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‘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