Some of you may know that Jean and I have just returned from a two-week trip to Germany, where we rented a car and visited the so-called Luther sites, the towns and cities where Martin Luther lived four hundred years ago, and where the Reformation began. It was a wonderful time and we are very grateful to your generosity in making it possible. We want to show you our slides, so we have decided we are going to have a potluck supper on Wednesday, June 25. You are all invited. You may feel that making you watch our slides is a heck of a way to say thank you, but we are going to do it anyway. I promise that we will be merciful.

Martin Luther was a force in shaping the world that we live in, not only the Protestant world, our religious heritage, but also western civilization. There is probably nobody more important than Martin Luther in shaping that world.

In many ways we have gone beyond Martin Luther. Like all reformers he was single-minded and thus he over-emphasized some things, and he neglected other things. So other reformers came along like John Wesley, the founder of our tradition, to build on Martin Luther.

It may be that the world Luther helped to create, which was called the modern world, and has been here four hundred years, is being superseded by a new era in history called the post-modern world. That may be, but we will understand neither who we are as people living in the 20th century, or looking into the 21st century to who we ought to be, if we do not understand the heritage given to us by this great man.

I will talk about Luther in two parts. Today I want to talk about the young Luther, and then next week the mature Luther and the legacy that he left to all of us.

Luther was born on November 10, 1483, in Eisleben, a little town in what is called Saxony in Germany. Jean and I were there just a couple of weeks ago. We stayed in a "pension" just a few feet away from Luther's "geburthaus" house, the place where he was born.

We also walked a few blocks beyond that to the church in which he was baptized the day after he was born, on November 11, 1483. It was St. Martin's Day, named for St. Martin of Tours. So they named their baby Martin in honor of St. Martin.

St Martin of Tours was a Roman soldier who was converted to Christianity and later became a bishop. He was famous for taking an ax and destroying pagan shrines and altars. Many people would feel that it was prophetic, that Luther would be baptized Martin, because he, too, would become an iconoclast of sorts, destroying those doctrines and practices in the Christian Faith that he felt were not Christian. But instead of an ax, he would use a pen.

Luther's father, Hans Luther, was a miner, a peasant. As you approach Eisleben today you can see giant "slag heaps," they are called. I swear they are as big as Mt. Helix, you can see them for miles on the horizon as you approach that part of the country, giving evidence that for all these years mining has been the main occupation of that region.

We went into the museum to see how they mined. You could see depictions of miners going down through narrow passages. Remember those ant farms we used to have behind a glass where you could see the ants make their tunnels? That is what it looked liked, passages so small that only one person could pass through them. It was a terrible life.

Hans Luther was an enterprising, ambitious man. He wanted to improve his life, so when Martin was two years old, he moved his family to Mansfeld, a few kilometers away, and invested in a mine. He later invested in other properties and began to accumulate some capital.

This was a time when another irresistible force was beginning to erode away the foundation of feudal society, the accumulation of wealth in European cities. It began hundreds of years before with the crusades. The crusaders brought back treasures, but more importantly they opened up trade routes with the east. Now, within that decade of Luther's birth, in 1492, Columbus "sailed the ocean blue" and opened up the New World for trade. The result was that the continent of Europe would become fabulously wealthy.

But in Luther's childhood, this tide was just beginning to rise, and it was lifting peasants like Hans Luther out of poverty and the peasant class into the mercantile class.

We visited Mansfeld as well. We saw the school that Luther attended as a little boy. It is in the square of the little village, with the church in the middle. To the left of the church is this building that is still there where he went to school.

Luther, I suppose, spent some time every day inside of that church. We couldn't find anybody there to open it for us, so we didn't get inside. But inside, I am sure, it was typical of all the churches in the Middle Ages, filled with pictures, statues and carvings to teach the people about the Christian Faith, because the great majority of people could neither read nor write. Pictures were the way they learned their faith.

