“TWO MARTINS, ONE CHRIST,” A SERMON COMMEMORATING THE BIRTH OF BLESSED MARTIN LUTHER, 10 NOV. 1483, PREACHED 17 NOV. 1999 AT PEACE LUTHERAN CHURCH, SUSSEX, WI, BY FR. STEPHEN WIEST (ISA 58:6-12; REV 14:6-7; MATT 25:34-40)
Lord Jesus Christ, enable Thou me to preach no one but Thee
Blessed Martin Luther, Reformer of Christ’s Church, was born on November 10, 1483. Luther’s birth occurred on the eve of the burial of St. Martin of Tours, an event that had transpired more than a millennium before, on 11 Nov. 397. For this reason, the newborn son of coal miner Hans Luther and his wife Hanna was baptized at the church at Eisleben in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, and christened “Martin.” Blessed Martin Luther was named after St Martin of Tours. Martin’s naming with the name of this great saint would prove to be prophetic. The collect appointed for the feast of S 1. Martin of Tours seems almost to have been written with the work of Reformer Martin Luther in view. It reads:
Lord God of hosts, you clothed your servant Martin the soldier with a spirit of sacrifice, and set him as a bishop in your Church to be a defender of the Catholic faith: give us grace to follow in his holy steps, that at the last we may be found clothed with righteousness in the dwellings of peace; through Jesus Christ our Lord . . .
Indeed, we might say that Martin of Tours was the type of Martin Luther.
The first Martin was born about 330 in Hungary. Because he was the son of a Roman soldier, Martin was drafted into the army at an early age despite his desire to become a Christian. While stationed at the French city of Amiens, the young soldier met at the city gate a poor man nearly naked, who was shivering in the winter frost. Martin, seeing that no one else would give this poor wretch any alms, took his great soldier’s cloak and cut it in half with his sword. Half he gave to the freezing beggar, for he had nothing else to offer besides his cloak and weapons. That night in his sleep Martin saw Jesus Christ, dressed in the half of the cloak with which he had parted, saying, “Martin, yet a catechumen, has covered me with this garment.” Soon thereafter, the young soldier was baptized and became a Christian.
Martin Luther, a millennium after Martin of Tours, beheld a naked, shivering beggar as well. That poor, shivering beggar was the whole of poor Christendom, trying to find shelter from the gaze of the God who hates sin by hiding behind the few filthy rags of her own righteousness. Martin Luther, just like his namesake, Martin of Tours, had at hand a great and ample garment. This garment was the robe of righteousness, large enough to cover the whole sinful world by faith in Jesus Christ. It was Christ’s gracious “issue” of equipment to his soldier of the Cross, Martin Luther. Luther clothed the shivering, naked Church with this garment as he preached and taught poor, misled Christendom the pure Gospel of justification by faith in Jesus Christ alone. This Gospel of forgiveness of sins in the Promised Savior is the only thing that can clothe Adam and Eve and all their fallen children rightly in the eyes of a Righteous God. Anyone who would be clothed in his own good works, good words, and good thoughts, needs to open up his eyes and see how naked and poor he is apart from the freely given garment of God’s righteousness in Christ Crucified for our sins. This Gospel of Martin Luther was identical with the Gospel of St. Martin of Tours, with the Gospel of St. Paul, with the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, and with the Gospel of the whole Church Catholic in all places and in all times.
It is a point of considerable interest to us that our word “chapel” seems to be derived from the incident of the cloak freely given to the shivering beggar by. Martin of Tours. The place of prayer in which the cloak of St. Martin was afterward preserved was called in Latin the cappella, after the diminutive for “cloak.” In Old French, this word was pronounced chapele. If any chapel, then, is to be true to its name, it must be a place where nothing is offered to sinful mankind but the covering of righteousness of Jesus Christ. Just as the cloak of St. Martin of Tours covered the poor beggar, so the Gospel of Blessed Martin Luther covered the deluded, works-righteous souls of those touched by the evangelical message of the Reformation. Would that it were so now, as well, among us! Have mercy, Lord Christ, upon any poor, naked, and shivering souls where your Gospel is no longer preached in all its purity, where your Sacraments are no longer administered rightly! Enable your Church, gathered in this place and clothed in your grace alone, to retain her hold upon on you, the true Robe of Righteousness, for the blessed covering over of the sins of all who come here for your Gospel and your Sacraments!
