500 Years
Today marks the 500th year since Martin Luther nailed 95 theses (or points of discussion) to the door of Castle Church in Wittenberg, Germany.
Throughout 2017, Germany has been celebrating Martin Luther and the Reformation that he began. The 500th anniversary of the Reformation has spawned more than 1,000 events in 100 places in Germany.
It is somehow appropriate that on this 500th anniversary of Luther and the Reformation, Angela Merkel is serving in her fourth term as Germany’s chancellor. Merkel grew up as the daughter of a Lutheran pastor. She was born in 1954 in Hamburg, Germany, which was then in West Germany, but she grew up behind the Iron Curtain in what was then atheistic East Germany.
The city of Wittenberg was also in East Germany, but because of the amazing events that happened in the former Soviet bloc after the fall of the Berlin Wall in November of 1989, students and guests at Wittenberg University were free this past Sunday to thank God through a festival of choral music. And this morning at 11:30 a.m. the University is hosting a re-enactment of Martin Luther posting the 95 theses in a event entitled, “The Entire Life of Believers Is One of Repentance.”
A special exhibit on display at Luther’s home in Wittenberg and in a university building in front of his home (called the Augusteum) is entitled, “Luther! 95 Treasures – 95 People.” One of the treasures on display is a Bible that Luther used. Another treasure is his will, written in his own handwriting. On the end leaf of another Bible in the exhibit is a note by George Rörer, whom Luther employed. The note reads, “On the evening ahead of All Saint’s Day, Martin Luther’s theses were nailed to the door of the Wittenberg church.”
The logo of the year-long “Luther 2017 — 500 Years Reformation” features a stylized drawing of Martin Luther and the first words of the gospel of John:
In the beginning was the Word.
John 1:1a
What an appropriate tribute to this man who encouraged people to start going back to the Bible to find out what God’s will was for their lives and who made the Bible accessible to the German people by translating it into German. I am grateful to God that the people of a united Germany are being reminded all year through this celebration that “In the beginning was the Word.” I am confident that God worked through the fall of Communism so that throughout this year Germans and the tourists who participate in Luther 2017 can be exposed to those powerful first six words of John 1. After all, as God said in Isaiah:
For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven,
And do not return there without watering the earth
And making it bear and sprout,
And furnishing seed to the sower and bread to the eater;
So will My word be which goes forth from My mouth;
It will not return to Me empty,
Without accomplishing what I desire,
And without succeeding in the matter for which I sent it.
Isaiah 55:10-11