Jeremy L. Berg

We are celebrating “Luther Week” at MainStreet as we honor the 500th anniversary of the Reformation. We watched the 2003 Luther movie on Wednesday night, and we will be discussing the movie and Reformation this Wednesday night at Three Taverns.

This Sunday I also spent time introducing this truly one-of-a-kind flawed heroes of the faith. Many are familiar with Luther the Reformer: the monk with an uneasy conscience, fearing the wrath of God, discovering in the Bible a God of grace who saves us by faith in Christ alone, how he took on the entire Roman Church of the 16th century with its many corruptions, nailing his 95 Theses on the door of the Castle Church at Wittenburg, translating the Bible into German language so all could read, and how he set into motion events that would change the history of Christianity and Western Civilization itself.

I took a moment to recognize the humanity of Luther as well, for he was quite a character and his sharp and witty pen gives us glimpses of his humanity. Just google “Martin Luther Quotes” and you’ll discover the heights of holy wisdom all the way down to the depths of … well, a loud-mouthed German probably holding a large stein of beer in his hand. For instance:

On prayer: “I have so much to do that I shall spend the first three hours in prayer.”

On grace: “Be a sinner and sin boldly, but believe and rejoice in Christ even more boldly.”

On God’s care: “I have held many things in my hands, and I have lost them all; but whatever I have placed in God’s hands, that I still possess.”

On drinking beer: “Whoever drinks beer, he is quick to sleep; whoever sleeps long, does not sin; whoever does not sin, enters Heaven! Thus, let us drink beer!”

On holy flatulence: “I resist the devil, and often it is with a fart that I chase him away.”

You get the point.

Steve Lawson introduces us to Luther the Preacher. Quoting Fred W. Meuser: “Martin Luther is famous as reformer, theologian, professor, translator, prodigious author, and polemicist. He is well known as hymn-writer, musician, friend of students, mentor of pastors, and pastor to countless clergy and laity. Yet he saw himself first of all as a preacher.” Luther gave himself tirelessly to preaching.

While, Luther wrote voluminously, he never put his written works on the same level with his proclamation of God’s Word. Luther maintained, “Christ Himself wrote nothing, nor did He give command to write, but to preach orally.”

Consider the overwhelming number of sermons he preached—7,000 between 1510 and 1546. That is almost 200 sermons per year, or 4 per week. Throughout his ministry, Luther preached, on average, one sermon every two days. Fortunately for us, some 2,300 of his biblical expositions survive in written form today.

I wanted to introduce Luther the preacher to my congregation. So, to honor Martin Luther and the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation, I decided to dig out one of Martin Luther’s sermons on the parables and preach to my congregation. I had the joy (and challenge!) of reading through a couple dozen Luther sermons this week in search of a good one to share this Sunday. A few observations:

First, I was pleased to find hundreds of them available free online in various places. For example, go here. So, now you also can go back in time and imagine yourself in an uncomfortable wooden pew feasting on these meaty treats. The “meatiness” leads to my next observation.

Second, it was no easy task pulling out one of these sermons to repackage for today’s listeners. I mean no offense to my congregation, as I think we’re of above average intellect and a pretty typical sampling of a midwest suburban Bible teaching church. I found very few sermons I thought would connect with and hold the attention of my folks. Luther’s sermons, which I’d guess are more “down to earth” than many writers of the time, are still quite long and theologically dense for modern consumption. I ended up selecting just a small a portion of a sermon which still took about 25 minutes. The entire thing would have been twice that long.

Third, it was both fascinating and disturbing to read firsthand some of Luther’s well-known cutthroat, no-holds-barred polemic against the corruption in the Roman Catholic Church of his day, the papacy, St. James (who he thought preached a works plus faith gospel), and, most disturbingly the Jews. (Luther’s anti-semitism casts a real and dark shadow over his life, and must be condemned in the harshest possible terms.) Such heat seems to emerge in almost every single sermon on every single parable or text. I had a cut out portions that weren’t suitable for family audiences.

So, we stepped into the MainStreet Covenant time-machine this Sunday and I preached from Luther’s Sermon on “The Parable of the Marriage Feast” on the Twentieth Sunday after Trinity in 1523. It’s a powerful picture of the major Reformation theme of “Union with Christ.”

