This is Keith and this is Ben, and this is Main Street Lutherans. We are recording right before Reformation Sunday and this will get published the day before Reformation Sunday in 2024. And so we're going to take a look at what started the Reformation, the 95 Theses. Before we get to that, though, how do we recognize the Reformation in our churches, Keith, or yours in particular?

Yeah, I mean, I think. I think what St. Matthew does, just as one example, is fairly typical and not terribly creative. But, you know, it's still a day that probably has as much sentimental value to especially lifelong Lutherans or long term Lutherans than, you know, as much as it might have any actual standing in the church year. You know, it's interesting that the church doesn't even have like, you know, in communion every year I look for one, and every year I'm a little surprised to discover there is not a proper preface for the Eucharistic prayer for Reformation Sunday. So there's. It's hard to, liturgically speaking, kind of, you know, make it into something really big. So we usually count on, you know, the red in the pyramids and a lot of the congregation wear red. And the music, you know, Reformation is usually a day where like we bring out the. Our brass ensemble to accompany. The Oregon choir usually sings something pretty cool, sometimes bell choir. So we make it kind of festive in that way.

Is that sort of similar to Pentecost?

Yeah, in a way. You know, Pentecost I think you have because of like the, you know, the reading from acts and the creative ways that people will try to kind of, you know, not reenact, but sort of symbolize the presence of the Holy Spirit, whether it's reading the gospel in different languages, for example, or something like that.

Wearing red.

Yeah, yeah. So it's similar, but different.

Coincidentally in frocks brown with funny hats.

Right? Yeah, yeah. Shave tons in our heads for those of us that have hair, you know, I don't. But coincidentally, the Yorkshire, Pennsylvania Halloween parade is always the last Sunday in October, which falls on Reformation Sunday. And because Saint Matthews sits on Market street in York, which is the parade route, and we're very close to the beginning of the parade route at the York Fairgrounds. We always refrain from doing anything that's going to make the service run too long on Reformation because people have a hard time getting out of the parking lot after a certain time of day. Now this year, the parade's a little bit later. It's not starting until 2:00pm so our service done around 12:00 so it shouldn't be a problem this year.

Yeah.

But there are some years if the parade's going to start at one, it starts getting tight, which is why, you know, like, some churches do confirmation or affirmation of baptism on Reformation Sunday, and we don't because it would make the service run long. And then people complain and can't make it to their brunch or their confirmation party or whatever it might be.

Yeah, yeah.

What do you guys do at Unity?

You know, I don't know that we have a tradition. One thing of note was that when I was looking up, I'm preaching and presiding this Sunday at church, maybe the last time I will as part of my internship for licensed lay ministry. But when I was looking in Sundays and seasons, I had to do some weird maneuvers to get to the Reformation texts. So the default in Sundays and seasons is not Reformation Day. It is just the normal literature.

Yeah, whatever. Sunday after Pentecost, we are.

Yeah. And so kind of interesting that way. So it may not be a default for many of our congregations. And going back to talking with Imran in the last couple episodes, he mentioned that a lot of folks in the non upper Midwest and East coast may not have the same traditions. And so I remember as I. When I was a kid, I went to an elca. Well, it wasn't ELCA at the time, but a Lutheran school. And at Reformation Day, right before Halloween, we'd have this, the flannograph or flannogram of Martin Luther with the tree and all that. And I think I've. I don't know if I've said it on the podcast, but it always seemed to me like Reformation Day was more important than Christmas because Martin Luther always came before Jesus and Santa Claus on the flannogram. So that was kind of funny. And that's sort of made Martin Luther kind of important in our day.

What was the significance of the tree on the flannel graph?

Oh, where Martin Luther hid under the tree during the storm and prayed to St. Anne.

Right. Oh, okay. Yeah. I thought maybe you were going to say it was the reference to the quote about Luther that people often refer to says something like, if the world were going to end tomorrow, I would plant a tree today.

