Text of the Week: For the gospel reveals
how God puts people right with himself: it is through faith from beginning to
end. As the scripture says, “The person who is put right with God through faith
shall live.” Romans 1:17
Welcome to our Services today and a special
welcome to anyone worshipping with us for the first time. During today’s
services we are going to mark the 500th anniversary of the
Reformation. It was on the 31st October, 1517 that Martin Luther is
said to have nailed 95 propositions for discussion at the university in
Wittenberg to the university church door. It sparked off discussions that have
been going on ever since. Much that Luther did and much that he stood for we
would not countenance today. But equally much that he did and much that he
stood for go to the heart of our faith. I want to home in on three things that
have meant the world to me and very much help to shape the person I am. Only by
Grace was the title we gave to one of the song books we produced and have used
at Highbury for many years. The modern worship song may not be by Luther but it
goes to the heart of something that’s mean the world to me. It’s the fact that
God reaches out to each of us in forgiving love that makes all the difference
to me. The next thing that’s all important to me is the centrality of the Bible
– that’s supremely where we can hear God’s Word for us today and that Word
makes all the difference. But how we read the Bible is also crucial … and
that’s the third of Luther’s insights that counts for me. At the heart of the
whole of the Bible is Jesus Christ: how important it is to read the Bible
through the eyes of Jesus.
Welcome and Call to Worship
124 Praise to the Lord the almighty
Prayer and the Lord’s Prayer
Luther’s Story
Reading; Romans 1:16-17
A Hy-Spirit Song
Activities for all over 3
Romans 5:1-5 – the Congregation
OBG 25 Only by Grace – Hy-Spirit
The Opening of a Closed Book
Hymn: Reforming Christ [Tune:
Woodlands]
Reading: Romans 8:31-39
454 A safe stronghold
Prayers of Concern
112 God whose almighty word
Words of Blessing
At our evening service we explored Graham Adams' new hymn for the anniversary year
Reforming Christ!
At our evening service we explored Graham Adams' new hymn for the anniversary year
Reforming Christ!
The Opening of a Closed Book - Luther at 500
505 years ago in 1512 something remarkable happened in a small town 68 miles South West of the modern city of Berlin. though few people noticed at the time. A young monk who had been studying the Bible for seven years at the new university of Wittenberg and regularly delivering theology lectures was presented with a closed Bible. Holding it carefully he opened it. It was part of a solemn ceremony during which Martin Luther’s studies were recognised, he was awarded his Doctorate and was recognised as a ‘Doctor’, a Teacher who was able to teach. He was to teach the Bible and straightaway he began with lectures on the Book of Psalms. He had a way with words that moved all those who studied under him. The Bible he was presented with was a Latin bible. It was a translation that had been made from the original Hebrew and Greek in Bethlehem by Jerome 1200 years before. It was a translation that had stood the test of time. The second millennium of the Roman Empire had only just come to an end with the fall of Constantinople in 1493. By 1512 Latin was still the common language of the church, of scholarship and of diplomacy throughout Europe.
There
was something novel about that Bible, however. It was just like the Bible that
was placed on the coffin of King Richard III at his burial in Leicester
Cathedral in 2015. It was a printed Bible. It was only 57 years since Gutenberg
produced the very first printed Bible. The invention of printing was the
biggest breakthrough in communications since the invention of the alphabet and
remained so until the intervention of the world wide web less than 25 years
ago. It meant that new ideas could spread … and they did spread like wild fire.
Teachers
at that new university of Witenberg were excited by the potential released by
the printing press. Not only could they line the shelves of their library with
printed editions of the ancient classics that were fast appearing, but they
could also produce wonderful new handouts.
So
over the next four years as Martin Luther worked methodically through the Book
of Psalms and then turned to Paul’s letter to the Romans he called on the
services of the local printing house to produce handouts. Large sheets of paper
with a block of print containing the Latin text of first the Psalms and later
Romans in roughly one third of the page with large gaps between the lines and
very big margins to the side and to the bottom. His students would then take
down at dictation speed his comments on the text and write them carefully
between the lines. Then Luther would dictate a fuller exposition of the passage
in those wide margins on the page.
That young university lecturer had been on a
pilgrimage of faith had already brought him a long way, but it was in many ways
only just beginning.
