Martin Luther died in the upstairs bedroom of a little house in the town of Eisleben, Germany. He had been taken there from St. Andrew’s church across the street where he preached his last sermon. On February 18, 1546, he died. From the window of that little East German bedroom you can see St. Anne’s church, where he was baptized at the age of one day, and the house where he was born.

Hans and Margaret Luder were on their way to Mansfield to look for work in the copper mines. As they traveled through Eisleben, they had to stop for their son’s birth on November 10, 1483. The next day, November 11, St. Martin’s day, they took their firstborn to the parish church for baptism. They gave him the name of the day.

Then it was on to Mansfield where Hans became a prosperous businessman. Martin was a good scholar and studied to be a lawyer.

In July, 1505, returning to the university from a visit home, he unexpectedly encountered death. He was 21 and a student at the University of Erfurt. There was a terrible storm. Lightning struck nearby, and Martin fell to the ground. In his fright he called out to the patron saint of miners, "St. Anne, help me! I will become a monk." She did, and he did!

Luther entered the monastery at Erfurt, was ordained, and became a professor at a new little university at Wittenberg. The year was 1512. He was a master at Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. He began giving lectures on the Bible.

Lecturing from the original language of the Scriptures opened a whole new world to him and caused him to seriously question the shape of the Christian church in his day. By 1517, he was ready to debate the issues with the scholars. So, on All Saints’ Eve, Hallowed Eve, October 31, which we call Halloween, he placed his 95 arguments, called theses, on the village bulletin board: the Castle Church doors in Wittenberg.

That’s the place and time. And Luther was the person, who more than any other person, re-formed the Christian church.

Had it not been for a couple of things brewing at that time, the incident would have remained a "tempest in a teapot." It would have been just a scholarly debate in Latin in some lecture hall among the educated elite of the day. But Gutenberg had invented the printing press, and German printers were looking for something to publish. The political mood of the day called for an overthrow of the Holy Roman Empire’s control. Nationalism was running high. Those 95 theses, translated into the language of the people, spread like wildfire. The battle of the Reformation was on for good. The floodgates of God’s grace had not been opened this wide for the last 1,000 years. The shape of the Christian church would never be the same.

Martin Luther actually "re-formed" the church into its earlier form. He called for the more original shape of Christianity in three areas: Bible, priesthood, and salvation.

Luther asked that the Scriptures be placed in the hands of the people and in their language so that their lives could be shaped by it. He claimed everyone was a priest in God’s sight and had a ministry to carry on in the world. He held up before the people of his day the fact that we are saved by God’s gift of grace, not by living the life of perfection that would earn it for us.

You can still see the Augustinian monastery of the black friars at Erfurt where Luther tried in every way to appease God. You can go up to the second floor and see the cell where he lived and where one time he flogged himself all night long, almost to the point of death, in order to gain God’s favor.

Then, Luther discovered it in the Scriptures, and it changed the shape of his faith and our church: "But by the free gift of God’s grace all are right with him through Christ Jesus, who sets them free" (Romans 3:24).

The saddest part of Martin Luther’s story is these new, exciting shapes of the church have become old, stagnant, and bloated. We desperately need a new re-forming of the church today. We need another Luther, Wesley, Calvin, or Booth right now and in this place. We need bold thinkers and protestors in direct touch with the Almighty God to call for new shape in our church now.

I have had the profound privilege of traveling to Wittenberg, East Germany, several times. I have worshiped in the Stadt Kirche (city church) where Luther was parish pastor his entire ministry. A Pastor Haas has given up his West German citizenship in order to serve that little group of people now.

When I visited that church and greeted the congregation a week before the 450th anniversary of the Reformation in 1967, I was shocked by the tiny little group that met there. The church could hold 700 worshipers. But on that Sunday morning, only 27 were seated there. Most of them had come from America with me. The remainder were very old people. The church was mausoleum-like, dark, damp, and dreary. Everything seemed antique, unused, and musty. An oppressive communist government shadowed our every move as we made our visit.

Four-hundred-fifty years of trying to keep the church the same as when Luther was there had taken its toll. Many years of being the famous church had stultified the congregation and any mission and ministry it might have once held.

It was an unpleasant experience to see how stifled and nearly dead the Lutheran religion was at the very place it began.

We as a congregation have something to learn from this. That which was exciting and new, and for which people laid their lives on the line, had been organized, commercialized, stilted, and downright boring. It could happen here.

Think what it would mean to our own congregation if we took seriously those three shapes Luther insisted on in his day. Imagine what it would mean if all our members who had a Bible read it regularly and knew its contents. Think of the impact on our community if all 3,500 members here took their baptism seriously and carried out their own ministries in the world. Consider the joy evidenced in our worship and our stewardship emphasis if we all believed in the wonderful gift of God’s grace as proclaimed by Martin Luther.

Any congregation which could re-form into that shape again would double in size, minister to thousands around it, have an abundance of offerings to share, and probably be on the cover of Time magazine within the year.

