The Human Side Of The Holidays

December 3, 2000
Venice

Years ago I read that when jazz musician Benny Goodman was talking with a woman at a party, someone dropped a champagne glass. At the sound of the shattering glass, the woman asked, “What was that?”

Goodman answered, “C Sharp.” We humans are like that – we respond according to our interests. To some the sound would have been startling, creating anxieties about a stained rug or someone drinking too much wine. Others might be amused at the awkward accident happening to somebody else. To Benny Goodman, the sound meant C Sharp.

Today is the first Sunday of the Christian Advent season, when Christian believers begin their preparation to celebrate the virgin birth of their Savior, Jesus, in a manger in Bethlehem. From different points of view, the Christmas holidays also bring out differing reactions and unlike interpretations. Unitarian Universalists many times have mixed feelings about Christmas. Some hear “C sharp”; some hear breaking glass. But the person who denies the power of feeling at Christmas season has never listened either to his fellow-liberals or acknowledged his own emotions.

We try to accommodate in various ways, sometimes sensitively, sometimes rationalizing, sometimes naively. An old friend remarked that Unitarian Universalists never mention Christmas without also referring to Hanukkah. I suppose we do that for several reasons: to recognize the wideness of the cultural patterns we celebrate in December; to included the liberation celebration of Hanukkah, which has been a part of the heritage of many of our families; to create an atmosphere for the cultural universality of December rituals – concerts, charitable giving, both personal and commercialized, and swinging parties.

There is no single origin of our mid-Winter celebrations. One flowing spring is seldom the only source of a mighty river. Other brooks and streams feed into it. We need remember the many sources of Winter celebration – not only Christmas and Hanukkah, but also many others, including in recent years, Kwanzaa.

India may be at least one of the sources of Western culture. The roots of Western cultural origins may have beginnings in the Indus Valley, as well as the Tigris-Euphrates basin and Egypt. There are other sources, including the Roman, Teutonic, and Scandinavian.

Thousands of years before the birth of Jesus, the people of India were devoted to the god, Vishnu. Even today, Vishnu may have more followers than any other Hindu god. Originally, he was a Sun god. As the Brahmanic religion developed, Vishnu became the principal god to whom sacrifice was made. In the Hindu trinity, he is the second member who assumes human form. There are differences between Hindu and Christian mythology. Vishnu was incarnated many times, sometimes as animal, sometimes as man. We should note that what we call the “messianic tradition” was a continuing hope in Hinduism. One day, Vishnu would reappear, he would cleanse the earth from sin, remove the shadows and bring about the reign of justice and truth.

Some of us have roots in the Scandinavian peninsula. The traditions of the Norsemen tell the stories of the great celebrations on the occasion of the Winter Solstice. The feast was known as Jul and honored the divine birth of Freyer.

Zoroaster, who lived six or seven centuries before Jesus, was the founder of the religion that bears his name, Zoroastrianism. This prophet of Persian religion taught that there was a struggle constantly between good and evil. Mythology and legend accumulated after his time on earth. Followers declared that Zoroaster was born of a virgin, was visited by adoring Magi; in infancy[, he] was saved from a powerful enemy. In other myths, the life of Zoroaster paralleled the Gospel stories about Jesus.

About the birth of Buddha, there also grew a miraculous mythology, although he had taught ethics and rejected the gods. Years after his death, he was transformed into what in life he had rejected, a god. Parallels with the Christian stories are found also in the mythology that accumulated around Confucius, who lived about the same period as Buddha, about the sixth century, B.C.E.

Many cultures, many historic periods, many religions have contributed to our Christmas. If that’s all there was to it – a package of myth and legend, tied with the ribbons of strange customs and superstitious rites of numerous early religions, held before us in order to encourage the spending of money, not to speak of exhausting us physically, we could recommend that Christmas be ignored. If the complex patterns of ancient Christmas myth and legend were all there was to it, we could protest that promoting the celebration of Christmas strengthened belief in the unreasonable and unwholesome doctrine of inherited sin. Furthermore, we could protest with justification that adoration and praise of a virgin mother placed an unnecessary and inhuman stigma on natural love between man and woman and the children born to them.

But that’s not all there is to it. There may be considerable dilution of feeling in placing other customs in conscious juxtaposition with Christmas and Hanukkah, because we may not be able to have our cake and eat it too, as far as the deepest and most poignant sentiments of Christmas are concerned.

When we turn to the universality of the Winter feast, when we ring the changes on the likenesses of Christian, Buddhist, Persian, Chinese, and Scandinavian myths, there may be a real question as to whether we just want an excuse for a party, or feel a reluctance to be too different, whereas for the convinced Christian believer, Christmas is Christ’s Mass, and the Mass celebrates the unique and once-and-for-all supernatural atoning sacrifice of God in Christ for all humankind. But I know no Unitarian Universalists who celebrate Christmas for that theological reason.

We like the carols with lovely melodies, with wistful words, whose theology we ignore. An old friend in a church I served many years ago used to say around the Christmas season, “What we won’t say, we sing.” We tend to convey by our attitudes that inasmuch as many faiths have saviors, we will taste them all, like a wine-tasting party.

Do we celebrate because the old pre-Christian tides of anciently imbedded feelings surface when the Winter Solstice arrives? Or, in spite of our rejection of Christian theology, are we still sufficiently conditioned by the Christian centuries to want to celebrate Christ’s birth – and then explain it away to rid ourselves of any intellectual discomfort we might feel? The Christian Christmas stories and music are deeply moving even to an agnostic or atheist.

When one gets right down to cases, there is no more reason to celebrate the Winter Solstice than the theological Christ’s Mass. The early pre-scientific peoples believed the change from darkness to increasing light was the gift of the gods, who were unpredictable in their bounty. We have learned that the changing seasons and measurable variations of day and night are astronomically precise, predictable as planet Earth moves in its rotating, plotted orbit around our sun-star. There is perhaps even less reason for annual re-creation of the feasts of Anglo-Saxons, Teutons, and Scandinavians than there is for our Christmas worship, even though the pagan wassailing, tree worship, and slightly scandalous parties seem in truth to bring a more enthusiastic response in our day than the incarnation theology.

We do not wrestle seriously with these considerations because feelings prevail, hardly less so among self-classified rationalists and agnostics than with anybody else. Feelings will prevail because we will respond to the aroma and sight of evergreen and candle, the excitement of being busy for others, the sounds of Adeste Fideles and Handel’s MESSIAH, the abundance of sentiment, the image of Jul log (not in FL?) and the warmth of human affection.

On Ash Wednesday, the ashes used in most Roman Catholic churches, traditionally, are secured by burning the palms used the previous year on Palm Sunday. In a few countries, Scandinavian, I believe, the ashes, the visible sign of repentance, were the ashes of the Jul log burned the previous Christmas. Were these penitential customs an awareness that the Christmas dreams of peace and goodwill were not realized because of what we humans are and the ways we think and behave?

But in this season, can there not be moments when new content may replace both the superstitions of pre-history and theologies we can no longer believe? Yes! I believe so.

We celebrate the wonder of life in its lovely realization – the wanted, new baby in the manger of the poor. The story of the baby Jesus stirs us deeply because his is a universal story of parents who experience the shattering, mysterious compound of love, danger, fear, and hope, blended with the fact of pain, the surprise of human sacrifice, and the wonder of human growth.

We celebrate the creation of new human life. Do you remember Stephen Vincent Benet’s poem, “Nightmare for Future Reference”? It was written at the height of the Cold War, but we are still under threat with at least 7 or 8 nations possessing nuclear weapons, and who knows how many have biological death weapons in their secret laboratories? Benet’s poem goes:

“That was the second year of the Third World War
The one between us and Them....”