Born
on the 10th November 1483 in Eiselben and moving with his family to Mansfeld
when only one year old, he was 14 when he went to school in Magdeburg and then
a year later on to Eisenach. His family were proud of his achievements and had
high hopes that he would become a lawyer and a wealthy man. The school year was
shaped around the Christian year with its regular round of Mass and Vespers and
colourful processions on those special holy days that were a regular feature of
the calendar. Music was on the curriculum and Martin Luther, a fine singer,
delighted in singing the Psalms, the Canticles, the Magnificat, the Benedictus,
the Nunc Dimittis and those rich Latin hymns that were part of the church’s
liturgy.
At
18 he began his studies at the traditional University in Erfurt. Steeped in the
philosophical thinking of Aristotle and the great Medieval, his course had a
large smattering of theology but was aimed at qualifying him for the law.
After
one year he received he became a Bachelor in the Arts subjects he was studying
and two and a half years later received his Masters. A high-flying student he
was set to achieve great things as a lawyer when something happened that was to
change his life.
Walking
back to the University of Erfurth from his home late at night on 2nd July 1505
he was caught in an unimaginably violent thunderstorm. Fearing for his life, as
he later recalled, he cried out to St Anne, “St Anne, help me and I will become
a monk.”
The
storm abated. Luther made it back to Erfurt safely. Something had happened that brought him face to face with the
reality of God in all his majesty and awe. A fearful God much to be feared. Within a fortnight he presented himself
at the door of a strict Augustinian monastery in Erfurt and he became a monk.
He now entered into a daily round of worship and prayer steeped in the Psalms
and the Scriptures and shaped by the thinking of St Augustine. Presiding for
the first time at Mass, he was drawn to a spirituality based on the imitation
of Christ that had been popularised by Thomas a Kempis.
The
community quickly recognised that he had a way with words and as part of their
support of the fledgling university in
Wittenberg they arranged for him to teach a term at the university when he was
only 25 in the winter of 1508.
It
wasn’t long before he was back in the monastery at Erfurt. He jumped at the
chance to visit Rome with a fellow Brother to represent the monastery in a
dispute that had blown up. He was fully prepared to be inspired as he had the
opportunity to meet with what he expected to be deeply devout priests in the
heart of the world-wide church of Rome. He was strangely disappointed. He was
shocked at the extravagant building projects, the untold wealth, the flippant
way so many priests rushed through the daily round of services and the
immorality he saw all around him. Nonetheless he sought a deep spiritual
experience as he dragged himself up the steps of Pilate, saying the Lord’s
Prayer, the Our Father, the Pater Noster once on each step. He reached the top
and as he recalled later had a moment of questioning, asking “Who knows whether
it is so?”
He
returned to the monastery in Erfurt in April 1511 only to find himself
transferred almost immediately to the Augustinian monastery in what was little
more than a village of 2,500 people. It was to become the place he was to make
his home for the rest of his life. Wittenberg. The one claim to fame it had was
the brand new University that Frederick the Wise, the Elector of Saxony had
founded only a few years before.
Luther
had moments of deep depression … but there was someone in the Wittenberg
monastery who was a saving grace for him. Johann von Staupitz. As a pray-er and
spiritual director he made his mark on Luther, but he could also see the way
Luther had with words. And so it was that Staupitz arranged for Martin Luther
to study further at the university and acquire the status of Teacher, Doctor.
And so it was on the 19th October 1512 (505 years ago to the day that I am
writing these notes!) Martin Luther was presented with that Latin Bible that
was closed and it was opened in his hands.
It
was 1st August, 1513 that he began those lectures on the Psalms. Steeped in the
great traditions of the church through the centuries he drew out the meaning in
four ways, summed up in a little Latin verse he would quote
("The
letter lets you know what happened, and allegory what you
must
believe; the moral sense what you must do, and the mystical what you may hope
for."
In
the inner turmoil he often found himself in he sought refuge in the Tower Room
– among the Psalms one great Psalm that spoke powerfully to him was Psalm 46.
Psalm
46
God
is our refuge and strength,
a very present help in trouble.
Therefore
we will not fear, though the earth should change,
though the mountains shake in the heart of
the sea;
though
its waters roar and foam,
though the mountains tremble with its
tumult.
There
is a river whose streams make glad the city of God,
the holy habitation of the Most High.
God
is in the midst of the city; it shall not be moved;
God will help it when the morning dawns.
The
nations are in an uproar, the kingdoms totter;
he utters his voice, the earth melts.
The
Lord of hosts is with us;
the God of Jacob is our refuge.
Come,
behold the works of the Lord;
see what desolations he has brought on the
earth.
