This quick study on Reformation History was given at the end of service at St. Peter–Immanuel Lutheran Church in Milwaukee, WI, on September 17, 2017. The text of the study is included and you may play the audio of the study here.
Remember how we spoke of purgatory? Well, this comes to our use in the year 1517. Now, of course, we all should know what happened that year: Martin Luther posted 95 theses on the church door in Wittenberg. That we all know. But, why did he do that?
Well, some might say it was an excess of coffee, which first made its way to the European scene around that time. But, in reality, it’s because the Pope of the time, Pope Leo X, wanted to leave a lasting legacy in his honor. He wanted to be so remembered by all of Christendom, he was so vain, that he needed this even more than just wanted it. He wanted his name in lights, so to speak, although there was no electric light back then. Pope Leo X, sadly, is a good example of what happens when a pastor wants to make a name for himself, yet lets the sheep entrusted to his care slip away into the maw of hell.
Anyway, this vain pastor of pastors and his advisors came up with this brilliant idea. St. Peter’s Church was built in the 4th century by Constantine the Great. It is supposed to be the place where St. Peter is laid to rest, yet who really ever knows. However, this church was over a thousand years old. It had seen lootings, ransackings, fires, all kind of calamities. You could imagine the upkeep required on something like that. Pope Leo X decided that he would renovate, restore, and redesign the church to become a basilica, a specific architectural style, and it would be the home and heart of the faith.
There was only one problem. Pope Leo X was a spendthrift, a prodigal, a squanderer, a hedonist. He loved pleasure. He loved comfort. He loved the peoples’ adoration. He borrowed heavily. He spent heavily. The problem then was the Vatican was broke. They had no money to spend on St. Peter’s. Pope Leo X was in a pickle. How could he leave a legacy that would bear his name when he had no money to do so.
He and his advisors had another brilliant idea. They would use the fear of Purgatory and the time that the sinners of this life would have to spend there in order to make their money. They would sell indulgences. An indulgence is a letter or a note of some kind that basically promises that whoever’s name was upon it would a prescribed amount of time off of Purgatory. Maybe it was a few years, maybe it was immediate. It would all depend upon how much would pay. Now, indulgences had been around for a few hundred years. However, they would have been earned through prayers, worship, service. Never before had it been like this: through money. Indulgences are still around today, too.
This practice of indulgence selling rubbed Luther the wrong way. It wasn’t so much the indulgence; he was a good Catholic boy after all at that time. It was the money for forgiveness. It didn’t sit well with him. He began to think about this. Surely, the Pope, who, incidentally, was widely respected for being a learned man, would listen to simple concerns from his brothers of the cloth. Luther began to write down his ideas. But then someone would come onto the scene that would change the tone of Luther’s concerns from conciliatory questions to accusing theses: Johann Tetzel, indulgence seller extraordinaire.
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