The poet goes on with laconic but sobering words in the framework of a father speaking to his son:

“The lab chief was no longer permitted guinea pigs for experiments and the statistical curve of the birth rate was in a steep and terrifying slide:

I didn’t ask them,
Not even your mother – she was strange those days –
But, two weeks later, I was back in the lines
And somebody sent me a paper –
Encouragement for the troops and all of that –
All about the fall of Their birth rate on Their side.
I guess you know, now. There was still a day when we fought
And the next day, the women knew. I don’t know how they knew,
But they smashed every government in the world
Like a heap of broken china within two days:
And we’d stopped firing by then. And we looked at each other –
Well, I’ve told you now. They tell you now at eighteen.
There’s no use to tell before.
Do you understand?
That’s why we have the Ritual of the Earth,
The Day of Sorrow, the other ceremonies.
Oh, yes, at first people hated the animals
Because they still bred, but we’ve gotten over that.
You can call it a virus, of course, if you like the word,
But we haven’t been able to find it. Not yet. No
It isn’t as if it had happened all at once.
There were a few children born in the last six months
Before the end of the war, so there’s still some hope,
But they’re almost grown. That’s the trouble
They’re almost grown.
Well, we had a long run. That’s something. At first they thought
There might be a nation somewhere – a savage tribe.
But we were all in it, even the Eskimos.
And we keep the toys in the stores and coloring books,
And people marry and plan and the rest of it,
But you see, there aren’t any children. They aren’t being born.”

Some psychologists interpret the image of a child in a dream as indicating the beginning of new life in a patient. New Life! We know that to define human beginnings as the fertilization of ovum by sperm is to describe, not explain. The emergence of living form, the growth of limb, mind, emotion – all these are/wonderful for diagnostic words. Everyone who has ever held a young baby knows that.

At this season, carol, candle, creche, and evergreen remind us with gladness that children are still being born. What theologically is called the “incarnation” is an all-human occasion for renewing the feeling of glad mystery that life forces are still with us, “the light that lighteth every one that cometh into the world.” No particularized theology may monopolize that full joy and deep wonder.

We celebrate another universal feeling. Church historian Hans Lietzmann helped put this in historical and cultural perspective (A HISTORY OF THE EARLY CHURCH (Vol II, p. 166 – 168). The Roman poet Virgil (79 B.C.E. – 14 B.C.E.) had predicted a time when a savior, coming to the world as a divine child, would erase sin and usher in a golden age. Many Romans thought that Caesar Augustus was that divine incarnation. For centuries to follow, all Caesars were deified. The Age of Augustus was extolled as one which brought better fortune and lessening misery as the Pax Romana brought universal peace. Temples of Peace, dedicated to Rome and Augustus, were built in city after city. Wrote Lietzmann, “A community of feeling passed over the boundaries of the provinces and the differences of race, and created the vitally necessary ideology of the Roman Empire.” So it is today – there is a community of feeling which is all too brief. There are World War I legends of soldiers climbing from the trenches and meeting as friends in Christmas battlefield truce. Personnel executives have told me how difficult it is to discharge persons at Christmas. We are more generous, not only with family, but also to worthy causes and needy persons. Christmas is an incarnation briefly of the dreams of all peoples of the world as it might be, when there would be peace on earth and goodwill to all. We do not need the psychologist to tell us that the babe in the manger or the crib room of the hospital is a sign of hope, for on him/her we project our deepest yearnings, the purer dreams of a human society where the symbols of religion will represent the reality of peace and the full recognition everywhere of the dignity of every person. Dr. Edmund Sinnot (THE BRIDGE OF LIFE) wrote, “Man’s objective now is not to make superior individuals reproduce themselves more efficiently, but to make individuals superior. Greatness will not be the result of evolution, but of aspiration.” (p. 124)

Consider four lines from W. H. Auden’s poem, “In Memory of W. B. Yeats”,

“Follow, poet, follow right
To the bottom of the night,
With your unconstraining voice
Still persuade us to rejoice.”

Because humankind has a dream, still persuade us to rejoice. There will come a time, in a couple of weeks, when the long night ebbs and more light shines on the babes of the world. When that illumination moves silently, transforming shadow to light, then something in our bones, our blood, our cultural heritage cries out that no matter how dismal the prospect for human redemption, no matter how formidable the portents of disaster, in spite of the blows with which we have been struck, there is a spirit of creation abroad in the world which calls us to protect the innocent, to warm our homes with light and love; and reverently embrace the cosmic mystery, which, I believe, underlies all the matter, energy, and value structures of this universe, this planet, our home.

Centuries before the Christian era began, long before the liberation struggles of the Maccabeans formed the Hanukkah celebration, the Greek dramatist Euripides had words for this occasion in the concluding prayer chorus of IPHIGENIA IN TAURUS, (p. 89):

“O great in our dull world of clay,
And great in heaven’s undying gleam,
Pallas, thy bidding we obey:
And bless thee, for mine ears have heard
The joy and wonder of a word
Beyond my dream, beyond my dream.”

That is the aspiration for the human side of the holidays – we hear the joy and wonder of a word and a world beyond our dreams, because the fulfillment of hopes depends upon the quality of our aspirations and upon our persistence in making real what has been ideal.

[Editor's Note: This sermon appeared at the end of the final (2004) bundle of musings, but was dated as being from the year 2000.]

The Reformation – and Martin Luther

October 28, 2001
Venice

Rewrite of
October 26, 1958, Akron
Also: Rochester 10/29/61, Revised 10/25/64

This is Reformation Sunday, marking the birthday of the Protestant Church and the revolt from Roman Catholicism. Next Wednesday marks the four hundred and eighty-fourth anniversary of the day Martin Luther tacked the 95 theses to the door of Wittenberg Cathedral. The religious, political, economic, and social changes effected by the Protestant Reformation represent [some] of the most important, if not the most important, changes in the history of the Western world. I would like to discuss the leading person of the Reformation, one of the most controversial persons in history, Martin Luther. He was a saint, sinner, vulgarian, or anti-Semitic bigot, depending on the point of view from which he is seen. His followers hailed him as a true prophet of the Lord. Roman Catholics called him a child of the devil and accused him of demolishing Christianity. The agrarian reformers of that turbulent sixteenth century said he was the toady, tool, and supporter of the feudal lords and princes. Religious radicals, Carlstadt and Muenster, for example, compared him to Moses, who led the way out of captivity in Egypt, but then deserted his followers, leaving them to perish in the wilderness. Those who have looked at this personal life with critical eye have thought him to be a coarse libertine who broke with his Roman Catholic tradition so that he might marry a nun and rear children in sin and vulgarity. The critics submit Luther’s own writings, TABLE TALK, as evidence of his degraded personality.

This we know, the history of the world was altered because Martin Luther lived. In abolishing the authority of the Pope, Martin Luther established the freedom of the Christian. When this principle became established, the administration of the religious institution became the responsibility of the parish, a congregation of lay people. Martin Luther did not anticipate, and actually opposed, some of the consequences of the Reformation he spearheaded. The principle of the authority of the lay congregation had extreme political as well as religious effects. The self-administration of religion pointed the way to worldly self-government as well. Therefore, it is of particular importance to the liberal groups whose guiding principle of freedom is the most uninhibited, to try to understand Martin Luther. This presentation divides into

1) the setting,
2) the Augustinian priest,
3) the reformer and supporter of princes, and
4) the man, Martin Luther.

Although Martin Luther is the most notable figure of the Reformation, he was not born when the Reformation began. To know the Reformation, we need to understand that the Renaissance, the revival of learning, the recovery of the ancient Greek belief in the worth of the humans, had been in progress for at least two centuries. Petrarch and Boccaccio had notably advanced Humanist studies. The Medici family, also of Florence, had been the greatest patrons of art, sculpture, literature, and philosophy that the European world had known. Under their patronage, Michelangelo, DaVinci, Mirandola, Raphael and others had created arts and letters that still summon our wonder at their genius. In 1453, the world’s greatest cultural center, Constantinople, had fallen to the Turks. The scholars there who had preserved the manuscripts and art objects of Hellenism fled to Italy and other parts of Europe. 12 Universities were founded in Germany between 1409 and 1506.

Not only did the Renaissance signal the revival of arts and learning, but a most important political movement was beginning to make its strong eddies felt in the ebb and flow of the Holy Roman Empire. Although Germany lagged somewhat, England, France and Spain had assumed form as nations. The mass of people had no share in the political rewards or freedoms, although they were the objects of the most severe hardships and sufferings. Their unquestioned place was serfdom.

