Friday, September 11, 2015

When the Word no longer WOWS us...

In February 1546, just a few days before he died, Martin Luther preached his last sermon in his hometown of Eisleben.

In that sermon, he said:
In times past we would have run to the ends of the world if we had known of a place where we could have heard God speak.  But now that we hear this every day in sermons, indeed now that all books are full of it, we do not see this happening.  You hear at home in your house father and mother and children sing and speak it; the preacher speaks it in the parish church – you ought to lift up your hands and rejoice that we have been given the honor of hearing God speak to us through the Word.  ‘Oh,’ people say, ‘what is that?  After all, there is preaching every day, often many times every day, so that we soon grow weary of it.  What do we get out of it?’  All right, go ahead, dear brother, if you don’t want God to speak to you every day at home in your house and in your church, then be clever and look for something else: in Trier is our Lord God’s coat, in Aachen are Joseph’s britches and our blessed Lady’s chemise.  Go there and squander your money, buy indulgence and the pope’s secondhand junk!"