Their pastors were gone. What would happen to their churches? What would happen to the teaching of God’s word? What would happen to them and to their children?
In the early 1600’s a mining town called Joachimsthal in Bohemia, today the Czech Republic, became subject to the Counter-Reformation. Most of the region was Roman Catholic, including their rulers, and those rulers decided that they were done with the previous imperial policy of peace between Lutherans and Roman Catholics. All Lutheran pastors were banished, and an order was put out that there would be no more Lutheran services, no more Lutheran schools, no more Lutheran teaching. Roman Catholic priests were brought in and the churches and all other public institutions were declared Roman Catholic, much to the protest of the citizens.
What would you do? Well, there was one thing that no king or governor’s order could do, and that was stop them from singing. And so they sang. They sang Lutheran hymns, including many of the same hymns we’re singing today. They taught those hymns to their children. This went on for years, for decades, even. There was no Lutheran church, no Lutheran school, no Lutheran pastors, but the Gospel, the pure Gospel as Luther and the other Reformers taught it, continued to be proclaimed in song. They stayed Lutheran because they were formed by Lutheran hymns.
Hymnody played a major role in the Lutheran Reformation of the Church. Martin Luther loved music. He loved to sing. He could play the lute, which if you don’t know was a sort of medieval guitar, and he played flute. More than just entertainment, he praised music as a most excellent gift of God and strongly believed that it should be used for teaching and proclaiming the Gospel. He wrote more than 30 hymns, the first of which appeared 500 years ago this year in the first hymnal, a little book that contained eight hymns.
It was a pretty radical change for the time. The Roman Mass that they had all grown up with did not include congregational singing. There was a cantor who sang. There was a choir. They sang some beautiful music, all in Latin. But in church the laity did not sing. There were other kinds of reformers at Luther’s time as well. Ulrich Zwingli opposed all music in church. He dismantled organs and disbanded the choirs. John Calvin believed nothing except the Psalms should be sung. Today there are still different views of how music should be used in church. Many modern churches believe that music is best used to manipulate the emotions and so drive people into a spiritual state in which they will commit themselves to Christ.
But this was never the case with Luther or with the Evangelical Lutheran church. Music and singing is a formative tool. It is best used to form people with the Gospel. Because the Gospel is the one thing that brings us salvation. The Gospel is the one thing that endures in this transitory world while nations rise and fall.
That importance of being formed by the Word of God was awfully clear to the prophet Jeremiah. Jeremiah saw the rising and falling of nations with his own eyes. He saw Judah during a time of prosperity and success, and then he saw the kingdom collapse and fall under siege and conquest. But in both good times and in bad he was called by God to proclaim his word.
In chapter 18 of his book Jeremiah records an object lesson from God. It’s a simple picture. God sent him to the potters house, where he watched the potter working at his potting wheel. What he was doing there was nothing unusual. He was making a pot or something like that, forming the sides. But the pot was ruined. It tore or collapsed, in some way it just wasn’t right. The potter didn’t shed any tears over it. He simply smooshed the clay down and started over.
“That’s me,” God told Jeremiah. This was his message for Israel:
6House of Israel, can I not do with you as this potter does? declares the Lord. See, like clay in the potter’s hands, that is what you are in my hands, house of Israel. 7One time I may say that a nation or a kingdom is to be uprooted, torn down, and destroyed, 8but if that nation I spoke about repents of its evil, then I will relent and not bring the disaster I had planned to bring against it. 9Another time I may say that a nation or a kingdom is to be built and planted, 10but if they do what is evil in my sight by not listening to my voice, then I will not bring about the good I said I would do for them.
Here we are in an election season in our country and this is a pretty good reminder for us. Far too easily election issues rule our lives. We worry and fret, or we get exasperated over the state of things, or we feel hopeless. Or sometimes we’re happy to see the ways things are going and we feel very hopeful, but is our hope in the right place? God is the one who forms the nations, just like a potter at his wheel. God is the one who uproots them, tears them down, and destroys them.
God is explaining here that he is not fickle. He works to bring people to repentance. He sent Jonah to the pagan city of Nineveh, where Jonah preached that in 40 days Nineveh would be destroyed. But the people repented and God did not destroy the city. It wasn’t because God is easily swayed. It was because God desired all along that these people repent. And God had promised peace to Jerusalem, but instead came war and destruction. It was not because God changed. It was because they turned their backs on God and rejected his peace.
I suppose that’s why a lot of Christians feel apprehensive and hopeless around election season. We look at our country and we can see that a lot of reform is needed. Where is our country headed? It certainly isn’t drawing nearer to God. And what does that mean for us? Is it like with Jerusalem, where God declared that he is forming a disaster against them?
But the point of Jeremiah’s message was not to cause them to despair over the state of their nation, but to call each person individually to hear his word, to repent, and to receive from him salvation. You can’t repent for your country, for sins you haven’t committed. But you have enough sins of your own to be concerned with. You can be reformed by God’s own hand even as nations around you rise and fall.
Jesus didn’t come to save the earthly kingdom of Israel. That was a hard thing for his disciples to understand. They wanted to see the nation reformed into the glory days of David and Solomon. But what Jesus came to do was something so much greater. He came to save them from sin and death and the devil’s power. He came to give them new life, a new life without fear, because you don’t have to be afraid of sin or death or the devil, then what is there to be afraid of? Although he forms the nations and causes them to rise and fall his greatest work was to reform our hearts according to his own righteousness, so that he could tell his disciples, “You’re going to stand in front of kings and rulers and you’re going to confess the Gospel and you’re not going to be afraid, even when they threaten to kill you, because it is the Holy Spirit who is speaking through you, and who is making you strong.”
Jesus’ words are also for you, you who have received his name in his holy baptism, you who are sustained by the Supper of his own body and blood. You may never confess the gospel in front of a king, but every day you face temptations and accusation from the prince of this world, the Devil.
And on those dark days when the nations of the world are in disarray and the weakness of your own flesh disgusts you and the Devil seems to be in control then look to Jeremiah, who proclaimed the enduring Gospel faithfully even as all Jerusalem collapsed around him. And look to Martin Luther, who defied pope and emperor because they would not and could not refute him with God’s Holy Word. And look at the simple people of a town like Joachimsthal, where they sang the Gospel in hymns.
“This world’s prince may still scowl fierce as he will. He can harm us none. He’s judged, the deed is done. One little word can fell him.”
Look to Jesus’ cross, where your hope is secure. By the gospel, the message of Christ crucified, spoken and sung, proclaimed in Word and Sacrament, our Lord Jesus reforms us to him. Heaven and earth will pass away, but his Word endures forever. By that word you are saved. By that word your sins are forgiven. By that word, that enduring, steadfast word, you have eternal life. Amen.
— Pastor Seth Georgson