God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Psalm 46:1 Help Me Lord! This month, we will once again celebrate the Reformation. We often focus on the 95 Theses or the Diet of Worms and those are exciting stories of Luther having the courage to proclaim the truth of Scripture to the powers that be no matter what the consequences may be. But I think of another side of Luther, the Luther in Castle Wartburg. Castle Wartburg has a long history. In 1067, Count Louis the Springer was concerned that his people were at the mercy of highwaymen and robbers. Much like the city of Chicago today, the land had become a place where private citizens feared to walk down the road without being harassed. Count Louis, being a Christian, considered it his duty to do whatever he could to protect the people of his realm from evil. So, he built Castle Wartburg on the top of a mountain that overlooked the whole valley and declared that he and his knights would serve the Lord by watching over the valley and preserving peace for God’s people. Several hundred years later in 1522, Martin Luther had a price on his head. The pope wanted him dead because he was stirring up trouble in the Roman Catholic Church by preaching the Gospel and against the current pope and his administration. He had just defended himself at the Diet of Worms with his famous refusal to recant his theological position. When called upon to recant his teachings and writings, Luther said, “Unless I am convinced by the testimony of the Scriptures or by clear reason (for I do not trust either in the pope or in councils alone, since it is well known that they have often erred and contradicted themselves), I am bound by the Scriptures I have quoted and my conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and will not recant anything, since it is neither safe nor right to go against conscience. May God help me. Amen.” Luther was a dead man walking. Fortunately, his supporter, Fredrick the Wise had purchased Castle Wartburg, and on his way home to Wittenberg, where he surely would have been arrested, tried, and executed by the pope, Fredrick the Wise had Luther kidnapped and brought to Castle Wartburg where he lived for almost a year and wrote prolifically including his translation of the New Testament from Greek into German so that the people could read the Bible for themselves. They no longer had to depend on priests to tell them what God said in His Word. Luther returned to Wittenberg after a year, and he risked his life because he had absolute confidence in God even though there were dangers for him still everywhere. Psalm 46 is sometimes called Luther’s Psalm because he spoke it and sang it so often. It starts out with “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.” That was the phrase that moved Luther forward. When people are against us, we ask ourselves, “what has God called us to do?” If we are doing what God has called us to do, we know we are on the right path, and “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.” This is the Psalm I remember these days when I am challenged in my beliefs by a society that is no longer united in its faith. Luther lived in a world that was conditioned to believe that they could not know God’s will without a priest to explain God’s Word to them. We live in a world that doesn’t care what God’s Word says. So, we hear arguments for sin that sound idiotic to us because we know God’s Word and we have to remind ourselves that the people making those arguments do not know what we know. The sad part is that they often also do not want to know what we know. That is when I remember this psalm. “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.” Not a clever argument. Not the loudest voice. Not money. Not power. Only God. “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.” And then I can stop worrying. I can let it go. I don’t have to win every battle on earth because “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.” This is God’s world, not mine. All I have to do is what I am called to do as his child and He will be my refuge and my strength even as He is yours. |