There would be pictures of Jesus in those churches, but not the pictures we are accustomed to seeing of Jesus in our Sunday Schools. We picture Jesus as a man, like us, who was a teacher primarily. These pictures show people gathered around him, eager to receive his wisdom and to hear the lovely words he would say to them. Or there would be pictures illustrating his parables, like the Good Samaritan, somebody helping someone out of love. Those are the pictures we are familiar with.

But the medieval church had different pictures of Jesus. These pictures were of Jesus in the last days, with a sword in his hand, slaying his enemies. Or pictures of Jesus at the Last Judgment, sitting upon a throne, with those who were to be saved on his right hand, and those who were to be damned and go into the torment of hell, gathered on his left hand. Underneath, in a panel, very often you would see portraits of the citizens of that town observing this scene. Or in another panel, you would see the people suffering the torments of hell, graphically depicting what it would be like. At the center of the church the crucifix, life size, life like, of Jesus with wounds in his side, suffering on the cross. That was the environment of the medieval church.

The Middle Ages were preoccupied with death. In large part, I suppose, because death was an ever present reality for them. The plagues were still a memory. The plagues, incidentally, were brought back by the crusaders, too, from Constantinople. The great plagues that swept across Europe were apocalyptic in their dimension. One-half to three-fourths of the population of Europe were wiped out in the 12th and 13th centuries because of the plagues.

In the 15th and 16th centuries, during Luther's life, there were still plagues. Luther will lose two brothers to the plague, but it was nothing like what had preceded them. But the memory was there, that taught that life was brutish and short. So the purpose of life, they believed, was to prepare for death, and to insure by the way you live that you would get into the next life.

That was the environment in which young Martin Luther grew up. There was one clear message. Christ had come to save us for the next life. The Church was the continuing presence of Christ here in this life to save us. And the Church had the only means of saving us, and that was in the sacraments.

There were seven sacraments, but there were three that were most important, at least for the issues that Luther was concerned about. Those were the sacraments of Confession, Penance, and Holy Communion. You confessed your sins and unworthiness continually in order to receive salvation. Then after receiving the assurance of forgiveness, you must do some good work to merit the forgiveness that God had given to you. Then you must receive the power that comes through the sacraments, especially Holy Communion, that will enable you to live a good life. But it was impossible to do it as human beings, so once again you would begin the cycle of Confession, Penance, and Holy Communion.

The whole system was based on the assumption that the purpose of our life as human beings was to become like God. We have a spark of divinity in us that links us to God, and makes us restless until we are one with God. One of the great theologians of the early Church, Irenaeus, put it in its classic form. He said, "God became like us so that we could become like God."

The Church preached that you become like God by doing that thing that is most characteristic of God, and that is love. In fact, that is what Jesus commanded us to do if we would live a full life. It is called the Great Commandment. "You shall love the Lord your God with all heart and mind and soul, and love your neighbor as yourself."

The medieval church did that. They outlined two paths that you could take to your salvation: one that focused on loving the neighbor, such as the path the Franciscans took, who would go out into the world, to the poor and the outcast, to those who were suffering most in this life, and love those persons in the way that Christ would love. The other path, to love God, was pursued by cloistered nuns and monks who leave the world and love God by prayer and devotion twenty-four hours a day.

Both paths were considered legitimate ways to become like God. To follow them resulted in accumulating "merit." Positive actions of love, that's what merit is, deeds of love directed either toward God or to the neighbor.

Now here was the problem. The assumption of that system is that the more merit you accumulate, the closer you come to God. So if you were serious about your salvation, then you went into a monastery or a nunnery where you could spend full time apart from the temptations of the world to concentrate on achieving your salvation.

It was said that in the church in Mansfeld there was a picture of a ship, which represents the Church. Inside the ship you could see monks and nuns, dressed in the habit of the religious. In the ocean, drowning, were the laity. The message was as clear as it could be. If you were serious about your salvation, you got yourself to a nunnery or to a monastery.

But Hans Luther had something else in mind for his son. At an early age Martin Luther demonstrated incredible intelligence and brightness. His father had great plans for him. He was determined first of all to give him the best education possible. He sent him as a little boy to Latin school. This was in the time when ninety-five percent of the people could neither read nor write. Then on to Magdeburg, to be taught by the Brothers of the Common Life. And then to Eisenach, to be taught by the brothers there connected with St. George'sChurch.