St. Martin of Tours secured from Caesar release from military service in order to be a soldier of Christ. As a monk, Martin came under the salutary influence of St. Hilary of Poi tiers, bishop of that city, and was ordained by Hilary into the priesthood. Martin founded the first monastic community in France. He would have preferred to spend the rest of his life in solitary study of God’s Word and in preaching to the peasants of the countryside about the monastery. Martin, however, was pulled away from his own chosen way of life by the will of God. God’s will was expressed through the people of Tours, who demanded that Martin be made bishop of their city. Blessed Martin Luther, a millennium later, undertook the life of a monastic like his namesake. Similarly, Luther, was not allowed by God to remain separated from the world as a monk. Through the Biblical studies enjoined upon him by Johann von Staupitz, his superior in the Augustinian order, Martin began to know the grace of God in Jesus Christ Crucified. It was not enough for God that Martin Luther should study and teach quietly at the University of Wittenberg. The rediscovered Gospel was a light that could not forever be hidden under a basket.
On the Eve of All Saints’ in 1517, Luther posted on the Wittenberg church door his Ninety-Five Theses against the supposed selling of forgiveness of sins through indulgences. Roland Bainton writes that Luther was like a man climbing in the darkness a winding staircase in the steeple of an ancient cathedral. In the blackness he reached out to steady himself, and his hand laid hold of a rope. He was startled to hear the clanging of a bell. No more than the first Martin ever thought to become bishop of Tours did this Martin ever think to become the Reformer of Christ’s Church. Luther had not planned to begin a Reformation in which the pure Gospel would be revealed clearly not only to himself but also to the whole of Christendom. Despite Luther’s own wishes and plans, that is what God wrought through Luther.
During the time of the bishopric of St. Martin of Tours in the Fourth Century, paganism began to decrease greatly in France. While Bishop Martin stood staunchly against the Church’s- physical persecution of heretics and unbelievers, nonetheless he lent a strong hand to the pulling down of pagan temples and the felling of sacred trees. Once, when this great overthrower of paganism had demolished a certain temple, he desired also to cut down a sacred pine that stood near it. The pagan priest of that place and others agreed that they themselves would fell the tree-upon condition that Bishop Martin of Tours, who trusted so strongly in the Christ whom he preached, would stand wherever they should place him. Martin consented, and let himself be tied on that side of the great tree toward which it was leaning. When the sacred pine seemed about to fall and crush him, St. Martin made the Sign of the Holy Cross and the tree fell harmlessly to one side.
Blessed Martin Luther took his stand, as well, upon dangerous ground, protected by nothing but the Word of God. When he was called upon by Emperor Charles V and the papal legate at the Diet of Worms in 1521 to recant the Gospel he preached and bow to the authority of a Church that had long denied that Gospel, Luther refused. The Reformer declared:
Since then Your Majesty and your lordships desire a simple reply, I will answer without horns and without teeth. Unless I am convicted by Scripture and plain reason-I do not accept the authority of 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. Here I stand, I cannot do otherwise. God help me. Amen.
The Emperor’s quick response, promulgated in the Edict of Worms, enjoined all imperial subjects “not to take . . . Martin Luther into your houses, not to receive him at court, to give him neither food nor drink, not to hide him, to afford him no help, following, support, or encouragement, either clandestinely or publicly, through words or works. Where you can get him, seize him and overpower him, you shall capture him and send him to us under tightest security.” For the next twenty-five years, Martin Luther stood beneath that “great falling tree” of an imperial decree and saw God deflect it by nothing more powerful or glorious than the simple preaching of the Cross. The preaching of the Cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but unto us who are being saved-even from the persecution of our own church body’s Christless bureaucrats—it is the power of God for salvation. So also was this preaching of the Cross the only salvation of Luther, whom God used to overthrow the papistical paganism which had overgrown Christ’s Church. That papistical paganism is still with us today, and it needs to be toppled once again from the perch on which it lords it over us by means even of our own synodical seal!
For Luther to be put under the imperial ban in 1521 was nothing new to him. Earlier that year, Luther had been excommunicated from the Church by Pope Leo X. In 1518 Luther had already been condemned at Rome for his Ninety-Five Theses of 1517. Also in 1518 he was released from the Augustinian order by von Staupitz, Luther’s former dear father in Christ, who now disowned Luther. For the sake of the Gospel of his dear Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, Luther took his place as the last and the least of Christ’s brethren: a man sentenced to death, a spectacle to the world, to angels and to men, a fool for Christ’s sake, weak, held in disrepute, hungry, thirsty, ill-clad, buffeted, homeless, reviled, persecuted, slandered, relegated to the refuse of the world, the offscouring of all things. Think how quickly our own hearts would recoil at the prospect of having to be hidden away for a whole year simply as the result of our confession of the Faith. Which one of us would willingly court even social ostracism or economic privation, much less suffering and death, in order to return to a God-given calling of preaching Christ with no guarantee of personal safety? We cannot clothe Luther, the least of Christ’s brethren sent in Christ’s stead to preach Christ’s Gospel, with too much honor—especially that honor of emulation in bold evangelical deeds as well as that of mere lip-service by our grand evangelical words.