Yeah, no, no, it was, you know, it's.

Yeah, right. Yeah. When he's running from the storm and he's trying to hide.

Yeah. Flanagrams are all about the trauma.

Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah. That's. Since you guys can't see us. That is definitely sarcastic.

So flanographs we should probably explain for those of the listeners that are younger than we are, Flannagraphs are kind of like the Internet, but made out of fabric.

If you see any of Phil Vischer's stuff from what's in the Bible, it sort of plays on the flannogram idea, the way the animation's done, so.

Right.

But, yeah, the thing is, flannel sticks to flannel. So you've got a flannel backdrop with a little flannel images that you slap onto it.

Yeah. Characters or sets or whatever, you can do little plays with them.

Yeah, I'm sure it's coming back someday.

It was way high tech back in the day.

That's right. So Martin Luther kicks off this thing in 1517, the Reformation, with this thing called the 95 Theses. He does this, and we recognize that Protestantism comes from that action. You know, not all Protestants derive from that. But because Luther's the first to get credit for this, does that mean that Lutherans. Lutherans get to be. To get to claim to be the real Protestants?

I think that really is kind of a fair question. And a lot of Lutherans would, I think, be tempted to say yes. But the reality is, like you said, Luther was not the first even major Protestant figure in the church. I mean, there was John Wycliffe, there was Jan Huss. But he does seem to be the one that got the biggest amount of traction and the least amount of pushback. And while Lutherans, in talking about our history, are quick to point out the pushback that Luther did receive, when it comes down to it, he never got executed. So.

Yeah. And since I'm preaching on this on Sunday, I should include that. You know, he benefits from the Gutenberg Press.

Absolutely.

And is able, whether he pushes the distribution of it or if somebody else picks it up and does that, the distribution of his writing is what made it a big deal and how it was able to proliferate throughout, just beyond Wittenberg and beyond the folks that he intended to give this to. So, yeah. So, yeah. So the 95 Theses, when we recognize Reformation Day, we're talking about October 31, 1517, Martin Luther, according to the Flannelgram, he nails the 95 Theses to the door of the church. Now, if that was my church, he would have broken the door because it's made out of glass.

Right.

And so I caution people not to do that themselves. Yeah, but that's where it starts. But we don't often talk about in detail what the 95 theses were. And in Fact, I didn't actually think to even read them until I took a class on. I think it was systematic theology that encouraged us to read those. Or maybe it was. I think we had a Lutheran Confessions class. That was probably it. But I hadn't actually read them because I thought, well, these are probably pretty intimidating since nobody had had me read them before. And then I read them and realized that actually, it's not that bad.

Yeah. They're basically one sentence apiece. There's a few that are maybe two sentences, and they're not even very long sentences. And the other piece that you and I were chatting about before we started recording, many of the 95 are redundant. They're basically either saying the exact same thing, or they just kind of read like a rant, you know, on primarily the subject of indulgences.

Yeah. And through that, the power of the Pope and other things. We'll get to those. But. So I think probably the more complicated part of the theses is that there's church history involved.

Right.

And it doesn't lay that out. If this was an actual thesis for, you know, a class or something, you would expect them to give some background on this. And this assumes that, you know, everything that's going on at the church in the time. So.

Yeah. And Luther wrote this. You know, his primary intent in creating this list of talking points, which is what the 95 theses are, was to engage in a scholarly debate. You know, Luther was a college professor in addition to being a priest and a monk, and he wanted to start a debate on campus or perhaps with the local church hierarchy about these talking points. You know, he certainly didn't set out to split off from the established church at the time. And he certainly wasn't looking to, you know, start the fire, historically speaking, that he did. Yeah, he wanted to. He wanted to have a debate, and, you know, he got one. Just not. Not on the scale that he was expecting.

Right. He was. He was looking for reformation, not. Not schism.

