When Leadership Fails

Preaching today at Saint Paul's Lutheran Church, Rye Brook, N.Y.

‘My father made your yoke heavy, but I will add to your yoke; my father disciplined you with whips, but I will discipline you with scorpions.’ So the king did not listen to the people. (I Kings 12:14-15)

Looking back nine centuries before Christ was born, we find Israel in the midst of a leadership crisis. 

A vain and narcissistic leader repudiates the wisdom of his predecessor, rejects good advice, acts tough, makes threats, and tears his country apart.

In the political placidity of 2019, we can only wonder what that must have been like.

No doubt leadership problems predate recorded human history, as far back as when an ambitious Cro-Magnon convinced his followers they would eat better if they hunted rather than gathered and led his people to be massacred by an defensive mastodon.

Indeed, leadership problems are an appropriate topic for reflection as we observe the 502nd anniversary of the Reformation.

In October 1517 the leader was Pope Leo X, who got it into his head that he had power over the destination of souls when people died. Leo also saw a business opportunity in that power. As he faced mounting debts over the reconstruction of Saint Peter’s Basilica in Rome, Leo raised funds by selling indulgences to sinners to minimize the time they would spend in Purgatory.

That made Martin Luther see red. A mercurial monk, priest, and theology professor, proclaimed the doctrine of justification by faith alone. Luther declared that individuals are saved by the grace of God, and no paper signed by the pope or a bishop could open the gates to heaven.

Can we all say Amen.

Clearly this theological insight is worth celebrating today. Because of what Martin Luther declared, Christians are liberated from the task of seeking out Jesus, of pleading with Jesus to come into our lives. When people ask us, “Have you found Jesus?” Lutherans may reply, “Jesus has found me!” And nothing we can say, do, or not do can repel the grace that saves us.

One would think that revelation would have settled the question of salvation for all time, and today we would be celebrating 502 years of Christian harmony.

But Leo X quickly realized there was no financial profit in grace. And far be it from our Protestant and Catholic ancestor to sit in a quiet pub to discuss hermeneutical differences over a stein of beer. Instead, they formed armies, fought battles, and blood flowed for the next, 200 years.

The German Peasant’s War of 1525 was an uprising by persons at the bottom of the social scale who were inspired by Luther’s message of the priesthood of all believers. Luther abhorred violence and he condemned the peasants’ bloody uprising, while harsh suppression by the authorities left tens of thousands dead.

The Massacre of Saint Bartholomew’s Day in 1572 was the most notorious episode of religious violence of the Reformation era. On August 24, 1572, in the midst of celebrations of a marriage between a Catholic princess and a Protestant king, at least 2,000 French Protestants were murdered on the streets of Paris. 

The Thirty Years War (1618-1648) left parts of the German-speaking lands utterly decimated – some areas lost between a quarter and a half of their population. The episodes of violence associated with both Protestant and Catholic troops in the war were legendary, and stories spread across Europe.

Another sad outcome of the reformation was war against non-Christians. The “reconversion” of Spain to Christianity, and the expulsion of the Jewish and Muslim populations of the peninsula were hugely significant acts of symbolic and practical violence. And, beyond both 1492 and 1517, as Spain and other European nations acquired overseas empires, they also began to convert and subdue indigenous peoples, leading to the genocide of the people who populated the Americas before Europeans came. 

Did Martin Luther really understand what he was starting 502 years ago?

For millions, his efforts to reform Christendom created more pain than gain. For many Christians, especially Anabaptists, Luther’s movement was often lethal.

Here’s a Reformation story, which Anabaptists still tell:

In 1569 in Holland, a Mennonite preacher named Dirk Willems was arrested by his Lutheran neighbors for practicing the heretical custom of adult baptism.

After 1500 years of quarrelsome Christianity, the Lutherans had a pretty good idea what God wanted them to do with heretics: burn them at the stake.

According to The Martyr’s Mirror, Willems escaped from his captors one winter night and sprinted across the frozen hillocks. The Lutherans were losing sight of him and one pursuer took a shortcut across a frozen pond. But the ice broke beneath him and the Lutheran fell into the frigid water, writhing helplessly.

Willems turned to see the man’s distress and made a fateful decision. He ran back to the pond and pulled the man out of the water. The other pursuers caught up with him and carried Willems back to the jail, where he was promptly burned at the stake.

Today the awkward tale of Dirk Willems is rarely told in Lutheran confirmation classes but it’s worth keeping in mind. Otherwise we might be tempted to celebrate the Reformation as a beatific highpoint of Christian progress.

