Complicated

Papers were nailed to the church door on Sunday as we entered. Curious about why, I pointed them out, and Ann remembered that Sunday was Reformation Sunday, a day when we celebrate Martin Luther’s 95 Theses and the beginning of the Protestant Church.

Stories of Martin Luther’s challenges to the Roman Catholic Church, particularly about the practice of indulgences, are familiar to me. Martin Luther’s story has always been one of how ordinary people could have relationships with God without the intervention of a priest. It has been the story of a man who challenged the church’s sale of indulgences, challenging a practice that encouraged people to pay so that they could go to heaven. In my life, his story has been the story of a man who stood up for common people. Fittingly, two lay people gave the sermon about his story.

The second speaker, Kay Verelius, surprised me with parts of Martin Luther’s story that I had never heard. For one thing, he introduced hymns to the church service, though the meter was different in his day. Additionally, later in his life, Martin Luther was an activist against Jews. The website Christianity Today, among many other sites, reports that Luther published On the Jews and Their Lies (1543) where he wrote, “Set fire to their synagogues or schools.” He continued that Jewish houses should “be razed and destroyed,” and Jewish “prayer books and Talmudic writings, in which such idolatry, lies, cursing, and blasphemy are taught, [should] be taken from them.” In addition, “their rabbis [should] be forbidden to teach on pain of loss of life and limb.” Still, this wasn’t enough.

Luther also urged that “safe-conduct on the highways be abolished completely for the Jews,” and that “all cash and treasure of silver and gold be taken from them.” What Jews could do was to have “a flail, an ax, a hoe, a spade” put into their hands so “young, strong Jews and Jewesses” could “earn their bread in the sweat of their brow.” According to Kay, his words contributed significantly to the German anti-Semitism that led to persecution of Jews during World War II. Kay said nearly every writer of Third Reich referenced and quoted Martin Luther’s works.

Kay also quoted Pastor Bernard Howard: “It seems to me Martin Luther is a man we should honor but not celebrate…. Luther is both hero and anti-hero, both liberator and oppressor.” Pastor Howard said that we should “honor” Martin Luther for all of his contributions, but not lift that honor to the level of celebration.

I’ve been thinking about that. What does it mean to honor a person? Knowing artin Lunter’s anti-Semitism, do I honor Martin Luther?

Martin Luther was a complicated man. Like most of us, he was created “half to rise and half tofall.” Can I honor the man, knowing both his great gifts and his great failings?

The question goes so far beyond Martin Luther. It’s again evidence of the partial histories our schools and church’s tell, hiding the darkness of those whom the powers would have as our heroes. Learning about Martin Luther reminds me of learning about Christopher Columbus’s destructiveness and about the Japanese internment in the U.S. during World War II. I didn’t learn about the darker side of these stories in school, perhaps because they undermine a myth of goodness and power that undergirds the American myth of virtue, and perhaps my church didn’t teach me about Martin Luther’s anti-Semitism for the same reason. This gives me pause.

Like humans, perhaps our institutions are created half to rise and half to fall. Our nation, our schools, and our churches, are a complicated mix of good and bad.

Thinking about this history and Howard’s comments, I wonder who I honor and what that means. I’m not sure I know what Howard means by “honor,” but I don’t honor the man, Martin Luther; I do honor some of his deeds.

As I think about this, I remember my niece Isabella, a debater in high school, who told me that she liked to argue the harder side of a debate but that she would never argue against immigrants or gay people. Because I know everyone has a dark side, I want to think about what, for me, is outside the bounds of honor.

Anti-Semitism is. So is racism. And so is macho-ism. Interestingly, I don’t think homophobia is for me. Maybe that’s because I grew up with it and with so many people I loved who were homophobic. 

I’ll have to think some more about this. I'd love for you to help me.