The Roman Catholic was the authoritarian church. There was no toleration of heresy, but the seeds that were to bear fruit in Luther’s time had already been sown. John Wyclif of England, opposed to the wealth of the church and clerical interference in all walks of life, believed that the Bible should be the possession of the people and had translated the scriptures into English. Wyclif was executed for heresy, his ashes scattered on Thames, but neither his convictions nor his bravery were forgotten. 1373 marked the birth of John Hus, a Bohemian priest, who was influenced by Wyclif’s teachings and Hus preached an evangelical doctrine which was anathema to the Roman Catholic church. John Hus avowed publicly that the head of the Church was Christ, not the Pope. The unprincipled church gave him safe conduct to the Council of Constance, but broke faith and burned him at the stake, July 6, 1415, but neither was his memory forgotten nor his principles rejected by his followers. In 1498, the austere monk of Florence, Savonarola denounced the Pope. After a succession of temporary triumphs and then humiliating defeat, Savonarola was burned at the stake. But even as smoke and smell from the burning flesh and faggots were dispersed to the winds, so the knowledge of his revolt became widely perceived by later reformers, including Martin Luther, who was but a fifteen-year-old student when Savonarola was executed.

Something else had happened which was to make the world different than it had ever been before. Moveable type printing had been invented – the peoples of the world would not only become more literate, but the printed word was to bring them the wisdom of scripture in their own language, and they read the protesting pamphlets of the reformers.

In this seething caldron of social change, a baby boy was born to a peasant miner, Hans Luther and his wife, Marguerite, in 1483. November 10 was St. Martin’s day, and the infant was named Martin after the patron saint. Martin’s parents were peasants, but Hans Luther was not content to accept the poverty and misery of the miner’s lot. By individual effort he labored to make his lot better and his family more comfortable and privileged. In these beginning times of individualism, his efforts brought some rewards. Martin was able to go to school and University to be prepared for the practice of law, which was his father’s wish for his eldest son.

The schools at that time were organized, administered, and taught by the Church and its various orders. Martin’s early schooling was directed by the Brethren of the Common Life, an order dedicated to education. Then, in the University, he was influenced by the Augustinian order. Under the strong influence of the monks, together with his personality, which was unusually sensitive to supernaturalism and mystery, along with his fine mind, which was capable of wrestling with the intricate language of philosophy and theology, Martin Luther found his hopes turning toward the Church and away from the Law. Although Hans Luther was deeply religious, his wish that Martin be a Doctor of Law was so strong that when Martin announced that he was to become an Augustinian monk, his father was deeply hurt. Years were to pass before he really forgave the son who was frustrating the parent’s deepest wish.

After a farewell party, Martin’s friends escorted him to the Augustinian cloister at Erfurt on the 17th of July 1505. He entered its gates there to endure the privation of the order and to know the religious joy of humbling his passions, following the tedious routine of prayer and study, eventually, when ordained to know the mystery or celebrating the Mass, in which the wafer and wine became the body and blood of Christ.

As a monk, Martin Luther was conscientious to a degree we would believe to be unnatural. He fasted for days at a time, went night after night without sleep so that he might devote himself to prayer unceasingly (and in so doing permanently injured his health). He whipped himself to subdue the desires of the flesh. Although he was a model of holiness to his brother monks, his personal anxiety increased. He became increasingly morbid. Luther, a child of his times, feared the devil and believed the arts of witchcraft could have a dreadful effect on him. The iron discipline of the Augustine order had the natural effect of subduing his outward expressions of feeling and intensifying the inward fires of human passions.

Following his ordination as a priest, he turned to teaching at the University and soon became a most popular teacher. His large following of students was drawn for several reasons. His peasant inheritance gave him the common touch, plain talk, and natural illustration which reached the core of subjects. To a lesser degree than monks of more aristocratic background, was he bound to narrow conventions and traditional formulas. Following his master’s degree, he earned the degree of Doctor of Theology, a scholastic honor rare in those days.

His talents and drive soon won greater recognition. When only 31 years old, in 1515, he was appointed District-Vicar of the Augustinian order. Thus, in addition to his devotional duties as a monk, his university responsibilities as a teacher of philosophy, he had the additional duty of administrative responsibility, superintending the 10 Augustinian monasteries in his district.

This devout Augustinian monk was obsessed not only with neurotic fears for his salvation, but also he was upset by dishonesty and corruption readily discovered in the church of that day, which was dominated by the Renaissance Popes, who had a high degree of sensitivity to artistic beauty and an insensitive attitude toward personal and organizational corruption.

Martin Luther and another monk made a pilgrimage to Rome. He had hopes that this would be a high experience in his life, but [it] resulted in considerable disillusion. In Rome he could not help observing the corruption, hypocrisy, and political knavery of the hierarchy. The irreverence of the priesthood shocked this simple, devout German peasant priest. It is said that while climbing the sacred stairs on his knees, that Paul’s words to the Romans fixed themselves in Luther’s brain, “the just shall live by faith.” He realized that acts of piety like climbing stairs on his knees were of little effect. The extent to which the Rome visit influenced his revolt, we do not know. Perhaps it was a small but significant episode in his life.

The real spark of the Reformation was ignited when the Roman hierarchy decided that in order to build magnificent St. Peter’s Basilica, much money had to be raised. So the sale of indulgences was authorized. The doctrine was that by their purity the saints had built up a bank account (so to speak) of piety, on which the sinful could draw to lessen their years in Purgatory. So, Tetzel, a monk went through the countryside urging the peasants to buy indulgences so that their dead relatives might be released from Purgatory sooner. It is said that Pope Leo X, who was the son of Lorenzo de Medici, said cynically about the response of the believing peasants, “This story of Jesus has helped us a lot.”

On October 31, 1517, Martin Luther tacked a manuscript to the door of Wittenberg Cathedral. 95 propositions for debate were listed. Luther questioned the indulgences with a series of logical propositions, the most telling of which proposed that if the Pope had the power to release souls from Purgatory, then he should do so at once, not for money, but out of the spirit of love and charity.

Although years were to elapse between the nailing of the theses to the door of Wittenberg Cathedral and the actual formation of the Reformed Church, that date is historically looked upon as the birthday of Protestantism.

Luther’s theses were formal statements, but his vernacular comment was, “God will not tolerate this flea market.”

News of the opposition of this Augustinian monk to the plans of the hierarchy soon reached Rome, and action followed. There were years of ecclesiastical maneuvering. Luther refused to recant. He had a famous debate with John Eck and undoubtedly would have been executed except for a new historical tide. Nationalism was dawning; and the feudal lords and princes of Germany were very much opposed to the Roman Church drawing off large sums of money from the homeland for St. Peter’s or any other foreign enterprise.

Luther began to write and his statements pointed unquestionably to strong differences with the Church at Rome. He proposed the priesthood of all believers, and that there were only two sacraments authorized by scripture: baptism and the Lord’s Supper. These statements were heretical, unquestionably, and Luther was summoned to appear before the Diet of Worms (“Here I stand”). Luther was excommunicated, and would have been seized, except Frederick, elector of Saxony, had him spirited away to Wartburg Castle. But the printing press was pounding out Luther’s writings, [which] were distributed widely, and the people responded. When Luther emerged from Wartburg, he found himself organizing a Reformed Church.

Then occurred one of the more puzzling aspects of Luther’s strange character: The impetus to religious freedom had other consequences. The peasants revolted against the landlords and princes. It was somewhat natural, but unexpected that they should seek to throw off political and economic oppression when the way to religious freedom had been pointed out. From our perspective we know this is one of the glories of religious freedom – other benefits to humankind are natural consequences. But Luther proved to be the the toady, the tool, the supporter of the princes. Neither the implications of religious freedom nor love for the peasant people from which he sprang mitigated the severity of his condemnation of the Peasants’ Revolt. To the aristocratic Lords and Princes, Luther offered these words of encouragement, “Hearken dear Lords... Let him who can stab, strike, and strangle... These are such times that a prince can go to heaven more easily by spilling blood than others through prayer.”

The peasants were crushed, murdered, tortured, starved.

Luther was not a tolerant man. Even admitting that like all persons, he was a child of his own age, we find it difficult to reconcile this devout man who professed the Lordship of the gentle Christ with the Luther who was savage not only with the Peasants’ War, but also had a bigoted hatred of Jews, and was unremitting in his urgings to destroy and persecute them.

Luther could not get along with other reformers. He refused to shake hands with Zwingli, because the latter would not accept Luther’s interpretation of the Lord’s Supper.