Right. Yeah. And we talked about. When we discussed the foundations of the elca, we talked about the word evangelical. And, you know, Luther did not. Later in his life, when people were saying, hey, this new church that's forming, that split off from the. The Catholic Church, they want to call it the Lutheran Church. And he says something along the lines of, why do you want to name a church after me, miserable worm that I am, Call it the Gospel Church, which is the root of the word evangelical.

Yeah.

So, you know. Yeah. So we've got this church named after him. That he didn't want named after him and. And that he didn't want to create in the first place, ironically speaking.

So the 95 theses break down into essentially eight different topics. So they start with indulgences. Now, indulgences, when I learned on the flannogram, I probably didn't learn what was accurate at the time. What I was taught was that you could go to the marketplace and there'd be a vendor out there waving these pieces of paper in the air. And if I didn't think grandma was good enough to get out of purgatory and into heaven, I could go and pay some money to this guy. He'd give me a piece of paper, and that was my receipt to show God to let them know. Let God know that Grandma could go to heaven, right?

Yeah. And I think that's what a lot of us, you know, kind of learn as either kids or young adults, you know, through sort of a Sunday school teaching. But the reality is that that's stretching it. It's basically a myth that's grounded in a few different pieces of historicity. But indulgences are real things, but they're not for sale. And the abuse that they were prone to in Luther's day was not officially sanctioned by the Catholic Church at large. It was something. There's a little argument in history about just how high did the corruption go around indulgences. Was it just some local fundraisers? Was it, you know, some of the bishops? Did they condone this? Did the Pope condone it? And there's argument over that. But generally speaking, the Church at large never intended for indulgences to be, quote, for sale. They are available for people after certain acts of contrition, and they still are, but they're not used for fundraising, although.

It seems that maybe there was a little bit of it by certain individuals.

Correct? Yeah. The most famous of which is Johann Tetzel, who was the guy around Luther's part of Germany at the time that was, you know, overtly going around raising money by granting indulgences to people. And the money was going back to Rome for the construction of St. Peter's Basilica. But again, you know, whose idea was this to start with? And did the church approve of this? Who knows?

Yeah.

So, you know, that's kind of the first and largest kind of category of the 95 theses are, you know, that Luther's arguing that these indulgences cannot do what the people seem to be thinking, whether they're being misled or allowed to think this or whatever. And they certainly are not to be used for fundraising. He calls that an abuse and a form of extortion and corruption.

Yeah. So those things are that indulgences don't grant full forgiveness or guarantee salvation, and generally it's for other people, is what a lot of his criticism is of. He also questions the power of the Pope when these are being sold or earned or what have you. There is this idea that it's the Pope that is facilitating this release from purgatory, and that he's saying the Pope doesn't have the power of that, only God has the power to do that. Right. And so that also includes this idea of the efficacy of the indulgences. Do they work as well as people say they do? And then, of course, the abuse, which comes down to the people who are actually trying to sell them for. For money and to help the Church pay for its debts. And so those are all things related to indulgences, which I think of the 95, it's probably 2/3 of the theses that contribute to that part.

Yeah. And the things that these theses are railing against, you know, is this official teaching that Luther is rebelling, or is this like sort of the fake news of his day, where this is at least. If this isn't what the Church is teaching, it's at least what people think. You know, the people in his parish, the people in his part of the world and. And not only there, but. But elsewhere. It's at least what people are. You know, he's at least accusing the Church of not doing the job of informing people of what these indulgences are and are not for. So then the rest of them, you know, if two thirds of the indulgences are, or 2/3 of the theses, excuse me, are about indulgences. The rest of them speak about things like scripture as the sole authority of the Church, that the Bible is the ultimate source of religious truth and not the authority of the traditions of the Church. There's also the nature of sin, the role of faith. And then probably the other biggest one that Luther really develops over the course of the rest of his life is the primacy of grace, that salvation is a gift from God and not something that we earn through our own human effort.

