This sermon was preached at First Lutheran Church in Ottumwa, Iowa, on the occasion of the 500th anniversary of Luther's speech at the Diet of Worms.
Everything that went down in the trial at the Diet of Worms 500 years ago was about freedom. No one brought it up when they interrogated Martin Luther about the books piled on a table in the middle of the room. But the question hung over everything like a dark cloud. Can you count on Jesus to take on your sin and free you to live and breathe again?
Luther had been on a wild ride the previous 3 1/2 years. His list of 95 questions about the pious practice of indulgences exploded across Europe, and the friar who taught at a nothing university in a podunk town in Germany found himself becoming as famous as Pope Leo and Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor. He neither wanted nor expected to play the celebrity. Think of how last May the name George Floyd became known across the country and how since then it’s taken on a role as a symbol for something he no doubt never imagined.
Luther had become the fulcrum at the center of change and the symbol for every awful thing in the church or for every hope counter to the church’s oppressive gaze. Jerome Aleander, a papal representative, reported back to Rome that Germany was a powder keg ready to blow. He said the situation had to be dealt with before it was too late.
The process had already begun when the previous fall Pope Leo had issued the threat to excommunicate Luther. The threat didn’t move Luther to recant what he’d taught publicly and published. So in January, Luther was declared a heretic, and now the civil authorities were bringing down the other fist.
From the beginning all Luther wanted was a serious debate in the church to see if he was indeed right about what he’d encountered in scripture. He’d discovered Paul in Romans proclaiming that salvation came on account of Jesus without any participation points of our own being factored in. In other words, Luther had experienced exactly what Jesus was talking about in our gospel reading this morning: “You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free. …If the Son sets you free you will be free indeed.” Luther had suddenly found himself free of demands to play nice for God, free of the judgment that it seemed the entire message of the church was built on, and free of the terror of being found wanting by God and being sent to hell for eternity.
Late in his life, looking back on how it all happened, Luther said he raced back through the Bible and saw that same proclamation of freedom oozed out of every chapter and verse. It’s like that recent Facebook meme that asks if the sneaker is pink and white or gray and green. If you’re a pink sneaker person, once you see it as green, you can’t see it as pink again. Once Luther spotted complete freedom in Christ how would he ever see Jesus as the divine accountant keeping track of sin and rendering hellfire as a sentence?
The aim of Johann Eck, the inquisitor at Worms, wasn’t an exploration of the wonders of grace in the Old and New Testament or even a formal debate about theology. Eck’s one aim was to put a lid on it. Luther was to be shut down for good, so the only question allowed was this: Will you recant? Eck demanded that Luther take it all back and fall into line again.
After being allowed to sleep on it, Luther was back before the emperor, the prince electors, representatives of the church, and a bunch of Spaniards in the gallery who reports say mocked him and flipped him off. Our favorite Friar tried to make a distinction about the different kinds of things he’d written, but Eck accused him of stalling and quibbling. So Luther responded with the famous speech we remember today. We’ll speak those same words as our confession of faith today.
“Unless I am convinced by Scripture and plain reason - I do not accept the authority of the popes and councils, for they have contradicted each other - my conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and I will not recant anything for to go against conscience is neither right nor safe. God help me. Amen."
What Luther was up against in Worms was our human attachment to “if/then” thinking. If you do this, then you’ll get this in return. We human beings love Isaac Newton’s laws of physics like “For every action there’s an equal and opposite reaction” and “An object in motion tends to stay in motion unless acted upon by another object or force.” We see how our use of power in the world brings about change. We know that we get paid once or twice a month if we work hard, and if we’re careful we might get our school loans paid off and eventually (fingers crossed) retire and gain the reward of travel with our beloved before we get too old.
But the gospel that had so grabbed hold of Luther works a different way. There’s no “if/then” here. It’s all “because Jesus/then.” Because Jesus was crucified, died, and raised from the dead, then you have everything you need for salvation. And when it’s a “because” rather than an “if,” there’s no uncertainty. When there’s no uncertainty, then you can echo Paul in Romans 8: “For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
The threat of uncertainty is exactly what Luther was talking about in his speech when he talked about the conscience. He knew exactly how life works, how we move along at a clip and then something comes along to trip us up, shatter our confidence in being able to concoct a future, and bring us to doubt and despair. It happens with a job loss, or the word “cancer,” or a financial setback, or awful crop and livestock prices, or a dang global pandemic. It happens with relationships that fall apart or kids that give you grief or aging parents whose lives you’re trying to manage. It happens with a bad grade or not making the team or the day-after-day-after-day gloom of depression.