But Martin Luther was not only an Augustinian priest, a reformer of strange and devious as well as noble ways, he was also a man. When the reformers were celebrating freedom from the Roman Catholic church, the monasteries and convents were opened, the monks and nuns sought marriage and Christian homes, sometimes marrying each other. Catherine von Bora was a nun jilted by a suitor shortly after her release from the convent. Martin Luther tried to be a marriage broker for her and find a suitable husband. However, when it was reported to him that Catherine von Bora would marry only Dr. Amsdorf or Dr. Luther, he investigated further, he checked it out, with the result shortly after, Martin Luther and ex-nun Catherine von Bora were married. They established their home in the Augustinian cloister where Luther formerly had led the monastic life.

Theirs was a busy home with much affection, the ex-nun soon became “my Katie” to Luther. Not only were children born to them, but also they were hospitable and generous to the homeless. At one time not less than eleven orphans shared their home and table. The reminiscences of this home life are found in Luther’s TABLE TALK, remarkable for the insight it gives into the personality of this father. He was gentle, but at times objectionably vulgar and rude.

When illness or the plague struck, as it did frequently in those days, the hand of death entered the home. Of the children, Elizabeth died in infancy. When little Hans was ill, Martin Luther composed and to comfort him sang the famous childrens’ Christmas carol, “Away in a Manger”. Hans and Paul lived to maturity. Marguerite lived to girlhood, but in a agonizing time of trial for the busy parents, she died of illness. In the grief of that occasion, Luther formed the tune and words of his greatest hymn, “A Mighty Fortress is our God.” [CJW note: based on Psalm 46]

This aging father had innumerable organization details of the reformed church. He was called to settle disputes between princes. His health, never good since his monastic days, grew worse. After a winter journey under difficult conditions, he died after attempting to resolve a conflict between two Lords.

What shall we say of this man? He was a leading reformer. He was a reactionary who was unbelievably harsh with his fellow peasants. He was intolerant. He was an anti-Semite. He was coarse and vulgar. But also, he was a great preacher and scholar. He translated the Bible into German, giving the people the Scripture. His courage sparked the Reformation, giving birth to the numerous free Christian groups, among which in later years our own was to be numbered. He was the Reformation’s greatest hymn writer. Albert Schweitzer, who had a doctorate in music as well as doctorates in medicine and theology, remarked that the only person who really understood Martin Luther was Johann Sebastian Bach. He was a kind and loving but financially embarrassed father. He was a teacher who won the respect of his students.

But the most affectionate and most human epitaph that the Reformer earned was written by the ex-nun who became his wife and the mother of their children. A month after his death, Catherine von Bora Luther, writing to her sister, Christina, said, “Who would not be sorrowful and mourn for so noble a man as my dear Lord, who served not only one city or land, but the whole world? Truly I am so distressed that I cannot tell my sorrow to anyone. If I had a principality or an empire, it would never have cost me so much pain to lose them as I have now that our Lord God has taken from me, and not from me only, but from the whole world, this dear and precious man.”

Religion must be not only in a person’s heart as an inward loyalty to that which he or she believes true and righteous, convictions must become known in the world. And no reformation is ever complete until justice is accomplished and the world of persons ruled by all persons, because equally they are entitled to the human dignity and worth which should be the birthright of all souls. Those who are devoted to such religious values will discover in their own experience that the cause of reform is never jaded, its goals ever re-defined.

Not because we would endorse the theology of Luther’s greatest hymn, but because a tribute to him is fitting on this 484th anniversary of Protestantism, may we join in singing #104, “A Mighty Fortress is our God.”

Measuring The Past – Weighing The Future

January 2, 2000
Venice

(re-write of March 21, 1982, Lakeland)

Thirty-nine years ago the Universalist Church of America and the American Unitarian Association consolidated, and the Unitarian Universalist Association became a new religious name on the continental scene. Today, I would like to review briefly the values that each brought from an historic past – values which should not be erased – and re-affirm proposals and principles which seem to me essential to justify an on-going religious enterprise which asks for loyalty and support. We are justified if we are useful in service to the human family, courageous, and thoughtful in evaluating the conflicts and stresses in society, and aware of the need to provide situations where we celebrate life together – worship. No religious endeavor is worthy of the commitment it requires unless it serves persons in their needs, challenges society to create both larger liberties and stronger social cohesion, and deepens our human grasp of the importance of the great ideas: the nature of this creating universe, our purpose and destiny on this earth and the “source of human good.”

There were Universalists and Unitarians hundreds of years before the movements were organized on this continent. The associations and denominations were structures to unite congregations and to house and protect ideas which had previously existed as heresies within other religious frameworks.

That all humankind, without exception, was not condemned to everlasting Hell, but was to be saved, was a theological affirmation existing from earliest Christian times. In America, the early Universalist preachers were almost exclusively “Bible Universalists,” many of them self-taught. They rebutted the orthodox claims of Hell and damnation with proof texts from the Old and New Testaments which indicated clearly that many of the Old Testament prophets, and in the New Testament, Jesus, Paul, and others believed that the nature of God was love, and that eternal creating love, by its very nature, prohibited eternal damnation, even for one single human soul. Hosea Ballou, the pioneer Universalist preacher, was riding circuit, place to place, preaching Universalism. He stopped in homes overnight. Somewhere in New England he stopped overnight with a farmer who did not agree with him and they discussed Universalism. The farmer’s son was somewhat of a drunk and when he did not return from town, the farmer was worried. He was afraid his son would go to Hell. “All right,” said Ballou, “We’ll find a place on the path where your son will be coming home. We’ll build a big fire, grab him and throw him into it.” The farmer was shocked, “That’s my son, I love him, I can’t do that.”

“If you, a human and imperfect father, love your son so much you wouldn’t throw him into the fire, how can you possibly believe that God, the perfect father, would do so?”

It is fair to report that the orthodox opponents could find numerous biblical proof texts which seemed to buttress their position that a few souls would be saved by the grace of God. But most souls were destined for eternal punishment in Hell.

This demonstrates one can “prove” almost anything from scriptures. Those who advocate “scientific creationism” using the scriptures as laboratory proof that evolution is erroneous do not seem to recognize that by the same means, scripture, one can “prove” that the earth is flat. So it would seem consistent to me that a believer in “scientific creationism” should, logically, belong to the Flat Earth society.

In Christian beginnings, universal salvation was a doctrine defended by many of the early leaders of the Church. Even when it became a heretical doctrine, some five hundred years after Jesus lived, there were frequent re-assertions of the doctrine of universal salvation by courageous heretics.

In modern Universalism in America, there was Dr. George de Benneville. Influenced by the Universalism of some of the German pietists who were a small but influential wing of the Protestant Reformation, de Benneville was preaching Universalism in Pennsylvania in the 1740s. John Murray, disciple of James Relly, came to America. After the remarkable experiences of the New Jersey landing, he found his ways to New England. Much to his surprise, he found a Universalist group in Gloucester, Massachusetts, in 1770. We would call it a fellowship today. After a series of dramatic events, he became minister of the first organized society of Universalists in America, The Independent Christian Church.

The movement spread rapidly in New England and Pennsylvania, soon reaching out to gather societies in New York and Ohio. In 1805, Hosea Ballou’s famous TREATISE ON THE ATONEMENT was the theological proposal which made most Universalists unitarian (small u) in their theology years before Unitarianism became an organized movement.

Unitarianism has roots as deep or deeper in the soil of human history. The Hebrew scripture proclaimed a monotheism at least from the time of the ethical prophets, 800 years B.C.E. The New Testament offers no evidence of Trinitarian belief. Belief that God was three was a later development of Christian dogma.

Disbelief in the Trinity became heretical. While monotheism remained the foundation of Jewish and Moslem theology, the Christian Church punished those who deviated from the Trinitarian dogmas.

Nevertheless, Unitarian thought flared again and again. Servetus, most well-known of the anti-Trinitarians of the Reformation period, was burned at the stake by John Calvin in Geneva, but his influence was not destroyed thereby. In the same sixteenth-century, the Socinian or Unitarian movement was organized in Transylvania by Francis David. David, later imprisoned, died in jail, but Unitarianism has persisted in Hungary for more than four hundred years.

Unitarianism in England pre-dated the movement in America by almost a century. Under the leadership of Theophilus Lindsey and Joseph Priestley, organization was made effective in the founding of Essex Hall Chapel in 1774.