My wife begged me not to dress up in character, to don the black robe and Luther hat and fail miserably at a German accent. But I tried to convey his sermon with some gusto. I will share the selection I preached below and leave in the anti-papacy part I left out in italics.

So, welcome to church in 1523! Leave your coffee at the door, don’t count on a nursery for your kids. Sit up straight, and listen to some good ole Late Medieval period preaching. Enjoy!

———————

LUTHER: THE PARABLE OF THE MARRIAGE FEAST OR WEDDING GARMENT 

MATTHEW 22:1-14

Read entire sermon here by scrolling down to pp. 197-206.

This is among all the parables and pictures, by which God presents the kingdom of Christ to us, a select and beautiful one; that the Christian state is a marriage feast or a matrimonial union, where God himself selects a church on the earth for his Son, which he takes to himself as his bride. God here by our own lives and experiences will make known and reflect as in a mirror what we have in Christ; and also by the common state of marriage on earth, in which we were born and reared and now live, he delivers a daily sermon and admonition in order that we should remember and consider this great mystery (for so St. Paul calls it in Ephesians 5:32), that the conjugal life of a man and wife, instituted by God, should be a great, beautiful and wonderful sign, and a tangible, yet spiritual picture, that points out and explains something special, excellent and great, hidden to and inconceivable by the human reason, namely, Christ and his church.

[Here I skipped his first 12 points/paragraphs]

13. Let us now briefly notice what is taught by this marriage feast. First, this marriage feast is a union of the divine nature with the human. And the great love Christ has for us is presented to us in this picture of the wedding feast. For there are many kinds of love, but none is so ardent and fervent as a bride’s love, the love a new bride has to her bridegroom, and on the other hand, the bridegroom’s love to the bride.

True love has no regard for pleasures or presents, or riches, or gold rings and the like; but cares only for the bridegroom. And if he even gave her all he had, she would regard none of his presents, but say: I will have only thee. And if on the other hand he has nothing at all, it makes no difference with her, she will in spite of all that desire him. That is the true nature of the love of a bride. But where one has regard to pleasure, it is harlot-love; she does not care for him, but for the money; therefore such love does not last long.

14. This true bride-love God presented to us in Christ, in that he allowed him to become man for us and be united with our human nature that we might thus perceive and appreciate his good will toward us. Now, as the bride loves her betrothed, so also does Christ love us; and we on the other hand will love him, if we believe and are the true bride. And although he gave us even heaven, the wisdom of all the Prophets, the glory of all the saints and angels, yet we would not esteem them unless he gave us himself. The bride can be satisfied by nothing, is insatiable, the only one thing she wants is the bridegroom himself; as she says in the Song of Solomon, 2:16: “My beloved is mine, and I am his.” She cannot rest until she has her beloved himself.

So is Christ also on the other hand disposed toward me: he will have me only, and besides nothing. And if I gave him even all I could, it would be of no use to him; he would have no regard for it, even if I wore all the hoods of all the monks. He wants my whole heart; for the outward things, as the outward virtues, are only maid servants, he wants the wife herself. He demands, that I say from the bottom of my heart: I am thine. The union and the marriage are accomplished by faith, so that I rely fully and freely upon him, that he is mine. If I only have him, what can I desire more?

15. Now, what do we give to him? An impure bride, a dirty, old, wrinkled outcast. But he is the eternal wisdom, the eternal truth, the eternal light, an exceptionally beautiful youth. What does he give us then? Himself, wholly and completely. He does not cut a piece off for me or give me a little morsel, but the whole fountain of eternal wisdom, not a little brooklet. If then I am thus his and he mine, I have eternal life, righteousness and all that belongs to him. Therefore I am righteous, saved, and in a sense that neither death, sin, hell, nor satan can harm me.

16. Now, what do we bring to him? Nothing but all our heart-aches, all our misfortunes, sins, misery and lamentations. He is the eternal light, we the eternal darkness; he the life, we death; he righteousness, we sin. This is a marriage that is very unequal.

But what does the bridegroom do? He is so fastidious that he will not dwell with his bride until he first adorns her in the highest degree. How is that done? The Apostle Paul teaches that when he says in Titus 3:5-6: “He gave his tender body unto death for them and sprinkled them with his holy blood and cleansed them through the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit.” He instituted a washing; that washing is baptism, with which he washes her. More than this, he has given to her his Word; in that she believes and through her faith she becomes a bride. The bridegroom comes with all his treasures; but I come with all my sins, with all my misery and heart-griefs. But because this is a marriage and a union, in the sense that they become one flesh, Genesis 2:24; Matthew 19:5, and they leave father and mother and cleave to one another, they should embrace each other and not disown one another, although one is even a little sick and awkward; for what concerns one, the other must also bear.

