Pastor Glenn McDonald: Luther’s Stand

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Each day this Lent we’re looking at major “turning points” in Christian history – moments or seasons in which the story of God’s people took an important and often unexpected turn.  

What’s the greatest courtroom scene in Hollywood history?

Movie lovers have a truckload of memorable moments from which to choose.

There’s the impassioned defense of a Black man falsely accused of murder in To Kill a Mockingbird (1960). Atticus Finch, played by Gregory Peck, is magnificent. But he fails. Defense attorney Matthew McConaughey faces a similar task in 1996’s A Time to Kill. Thankfully, he succeeds.

Paul Newman plays a beaten-down, alcoholic attorney in The Verdict (1982), tasked with taking on a corrupt medical establishment that is covering up malpractice. Against the odds, he wins. Tom Cruise demands to hear the truth from arrogant Colonel Nathan Jessup (played by Jack Nicholson) in 1992’s A Few Good Men, only to be told, “You can’t handle the truth!” In the end, both truth and justice prevail.

And we mustn’t leave out Joe Pesci as an East coast almost-lawyer trying to save his cousin, wrongfully accused of murder in a Southern town, in My Cousin Vinny (1992). His efforts are redeemed at the last minute by the testimony of Marisa Tomei, his girlfriend, who also happens to be the daughter of a mechanic and is thus blessed with a semi-miraculous encyclopedic knowledge of cars.

What’s the greatest courtroom scene in the history of Christianity?

Nothing compares, of course, with Jesus’ appearance before Pontius Pilate on the day of his crucifixion. Then there’s the final showdown between Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan in the Scopes Monkey Trial of 1925, an event we’ll consider a few weeks from now.

But when it comes to a single hour in which we can almost see history pivoting from an old chapter to something entirely new, it’s hard to top Martin Luther’s appearance before the Diet of Worms at about 6:00 pm on April 18, 1521.

Last October we considered some of the back story of Luther’s life.

Throughout his ministry as a German monk, he had devoted himself to one primary question: How can a sinful person ever get right with God?

Even though he was a loyal Catholic, he wasn’t sure the Church at Rome had embraced the right answer to that all-important question.

For years, Luther had tortured himself (sometimes literally) in an effort to live up to God’s standards of moral perfection. He confessed his sins up to three hours a day. He fasted obsessively, endangering his health. He slept outdoors. He whipped his own bare flesh. 

Did he feel closer to God as a result? Quite the contrary: He seethed with anger toward such a demanding deity.

He later wrote, “My situation was that, although an impeccable monk, I stood before God as a sinner troubled in conscience, and I had no confidence that my merit would assuage him. Therefore I did not love a just and angry God, but rather I hated and murmured against him.”

While doing a deep dive into the New Testament book of Romans, however, Luther made the discovery that Christ had already fully paid off his never-ending tax bill of sins and failures.   

It dawned on him that he was free. And he was loved. 

“Then I grasped the truth that the justice of God is that righteousness whereby, through grace and sheer mercy, he justifies us by faith. Thereupon I felt myself to be reborn and to have gone through open doors into paradise.”

To say that his preaching, teaching, and writing were transformed after that time is an understatement.

He almost certainly had no intention of launching a movement that would turn the Church inside-out and upside-down. After all, he was just an obsessively devoted monk doing his best out on the fringes of Christendom.

But Luther couldn’t shake the feeling that he was right about something that truly mattered.

He felt certain the Church was in danger of substituting God’s grace (that is, we can get right with God only through God’s own lavish generosity) for human effort (that is, we can get right with God only by means of grace plus our own best efforts). For Luther, salvation was sola gratia, “by grace alone” by means of sola fide, “faith alone.”  

When word of his teaching got out – and when the recent invention of the printing press facilitated the rapid spread of his perspectives across Europe – the pope simply had to respond.

Was Luther willing to recant any opinions that contradicted Rome, or would he dare to risk his life by stubbornly clinging to his monkish heresies?

That’s what was at stake at the imperial diet (or formal assembly) of both secular and sacred authorities in the small German town of Worms. Luther, who was 37, would appear before none other than Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor, who was a mere 21 years old.

On April 17, Luther’s writings had been spread out on a table in the presence of the emperor. A stir went through the crowd. Could a single person, working out in the sticks, really have written so many pages?

The ecclesiastical prosecutor reminded Luther why he was there. Looking at all of his works, was he ready to recant any teachings that contradicted the views of the Church?

Luther balked. Could he have one more day to think it over?

This was an audacious move. It tested the patience of the emperor himself. But it gave the defendant a chance to prepare a summary statement.

Twenty-four hours later, the prosecutor was ready: “Come then, answer the question of his majesty, whose kindness you have experienced in seeking a time for thought. Do you wish to defend all your acknowledged books, or to retract some?”

Luther first pointed out that his books fell into several categories. He was certain that his devotionals would offend no one. Then he admitted that some of his theological papers were undoubtedly controversial. Yes, he would gladly recant…if and only if someone could prove, by Scripture, that he was wrong. If anyone could do that, “I shall be the first to cast my books into the fire.”

That’s not the answer the church authorities wanted. They were looking for something a little more on the order of Yes or No.

Luther responded with one of the most famous statements in Christian history.

He declared, “Unless I am convinced by the testimony of the Scriptures or by pure reason (for I do not trust either in the pope or in councils alone, since it is well known that they have often erred and contradicted themselves), I am bound by the Scriptures I have quoted and my conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and I will not retract anything, since it is neither safe nor right to go against conscience. Here I stand. I cannot do otherwise. God help me. Amen.”

Here I stand. I cannot do otherwise.

Those words were not included in the official transcript. But witnesses claimed they heard them nonetheless. Historians believe that the recorders might have been so stunned by the previous words – “I cannot and will not retract anything” – that they momentarily stopped writing.

The die was cast.

Martin Luther and the Protestants who were soon to follow him – whenever faced with choosing between what the Bible says and what the Church says – would go with Scripture.

His life was now in grave danger. Charles V branded him a “notorious heretic” and outlaw. Fortunately, he was “kidnapped” by a group of armed men as he walked through the woods a few days later. They turned out to be friends who had been hired by Frederick III, a local magistrate and one of Luther’s biggest fans.

After that, the monk spent more than a year in a kind of happy exile, during which he was free to complete his translation of the New Testament into German.

Luther is a fascinating character: brilliant, witty, occasionally profane, subject to depression and fits of mania, a hypochondriac, and someone utterly consumed by a fierce love for God.

Looking back, he himself said that he felt as if he had been a man climbing a tower in the darkness, up a winding staircase, only to find a step missing at the top.

As he plunged into the darkness, he grabbed hold of a rope that began to ring a bell – loud pealing that awoke all of Europe from spiritual slumber. 

Five hundred years later, the echoes of that bell can still be heard.

And followers of Jesus every morning are challenged afresh to take a stand of their own on God’s Word alone.

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