Something from Luther that's Blowing My Mind

Recently, I wrote on science as a Christian vocation, and in light of that piece, and particularly the one that followed, this excerpt from Martin Luther is, yes, blowing my mind ("Open Letter to the Christian Nobility of the German Nation Concerning the Reform of the Christian Estate") 

Written in 1520, it's still relevant five centuries later...

From all this it follows that there is really no difference between laymen and priests, princes and bishops, "spirituals" and "temporals," as they call them, except that of office and work, but not of "estate"; for they are all of the same estate -- true priests, bishops and popes -- though they are not all engaged in the same work, just as all priests and monks have not the same work. 

This is the teaching of St. Paul in Romans 12:4 and I Corinthians 12:12, and of St. Peter in I Peter 2:9, as I have said above, viz., that we are all one body of Christ, the Head, all members one of another. Christ has not two different bodies, one "temporal," the other "spiritual." He is one Head, and He has One body. 

Therefore, just as Those who are now called "spiritual" -- priests, bishops or popes -- are neither different from other Christians nor superior to them, except that they are charged with the administration of the Word of God and the sacraments, which is their work and office, so it is with the temporal authorities -- they bear sword and rod with which to punish the evil and to protect die good. 

A cobbler, a smith, a farmer, each has the work and office of his trade, and yet they are all alike consecrated priests and bishops, and every one by means of his own work or office must benefit and serve every other, that in this way many kinds of work may be done for the bodily and spiritual welfare of the community, even as all the members of the body serve one another.

Love in a Time of COVID-19

Safeway, St. Patty's Day 2020

Tuesday I was shopping for groceries at Safeway, and somewhere near the coffee aisle, I found some new thoughts running through my brain—questions about everyone in the store and every surface I touched, all of which can be summarized in one phrase: 

“Will this give me the coronavirus?” 

Of course, I may be particularly selfish, but it wasn’t long before another thought, more other-centered, came to mind, “Who might I be infecting?” (I don’t have any symptoms, but of course, there is asymptomatic COVID-19 infection. So it wasn't a moot point.) Third thought as I looked around: “What is happening here?” I looked at the shelves and found gaping holes because people, being concerned about their personal stock piles, were hoarding. (Above, you’ll see a shelf usually filled with canned goods at my local Safeway.)

All this got me to ponder the effects of COVID-19, not just "social distancing," which is having profound effects on loneliness and isolation, but the related effect of thinking that every single persona might be somebody carrying this particularly pernicious disease--that could, at the least, send me into a 14-day quarantine, and at the worse, into a painful set of upper respiratory symptoms and hospitalization.

This all sounds a bit dower to me, and I realize where I'd like to go with this post--that is, to affirm our fundamental calling to love one another. So let me allow the great Christian teacher of the 4th and 5th century, Augustine, do some heavy lifting. 

In preaching on 1 John 4:4-12, this great Christian thinker uttered this:

“Once for all, then, a short precept is given you: Love, and do what you will: whether you hold your peace, through love hold your peace; whether you cry out, through love cry out; whether you correct, through love correct; whether you spare, through love do you spare: let the root of love be within, of this root can nothing spring but what is good.” Augustine

Similarly, if I jump up a millennium or so, Martin Luther produced an amazing tract, "Whether Christians Should Flee the Plague." right at the time that a bubonic plague hit Wittenberg, Germany in 1527. In response, Luther refused to flee the city in order to protect himself.  He stayed and cared for the victims. 

As Lyman Stone comments:

"Luther provides a clear articulation of the Christian epidemic response: We die at our posts. Christian doctors cannot abandon their hospitals, Christian governors cannot flee their districts, Christian pastors cannot abandon their congregations. The plague does not dissolve our duties: It turns them to crosses, on which we must be prepared to die." 

And so I return to that central question, stated just a bit differently, "What happens when everyone around you might have COVID-19 or when they might get it from you?"

My strong hunch is that no Christian leader of the stature of Augustine or Luther--or of lesser fame, faith, and insight--would allow the coronavirus to make everyone around us an object of suspicion. 

