Dear Friends in Christ,                  

   I came across a true story recently that a Lutheran pastor told about two of his parishioners who were vacationing in Norway where the national religion is Lutheranism.  One day they visited a quaint little town that had the rather unusual name of Hell, Norway.  They quickly sent their pastor a postcard that said: “Dear Pastor, we passed through Hell today, and we’re concerned.  Almost everyone here seems to be Lutheran.”

   We Lutherans, of course, get our name from the great reformer, Martin Luther, who never set out to start his own church but rather to reform the church of his day from the errors that had crept into it.  And while Luther made many contributions to the life of the entire Christian Church, not just the part of it known as Lutheran, one of the grandest gifts that he gave to the church was his immortal hymn that we’ll be singing at the end of our service today, “A Mighty Fortress.”  Now we have 2 versions of that hymn in our Lutheran Worship hymnal.  The one we’ll be singing later on, which is what I call the more upbeat version, begins with these words: “A mighty fortress is our God, A sword and shield victorious.”  The other version that many of us were raised on and that has a slower, more majestic beat to it, begins with these words: “A mighty fortress is our God, A trusty shield and weapon.”  Interestingly, it is only in Lutheran hymnals that we find those 2 versions.  Every other hymnal I looked at and every site I examined on the Internet offers a different rendering of those first 2 lines.  And that rendering goes like this: “A mighty fortress is our God, a bulwark never failing.”  Do you have any idea what a bulwark is?  The Thesaurus Dictionary on my computer offered the following synonyms: fortification, embankment, rampart, safeguard, protection, defense.

   Well, nobody understood better the meaning of a bulwark or a fortress than Martin Luther.  When he was brought before representatives of the 2 most powerful men in the world at that time, namely, the Pope and the Roman Emperor at the famous Diet of Worms, he was ordered to recant or take back everything he had been saying and writing that was in opposition to the traditional teachings of the Roman Catholic Church.  When he refused to do so, he was excommunicated from the church, which meant he was fair game for anyone who might want to kill him.  But as Luther was returning to his home in Wittenberg, he was kidnapped by friends and taken to a castle in Wartburg, Germany.  There Luther discovered that a person in distress like himself could find refuge in God just as he had found refuge behind the walls of that fortress.  And I don’t think there is any doubt that the image of that castle must have been very much in the forefront of Luther’s mind when he penned the words of his famous hymn, “A Mighty Fortress.”  

   That hymn is based upon the 46^th Psalm where we read these words: “God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam and the mountains quake with their surging… The LORD Almighty is with us; the God of Jacob is our fortress.”  Those words not only served as great inspiration for Luther, they can also serve as the same for us because let’s face it, my friends, we all go through times in our lives when we need a fortress, don’t we?  There are times when we need a refuge, a bulwark, a safe place to hide from the constant pounding of the world upon our lives.  Now is definitely one of those times!  A fragile economy, a volatile stock market that has more ups and downs than a roller coaster at Six Flags, a ballooning national debt that is now nearly $10.5 trillion and that grows at a rate of $3 billion a day, wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the ongoing threat of terrorist attacks, devastation and destruction caused by hurricanes, floods, tornadoes, and other natural disasters, not to mention health problems, marital problems, family problems, work-related problems – all of these things that have become all too commonplace in our world today make us yearn for a mighty fortress where we can find peace and strength and comfort for our troubled souls.

   We need what one woman by the name of Madeleine Landry found a few years ago.  She and her family live in Simi Valley, California, where forest fires threatened their home in 2004.  As those fires got closer and closer, she asked the firefighters what they should do.  They told her, “Go inside your home, close the windows and doors, and let it go by.”  Now that doesn’t sound like very good advice, does it, because the intensity of those fires can wipe out just about everything in their path?  Notice, though, I said just about everything, for you see, the firefighters knew what kind of home the Landry’s had.  It was an 11,000 square foot edifice equipped with vacuum-sealed doors, a steel frame, and an exterior made only of steel and concrete.  The firefighters knew that a home like that could withstand one of those devastating California fires and emerge from it unscathed.  Imagine how comforting it would be to have a fortress like that, a refuge, when our world seems to be on fire.

   There have been times when America, at its best, has been such a refuge for many people.  In fact, welcoming foreigners and refugees to our shores since 1886 has been the job of this lady here who stands 151 feet tall.  Her name is Lady Liberty and at her base you will find these words: “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.  Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”  Only God knows how many millions of those huddled masses have found a refuge in our country from the great oppression which they lived under in their home countries.

