“I Must Stay at Your House Today”
Proper 26C: Isaiah 1:1-10, Luke 10:1-10
It was 490 years ago last Wednesday that Martin Luther, an Augustinian monk and seminary teacher, nailed 95 theses to the door of the church in Wittenberg, Germany. It would begin a long and torturous path for this young man, because he was openly challenging the “powers and principalities” of his day. You see, Pope Leo had decided that he wanted to build the most magnificent basilica in all of Christendom. He wanted to be remembered for this. He wanted a monument, a physical legacy of his greatness. The trouble was that his grand plan was plenty expensive.
To this end, he sent out his representatives to raise a lot of money. The tactic they would use would be to capitalize on the guilt of the masses. The church had operated for centuries by presenting itself as the only recourse to spending eternity in the fires of hell, the pits of damnation. The church had perpetuated itself on the basis of fear.
Martin Luther, having been raised with a father who also perpetuated his power through engendering fear, was incensed. Yes, he had cowed to his father in his earlier years. But his father insisted he become a lawyer, and Martin perhaps left his father’s house of fear first by refusing to enter a profession he did not desire. Instead, he went to an Augustinian monastery, where he sang the Psalms every day and night. The hymn we just sang was his refiguring of Psalm 46. He wrote it some 10 years after the theses were nailed to the door of the church. He wrote it during very tough times, when a friend of his had been burned at the stake as a heretic, when the German princes were having their freedoms challenged.
Most often, this hymn is sung to the sound of a powerful pipe organ played full throttle. It has somehow become symbolic of the church triumphal, a rather arrogant form of Christianity that sought to proselytize the world. But I am not convinced that Luther wrote it in that vein. I think Luther had been transformed in his study of the book of Romans and did not experience God as mighty in physical battle, but mighty in spiritual battle!
Let’s review a few words from Romans that may well have provided the heart connection for Luther’s own conversion. It is important to recall that Luther did not feel conversion was an intellectual exercise. It was the work of the Spirit, claiming the heart of the one who sought God. These verses from the eighth chapter of Romans:
“There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and death. Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with signs too deep for words. And God, who searches the heart, knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God…I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Suffice it to say that through his studies and prayer, Luther became inwardly certain that God was not a punishing entity, as his father had been. God was to be known through the person of Christ, and in this case through the writings of Paul to the Romans. Scripture was always to be illuminated by the Holy Spirit. It was not meant to be interpreted by the religious elite in faraway places. God’s grace and the love of Christ were meant to be available to all. And if, as Paul states clearly, there is no condemnation in Christ, where did the Pope’s puppets, such as John Tetzel, get off by selling indulgences to the weary masses for the purposes of building a monument to their power? Brother Tetzel lured the average folk with jolly thoughts such as: “as soon as the coin in the coffer rings, the soul from purgatory springs.” It was rubbish, and Luther knew it. Perhaps what Luther didn’t know, having created another set of theses earlier that were received in a lukewarm fashion, was that he had awakened the wrath of the Vatican.
He would be excommunicated and seen as a heretic. But the forces of history were on his side.
It cannot be overlooked that the invention of the printing press was a primary factor in the success of Martin Luther’s message. For centuries only the elite knew how to read or had access to hand-copied versions of the scriptures. Now, Luther’s theses and beliefs could be distributed far and wide. The people, tired of various forms of oppression from church and state, were hungry to hear words of encouragement, including words such as “in Christ there is no condemnation.” A breath of fresh air seemed to sweep across the continent. Grace was abounding.
I would like to recommend to you a much more recent document for your perusal. It is called A New Reformation and it was written by a modern excommunicated priest, Matthew Fox. Fox’s message centers more on the story of creation than on the book of Romans. He wants us to know that we were created “good” and that he is tired of having the old fear messages about sin being broadcast in the marketplace of religion. Here is one of the theses he nailed to the door of the church in Wittenberg in recent years. “The dark night of the soul descends on us all and the proper response is not addiction, such as shopping, alcohol, drugs, TV, sex or religion, but rather to be with the darkness and learn from it.” (82)
Utilizing my knowledge of Luther’s desire that we should ask the Holy Spirit to illuminate the scriptures for us, I took a deeper look this week at the story of Zacchaeus, who was a chief tax collector, who was rich, and who was resented. We are also told that he was short in stature, which caused him to have to climb a sycamore tree in order to see who this Jesus was. We have no way of knowing if Jesus knew a thing about Zacchaeus prior to that day. Apparently, he knew his name. I believe that Jesus was able to read the souls of those he encountered. It somehow registered that Zacchaeus was despised not only by the general population, for exacting payment for taxes and for being a crook, but Zacchaeus also despised himself.
Zacchaeus was one of Jesus’ lost sheep. He had forgotten who he was, and that he had been created in the image and likeness of God. Jesus was quite a celebrity in those days, so it really registered with folks when he said to the tax collector, “…hurry and come down; for I must stay at your house today.” Zacchaeus felt his respect, his positive regard, his love, his invitation. It transformed him. He repented, that is to say he experienced a change of mind about who he was and what he was doing. He vowed to clean up his act, to repay his debts, to clean up his side of the street. In Jesus words, he came to realize that he, too, was a son of Abraham. Thus his faith in himself was restored, and he was no longer lost.
I believe that Jesus did indeed that day go to the house of Zacchaeus and that they broke bread together. Let us remember now that act of our common humanity, and the restoration we experience through the teachings of Jesus, by singing together, “Break Now the Bread of Life.”
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