Nothing, it seems, should interrupt our call to love.

Good Friday

I'm reposting this from last year's Good Friday meditation.

“Any discussion of how pain and suffering fit into God’s scheme ultimately leads back to the cross.” Philip Yancey

Martin Luther Theologian of the Cross

Martin Luther, who in many ways initiated the Protestant Reformation, offers this moving meditation on Jesus suffering. And, as we turn to remember Jesus’s crucifixion today, on Good Friday, let us remember that the cross represented a shameful, four-letter word in Latin, crux. The word signified a death reserved for political traitors and villains and never for Roman citizens. Cicero’s Orations denounced both the reality of the cross and its usage by polite Romans. Death on cross was “the most cruel and abominable form of punishment”, and the very word “should be foreign not only to the body of a Roman citizen, but to his thoughts, his eyes, his ears.” 

And now to Luther:

The whole value of the meditation of the suffering of Christ lies in this, that man should come to the knowledge of himself and sink and tremble. If you are so hardened that you do not tremble, then you have reason to tremble. Pray to God that he may soften your heart and make fruitful your meditation upon the suffering of Christ, for we ourselves are incapable of proper reflection unless God instill it. 

The greater and the more wonderful is the excellence of his love by contrast with the lowliness of his form, the hate and pain of passion. Herein we come to know both God and ourselves. His beauty is his own, and through it we learn to know him. His uncomeliness and passion are ours, and in them we know ourselves, for what he suffered in the flesh, we must suffer in the spirit. He has in truth borne our stripes. Here, then, in an unspeakably clear mirror you see yourself. You must know that through your sins you are as uncomely and mangled as you see him here. 

We ought to suffer a thousand and again a thousand times more than Christ because he is God and we are dust and ashes, yet it is the reverse. He who had a thousand and again a thousand times less need, has taken upon himself a thousand and again a thousand times more than we. 

No understanding can fathom nor tongue can express, no writing can record, but only the inward dealing can grasp what is involved in the suffering of Christ.

Today we are called to focus on what the Cross of Christ means for us.

Martin Luther: Good Friday Lenten Reflection

“Any discussion of how pain and suffering fit into God’s scheme ultimately leads back to the cross.” Philip Yancey

Martin Luther, who in many ways initiated the Protestant Reformation, offers this moving meditation on Jesus suffering. And, as we turn to remember Jesus’s crucifixion today, on Good Friday, let us remember that the cross represented a shameful, four-letter word in Latin, crux. The word signified a death reserved for political traitors and villains and never for Roman citizens. Cicero’s Orations denounced both the reality of the cross and its usage by polite Romans. Death on cross was “the most cruel and abominable form of punishment”, and the very word “should be foreign not only to the body of a Roman citizen, but to his thoughts, his eyes, his ears.” 

And now to Luther:

The whole value of the meditation of the suffering of Christ lies in this, that man should come to the knowledge of himself and sink and tremble. If you are so hardened that you do not tremble, then you have reason to tremble. Pray to God that he may soften your heart and make fruitful your meditation upon the suffering of Christ, for we ourselves are incapable of proper reflection unless God instill it. 

The greater and the more wonderful is the excellence of his love by contrast with the lowliness of his form, the hate and pain of passion. Herein we come to know both God and ourselves. His beauty is his own, and through it we learn to know him. His uncomeliness and passion are ours, and in them we know ourselves, for what he suffered in the flesh, we must suffer in the spirit. He has in truth borne our stripes. Here, then, in an unspeakably clear mirror you see yourself. You must know that through your sins you are as uncomely and mangled as you see him here. 

We ought to suffer a thousand and again a thousand times more than Christ because he is God and we are dust and ashes, yet it is the reverse. He who had a thousand and again a thousand times less need, has taken upon himself a thousand and again a thousand times more than we. 

No understanding can fathom nor tongue can express, no writing can record, but only the inward dealing can grasp what is involved in the suffering of Christ.

Reflect on what the Cross of Christ means for you.