He
makes wars cease to the end of the earth;
he breaks the bow, and shatters the spear;
he burns the shields with fire.
‘Be
still, and know that I am God!
I am exalted among the nations,
I am exalted in the earth.’
The
Lord of hosts is with us;
the God of Jacob is our refuge.
18
months later in April 1515 he turned to the New Testament and to Paul’s letter
to the Romans. It wasn’t long before he reached a passage that was to be for
Martin Luther a turning point. The God he had got to know was a wrathful God
who made great demands on those who followed him. But in the words of Paul he
began to discover a quite different dimension to this God.
The
passage that was to become such a seminal passage for him was in Romans 1:15-16
Once
he had considered the righteousness of God to be something fearful. But now it
began to dawn on him. The righteousness of God was something wonderful.
Something warm. Something to draw us into the embrace of a God of love. It was
not so much the righteousness of a wrathful God as the righteousness whereby
God made us right with himself.
The
Good News Bible captures in some ways what was slowly beginning to dawn on
Martin Luther.
Romans
1:15f GNB
I
have complete confidence in the gospel;
it
is God's power to save all who believe,
first
the Jews and also the Gentiles.
For the gospel reveals
how
God puts people right with himself:
it
is through faith from beginning to end.
As
the scripture says, “The person who is put right with God through faith shall
live.”
By
the beginning of March 1516 Luther had reached chapter 9 of Romans in his
lectures when there was great excitement at the University. A dispatch rider
arrived with a book that had just been published that was to revolutionise the
study of the Bible and the translation of the Bible. It was the very first
printed edition of the Greek New Testament prepared by Erasmus: Luther
immediately began to make good use of it in his lectures.
Those
lectures were never published by Luther but a number of his students kept the
notes he dictated between the lines and in those large margins. It wasn’t until
1908 that they were re-discovered and published.
Something
is happening in Luther’s heart as he reads Romans – all too conscious of his
own inadequacies, his own failures, his own sinfulness it is in this letter of
Paul that he discovers the mercy of God, the grace of God and the liberating
realization that it is faith that releases that love of God in to the heart.
Let’s
say together as a statement of that faith we share in reading together
Romans
5:1-5
Now that we have
been put right with God through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord
Jesus Christ. 2He has brought us by faith into this experience of God's grace,
in which we now live. And so we boast of the hope we have of sharing God's
glory! 3We also boast of our troubles, because we know that trouble produces
endurance, 4endurance brings God's approval, and his approval creates hope.
5This hope does not disappoint us, for God has poured out his love into our
hearts by means of the Holy Spirit, who is God's gift to us.
For
me the worship song, Only by grace captures that insight that meant the world
to Luther and means the world to us.
Only
by grace
Only by grace can we enter,
Only by grace can we stand;
Not by our human endeavour,
But by the blood of the Lamb.
Into Your presence You call
us,
You call us to come.
Into Your presence You draw
us,
And now by Your grace we come,
Now by Your grace we come.
Lord, if You mark our
transgressions,
Who would stand?
Thanks to Your grace we are
cleansed
By the blood of the Lamb.
(Repeat)
Gerrit
Gustafson (born 1948)
©
1990 Integrity Music/Adm. by Kingswaysongs, a division of David C Cook
www.kingswaysongs.co.uk Used by Permission.
CCL Licence No. 3540
He
was deeply troubled when he heard that a monk who was effectively a travelling
salesman was selling bits of paper, beautifully printed that promised people
they could get to heaven more quickly when they died – the more you paid the
quicker you got there. Martin Luther was incensed at the way Tetzel was
fleecing people – even more so when he learned that the proceeds of the sales
were being sent back to Rome to pay for the escalating costs of one of those
building projects he had seen for himself less than ten years before – the
re-building of what has become the magnificent St Peter’s. To think that was
being paid for out of the hard earned cash of people in Wittenberg who lived in
poverty!
It was too much. And so it was Martin Luther drew up a detailed riposte to the whole idea of selling indulgences to get a short cut to heaven. He had printed 95 propositions, theses, explaining how wrong they were and, tradition has it, nailed them to the door of the castle church near the University.
It
was the 31st October 1517.
Events
unfolded after that very rapidly.
The
young monk turned university lecturer was summoned to Augsburg where he was
interrogated by an Italian Cardinal whose job at that time it was to
troubleshoot problems for the Roman church. For three days they met. Prove to
me from Scripture that I am wrong, said Luther and he would recant. Cajetan
couldn’t. Luther faced the condemnation of Rome – sensing it was dangerous to
stay in Augsburg he fled back to Wittenberg where he faced formal condemnation
by Rome in what was known as a papal bull.