But the truth is, if Luther had his way, he’d have nailed a few Anabaptists to the Wittenberg door, too. And Jews. And the Pope. The defacing of the Wittenberg door was the ominous prelude to decades of burnings, beheadings, torture, and other primitive forms of hermeneutical discussion.

Luther, who spent much of his life hiding from Catholic assassins, would have readily immolated the odd Mennonite or Jew whose theology he found abhorrent. Fortunately for persons in those groups, Luther usually dissipated his anger through vivid insults which you can use even now to add salt to your Twitter tweets. In the unlikely case you are feeling angst, you can express it in Luther’s words on your cell phone. Download the Luther insult generator - http://ergofabulous.org/luther/
and tweet away.) 

Luther was complicated. Among other things, he was a bona fide prophet. God spoke through him with blinding clarity.

But Luther also spoke for his imperfect human self, and on those occasions he was often wrong. He was a typical sixteenth century European Christian who bristled with anti-Semitism and xenophobia and he bristled brisker than most. Had his glowering imperfections been less obvious, his followers might have elevated him to the demigod status of Joseph Smith or Mary Baker Eddy.

Luther’s point was that with God’s grace, salvation is achieved by faith alone. That was a revolutionary revelation that relieved a heavy burden from sinners who saw themselves struggling futilely to please a vengeful God.

Salvation by faith alone is God’s message to us, and it’s too bad Pope Leo couldn’t see it. It’s also too bad that the reformers themselves sometimes lost sight of it. Fifty years after Luther published his theses, some of his Lutheran descendants got the idea that faith and grace only worked for Lutherans, not Catholics, not Anglicans, and certainly not Anabaptists. Luther himself, a confirmed churl, despised Anabaptists because of their adherence to believer’s baptism. Dirk Willems was not the only one to pay the price of Lutheran arrogance. These were the horrid hermeneutics of the Reformation.

But times change and we Christians are no longer immolating each other. Today Pope Francis warmly embraces Lutherans and Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York (who knew he was a Luther scholar?) acknowledges “the church needed reforming” in 1517. One can even see the day in the not-too-distant future when Lutherans and Catholics will share the same communion elements of bread and wine at a common table.

The ideal result of the Reformation will be when Lutherans and Catholics share a common priesthood, but that day seems far off. Most Lutheran communions ordain women as priests and bishops, and the otherwise progressive Pope Francis has declared that will not happen in his reign.

So for those who believe it is essential for the church to embrace the gifts of all who are called to ministry, regardless of gender or sexual orientation, there is still reforming to be done.

As we look forward to the perfect unity of a reformed church, it may be good to keep in mind that Reformation has always been imperfect, often brutal, and slow to embrace the insight that Luther saw in his more gracious moments: that persons are redeemed by faith, not dogma, and by God’s grace, not priestly intercession.

True reformation may be a long ways off, but by God’s grace it will come. 

Like the long, slow moral arc of the universe, the arc of reformation bends inexorably toward unity.
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Reformation leaders caricatured above above:

1. John Wycliffe (1328-1384) was an English scholastic philosopher, theologian, Biblical translator, reformer, priest, and a seminary professor at the University of Oxford. He became an influential dissident within the Roman Catholic priesthood during the 14th century and is considered an important predecessor to Protestantism.

2. Martin Luther (1483-1546). Here I stand, I can do no other.

3. Jan Hess (1369-1415) was a Czech theologian and philosopher who became a church reformer and an inspirer of Hussitism, a key predecessor to Protestantism and a seminal figure in the Bohemian Reformation.

4. John Calvin (1508 – 1564) was a French theologian, pastor and reformer in Geneva during the Protestant Reformation. He was a principal figure in the development of the system of Christian theology later called Calvinism

5. Argula von Grumbach née von Stauff (1492-. 1554) was a Bavarian writer and noblewoman who, starting in the early 1520s, became involved in the Protestant Reformation debates going on in Germany.

6. Marguerite de Navarre  (1527-1549.  American historian Will Durant wrote: "In Marguerite the Renaissance and the Reformation were for a moment one. Her influence radiated throughout France. Every free spirit looked upon her as protectoress and ideal .... Marguerite was the embodiment of charity.

7. Kartharina Von Bora Luther. (1499-1552) Katharina von Bora, after her wedding Katharina Luther, also referred to as "die Lutherin", was the wife of Martin Luther, German reformer and a seminal figure of the Protestant Reformation.


8. Marie Dentière (1495-1528) was a Walloon Protestant reformer and theologian, who moved to Geneva. She played an active role in Genevan religion and politics, in the closure of Geneva's convents, and preaching with such reformers as John Calvin and William Farel.