In the United States, although there were early Congregational preachers who were Unitarian in thought, specific organization was delayed.

King’s Chapel was the first Anglican (Episcopal) Church in Boston. However, in 1785, the membership elected a liberal minister, James Freeman. Importantly enough, when the Bishop would not approve Freeman and refused to ordain him, the Parish delegated its Senior Warden to ordain Freeman – a radical departure from and rejection of the Anglican/Episcopal practice of ordination by the Bishop through whose laying on of hands on the ordinand maintained the doctrine of apostolic succession.

The American Unitarian Association was formed in 1825. It was not a uniting of churches, but was an individual membership organization. The inspired preaching of William Ellery Charming and the Unitarian influence on the faculty of Harvard Divinity School were important in the founding of the AUA. Ralph Waldo Emerson and Theodore Parker, among others, strengthened the intellectual position and increasingly isolated the Unitarian movement from the prevailing orthodoxies.

For more than a hundred years, the Universalists and Unitarians maintained their denominational separateness, each accumulating heroes, heroines, traditions, trusts and institutional habits which were difficult to alter or abandon. Recognizing, however, that their theology and social attitudes were developing along parallel lines, there were overtures toward merger as early as 1865.

Both denominations took pretty much in stride the revolutions in scientific ideas and adjusted theological positions to cohere with modern thought. Darwinian evolution, the higher criticism of the Bible, and Freudian theories of our motives and inwardness all were accepted generally by both denominations and were positions which helped liberals toward a better understanding of human nature in a world of natural and orderly processes.

[CJW note: Mainline religions stopped preaching hellfire & brimstone; reference to a cartoon which depicts a minister giving a sermon in which he declares, “No matter how badly you have sinned, you don’t have to worry about losing your coverage!”]

In the 1950s, deliberations about merger intensified and in progressive steps, studies were undertaken, and various merger proposal voted, which led to the conclusive vote in 1960. The negotiations had been complicated and there was opposition, but the consolidation was overwhelmingly approved by the delegates. At the time, some of us remembered the words of the prophet Amos, “Can two men (sic) walk together except they agree?” Unitarians and Universalists agreed that their religious association was one and to walk together henceforth.

It is important to remember the values of the old which have been preserved in the new:

First, there is the basic theological/philosophical tradition of individual freedom, reason, character, optimism . This right of individual belief is maintained specifically in the purposes and objectives of the UUA: “To strengthen one another in a free and disciplined search for truth as the foundation of our religious fellowship.”

Second is the great Reformation affirmation of the priesthood of all believers. We make no division between the clergy and the laity that asserts or implies that the clergyman has a unique, sacred calling. We ministers are trained to carry out the duties and responsibilities of the ordained minister, but we have no wisdom from on high that is denied the person in the pew or chair. The freedom and responsibility of both pulpit and pew have both historical precedent and continuing symbol in our traditions, in the ordination in King’s Chapel of James Freeman by the Senior Warden, a layman and ordination of John Murray by the Gloucester Universalists – laypeople all.

The parallel institutional right of congregational independence was a high value in both Unitarian and Universalist traditions and it has been preserved in the constitutional documents of the UUA.

There are many traditions in our historical past which are points of referral and wise guidance, but the most vital are the freedom of the individual and the independence of the congregation.

What shall we dream and try to make real in the future? The future cannot be precisely determined by the conditions of the present. One of the mysterious, tantalizing, and hopeful features of this dynamic universe is that effects can never be exactly predicted from observable causes. Prediction of things to come is always a venture of chance. I do not happen to believe in crystal balls, tarot cards, or the daily astrological column.

But it seems to me that one of our responsibilities is theological. When one looks back on the “death and Glory” argument which badly split the Universalists in the 19th century, when one considers the agitation and hot debates in the humanism/theism controversy of a few decades ago, as well as other issues on which there was division, one must surely recognize that theological debate is seldom a placid encounter. As one historian has remarked, “there is no rancor like that between theological opponents who fight for the glory of God as if the very devil were in them.”

We do need a theological framework which provides a reasonable enclosure for the revolutionary changes which are occurring in electronic communications, science, politics, economics and government. The UUA has a program, “Building your own theology” which I recommend, if you have not already used it.

But we must be just as wary of establishing a creed as were our forbears. The fact that a religion may be appraised as modern is no warrant whatsoever for an attitude requiring conformity to it, or being arrogant about it. In the historical room of the Universalist Church in Gloucester, there hangs a replica of the original Charter of Compact of that first organized Universalist Church. If you ever visit there, read the whole compact, but particularly notice the 9th article: “whereas the privilege of choosing and professing one’s own religion is inestimable; and in order to maintain that privilege unimpaired, in case any person associated with us should suffer persecution from the undue exercise of power, we do agree and resolve to afford him all legal means of extricating him from difficulty and of enjoying that freedom which is held forth by the Constitution.” The language may be slightly archaic, but the ethic is as imperative today as then.

Universal salvation, among us, has become less a theological proposition for the after-life and more an article of faith for the people living in this world – to affirm, defend, and promote the worth of every human personality and the use of the democratic method in human relationships. This is the additional meaning, The Big Idea, that has been transfused into the grand old theology of the universal salvation of all humankind.

There is no blinking the requirement that our faith must be not only free, but also exacting, for the defense of all souls is no trivial or easy task. It is something we must do together. John Coleman Adams, one of the superior of our 19th century preachers, once said that “our forbears were too jealous of their liberties to cultivate their unities.”

The defense of the free mind requires a good deal of unity. We should be neither boastful of our knowledge nor extravagant in our claims of virtue. Even as a consolidated association, we are tiny compared with the millions other churches can count. Nevertheless, we need to exert our efforts, the ounces of our weight, toward achieving a world which will consider all persons on earth worthy of salvation here on earth, which will Define salvation in terms of enough to live on as well as freedom to choose a faith to live by.

We live in communities where there is a multiplicity of differing religions, denominations, associations with differing theologies, symbols, sacraments, rituals, traditions. What is most needed for the 21st century is not a unity of faith, as faith is commonly understood, but rather an urgent witness to stimulate and encourage all persons to live up to the ethical demands of their own religions. We do this best by living up to our own. In our own way and in cooperation with others whose faith symbols may differ widely, can deal with issues of human dignity, rights, freedom, hunger, sickness, and the search for the common good.

Measuring The Past – Weighing The Future

March 21, 1982
Lakeland

Twenty-one years ago the Universalist Church of America and the American Unitarian Association consolidated and the Unitarian Universalist Association became a new religious name on the American scene. Today I would like to review briefly the values that each brought from an historic past – values which should not be erased; and re-affirm proposals and principles which seem to me essential to justify an on-going religious enterprise which asks for loyalty and support. We are justified if we are useful in service to the human family, courageous and thoughtful in evaluating the conflicts and stresses in society, and aware of the need to provide situations where we celebrate life together – worship. No religious endeavor is worthy of the commitment it requires unless it serves persons in their needs, challenges society to create both larger liberties and stronger social cohesion, and deepens our human grasp of the enduring importance of the great ideas: the nature of this creating universe, our purpose and destiny on this earth, and the “source of human good.”

There were Universalists and Unitarians hundreds of years before the movements were organized on this continent. The denominations were structures erected to house ideas which had existed as heresies within other religious frameworks.

That all humankind, without exception, was not condemned to hell but was destined to be saved was a theological affirmation existing from earliest Christian times. In America, the early Universalist preachers were almost exclusively “Bible Universalists,” many of them self-taught. They rebutted the orthodox claims of Hell and damnation with proof-texts from the Old and New Testaments which indicated clearly that many of the Old Testament prophets, and in the New Testament, Jesus, Paul, and others believed that the nature of God was love and that eternal creating Love by its very nature prohibited eternal damnation even for one single human soul. It is fair to report that the orthodox opponents could find numerous Biblical proof texts which seemed to buttress their position that a few souls would be saved by the Grace of God, but most souls were destined for eternal punishment in Hell.

This demonstrates that one can “prove” almost anything from scriptures. I noted this week that a writer called attention to those who advocate ‘scientific creationism,” using the scripture as laboratory proof that evolution is erroneous. But by the same means, you can prove the earth is flat. So it would seem consistent to me that a believer in scientific creationism should, logically, belong to the Flat Earth Society.