Luther lived with his aunt, his mother's sister, in Eisenach, and would return later in his life to WartburgCastle, which is on a hill above the town, as he was fleeing from arrest. We will look at that next week. Eisenach is also where Johann Sebastian Bach was born two hundred years later. It is a wonderful, beautiful city, and a center of music. Luther, himself, was a musician of no mean talent. It is believed by historians that when he was living in Eisenach with his aunt, he developed his talent for music.

When Luther was 18, his father sent him to the University at Erfurt. In those days it was the most prestigious university in Germany. Luther went to Erfurt in 1501. The university had already had been there for 150 years before Luther got there. There Luther was exposed to the first wave of humanism, this movement that would blossom later into the Renaissance. It was a movement of freedom, a movement emphasizing the individual. It was a movement that sought to appreciate the joys and the beauty of this life, rather than focusing on the next life. It was a movement that sought to revive ancient culture from Greece. Important for Luther, it was a movement that sought and found early manuscripts of the Bible, and read them critically in Greek and in Hebrew. So this is the beginning of the first critical study of scripture, in the 16th century, in Germany, and Luther was there when it happened.

He completed his baccalaureate and his masters at Erfurt, and went home to Mansfeld for a visit. His father wanted him to be a lawyer. Like all parents who struggle to better themselves and to provide a better future for their children, he had dreams for his son. He wanted him to be a lawyer so that he would be successful and wealthy in this new world that was emerging in Germany. But Luther was considering leaving that world and entering a monastery.

The decisive moment came as he was returning to Erfurt. He was going back to follow the wish of his father, to study law. In a thunderstorm he was knocked from his horse by lightning. He fell to his knees, and prayed to St. Anne, the patron saint of all miners, that if his life were spared, he would enter the monastery at Erfurt and devote his life wholly to Christ.

He got up, went into the city. Instead of entering the university, he crossed the little river that runs through Erfurt, Jean and I walked across the same bridge that he did, to the doors of the Augustinian cloister. He knocked on those doors and begged to be admitted as a brother in the Augustinian order.

He served his novitiate. He was ordained a priest in the cathedral at Erfurt. It is a beautiful, magnificent cathedral in the center of the city, with seventy-one steps going up dramatically to the front door of the church. After his ordination as a priest, he walked back to the monastery church, lay prostrate in front of the altar, and pledged his life as a monk to poverty, chastity, and obedience.

His mother and his father were present. He served them at his first communion in that chapel. You can imagine the emotions inside of them as their son, in his father's eyes at least, threw away everything that he had hoped for his son.

Some historians feel that this conflict with his father was the source of Luther's religious struggle with God. That is a theory made popular by Erik Erickson in a psychobiography called, Young Luther. But there is no evidence of that. There is ample evidence, however, that Luther was a typical person of his age. He was preoccupied with saving his soul and had the courage and commitment to that dilemma in his life by leaving this world, sacrificing all of that, and entering into the cloister. Luther did that with passion, as he did all things in his life with passion.

He sought to love God with his whole heart, mind, soul and strength, expecting in doing that, that the result would be that he would feel close to God. But it didn't work that way. It had the opposite effect on him. The harder he tried, the more depressed he became. The more he confessed his sins, the more guilty he felt. The more he prayed, the more distant he felt from God. He tried everything. He fasted to the point of collapsing. They were concerned about his health. He confessed the most trivial things, day after day, until finally his confessor had to tell him to stop it. He prayed and prayed incessantly, and only felt more distant from God.

You may feel that this life is foreign to us, but it is not. Ages and cultures change, but human nature doesn't change. The human dimension is the drive to perfection, to become somebody, to fulfill our lives. In religious culture that takes one form. In secular culture it takes another. In Luther's time it was a religious culture, and the goal of life was being one with God. We live in a secular culture where for many of us the goal of life is not being one with God, but being successful in this world. But it is the same thing. It is also the same in that in both ages there are steps, or rules that we can follow in order to achieve the goal. And in both the Middle Ages and in the secular world, there is also what you could call merit that can be measured: accomplishments, achievements, things that we can hold, point to, and count, and say, "I have achieved this goal," or "I have fallen short of it."