Yeah. And these are sort of the starting point that after he makes this declaration, they build on this. And so as we look into all the pieces of the Book of Concord, they have elements of these, but further expanded by Melanchthon and Others to really flesh it out a bit more. And those are much more complicated reads than the 95 theses.

Yeah, yeah, but you're right, important. And you know, they really draw out these themes that theses begin, but only in a really kind of raw, non systematic way. Like I said, a lot of them read like a rant. They are. You know, it's raw thinking at the time and then with the help of others, it becomes more and more refined.

Yeah. So when Lutherans kick it in right before Halloween and we celebrate Reformation Day at Unity, we're going to celebrate Reformation Day and Halloween at the same time. In fact, I will be preaching dressed up in my Halloween costume, which is.

For everybody dressing up as a Lutheran pastor.

I'm going to be dressed as Mo Raka.

Nice.

Who is not Lutheran, but it's my Halloween costume. And so I'm going to be talking a little bit about Luther. I'm going to be talking about our text, which is kind of fun. Talking about what the disciples say to Jesus in that text and relating it to actually a letter from Birmingham Jail by Martin Luther King Jr. And tying that all together. And hopefully I won't make anybody cry this time. But yeah. So that's the reformation and the 95 theses all summarized for us here. I would encourage you to read it at home. It's kind of interesting. They get heralded a lot more than they probably ought to at times, but they are approachable and you can actually get through them fairly quickly. So.

Yeah, yeah. And then, you know, as Ben, as you said at the beginning, it's. It's easy to then try to look up the history and the practices that the theses refer to and try to get a little context. It's not hard to Google all of this at this point.

The Catholic Church did reform based on a lot of this criticism. Just in fact.

Yeah. Many of the things that, that Luton did rail about. You know, Lutherans today and the Roman Catholic Church have come to agreement on, probably most significantly, the grace as the sole means of salvation. There's actually a joint doctrine that was written about that right around the time that I was in seminary that was voted upon by the Roman Catholic Church and the World Federation. Pretty cool.

Yeah. All right, so that takes us to our catechism question. Our last episode. The question was, what was one of the primary reasons for the schism between the Ethernet Orthodox and Western Roman Catholic portions of the Christian Church? And was it that they didn't like each other's foods? Was it that Orthodox priests wanted to be able to marry. And the actual answer is that the Orthodox Church protested the addition of the phrase and the Son, the philicae in the petition about the Holy Spirit in the Nicene Creed, which says, we believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father, and then the philoche is and the Son. So there you go. There's. There's our answer for that. We have a Martin Luther inspired question for this week.

Yeah, what psalm inspired Martin Luther's hymn A Mighty Fortress? Father, one of the more famous Lutheran hymns, is it Psalm 17 says, Guard me as the apple of the eye. Hide me in the shadow of your wings from the wicked who despoil me, my deadly enemies who surround me. Psalm 23, your rod and your staff, they comfort me. Psalm 46, God is our refuge and strength, a very pleasant help in Trouble. Or Psalm 163. It's a big, big house with lots and lots of rooms. You can respond to that question by emailing us, by sending us a message on social media, or even to our phone number, all of which is available in the episode notes and which Ben is going to recite for us now.

Oh, well, we've. We've shortened our closing here, though, so. Main Street Lutherans is hosted by Keith Fair and Ben Fote. You're a Keith Fair, by the way. And the show is produced by Folk Media Productions. Find all our contact information, links, and even a transcript in the episode notes. And I'm going to add right here, the best way to help us out is to share the podcast with folks that you know, whether you like them or not. It's helpful for folks in your congregations, people who are looking for answers about how our church responds to things, how we think.

I wonder if we should be able to give indulgences for people that listen to a full episode of podcast.

Yeah, I'll have to get out my flannel gram.

Yeah, yeah.

So. So if you can, you can share an episode or share the podcast or social media. We're also on YouTube, so check that out. Yeah. But until next time, go in peace. Serve the Lord.

Thanks be to God.