In Christian beginnings, Universal Salvation was a doctrine defended by many of the early leaders of the Church. Even when Universal salvation became a heretical doctrine, some five hundred years after Jesus lived, there were frequent re-assertions of the doctrine of Universal salvation by courageous heretics.

In modern Universalism in America, there was Dr. George de Benneville. Influenced by the Universalism of some of the German pietists who were a small but influential wing of the Protestant Reformation, de Benneville was preaching Universalism in Pennsylvania in the 1740s. John Murray, disciple of James Relly, landed in America. After the remarkable experiences of the New Jersey landing, he found his way to New England. Much to his surprise, he found a Universalist group in Gloucester, Mass., in 1770 (we would call it a fellowship today). After a series of dramatic events, he became minister of the first organized society of Universalists in America, the Independent Christian Church.

The movement spread rapidly in New England and Pennsylvania, soon reaching out to gather societies in New York and Ohio. In 1805, Hosea Ballou’s famous TREATISE ON THE ATONEMENT was the theological proposal which made most Universalists unitarian in their theology, years before Unitarianism became an organized movement.

Unitarianism has roots as deep or deeper in the soil of human history. The Hebrew scriptures proclaimed a monotheism at least from the time of the ethical prophets, 800 years B.C.E. The New Testament offers no evidence of Trinitarian belief. Belief that God was three was a later development of Christian dogma.

Disbelief in the Trinity became heretical. While monotheism remained the foundation of Jewish and Moslem theology, the Christian church punished those who deviated from Trinitarian dogmas.

Nevertheless, Unitarian thought flared again and again. Servetus, most well-known of the anti-Trinitarians of the Reformation period, was burned at the stake by John Calvin in Geneva, but his influence was not destroyed thereby. In the same sixteenth century, the Socinian or Unitarian movement was organized in Transylvania by Francis David. David, later imprisoned, died in jail, but Unitarianism has persisted in Hungary for more than four hundred years.

Unitarianism in England pre-dated the movement in America by almost a century. Under the leadership of Theophilus Lindsey and Joseph Priestly, organization was made effective in the founding of Essex Hall Chapel in 1774.

In the United States, although there were early Congregationalist preachers who were Unitarian in thought, specific organization was delayed.

King’s Chapel was the first Anglican (Episcopal) church in Boston. However, in 1785, the membership elected a liberal minister, James Freeman. Importantly enough, when the Bishop would not approve Freeman and refused to ordain him, the parish delegated its Senior Warden to ordain Freeman – a radical departure from a rejection of the Anglican/Episcopal practice of ordination by the Bishop through whose laying on of hands on the ordained maintained the doctrine of apostolic succession.

The American Unitarian Association was formed in 1825. [CJW note: not a denomination or association – individual membership] The inspired preaching of William Ellery Channing and the Unitarian influence of the faculty of Harvard Divinity School were important in the founding of the AUA. Ralph Waldo Emerson, Thoreau, and Theodore Parker, among others, strengthened the intellectual position and increasingly isolated the Unitarian movement from the prevailing orthodoxies.

For more than a hundred years, the Universalists and Unitarians maintained their denominational separateness, each accumulating heroes, heroines, traditions, trusts, and institutional habits which were difficult to alter or abandon. Recognizing, however, that their theology and social attitudes were developing along parallel lines, there were overtures toward merger as early as 1865.

Both denominations took pretty much in stride the revolutions in scientific ideas and adjusted theological positions to cohere with modern thought. Darwinian evolution, the higher criticism of the Bible and Freudian theories of our motives and inwardness all were accepted generally by both denominations and were positions which helped liberals toward better understanding of human nature in a world of natural and orderly processes.

In the 1950s, deliberations about merger intensified and in progressive steps, studies were undertaken, and various merger proposals voted, which led to the conclusive vote in 1960. The negotiations had been complicated and there was opposition but the consolidation was overwhelmingly approved by delegates. At the time, some of us remembered words of the prophet Amos (3/2), “Can two men walk together except they agree?” Unitarians and Universalists agreed that their religious association was one and to walk together henceforth.

It is important to remember the values of the old which have been preserved in the new.

First, there is the basic theological/philosophical tradition of individual freedom, reason, character, and optimism.

This right of individual belief is maintained specifically in the purposes and objectives of the UUA: “To strengthen one another in a free and disciplined search for truth as the foundation of our religious fellowship.”

Second is the great Reformation affirmation of the priesthood of all believers. We make no division between the clergy and laity that asserts or implies that the clergyman has a unique sacred calling. We ministers are trained to carry out the duties and responsibilities of the ordained minister, but we have no wisdom from on high that is denied the person in the chair or pew. The freedom and responsibility of both pulpit and pew have both historical precedent and continuing symbol in our traditions, in the ordination in King’s Chapel of James Freeman by the Senior Warden of King’s Chapel, a layman, and [in the] ordination of John Murray by the Gloucester Universalists – laypeople all.

The parallel institutional right of congregational independence has high value in both Unitarian and Universalists traditions and it has been preserved in the constitutional document of the UUA.

There are many traditions in our historical past which are points of referral and wise guidance, but the most vital are the freedom of the individual and the independence of the congregation.

What shall we dream and try to make real in the future? The future never can be exactly determined by the conditions of the present. One of the mysterious, tantalizing, and hopeful features of this dynamic universe is that effects can never be exactly predicted from observable causes. Prediction of things to come is always a venture of chance.

But it seems to me that one of our responsibilities is theological. When one looks back on the death and glory theological argument which badly split Universalists in the 19th century, when one considers the agitation and hot debates in the humanism/theism controversy of a few decades ago, as well as other issues on which there was division, one most surely recognizes that theological debate is seldom a placid encounter. As one historian has remarked, “there is no rancor like that between theological opponents who fight for the glory of God as if the very devil were in them.”

One of our Wednesday night series last year was “building your own theology” and my recollection is that there was considerable interested response. We do need a theological framework which provides a reasonable enclosure for the revolutionary changes which are occurring in science, communications, politics, economics, and government. We need the continued attention of our best minds to reckon with a faith which can accept the vast mystery of our universe, but also be satisfying for our human strivings to live by.

But we must be just as wary of establishing a creed as were our forebears. The fact that a religion may be appraised as modern is no warrant whatsoever for an attitude requiring conformity to it, or being arrogant about it. In the historical room of the lovely Universalist Church in Gloucester, Ma., there hangs a replica of the original Charter of Compact of that first organized Universalist church. If you ever visit there, read the whole charter, but particularly the 9th article, “whereas the privilege of choosing and professing one’s own religion is inestimable; and in order to maintain that privilege unimpaired, in case any person associating with us should suffer persecution from the undue exercise of power, we do agree and resolve to afford him all legal means of extricating himself from difficulty and enjoying that freedom which is held forth by the Constitution.” The language may be slightly archaic, but the ethic is as imperative today as then.

Consequently our efforts must be no less a defense than was made by those courageous Universalist pioneers.

Among us, universal salvation has become less a theological proposition for the after-life and more an article of faith for the people living in THIS world – to affirm, defend, promote the worth of every human personality and the use of the democratic method in human relationships. This is the additional meaning that has been transfused in to the grand old theology of the universal salvation of all humankind.

There is no blinking the requirement that our faith must not only be free, but also exacting, for the defense of all souls is not trivial or easy task. John Coleman Adams, one of the superior preachers of the 19th century, once said that “our forebears were too jealous of their liberties to cultivate their unities.”

The defense of the free mind requires a good deal of unity. We should be neither boastful of our knowledge nor extravagant in our claims of virtue. Even as a consolidated denomination, we are tiny compared with the millions that other churches can count. Nevertheless we need to exert our efforts, [CJW note: the ounces of our weighing], toward achieving a world which will consider all persons on earth worthy of salvation here on earth, which will define salvation in terms of enough to live on as well as freedom to choose a faith to live by.

One of the signers of the Charter of Compact of the Universalists who courageously organized in Gloucester was Gloster Dalton, a Black man. Upon the occasion of his church funeral April 11, 1813, the then minister “Father” Jones made this notation: “Gloster Dalton, an African. In this country from a youth. Supposed to be 90 years old. He was an honest, industrious man... belonged to the Independent Christian Society for many years. He was a native of Africa and brought away as a slave – so-called. For there are no slaves! All men are born free. T. Jones.”

