was speaking of. But when you simply look at what God accomplished through him, he certainly operated in the same way Revelation described, especially with how he helped God’s Word to be spread into the language of the people.
And if you were a lay person in those times, and suddenly were learning for the first time that your salvation comes through Jesus’ Work alone, you would have considered whoever taught it to you to be the greatest Prophet there ever was. Indeed, how beautiful are the feet of those who preach the Good News, no matter to who or where or when it happens.
Let us Give Thanks to God for how he worked through his servants in the Reformation, and let us never take for granted the heritage he has given us today, trust boldly, by God’s Word in the Scriptures Alone, that we are saved by Grace, through Faith, in Christ Alone. And to God alone be the Glory.
In Jesus’ Name, Amen.