By
now he was lecturing on Galatians and he was drawn to the freedom Paul spoke of
Galatians
5:1
For freedom Christ
has set us free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of
slavery.
For in Christ
Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything; the only
thing that counts is faith working through love.
For we were called
to freedom as brothers and sisters; we must not use our freedom as an
opportunity for self-indulgence, but through love become slaves to one another.
For the whole law is summed up in a single commandment, ‘You shall love your
neighbour as yourself.’
But
it was a freedom that involved serving Christ and serving others.
The
freedom of a Christian was one of three treatises Luther wrote explaining his
views.
By now he was in outright opposition to Rome – Luther was summoned to Worms in 1521 for a council drawn together with representatives from all over the Roman Empire under its effective Emperor, Charles V. Luther again was challenged to recant. Here I stand – I can no other was his response as he stood his ground..
With
the powers that be ranged against him, Luther found support in Saxony from the
elector Frederick who had always been supportive of the university in
Wittenberg and he gave Luther refuge in a castle in the Wartburg. He made the
most of three months exile and set to translating the New Testament into modern
German putting to good use Erasmus’s printed Greek New Testament together with
his notes on the text and his modern Latin translation … It was published in
September 1522.
In
the preface to his Greek New Testament Erasmus described his vision – that
people all over Europe would use the Greek text to translate the New Testament
into the ordinary language of the people
Christ wishes his
mysteries published as openly as possible. I would that even the lowliest women
read the Gospels and the Pauline epistles. And I would that they were
translated into all languages so that they could be read and understood not
only by Scots and Irish but also by Turks and Saracens
…. Would that as a
result, the farmer sing some portion of them at the plough, the weaver hum some
parts of them to the movement of his shuttle, the traveller lighten the
weariness of the journey with stories of this kind! Let all conversations of
every Christian be drawn from this source.
People
came to visit Luther and caught the vision – one of them was a young scholar
who had been born here in Gloucestershire, William Tyndale. By 1524 Tyndale’s
translation of the New Testament into English had been published.
It’s
in reading the Bible in your own language that you hear the Word of God – and
when reading the Bible, Luther suggested, you must always look for Christ – for
Christ is at the heart of the Bible. Think of the Old Testament as the manger
in which Christ was laid.
Luther
had by now returned to Wittenberg which was to be his home for the next 25
years before he died. There he broke
with many of the traditions of the church and began shaping things very
differently. The one time monk married Katherine Von Bora. He liked nothing
better than to invite students and friends to his house where he was full of
wit and fun. He loved singing, was an accomplished lute player and wrote hymns
that explained his faith to the tunes popular in the taverns. His first
collection of hymns was published in 1524 and soon after his most famous hymn
based on that favourite Psalm of his, Psalm 46, Ein festeburg – a Safe
Stronghold, our God is still. This was a troubling and troubled time – the hymn
is full of lurid imagery – no matter what may befall yet Christ is with us and
God is our safe stronghold still.
1 A safe stronghold our God is still,
a trusty shield and weapon;
he'll keep us clear from all the ill
that hath us now o'ertaken.
The ancient prince of hell
hath risen with purpose fell;
strong mail of craft and power
he weareth in this hour;
on earth is not his fellow.
2 With force of arms we nothing can,
full soon were we down-ridden;
but for us fights the proper Man
whom God himself hath bidden.
Ask ye, Who is this same?
Christ Jesus is his name,
the Lord Sabaoth's Son;'
he, and no other one,
shall conquer in the battle.
3 And were this world all devils o'er,
and watching to devour us,
we lay it not to heart so sore;
not they can overpower us.
And let the prince of ill
look grim as e'er he will,
he harms us not a whit;
for why? his doom is writ;
a word shall quickly slay him.
4 God's word, for all their craft and
force,
one moment will not linger,
but, spite of hell, shall have its
course;
'tis written by his finger.
And though they take our life,
goods, honour, children, wife,
yet is their profit small;
these things shall vanish all:
the City of God remaineth.
Martin
Luther (1483-1546) tr Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881)
Psalm
46
Using
the printing press his ideas were published and spread quickly in books and
pamphlets.
It
was a turbulent time – passions ran high. National feelings began to emerge.
The Roman Empire was losing its hold across the peoples of Europe – nation
states began to assert their independence from Rome, not least here in these
islands.