   But not only has America as a whole served as a refuge for people, so also have its churches.  In fact, what do we call the inside of a church where the worship service is conducted?  It’s called the sanctuary, isn’t it?  And what is a sanctuary but a place of refuge, a place of protection?  Another word that we use for the inside of the church is the nave.  That word comes from the same root as navy.  For centuries cathedrals and churches were built in the shape of a ship.  Or maybe you’ve been in churches whose naves have big beams of wood that look like the ribs of a ship.  If you’ve ever been in the Lutheran church at St. Peter, you’ve seen a great example of this there.  But why a ship?  Well, from what I understand, that design was to serve as a reminder of the ark that God had Noah build as a place of refuge for him and his family and the animals at the time of the great Flood.  The church was to be seen then as a place of refuge when the waters of life begin to rise, a place where you can ride out the storm.  I do hope that all of you view this church in that way.  I know some of you do because there have been times when you have come here to just sit and pray in our sanctuary.  You could have done it at home.  You could have done it in your car.  But instead you chose the church because there is a strong sense of God’s presence here, and where his presence is, there is peace, there is safety, there is protection.

   But you know what?  As nice as it is to have a place like this to come to when life gets tough, what the psalmist discovered and what Martin Luther discovered and what countless others have discovered throughout the ages is that you don’t need a building to provide you with security and protection.  For as our text says: “God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble.”

   Now I do want you to know that this was not a discovery that came easy to Luther.  As a young man, he was terrified of God.  He viewed God solely as a God of wrath and punishment and judgment.  He would much rather hide from God at that stage of his life than flee to him. 

   I don’t know how many of you know the story of Luther very well, so let me just briefly review it for you so you can see how God brought him to the point where he finally figured it all out, that though God was just, he was also merciful, loving, and forgiving.  Luther was the son of a Saxon coal miner named Hans Luther who really wanted his son to become a lawyer.  And young Martin had every intention of following through on his father’s wishes.  But on July 2, 1505, he was traveling through a forest when a violent thunderstorm arose and a bolt of lightning struck nearby, knocking him to the ground.  Terrified by what was happening, and probably thinking that God was out to get him, Luther called out to the patron saint of miners, St. Anne, the mother of Mary.  He said, “Saint Anne, save me!  And I will become a monk.”  His life was spared and, much to his father’s dismay, Luther stayed true to his word and soon entered an Augustinian monastery to become a monk.

   And he proved to be a very dedicated monk, but he was not happy.  Years later he wrote these words: “I kept the rule so strictly that I may say that if ever a monk got to heaven by his sheer monkery, it was I.  If I had kept on any longer, I should have killed myself with vigils, prayers, reading and other work.”  Luther believed that his salvation was totally dependent upon him and what he did.  But no matter what he did, no matter how hard he tried, he was never certain whether he’d done enough.  So he could not find peace.  He viewed himself as a miserable, doomed sinner in the hands of an angry God who demanded too much of him.  Because of that, when his father confessor  in the monastery counseled him one day to love God, Luther’s frustration boiled over and he said, “Love God!  I hate God!”

   But no matter how Luther felt about God at that stage of his life, God still loved Luther.  And just like in the early days of Christianity when God used the most unlikely of individuals to become his primary missionary and preacher of the Gospel, namely, a former persecutor of the church named Saul who became the Apostle Paul, so also God had big plans in mind for this unlikely monk named Martin Luther.  And I think it was only fitting that one evening in 1515 when he was preparing a lecture that he was to give to his class the following day on who else but the Apostle Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, the light suddenly went on for Luther.  And for the first time in his life, he understood the Gospel.  He understood that no matter what he did, no matter how hard he tried, no matter how hard he worked, he could not do enough to save himself.  But that was ok, for Jesus had already done it all for him.  And as Luther came to grips with the amazing grace of a loving and forgiving God, the chains of legalism and works righteousness that had bound him for so many years fell off and for the first time in his life he felt free – free to love God, free to serve God, free to give himself totally to God, not out of fear or compulsion, but out of gratitude and appreciation for all that God had done for him and all that he had made possible for him.  For the first time in his life Luther saw God not as an angry, vengeful deity, but as a refuge, a fortress, a bulwark.  And oh how he needed that because his life was not easy.  He and his wife Katie lost one child, Elizabeth, at the tender age of 8 months and another daughter, Magdalena, when she was 13.  In addition to those sorrows, Luther was vilified by former friends.  He spent his life with a death sentence hanging over his head.  He was given to bouts of depression and battled a host of other physical maladies and ailments.  But through it all, he hung on to his faith.  Through it all, he found refuge in God who proved time and time again to be his mighty fortress.

Amen.