Sermon: Reformation 2023

The following sermon was preached by Rev. Kurt Lantz in the seminary’s Martin Luther Chapel for the Festival of the Reformation, 31 October 2023.

To those who hear and keep what is written:

“Grace to you and peace from Him who is and who was and who is to come, and from the seven Spirits who are before His throne, and from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the first-born of the dead, and the ruler of the kings on earth” (Rev. 1:4-5).

We can blame that Augustinian monk from the 1500s. He latched onto some things that had been hidden in obscurity and they would not leave his mind but poured out from his mouth and his pen. They started to cause a stir in the monastery but he would not let the zeal of these exhilarating findings ebb away. He kept finding ways to transmit these strange teachings to his Augustinian brothers. The tension kept rising higher and higher among their little community. And then he wrote something that got out beyond the bounds of the cloister. It was published and widely read and that was the spark that changed everything. In 1522 he was kicked out and he dedicated the rest of his life to further study and published his ground-breaking works, becoming a world renown mathematician. Yes, we can blame Michael (not Martin), Michael Stifel (not Martin Luther).

It was the monk Michael Stifel who was kicked out of the Augustinian abbey after he published his poem “On the Christian, Righteous Doctrine of Martin Luther” in 1522. In that poem he referenced our reading from Revelation where the Apostle John writes about an angel who proclaims an eternal Gospel, and according to Stifel, with perfect clarity. Then using the German word lauter for clarity, Stifel played on the name of Luther throughout the poem. That was enough. He became a marked man and had to leave his clerical office. He switched his track to mathematics and was extremely successful in this second career vocation.

However, I think it may be his fault that we have such an obscure text as the first reading appointed for Reformation Day. Why a passage from Revelation when Luther did not have a very high view of this Book of the Bible in relation to the rest? I am sure Luther would have chosen a proper Old Testament Reading for such a day as this. In his Preface to the Book of Revelation Luther wrote, “Many have tried their hands at it, but until this very day they have reached no certainty; and some have brewed into it many stupid things out of their own heads.” Perhaps he had in mind this crazy idea that Br Stifel had put in people’s heads that the angel in chapter 14, proclaiming an eternal Gospel, was a prophecy of the coming of Martin Luther.

The idea did not die down, and at Luther’s funeral, his pastor Johannes Bugenhagen preached in his sermon: “For he was without doubt the angel concerning whom it is written in Revelation 14, who flies through the midst of heaven and had an eternal Gospel …. This angel who says, ‘Fear God and give him the honour,’ was Dr Martin Luther. And what is written here, ‘Fear God and give him the honour,’ are the two parts of Dr Martin Luther’s doctrine, the Law and the Gospel, through which all of Scripture is unlocked and Christ, our righteousness and eternal life, is recognized.”

Well, that pretty much sealed it, and about two hundred years or so later, when they decided it would be a good idea to celebrate a Reformation Day annually, in connection with Luther’s posting of the 95 theses on the day before All Saints, this reading from Revelation 14 was appointed. How happy Martin Luther might have been about that, we are left to ponder.

Luther did not seem to have a problem identifying other characters in the Book of Revelation with some of his contemporaries. He was not shy to point to the Roman papacy as the Babylon spoken of in the very next verse: “Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great, she who made all nations drink the wine of the passion of her sexual immorality” (v. 8). Or those who follow the teachings of the papacy in the following verses: “If anyone worships the beast and its image and receives a mark on his forehead or on his hand, he also will drink the wine of God’s wrath” (vv. 9-10). Here might lie some evidence that Luther would have supported the choice of this reading from Revelation 14 for an annual Reformation Day celebration, if it included the following verses and they were given a contemporary interpretation.

Luther recognised that he was placed in the midst of the battle against “the cosmic forces of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places” (Eph. 6:12). He reportedly saw the devil attacking him while he was at work expounding that lauter, Christian, righteous, doctrine of the Holy Scriptures, that eternal Gospel that proclaims victory for us and judgement against the enemies of God and those He has saved.

“Fear God and give Him glory, because the hour of His judgment has come, and worship Him who made heaven and earth, the sea and the springs of water” (Rev. 14:7). This eternal Gospel proclaims that the God who created all things for our blessing and joy has come out on top. The One who is concerned to graciously provide us with everything needed that we might live our lives in a happy receptivity of His love—He is the One who wins out in the end.

Having watched the old evil foe deceive Adam and Eve in the paradise He created for them, having seen sin bring death and destruction to what He had breathed into existence with words of love and formed with His hands into His own image, He acted swiftly and justly to proclaim the crushing of that enemy at the expense of His own suffering. He spoke to the Destroyer: “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise His heel” (Gen. 3:15).

That was the first proclamation of the eternal Gospel that sustains and strengthens the people of God against every evil attack of the ancient serpent, who is called Satan. It proclaims the judgement of God upon the devil, which is the vindication of sinners who have repented of listening to his deceits and now believe the gracious words that come from the mouth of God. The One who made heaven and earth, the sea and the springs of water for us, has condemned the Defiler who poisoned it all. The One who judges evil and will eradicate it, is the One who has always been providing for us to live in peace and grace with Him for ever.

And so He who made us in His image, took on our human nature so that His words might be as words always should be. Words of truth enact what they proclaim. And the eternal Word of God “became flesh and dwelt among us” (John 1:14). He came to enact that eternal Gospel first proclaimed to the satanic serpent in the presence of the first sinners. Our Lord Jesus Christ crushed the head of the serpent through His own suffering, death and resurrection for the sins of the world. He who brought corruption when there was but one man and one woman was defeated and Jesus Christ, the eternal only-begotten Son, has saved those from every nation and tribe and language and people.

This, of course, is the eternal Gospel that touched the life of Martin Luther Himself, in the midst of his own struggles with sin and the very dynamic afflictions that Satan threw at him. This is the revelation to Luther of Jesus Christ executing His victory and judgement against the powers of evil that were assailing the church in his day. This is the Christian and righteous doctrine that Dr Martin Luther penned and preached in such a convicting and inspiring way that there was a very real turning point in the history of the church, a time of Reformation in which Luther was the central player and the eternal Gospel was proclaimed with a lauter (clarity) that had not been heard for a long time.

That being said, it is an eternal Gospel that never was and never will be silenced. Luther did not suddenly appear in the midst of the sky and proclaim something new. The eternal angel, revealed to St. John was already long at work before Luther was ever born. It is God’s Gospel to proclaim from Genesis to Revelation, not only as books of the Bible, but as the lived reality of those who are the focus of God’s grace and mercy in Christ Jesus.

So the proclamation of this eternal Gospel did not begin with Luther. He needed to have it proclaimed to him before it could pour forth from him to us. God’s voice first proclaimed it in the Garden of Eden, and ever since, as the devil has continued his lies and deceit, the God who made heaven and earth for you has had His holy angel proclaiming this eternal Gospel, giving you reason to rejoice that the victory has been won, you have been saved in Christ, and the enemy is judged and condemned.

It was God’s holy angel proclaiming the eternal Gospel that was at work through the voice of Martin Luther to sound with particular clarity this eternal Gospel in the 1500s and in such a way that we hear its reverberations with this particular clarity throughout the Lutheran Church even today. Br Michael Stifel heard the angel of Revelation sounding forth through his fellow Augustinian with lauter (clarity). And I pray that the same angel with the same eternal Gospel has been a successful ventriloquist today, and found a suitable dummy through whom to proclaim salvation to you through Jesus Christ our Lord.

“The grace of the Lord Jesus be with all. Amen” (Rev. 22:21).