17. Therefore, the bride says, I am thine, thou must have me; then he must at the same time take all my misfortune upon himself. Thus then are my sins eternal righteousness, my death eternal life, my hell heaven; for these two, sin and righteousness, cannot exist together, nor heaven and hell.

If we are now to come together, then one must consume and melt the other in order that we may be united and become one. Now his righteousness is truly incomparably stronger than my sins, and his life unmeasurably stronger than my death; for he is life itself ,where all life must be kindled.

Therefore my death thus vanishes in his life, my sins in his righteousness and my condemnation in his salvation. Here my sin is forced between the hammer and the anvil, so that it perishes and vanishes. For now since my sin, my filth is taken away he must adorn and clothe me with his eternal righteousness and with all his grace until I become beautiful; for I am his bride.

Thus then I appropriate to myself all that he has, as he takes to himself all that I have; as the Prophet Ezekiel 16:6 says:

“Then I passed by you and saw you, and behold, you were at the time for love; so I spread My garment over you and covered your nakedness. I also swore to you and entered into a covenant with you so that you became Mine,” declares the Lord GOD.“I also clothed you with embroidered cloth and put sandals of porpoise skin on your feet; and I wrapped you with fine linen and covered you with silk.”

Here he relates many kind acts he did for her; and later he complains in verse 15, how she became a harlot. He tells us all this, that he clothed us with his riches and that we of ourselves have nothing.

Who so does not here lay hold of this as sure, that he has nothing of himself, but only Christ’s riches and cannot without doubt say, Thou art mine, he is not yet a Christian. 

18. Now since Christ is mine and I am his: if Satan rages, I have Christ who is my life; does sin trouble me, I have Christ who is my righteousness; do hell and perdition attack me, I have Christ, who is my salvation. Thus, there may rage within whatever will, if I have Christ, to him I can look so that nothing can harm me. And this union of the divine with the human is pointed out in the picture here of the marriage feast, and the exalted love God has to us, in the love of the bride.

19. Now what of the wedding garment? The wedding garment is Christ himself, which is put on by faith, as the Apostle says in Romans 13:14: “Put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ.” Then the garment gives forth a luster of itself, that is, faith in Christ bears fruit of itself, namely, love which works through faith in Christ. These are the good works, that also flash forth from faith, and entirely gratuitously do they go forth, they are done alone for the good of our neighbor; otherwise they are heathenish works, if they flow not out of faith; they will later come to naught and be condemned, and be cast into the outermost darkness.

20. This is indicated here in the binding of the hands and feet of those cast out. The hands represent their good deeds done without faith, the feet the manner of life in which he trusted and failed thus to cling to Christ alone. For we blame him that he had not on the wedding garment, that is, Christ; therefore he must perish with his works; for they did not sparkle forth from faith, from the garment. Hence if you want to do good works, then believe first; if you want to bear fruit, then be a tree first, later the fruit will follow of itself.

[JB – I left this next italicized part out in my preaching]

21. The mistake is also readily observed here, by which many have perverted the Gospel in that they say: Although the Pope and his following are wicked, yet we must obey him and acknowledge him as the head of Christendom. Let him do what he may, and yet he cannot err, and although he may not have on the wedding garment, nevertheless he is in the congregation. But they are not so good that one might compare them to the one who had not on the wedding garment. They are the villians and murderers who killed the servants of the King; and even if they were worthy to be compared to him, yet the Gospel in this parable does not teach us to follow them, but to cast them out and protect ourselves against them.

For whoever has not on the wedding garment does not belong to the congregation, is filth, like the slime, pus, and ulcers in the body; it is indeed  in the body, but it is no part of the healthy body. Counterfeits are among money, but they are not money; chaff is among the wheat, but it is not wheat; so these are among Christians, but they are not Christians. This is sufficient on to-day’s Gospel. Let us pray God for grace, that none of us may come to such a precious and glorious marriage feast without a wedding garment.

Amen.

You can listen to my message here.