Put very bluntly, we have no right to use the name "protestant" in 1985 unless:

We are deeply versed and directed by the Scriptures.

We are in the world every day doing our own ministry.

We are just downright thrilled with God’s free gift of grace and salvation so that we share it with everyone who will hold still to listen.

Often, however, we are like the Christians in Luther’s day. We are Bible-ignorant. We expect the preacher to do our ministry. And we are plain stingy with grace. We still try to earn our salvation and carry an unnecessary burden of guilt.

Martin Luther pointed out the abuses in the church in his day and called for a re-forming of Christianity. Not only did the world’s largest protestant denomination grow from his life, but he gave a new shape to Christianity. It’s a free way. It’s a way centered on personal faith. It’s a way of individual responsibility.

At the Diet of Worms in 1521, Luther took his famous stand. When asked to denounce what he had written calling for a change in the church and of Christianity, he stood before the emperor and said: "Here I stand, I can do no other, God help me. Amen."

We ought to be in the lineage of this reformer, calling for continual re-forming and changing of the church. We ought to be a dynamic organization adjusting to whatever time and geography in which we find ourselves. We ought to make relevant the good news to whatever the contemporary situation.

This will mean new liturgies, new books of worship, new social statements, new translations of the Bible, new positions for the altar, new ways of administering and scheduling sacraments, new mergers and organizations. While the content and core remain the same, the shape the church takes continues to be effective in whatever the day and situation.

We ought to be ashamed of ourselves if we use the names Lutheran and protestant and yet try to keep everything the way it was when we were growing up. We must never try to freeze this dynamic church in any age or place. We who are in the lineage of the Reformation have abuses to point out and change to work for as well. We must be 20th century protestors. It’s a different age now. We must find ways to hold up the cross of Jesus Christ for this time.

We now live in an age when one angry command can start a nuclear war which will obliterate the world. We must work to disarm that ever-threatening monster.

We live in a time when travel and communication make it a horrible sin to allow a few to have so much and so many to have so little. We must work to bring about change, a new sense of world community, and a system that feeds and opens up communication among all the earth’s people.

Whenever the bureaucracy of the organized church aggrandizes and proliferates itself at the expense of caring about and ministering to the world’s less privileged, we need to protest and cause another reformation. And when church mergers take place, we must make sure the bureaucracy of the church remains lean and effective for mission and ministry.

There are evils out in the world which must be held up for correction: racism, sexism, institutional violence, militarism, abuse of people. Martin Luther would argue that we should confront injustice wherever we find it and in whatever form it takes. He would say we should use God’s word to bring about justice and change.

Luther’s Reformation gave the church many new shapes. The sanctity of marriage for a pastor and the institution of the church parsonage began when Luther married Katherine Von Bora, a Roman Catholic nun. This story is delightful, because he spirited her and a number of other nuns out of the convent and then found husbands for them in the Lutheran clergy.

Luther gave us worship in our own language and congregational lay people taking part in the worship by singing hymns and liturgy and participating in the service itself.

Martin Luther was probably responsible for burning down more German homes than any other person. He thought that evergreen trees ought to be brought inside the house and lit with candles. We have substituted safe electric Christmas tree lights for candles, but we follow in his tradition nonetheless.

I have held in my hands the Bible from the desk Luther used to teach and preach. I turned that book’s old brittle pages to John’s Gospel, chapter 8:31 and read the words again: "You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free." In large letters across the margin in Luther’s own hand was written, "free indeed!" This young man struggled with sin, guilt, and churchly abuses - and found the church. He was freed. So may we be as well.

It broke Luther’s heart that his protest brought about a split between Protestant and Roman Catholic Christians. He didn’t want to split the church. Rather he wanted to re-shape and re-form it keeping the unity of the body of Christ catholic.

Luther would be pleased with the mood of our day. He would like the new direction in 1985 of seeking out unity of purpose and mission again. We no longer are "Catholichaters" as some have been. We recognize each other as true brothers and sisters in Christ - one in baptism. We look forward to the time when we can not only join hands in our ministry, mission, and baptism, but can kneel at God’s altar to receive the sacrament of Holy Communion. This would best show our oneness.

According to Louis Cranach’s paintings, those Saxon Germans were homely people. But one born November 10, 1583, in Eisleben, Germany, to Hans and Margaret Luder gave a beautiful new shape to the Christian church. His Reformation made the church Bible-centered and everyone a priest. It filled the church with God’s grace and forgiveness. The form of the church wasn’t rigid either. The church continually protested the wrong of its day and reshaped itself to be relavant to its people and time.

Luther was only in the town of Eisleben a couple times - when he was born and when he died. He probably died of heart failure. In those last moments, he was asked if he wanted to remain steadfast to Christ and the doctrine he had preached. Luther answered with a distinct and clear "Jawohl" - "Yes, indeed!" So may we.