In our times, we are the ones who will advance or yield the principles and spirit which made the old Universalism and the old Unitarianism worthy of devotion. We must demonstrate the merit of our religion in our time, in the service of our time, in the ways of our time, so that ‘twill be said of us too that we were known for speaking up for the right of persons everywhere to worship in freedom and live in peace.

Addenda

Here are a few written notes inserted between pages by Rev. Westman, but, uncharacteristically, without indication as to where they should be inserted into the main body of the sermon.

One could say Frank Oliver Hall was a naïve dreamer. 62 years have passed, but he proposed a dream which can become more real – and we are more conscious now, or should be, that the alternative to the dream is a nightmare. So I conclude with his admonition: “... our mission has not ended. It has only begun. We have our inspiring philosophy of life; we have a noble constituency of men and women who have been inspired by it; we have our message to preach; our works to do.”

***

We live in communities where there is a multiplicity of religions, denominations, associations, with differing theologies, symbols, sacraments, rituals, traditions. 100 years for us – what is most needed for the 21st century is not a unity of faith, as faith is commonly understood, but rather an urgent witness to stimulate and encourage all persons to live up to the ethical demands of their own religions. We do this best by living up to our own. In our own way and in cooperation with others whose faith symbols may differ widely, [we] can deal with issues of human dignity, rights, freedom, hunger, sickness, and the search for common ground.

These are human points of tangency for all religions with ethical goals and human standards.

***

Hosea Ballou – riding circuit in New England stopped at farm house. Farmer upset. Son a terror, a drunk, and fooled around with women. Afraid son would go to hell.

“All right,” said Ballou - “we’ll find a place on the path where your son will be coming home. We’ll build a big fire – grab him and throw him into it.”

Farmer, shocked: “That’s my son – I love him!”

Ballou: “If you, a human and imperfect father, love your son so much you wouldn’t throw him into the fire, how can you possibly believe that God, the perfect father, would do so?”

The Reformer: Martin Luther

October 26, 1958
Akron
Also: Rochester 10/29/61, Revised 10/25/64

The Reformer: Martin Luther – Saint, Sinner, Savage

This is Reformation Sunday, marking the birthday of the Protestant Church. Next Friday marks the four hundredth and thirty first anniversary of the day Martin Luther tacked the 95 theses to the door of Wittenburg Cathedral. The political, economic, social and religious effects of the Protestant Reformation is one of the important changes in the history of the Western World. Marking the historic significance of this day, I would like to discuss the leading person of the Reformation, Martin Luther, and contrast him with Thomas .... Luther is one of the most controversial persons in history. He was a saint, a sinner and savage (or vulgarian or bigot), depending upon the point of view from which he is seen. His followers hailed him as a true prophet of the Lord. Roman Catholics called him a child of the devil and accused him of demolishing Christianity. The agrarian reformers of that turbulent sixteenth century said he was the toady and supporter of the feudal lords and princes. Religious radicals, Carlstadt and Muenster, for example, compared him to Moses who led the way out of Egypt, but then deserted his followers, leaving them to perish in the wilderness. Those who have looked at his personal life with critical eye have sometimes thought him to be a corrupt, coarse, vulgar libertine who broke with Roman Catholic tradition so that he might marry a nun and rear children in sin and vulgarity The critics submit Luther’s own TABLE TALK as evidence of his degraded personality.

This we know, the history of the world was altered because Martin Luther lived. In abolishing the authority of the Pope, Martin Luther established the freedom of the Christian. When this principle became established, the administration of the life of the religious institution became the responsibility of the parish – a congregation of laypeople. Martin Luther did not anticipate, and actually opposed many of the consequences of the Reformation he spearheaded. The principle of the authority of the lay congregation had extreme political revolutionary effects. The self-administration of religion pointed the way to and established a principle for worldly self-government as well. Therefore, it is of particular importance to the liberal groups, whose guiding principle of freedom is most uninhibited, to understand Martin Luther. ... this sermon divides into 1) The Setting, 2) The Augustinian Priest, 3) The Reformer and Supporter of Princes, and 4) The Man, Martin Luther.

Although Martin Luther was not born when the Reformation began, he is the great reformer. To know the Reformation we must understand that the Renaissance, the revival of Learning, had been in progress for at least two centuries. In the 13th century, Petrarch and Boccaccio had notable advanced the humanist studies. The Medici family, also of Florence, had been the greatest patrons of art, sculpture, literature and philosophy that the world had ever known, and under their sponsorship, Da Vinci, Michaelangelo, Mirandola, Raphael and others had created wonders of art and letters that still summon our wonder at their imaginative, skillful genius. In 1453 the world’s greatest cultural center, Constantinople, had fallen to the Turks and the scholars of Greek learning who had preserved the manuscripts and art objects of Hellenism fled to Italy and other parts of Europe. [note in margin: “12 universities, Germany, 1409 – 1506]

Not only did the Renaissance signal the revival of arts and learning, but a most significant political movement was beginning to make its strong eddies felt in the ebb and flow of the Holy Roman Empire. Although Germany had lagged somewhat, England, France and Spain had assumed form as independent nations. The masses had no share in political rewards or freedoms, although they were the objects of the most severe hardships and cruel sufferings. Their ... order was serfdom.

The Roman Catholic was the authoritarian church. There was no toleration of revolt, but the seeds that were to bear fruit in Luther’s time had been sown. John Wyclif of England, opposed to the wealth of the church and clerical interference in all areas of life, believed that the Bible should be the possession of the people and had translated the scriptures into English. Wyclif was executed, his ashes scattered on Thames, but neither his convictions nor his bravery were forgotten. In 1373 [was the birth of] John Hus, a Bohemian priest who became influenced by Wyclif’s teaching, and preached an evangelical doctrine which was anathema to the Roman Catholic Church. John Hus avowed that the true head of the church was Christ, not the Pope. The unprincipled Church gave him safe conduct to the Council of Constance, but broke faith and burned him at the stake July 6, 1415, but neither was his memory forgotten, nor his principles rejected, by his followers. In 1498 the austere monk of Florence, Savonarola denounced the Pope, and after a succession of first temporary triumph and then humiliating defeat was burned at the stake. But even as the smoke and smell from the burning flesh and faggots were dispersed to the winds, so the knowledge of his revolt against Rome became widely perceived to other reformers, including Martin Luther, who was but a fifteen year old student when Savonarola was executed.

Something else had happened which was to make the world different than it had ever been before. Printing had been invented, the peoples of the world would not only become more literate, but the printed word was to bring them the wisdom of scripture in their own language, and the protesting pamphlets of the reformers.

In this seething cauldron of social change, a baby boy was born to a peasant miner, Hans Luther and his wife Marguerite, in 1483. November 10 was St. Martin’s Day, and the little child was named Martin after the patron saint. Although like so many of the world’s great, Martin’s parents were peasant stock, Hans Luther not content to accept poverty and misery of the miner’s lot, and by individual effort sought to make his lot better and his family more comfortable and privileged. In these beginning times of individualism, his efforts brought some reward, as Martin was enabled to go to school and university, to be prepared for the practice of law, which was his father’s wish for his eldest son.

The schools of that day were organized, administered and taught by the Church and its various orders. Thus, Martin’s early schooling was directed by the Brethren of the Common Life, an order dedicated to education. Then, in the university he was influenced by the Augustinian order. Under the strong influences of the monks, together with his personality which was unusually sensitive to supernaturalism and, along with his fine mind which was capable of wrestling with intricacies of language, philosophy and theology, Martin Luther found his hopes turning toward the Church and away from the law. Although Hans Luther was deeply religious, his wish that Martin be a doctor of the law was so strong that when Martin announced that he was to be an Augustinian monk, his father was deeply hurt and years were to pass before he really forgave the son who was frustrating the parent’s deepest wish. This revolt against his father’s authority, acceptance of church authority, ....

After a farewell party, Martin’s friends escorted him to the Augustinian cloister at Erfurt on the 17th of July 1505 and he entered its gates there to endure the privation of the order and to know the religious joy of humbling his passions, following the tedious routine of prayers and study, eventually when ordained to know the joy of celebrating the mass in which the wafer and wine became the body and blood of Christ.

