(Sermon preached in online worship October 25, Saint Paul's Evangelical Lutheran Church, Rye Brook, N.Y.)
Esther 4
It is illuminating to read this morning’s passage from Esther on Reformation Sunday.
The common theme is that Queen Esther and Martin Luther put themselves in harm’s way for a greater good.
Both challenged grave injustices at the risk of their lives, and this is why it is not odd to bring them together in a single sermon.
But they do seem like an odd couple.
Esther was a beautiful young woman who rose to prestige through her sex appeal. Luther was a lumpy-faced monk who rose to prestige through his brilliant writing and persuasive sermons.
I think it fair to say Esther was pure at heart while Luther’s heart roiled with deep resentments toward the pope, Jews, and anyone who disagreed with him.
But Esther had enemies. Preceding today’s scripture reading is the dark soap opera of Queen Vashti, Esther’s predecessor and ill-fated wife of King Ahasuerus.
Vashti was also a woman of great beauty and the King wanted to show her off to the ogling males of his court. But Vashti refused to expose herself, and the King, worried other husbands in the kingdom might wonder who wore the gilded pants in his castle, made sure she disappeared. After a sleazy Miss Universe-style beauty contest, Esther is chosen to succeed Vashti.
Of course Esther had no control over her good looks, but she did prove they ran more than skin deep.
When Evil Haman decided to kill the Jews in the Kingdom, Esther’s conscience prompted her to risk her own death by appealing directly to the king. She couldn’t be sure her beauty would save her, but fortunately alcoholic Ahasuerus could not stop drooling in her presence. She got what she asked for. Evil Haman was dispatched. The Jews lived. The feast of Purim was born.
Esther’s courage is praiseworthy – although as my spouse, the Divine Doc M, who checks my often-eccentric exegeses, points out – the story is problematic.
“She uses her beauty and her charms while Vashti is cast to who knows where,” my wife says. “Why aren’t we asking, ‘where’s Vashti’ and all the forgotten women she represents?”
Be that as it may, Esther is a stirring story of courage against evil and truth against power.
So, too, is the story of Martin Luther and the Protestant Reformation. And so, too, is that story problematic.
Five hundred and three years ago this Halloween, Martin Luther nailed his Ninety-Five Theses to the door of All Saints Church in Wittenberg.
But the truth is, if he had his way, he’d have nailed a few Anabaptists to the 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 even now could exalt your Twitter tweets.
Go to https://ergofabulous.org/luther/. Clicking on the link this morning the first Lutherism I found was, You vulgar boor, blockhead, and lout, you ass to cap all asses, screaming your heehaws.
He said it. I merely quote him. And there are no many other wonderful Lutherisms at this site.
But Luther also spoke for himself, 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.
Whether Luther actually defaced the Wittenberg door with nails is a matter of dispute, but historians are clear that he sent the theses to his bishop, Albert of Mainz, on October 31, 1517. They were not a demand for comprehensive church reform but a complaint about the sale of indulgences, a papal racket for selling tickets to heaven.
The Disputation of Martin Luther on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences was the opening salvo of the Protestant Reformation. Pope Leo X, who depended on indulgences to continue living in the manner to which he was accustomed, was alarmed by Luther’s disputation and eventually excommunicated him. His Holiness also dispatched goon squads in search of Luther’s hoary head.
Ironically, the sale of indulgences has never gone away completely. There are still church fundraisers that suggest a donation of $5 will assure the special attentiveness of the Blessed Mother to prayers. And scores of television evangelists, most of whom scorn both Lutherans and Catholics, raise millions by promising that contributions to their ministries will bring “special blessings” that undoubtedly include heaven.
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 remains a wonderful idea, 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. The Martyr’s Mirror, a record of Anabaptists burned and hanged by Lutherans and other oppressors, is a sad reminder of that period.
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, 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.
