Last weekend, one of my colleagues invited me to come to a confirmation class to teach something about Martin Luther.
Back in seminary, my classmates would often take to teasing me for quoting the Book of Concord or Augsburg Confession. They would roll their eyes when I answered professors’ questions with things like, “According to Luther…”
Lots of my colleagues still tease me for those kinds of things, and I am sure it doesn’t help to have started a Doctor of Ministry program with the intention of researching Luther and Lutheran Confessions stuff.
So I guess it made sense that I would get invited to teach a confirmation class about Martin Luther. I have taught many similar confirmation and adult-study classes about Luther and the Reformation before. But something about this particular group of kids struck me.
It has been almost exclusively the case that no confirmation student has had a clue of who Martin Luther is when they arrived in my confirmation classes over the past 15 years. Thinking back, I doubt that I knew anything about him when I started confirmation either. Once in a while, an excited student will say that Martin Luther was a civil rights activist for African Americans when I ask students if they know anything about him – obviously, they are thinking of Martin Luther King Jr.
Often, I have used the 2003 film Luther as a means of introducing him to confirmation students. I have always thought it was a good movie, with famous actors! Joseph Finnes, who was also in Shakespeare in Love. Alfred Molina who was in Spiderman.A real star-studded cast for 2003. I do an annotated version of the film where I stop the movie – almost annoyingly often – to explain who the people are, the historical background and setting, the veracity of the plot and so on.
But it has been close to 6 or 7 years since I have last screened the movie with a group. So this past weekend, I was reminded again just how compelling the story of Martin Luther is. Four teenagers who didn’t know a thing about Reformation history were quickly caught up in the drama of the story where there are no explosions or sword fights or special effects. Just a monk getting upset with the abuses of the medieval church and deciding to do something about it by writing a list of 95 complaints.
It was a good reminder for Reformation Day. There is a compelling origin story for our denomination (on top of the compelling origin story of our faith) that grounds us in God’s love and grace given for sinners like you and me. There is something to the idea that mercy isn’t for sale and that as people who follow in Martin Luther’s footsteps, we too are called to the work of proclaiming God’s grace.
We are still called to preach God’s freely given mercy and grace to a world that often believes that such love could only come with a cost. A world that desperately needs to hear that we do not have to earn our way in this life or the next, but that God declares us beloved and forgiven right from the beginning.
That the work that Martin Luther began in the Reformation, or really that he saw the church called to in scripture, is still the same calling that we share today.