Luther chose the monastic rule to find salvation. We rush to seminars, or workshops, or to books, where there is another rule outlined for us, often in twelve steps, or four rules, something simple that, we are told, if we only follow, we will find our dreams. I suggest to you it is the same thing. Luther gave himself totally to the monastic rule in the belief that it would lead him to God. He said, "If ever a monk got into heaven by his monkery it was I."

If doing something good is the way you accumulate merit, then the best thing in the Middle Ages that anybody could do was to make a pilgrimage, especially a pilgrimage to Rome, the Holy City. Luther did that. He walked all the way from Erfurt, in Germany, to Rome, and walked backed again.

This was the time of the Medici popes, about whom the most generous thing that you could say was that they weren't particularly interested in religion. It was under the Medicis that St. Peter's, the great cathedral, was built in Rome. They hired artists such as Raphael, in Luther's day, and Michelangelo, a little later, to work on it. We look at their art and it is incredibly beautiful to us. It is some of the greatest art in the world.

But Luther saw something else. He saw in this opulence corruption. He said he went to Rome with onions and returned with garlic. He said, "Rome is a whore."

When he returned to Erfurt, he was in deepest despair. It was obvious to his confessor, a man named Staupitz, a wise man. It is a testimony, incidentally, to the high regard the Augustinians had for Luther that Staupitz would be his confessor. Every monk must have a confessor. Staupitz was a vicar of the order in Saxony. He was the head of the Augustinian order in that region. He was Luther's confessor. A wise, wonderful man.

He was also the advisor to Frederick the Wise, who was the elector, or the prince, of Saxony. Frederick the Wise wanted to build a university in Wittenberg where his castle was. He wanted it to be the best university in Germany. So he went to the Augustinians who ran Erfurt, and asked them, and Staupitz, to create a university for him. Staupitz brought together the best and the brightest for the faculty at Wittenberg. Luther was among the first appointed to the faculty of the University at Wittenberg. Luther was thirty-one when he went to Wittenberg, and he was among the oldest members of the faculty. Revolutions are started by young people.

Luther was assigned by Staupitz to teach the Bible. Staupitz knew what he was doing. He knew that in the Bible Luther would find what he was looking for. Luther had never read the Bible until he went to Erfurt, which was typical of the Middle Ages. I think it is typical of modern age, too, for many people. Not only Roman Catholics in the Middle Ages, but Methodists in the 20th century as well. Luther had never read the Bible, but now he was studying the Bible.

Luther lectured in the psalms. He found there to his amazement that the psalmists suffered doubts, the same kinds of doubt and feelings of despair that he had felt. Yet they still had faith in God. They still trusted God. They began the psalm in despair, and ended in hope and faith. Just as revealing, and perhaps more important, the psalmists did not talk about being one with God, they talked about being apart from God. Yet they trusted still that God had not abandoned them. They may feel like God had abandoned them, but they know that God has not. The 139th psalm has this marvelous verse. "If I descend into hell thou art there." Luther descended into hell. He felt God had abandoned him.

Then he prepared lectures in Galatians and in Romans, these two classic letters from Paul. The passage from Galatians was read for us today about how we are saved not by our merits, but by our trusting God's grace alone.

One day in the tower of the monastery at Wittenberg he finally got that biblical message. It changed his life, and then he changed the world. He finally saw this, which many of us have yet to discover. Faith is not a matter of believing something, it is a matter of trusting someone. He said, "We are made righteous through our faith in God's grace."

That will become the battle cry that will characterize the Reformation. "We are saved by our faith in God's grace alone."

There is an old Lutheran hymn that contains this verse:

List ye men and be advised
No longer in shackles the spirit lies
Remember Luther the faithful one
Who has for you this freedom won.

We will look at that freedom next week.