As a monk, Martin Luther was conscientious to a degree we would think to be unnatural. He fasted for days at a time, went night after night without sleep so that he might devote himself to prayer unceasingly (and in so doing permanently injured his health). He whipped himself to subdue the desires of the flesh. Although he was a model of holiness to his brother monks, his personal anxiety increased. He became increasingly morbid. Luther, a child of his times, feared the devil and believed the arts of witchcraft could have a dreadful effect on him. The iron discipline of the Augustinian cloister had the natural effect of subduing his outward expressions of feeling and intensifying the inward fires of human passions.

Following his ordination as a priest, he turned to teaching at the University and soon became a most popular teacher, His large following of students was drawn for several reasons. His peasant inheritance gave him the common touch, and his plain talk and natural illustration reached the core of matters. [He was less bound to narrow conventions and traditional formulas monks of more aristocratic stock.] Following his master’s degree he earned a doctor of theology, a rare scholastic honor in those days.

His talents and drive soon won greater recognition. When only 31 years old in 1515, he was appointed District-vicar of the Augustinian order. Thus in addition to his devotional duties as a monk, his university responsibilities as a teacher of philosophy, he had additional responsibility of [acting as superintendent] to the ten Augustinian monasteries in his district.

This devout Augustinian monk was obsessed not only with neurotic fears for his salvation, but also he was upset by dishonesty and corruption readily discovered in the Church of that day which was dominated by the Renaissance Popes, who had a high degree of sensitivity to artistic beauty and an insensitive attitude toward personal and organizational corruption.

Thus what Martin Luther had hopes would be a high experience of his life resulted in considerable disillusion. He and another Augustinian made a pilgrimage to Rome. There he could not escape noticing the corruption, hypocrisy and political knavery of the hierarchy. Rome, like all great capitals of that day, was dirt-infested, priest-ridden, and morally soft. The irreverence of the priesthood shocked this simple, devout German peasant priest. It is said that while climbing the sacred stairs, that Paul’s words to the Romans fixed themselves in his brain, “the just shall live by faith,” and he realized that acts of piety, like climbing stairs on his knees, were of little effect. But it is part of that growing spirit of rebellion which some have named the Reformation.

How much the extent of his Roman visit influenced his revolt, we do not know. Perhaps it was but a small but significant episode in his long life.

The real spark of the Reformation was ignited when the Roman hierarchy decided that in order to build magnificent St. Peter’s Cathedral, much money had to be raised. So the sale of indulgences was authorized. The doctrine was that by their purity the saints had built up a bank account (so to speak) of piety, on which the sinful could draw to lessen their years in purgatory. So Tetzel, a monk went through the countryside urging peasants to buy indulgences so that their dead relatives might be released from purgatory sooner. It is said that Pope Leo X, who was the son of Lorenzo Medici, said cynically about the response of the pious peasants, “This story of Jesus has helped us a lot.”

On Oct. 31, 1517, Martin Luther tacked a manuscript to the door of Wittenburg Cathedral. 95 propositions for debate were listed. Luther questioned the indulgences with a series of logical propositions, the most telling of which proposed that if the Pope had the power to release soul from purgatory, then he should do so at once, not for money, but out of the spirit of love and charity. Although years were to elapse between the nailing of the theses to the door of Wittenburg Cathedral and the actual formation of the Reformed Church, that date is historically looked upon as the birthday of Protestantism. Luther’s theses were formal but his vernacular comment was “God will not tolerate this flea market!”

News of the opposition of this Augustinian monk to the plans of the hierarchy soon reached Rome and action followed. Luther refused to recant, he had a notable debate with John Eck and undoubtedly would have been executed as a heretic except for one historical tide. Nationalism was dawning, and the feudal lords and princes of Germany were very much opposed to the Roman Church drawing off large sums of money from the homeland for St. Peter’s, or any other foreign enterprise.

Luther began to write, and his pamphlets pointed unquestionable to a strong difference with the principles of the hierarchical church. He proposed the priesthood of all believers and that there were only two sacraments authorized by scripture, baptism and the Lord’s Supper. These were heretical opinions, unquestionably. Luther was excommunicated, and would have been seized, except Frederick, elector of Saxony had him spirited away to Wartburg Castle. But the printing press was pounding out Luther’s writings and they were widely distributed, and the people responded. When Luther emerged from Wartburg, he found himself organizing a Reformed Church.

Then occupied one of the most puzzling aspects of Luther’s strange character. The impetus to religious freedom had other consequences. The peasants revolted against their landlords and princes. It was natural but unexpected that they should seek to throw off political and economic oppression when the way to religious freedom had been pointed out. Historically we know that this is one of the glories of religious freedom – other benefits to mankind are the natural consequence. But Luther proved to be the toady and supporter of the princes. Neither the implications of religious freedom, nor love for the peasant people from which he sprang mitigated the severity of his condemnation of the Peasant’s Revolt. To the aristocratic Lords and Princes, Luther offered these words of encouragement, “Hearken Dear Lords .... Let him who can stab, strike and strangle .... These are such strange times that a prince can go to heaven more easily by spilling blood than other through prayer.”

The peasants were crushed, murdered, tortured, starved.

Luther was not a tolerant man. Even admitting that like all persons, he was a child of his own age, we find it difficult to reconcile this devout man who professed the Lordship of the gentle Christ with the Luther who was savage in his bigoted hatred of the Jews, and unremitting in his urgings to destroy and persecute them.

Luther could not get along with other reformers. He refused to shake hands with Zwingli because the latter would not accept Luther’s interpretation of the Lord’s Supper.

But this person, Martin Luther, was not only an Augustinian priest, a reformer of strange and devious as well as noble ways, he also was a man.

When the Reformers were celebrating freedom from the Roman Catholic Church, the monasteries and convents were opened, the monks and nuns sought marriage and Christian homes, sometimes marrying each other. Catherine Von Bora was a nun who was jilted by a suitor shortly after her release from the convent. Martin Luther sought to be a marriage broker to her and find a suitable husband. However, when it was reported to him that Catherine Von Bora would marry only Dr. Amadorf or Dr. Luther, he investigated further, with the result that shortly after, the ex-priest Martin Luther and the ex-nun Catherine Von Bora were married and established their home in the Augustinian cloister in Wittenburg where formerly Luther had lived the monastic life. [note in margin: A news release Oct ’64 – their wedding ring had been found in an E. Berlin home]

Theirs was a busy home. Not only were six children born to them, but also they were hospitable and generous to the homeless; at one time, not less than eleven orphans shared their home and table. The reminisces of this home life are found in Martin Luther’s TABLE TALK, remarkable for the insight it gives into the personality of this father. he was gentle, but at times objectionably vulgar and rude.

When the plague struck, as it did frequently in those days, sometimes death came close. One of the children, Elizabeth, died in infancy. Hans and Paul lived to maturity and their descendants still are living in Germany. Marguerite lived to girlhood, but in a terrible time of trial for the busy parents, she died of illness. In the grief of that occasion, Luther formed the tune and words of his greatest hymn, “A Mighty Fortress is Our God.”

This aging father had innumerable organizational details of the reformed church. He was called to settle disputes between princes. His health, never good since his monastic days, grew worse. After a winter journey under difficult conditions, he died after attempting to resolve a conflict between two lords.

What shall we say of this man? He was a reformer. He was a reactionary who was unbelievably harsh with his fellow Peasants. He was intolerant. He was an anti-Semite. He was coarse and vulgar. But also, he was a great preacher and scholar. He translated the Bible into German, giving the people the scripture. His courage sparked the Reformation, giving birth to the numerous free Christian groups among which in later years our own was to be numbered. He was the Reformation’s greatest hymn-writer. Schweitzer remarked that the only person who ever really understood Martin Luther was Bach. He was a kind and loving, but financially embarrassed father. He was a teacher who won the respect of his students.

But the most loving and most human epitaph that the reformer earned, was written by the ex-nun that became his wife and the mother of their children. A month after his death, Catherine Von Bora Luther writing to her sister remarked how much she missed him:

Christina,

Who would not be sorrowful and mourn for so noble a man as my dear Lord, who served not only one city or land, but the whole world? Truly I am distressed that I cannot tell my sorrow to anyone. If I had a principality or empire it would never have cost me so much pain to lose them as I have now that our Lord God has taken from me, and not from me only but from the whole world, this dear and precious man.

(304 A MIGHTY FORTRESS, pp. 18-19)