In this context Luther quite literally preached the reformation back onto a stable footing in a remarkable series of pulpit performances which come down to us as the Invocavit Sermons on 1522.  By the time he had finished, the Zwickau whackos were gone, and Zwilling and Karlstadt had had to leave Wittenberg.  Luther was back in control with Melancthon as his gentle second-in-command.  Others, like Justus Jonas, who had been swept up in the madness had returned to sanity.  All was well.  Luther had preached God’s Word and God’s Word had done it all. And it is from these – and from that crisis moment – that this quotation is drawn.

I have received unexpected and unsolicited gifts of two drinking vessels recently.  The first, from the person we at the Spin know simply as Evil Amy the Less, the author who last year had the slanderous temerity to base (and indeed name) the character of an alcoholic priest in her novel of medieval times upon a distinguished and universally loved and respected church historian, needs no further comment.

The second, however, provoked more substantial historical ruminations.  It arrived yesterday and is a beer glass with one of my favourite Luther quotations inscribed upon it, taken from one of the Invocavit Sermons of 1522.  The curvature of the glass means that the picture is not entirely legible but the whole statement reads as follows:

“I simply taught, preached, and wrote God’s Word; otherwise I did nothing.  And while I slept, or drank Wittenberg beer with my friends Philip and Amsdorf, the Word so greatly weakened the papacy that no price or emperor ever inflicted such losses upon it.”

I love this quotation, mainly because it references beer and thus clearly indicates that no Southern Baptist leader could ever claim Luther as an antecedent (and that is even before we touch upon his theology of baptism, the Lord’s Supper etc etc etc).  Bear that in mind during this 500th anniversary year….  But I also love it because it rests upon Luther’s supreme confidence in the proclamation of the Word.

In the popular imagination, it is the Diet of Worms where Luther is at his most vulnerable, standing before the massed elite of the Holy Roman Empire, to defend his theology (and I have a porcelain beer growler commemorating that scene).  In fact, other moments were equally risky – Augsburg in October 1518, for example.  And we also know in retrospect that Frederick the Wise had instructed his equivalent of the special forces to make sure Luther was kept safe.  Hence, his ‘kidnapping’ and subsequent sojourn in the Wartburg Castle under the pseudonym Junker Georg.

But while Luther stayed at the Wartburg, leadership in Wittenberg passed to his colleagues, the non-descript but radically inclined Konrad Zwilling, the young and gentle Philip Melanchthon, and the passionate Andreas Bodenstein von Karlstadt.

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