As we enter the secular month of November, it is somewhat difficult to know where we stand exactly in relation to the Church’s Year of Grace. For Lutherans, the month begins on the heels of the Reformation (31 October), and within the first couple weeks it also includes the birthday of the sainted Doctor Martin Luther (10 November). So it might seem only natural for us to think of this time of the year as a “Reformation Tide.” What is more, because it is no longer popular in the culture at large to remember the Reformation (much less to celebrate those historic events), it does seem important for us to keep that portion of the Church’s history alive in our observances.
But of course, there was a reason why the Reformation began, as it did, on All Hallows’ Eve. Luther posted his Ninety-Five Theses on the door of All Saints’ Church, because he knew that faithful Christians would be arriving for Mass in the morning. And his goal was not that the Feast of All Saints should be superseded or replaced by anything like the “Reformation.” He called for a debate of practices that contradicted or called into question the clarity of the precious Gospel of Christ Jesus and His free and full forgiveness, grace, and mercy. As a doctor of the Scriptures and a teacher of the Church, his purpose was to recall the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church back to her roots and foundations in the faith once delivered to the saints.
Those who may object to the celebration of the Reformation would have a valid complaint, if that celebration is approached as a chance to pat ourselves on the back with one hand, while bashing others over the head with a big stick in the other hand. Sadly, it has sometimes been the case that “Reformation Day” has become an occasion for criticizing the Roman Church for its faults and false teachings, while praising ourselves for not being “too Catholic.” Doing so has missed the point and purpose of the efforts and events that actually constituted the Lutheran Reformation. To be sure, Luther offered a significant and necessary critique of the dangerous heterodoxy of doctrine and practice that had infiltrated the Roman Church and established itself in the hearts and minds of the people. No less so did he level equally significant and necessary refutations of the heterodoxy that emerged among the various other protestants, especially with respect to the Holy Sacraments. But along with those critiques, Luther confessed and taught the pure truth of the Holy Scriptures, and he called the entire Church to a focus on Christ Jesus and His Word.
In considering all of these things, we should not forget that Martin Luther — and the Confession that assumed his name (contrary to his own preferences!) — did not drop down out of the clouds. Luther was a Christian because he was baptized and reared within the Roman Catholic Church, its heterodoxy notwithstanding. And despite the prevalent false doctrine and errant practices that he recognized and decried, it was within the Roman Catholic Church that he learned to know the Holy Scriptures as a monk, an academic, and a professor. And from his Roman Catholic father confessor, Johannes von Staupitz, he heard and learned to love the comforting Holy Gospel.
Luther never did despise his fathers in Christ and the countless saints who had gone before him, who were likewise baptized and reared within the Roman Church. Luther’s one desire — out of love for both Christ and His Church — was the reformation of the Roman Church on the basis of her own authentic confession and holy faith. By the grace and providence of God, everything she needed was still there: the treasures of the Holy Scriptures, the ecumenical Creeds, the practice of Holy Baptism, and the Office of the Holy Ministry; and although subject to abuse and confusion, Confession & Absolution, the Sacrament of the Altar, and the historic Liturgy still remained. The Church simply needed a renewed understanding and appreciation of these good gifts of her Lord.
The Christian Church to this day still needs such an understanding and appreciation, and we no less than others. In our native sinfulness, there is always the danger of falling into the same trap as the Church of the Middle Ages — supposing that Christ and His Gospel and Sacraments are somehow insufficient, and that we must do something to supplement His work with works of our own, or programs and gimmicks, or emotional excitement, or savvy strategies, or money, or what have you. Worst of all is when the Means of Grace and the Ministry of the Gospel are despised as “too Catholic,” and thus exchanged for the marketing techniques of the temporal world.
To guard and keep us from such temptations, I have long suggested and urged that we not try to choose between Reformation and All Saints (as though they were opposed to each other), but that we should celebrate both, the one as belonging to the other.
To celebrate the Reformation properly is to understand the work of Martin Luther and the events of the Sixteenth Century as one part of our history as the Church of Christ. Doctor Luther was a Pastor and Professor of that Church, and it was precisely as such that he taught and preached the Gospel of Christ — to and for the Church. So also do the Augsburg Confession and the whole Book of Concord affirm our connection to the Church catholic of all times and places, just as we confess each week in the Creeds. The celebration of All Saints also belongs to this connection.
In remembering and commemorating the saints who have gone before us, we confess our unity in Christ Jesus with all those who live by faith in Him (both here and now and hereafter in eternity). It is not Christian but pagan to assume that those who have died are “dead and gone,” as though they no longer existed. Our Lord teaches otherwise, and all of us know that. When we remember the Patriarchs and Prophets of the Old Testament, the Apostles, Evangelists, and Disciples of the New Testament, and the faithful Bishops, Pastors, Martyrs, and other Saints of the early church, we do so as those who share a living connection with these very people in the Body of Christ. So also as we remember Martin Luther and the Lutheran Reformers — not as those nostalgic for a fading past, but as those who rejoice in the fellowship we have with all those who live forever in the Communion of All Saints. For they are with the Lord, and the Lord is with us; and we are all together one Body in Him — far closer to the faithful departed (especially at the Lord’s Altar) than we are to those who live and work beside us in the world without faith in Christ Jesus.