Martin Luther, though; does not want us to speak of him. He wants us, rather, to speak of Christ, Blessed Martin Luther’s Savior from all his sins. Ever since the time of the Reformation, nearly five hundred years ago, Lutheran exegetes have taken our epistle reading from the Apocalypse to have been a prophecy of the God-wrought work of the Reformer. That angel in mid-heaven proclaiming an eternal Gospel for all those dwelling on earth, they have said, is a picture of the evangelical ministry of Blessed Martin Luther. “Perhaps that’s true,” Luther would answer, “but listen well to what the angel proclaims”: “Fear God and give him glory, for the hour of his judgment has come; and worship him who made heaven and earth, the sea and the fountains of water.”
Luther’s God is first and last our Lord Jesus Christ, True God and True Man. Luther’s God is he who says on the Last Day to those at his right hand: “Come, O blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.” Now, an inheritance prepared for us cannot be earned by our good works; it can be bestowed upon us only by the grace of the Lord who has willed it to us. What has been prepared for us from eternity cannot be earned or won by us in time; it can only be foreordained for us by God’s unmerited favor in Christ. The Father saw us in Christ, the Lamb slain for the sins of the world, and the Father called us blessed in Christ, before ever time began! Christ, the Blessed Redeemer, is the God of Luther, the Blessed Reformer. If there had been no sinless Redeemer in Christ, designated by God from eternity for man, there would never have been any redeemed Church for the poor, sinful Reformer, Luther, to reform!
If Luther was able to offer Christ’s hungry and thirsty people both the Bread and the newly-restored Cup, it was only because Luther’s Lord Jesus had first given up his Body and his Blood for Luther and for all. If Luther was able to live out manfully the latter half of his life as a “stranger in a strange land” under ecclesiastical and imperial bans, it was because Luther’s Lord Jesus had first manfully come unto his own while knowing full well that he would find no welcome from but a bitter Cross. If Luther was able to clothe poor, shivering Christendom with the righteousness of Christ in the preaching of the pure Gospel, it was only because Luther’s Lord Jesus had first been stripped naked in order to be covered with the shame of Luther’s sins, my sins, your sins, the world’s sins.
If Luther was able to break the yoke of false doctrine and let thousands upon thousands of oppressed consciences go free, it was only because Luther’s Lord Jesus had first come to liberate us from Satan’s prison-house of the Law, Sin, Death, and Hell—yes, even to die so that we might be healed from our sickness unto death. If Luther was able to pour himself out for the hungry and satisfy the desire of the afflicted with a fruitful lifetime of preaching and teaching the pure Gospel, it was only because Luther’s Lord Jesus had first poured out his blood from the Cross and given his Body as the offering for our sins. If Luther was enabled to become the Repairer of the Breach by restoring the doctrine of Justification to the Church, it was only because Luther’s Lord Jesus had first justified by his own precious suffering and death both Luther and the world to which Luther preached.
Despite all his prodigious accomplishments for the cause of Christ, Blessed Martin Luther never forgot the fact that he was a poor, miserable sinner in need of a Savior. Even his best works, he freely confessed, were shot through with sin. He, Luther, was the one whom Christ had fed and welcomed, clothed and healed, rescued from destruction with his death and resurrection. Blessed Martin Luther could clothe others in Christ’s righteousness only because he, himself, had first been clothed by Christ-just as that poor, naked, shivering beggar had once been clothed by Luther’s namesake, St. Martin of Tours. Martin of Tours was the patron saint of beggars. True to his namesake, the last words that Martin Luther ever wrote, found by the side of his deathbed, read, “We are beggars-that is true.” These two Martins were both soldiers of the one Lord Jesus Christ. We honor St. Martin of Tours and Blessed Martin Luther best when we follow in their train as soldiers of Christ. Let us bravely echo them-even against those who would gainsay us within our own church body-in confession of the pure Gospel of our only Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ:
Through the midst of hells of fear our transgressions drive us.
Who will help us to escape, shield us and revive us?
Lord, you alone, our Savior.
Your shed blood our salvation won; sin, death, hell are now undone.
Holy, most mighty God! Holy and most merciful Savior! Forever our Lord!
Give us grace abounding; keep, us, keep us in the faith.
Have mercy, O Lord!
(LW 265)
