Preach Magazine Issue 2- Spring 2015 Feb. 2015 | Page 19

SERIAL 19 ‘To preach simply is a great art. Christ himself did it.’ That stark sentence summarises Martin Luther’s whole approach to preaching. Luther did not leave behind a manual on homiletics; to gauge his understanding of preaching, we need to look to the sermons themselves and to the pearls of wisdom which his students collected when they ate with him and which are collected as the Table Talk. 1 L uther’s life story is well-known. Born in 1483, the son of a Saxon miner, Luther was studying law when in 1505 (in the midst of a terrifying thunderstorm) he promised his life to St Anne and entered the religious order of the Augustinians. Years of personal and introspective struggle with his sense of sinfulness followed until he came to realise that the gospel promises justification to those who believe, not to those who earn it by virtuous living. In 1517 Luther published his ‘ninety-five theses’ to dispute the practice of selling indulgences; that publication came to be seen later as the first skirmish in the ecclesiastical war of ideas we now call the Protestant Reformation. Luther was excommunicated in 1521 and came to be the leader of the Protestant movement in Germany. Even before 1517, Luther had been a noted theologian, and he continued to teach and to publish throughout his life. His many writings, including his sermons, were reprinted and circulated around Europe, popularising his central ideas of justification by grace alone through faith; the priesthood of all believers; and the supreme authority of Scripture. Luther died in 1546. The sermons as we have them were taken down by a scribe whilst Luther was preaching, and then published. Luther’s method was to work from an outline (though sometimes he abandoned or forgot it). Preaching, Luther was convinced, was God’s chosen means for communicating the gospel to those who will hear – making LWPT8462 - Preach Magazine - Issue 2 v2.indd 19 known the Word of God that is Christ, through the exposition of the Word of God that is Scripture. Luther eschewed rhetorical devices and the ‘thematic’ sermons of the later middle ages. He also tended not to expound the text verse by verse, believing that within each passage was a single message which he sought to communicate through the sermon. To do that, he endeavoured to keep his language simple – to preach to the poorly educated and to children rather than to the doctors of divinity. The former greatly outnumbered the latter who, after all, knew where the door was if they didn’t like it.2 His aim was that the whole congregation should be able to carry away with them the plain meaning of the scripture that they had heard – ‘I always stick to the basic thought so that everyone can say, “that was what his sermon was about”’.3 Typic