When these things happen, they destroy our sense of ourselves in relation to the world, to other people, and to God himself. That’s what your conscience is — not a little angel on one shoulder and a little devil on the other like in Tom and Jerry cartoons. When your conscience is troubled, you sense that the bonds that tie us to others and to God have frayed or even broken. Luther was dead sure that landing in that spot was not what God intends for you. He’d experienced it himself too many times to count, and nothing he tried fixed a darn thing, whether going to confession, praying more, attempting to keep lusts out of his head, going on a pilgrimage to Rome, or promising God he’d try to do better. The more he tried to whip himself into shape and fix his relationships with God, his neighbors, and the world, the less he seemed to accomplish.
But when he latched onto the promise of Christ’s mercy, now he’d encountered God in a way that required no religious superheroes. He didn’t have to become more religious, more spiritual, or more moral. All he needed to do was be the broken-down sinner he knew in his heart he was. That was the very person Jesus had come to save. But what Johann Eck was trying to get Luther to do was to turn his back on that confidence and the good news itself.
Eck was part of system that had more to do with the books in the self-help category on Amazon than with the gospels. The whole system urged you do your best for God. If you did, then God would take it the rest of the way. But did you catch the “if/then” there? All Eck could ever promise in the end was more doubt about whether you ever actually done your best. What if you didn’t? And how would you ever know until you were dead and standing at the pearly gates, and it was too late to achieve any extra credit? That’s why at the end of his speech Luther said, “it’s neither right nor safe to go against conscience.”
Luther regarded the whole business as the Evil One tempting him to turn away from Christ and trust himself. That’s not much different from what we experience in the world. Advertising is built on the proposition that you don’t have what’s needed for a full rich life, and you need to fill the gap with product X, whether Bud Light, teeth whiteners, or the candidate on the left or on the right. That’s how social media functions: you won’t be fulfilled unless you can curate the perfect online presence, posting pics of your truly interesting life, gourmet meals, and clever memes. The temptation is always for you to think that God doesn’t or can’t provide you with what you need, especially what you need to be in his good graces.
Luther’s advice when such temptation to unfaith comes along was to lift one cheek and let what my late dad called a “buck snort” rip. In Luther’s mind, the devil didn’t have a body, and passing gas or drinking beer or enjoying a good meal was a way to thumb your nose at the tempter and cling all the more firmly to Christ’s freedom.
In his letter to the Galatians, Saint Paul wrote one of my favorite lines in the whole Bible. He said “For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.” When Luther answered Eck before the Holy Roman Emperor and all the other officials, princes, and dignitaries, he stood firm. He would let nothing pull him away from the sure and certain promise of the gospel. He refused to recant. He simply said no.
I know Luther was more self-aware than I am, and he no doubt knew the gospel more intimately than I do. In the thick of life, I forget that promise and I keep turning to my own efforts as the path to security. But we have a Lord who isn’t going to leave us in the lurch. He’s given us this meal today, the Lord’s Supper, so that we can hear that promise and have it slide down our gullets with the bread and wine and become a part of every cell in our body. We have this promise to remind us: “This is my body and blood given and shed for you for the forgiveness of sins.” Notice Jesus didn’t say “given and shed for you as an example” or “given and shed for you as a job description” or “given and shed for you to prod you to do better.” Jesus gives himself to you for the forgiveness of sins, which always bestows freedom and a new day, indeed a new life.
Luther’s stood there in that chamber in Worms. He couldn’t do anything else. If he had, it would have meant denying the very Lord who’d freed him. In the end, he had to make it all about himself and his own understanding or effort or about the work that Christ did on the cross. There were no other alternatives, no half measures, no being kinda or sorta Christian.
In the same way there’s no halfway for us, even though we aren’t facing the Holy Roman Emperor. We just face more insidious temptations that are the harder to resist because they seem so much less consequential. But the question remains: Are you free? Do you understand what Christ has done for you? Does that promise have a grip on you? Or are you looking elsewhere for peace, safety, and security? I tell you this, my friends, Jesus has promised to give you life and give it abundantly. It’s in him that you’ll find the same freedom Luther did 500 years ago. May God help us. Amen.