Change
was in the air … and somehow change was here to stay. Much about Luther is an
inspiration – much is an abomination. The violence he unleashed, not least in
the suppression of the peasants’ revolt and religious wars that tore Europe
apart, his anti-semitism that played its awful part in a history that
culminated in the holocaust.
What
was it more than anything else that happened that makes me want to celebrate
this 500th anniversary of the Reformation?
For
me it is the opening of a closed book and the fulfilment of Erasmus’s vision
that
The
vision was Erasmus who published that Greek New Testament. That the ploughboy
should be able to read the bible in his own language.
It
was in those lectures on Psalms that Luther found great consolation and a God
who was with him in the dark times – the God who is a safe stronghold still.
It
was in Romans that Luther found the liberating power of God’s grace.
It
was in Galatians that he found the wonder of freedom in Chrsit … a freedom that
involves serving Christ and serving others.
It
was in translating the Bible into German that he did for the German people what
Tyndale, inspired by Luther, did for us in English.
It
is as the Bible has at its focus Jesus Christ that it becomes for us the Word
of God to shape our lives.
And that’s why change is here to stay. One watchword of the Reformation is that things are always in need of reform. You don’t reach a point at which all is perfect.
It
is the responsibility of each of us to read that Word of God with Christ at its
centre and then to do our bit in changing things to be in accordance with that
word.
One
final thought … the Bible is that common ground we share as Christians with
each other and it is the common ground on which we can come more closely
together.
The
story of the Reformation is often told as the story of deep division and
fracture for a once united church. I want to tell that story as a story of
renewal that captures the rich diversity of a church truly rooted in the
Scripture, centred on Christ that by the power of the Spirit knows God to be a
safe stronghold in a troubled world.
The
printing press had been only just been invented. The ideas of the reformation
were spread in strongly worded pamphlets illustrated with what can only be
described as blood curdling political cartoons.
We
rarely get the opportunity to go behind the polemic – but just occasionally
there’s an indication of much more listening and much more true dialogue going
on.
The
very first Cardinal to interrogate Luther at Augsburg was Cardinal Cajetan. In
the first third of his life Tomasso de Vio had studied and written commentaries
on Thomas Aquinas – Cajetan’s commentaries can still be found in the libraries
of Monasteries to this day.
The
second third of his life as a Cardinal he was a trouble-shooter for the Pope –
he happened to be in Saxony at the time Luther nailed his 95 theses to the door
of the church in Wittenberg and so he it was who was given the task of
interrogating Luther. “Prove to me from the Bible that I am wrong,” Luther
challenged, “and I will be convinced.”
Interestingly,
within a couple of years Cajetan had written a small pocket book on the Psalms
which he called a Little Breakfast in the Psalms. Then he turned to the study
of the Scriptures and in the last third of his life he wrote a commentary on
the New Testament and the Old Testament up to the book of Isaiah. It took
seriously the Bible and approached it in much the same way as the reformers did
as well.
From
1517 until 1542 there was a lot more dialogue than people sometimes imagine.
Then the Pope and the powers that be in the church in Rome clamped down on
things with the Council of Trent. That led to a close control over doctrine and
the reading of the Bible. Indeed it wasn’t until the 2nd Vatican
Council in the 1960’s that biblical scholarship was given a free hand and
worship was conducted in the vernacular.
Where
churches have come together in a closer spirit of co-operation it is where the
Scriptures are recognized as that common ground on which we can take a stand
together.
We
finish with Graham Adams’ new hymn – which won the Congregational Federation’s
hymn writing competition for this anniversary year.
Reforming
Christ – God’s living, loving Word –
the
Scriptures cradle and attest to you;
speak
to us now, shed tears and light again:
for
you are making us and all things new!
Reforming
Christ! Nail questions to our doors
to
make us think again, to seek your ways;
for
we neglect debate at truth’s expense –
so
shake us out of each complacent haze.
Reforming
Christ! Your faith enthrals my soul
and
forms the righteousness your word enfleshed.
Call
me to work for justice in all realms,
till
church and kingdoms make your will their guest.
Reforming
Christ! Expose what we indulge –
the
things that seem to count, which miss the mark;
so
help us see where faith is funding wealth,
and
shake us to address the gap so stark.
Reforming
Christ! Always reform your church!
Transform
us till our minds conform to you –
Christ
of the nails and faith that’s for the poor –
for
you are making us and all things new!
Graham
Adams (2017)
Suggested
tune: Woodlands
