It's a delight to be here with you this morning. Thank you for making me feel so welcome while I'm here. I don't know who was doing the praying about the weather, but I'm from the Pacific Northwest, from the Puget Sound lowlands part of the Pacific Northwest, where we get lots of rain. And so this just makes me feel right at home. It's great. I appreciate it very, very much. lots of wonderful hospitality from folks here that makes me feel really welcome. I appreciate that very much. I am the kind of Yankee that is going home, so you can continue to be friendly and warm and welcoming to me. I appreciate that. There are a few more copies of Luther and Love. This is my most recent release. I wasn't going to write a book on Luther. He is the most written about figure in church history. And I thought, I don't have anything to add to that. I'm not going to write a book on, you know, it's a lot of work to write a book, you know. It's going to take me months of research and writing and all, and there's lots of good books out there. You can get Stephen Lawson. You can get all kinds of good current writers. You can get Roland Bainton's Here I Stand. It's a great classic work on Luther. And, well, somehow, obviously, that all didn't work out. I ended up doing the deed anyway. And it really came about when I sort of got my teeth into some of my just general reading about Luther. And I was reading about Luther's final days and months and hours and some of the final things that he said, final conversations that he had with his wife. Luther had to be away. He was much in demand in Germany. He was the household word, household name in Germany by the end of his life in 1546. And his birthplace in Eisleben in Mansfield region of Saxony, Germany, was having a squabble with some of its local noblemen, counts. And the magistrate of the town felt like the only person that could really solve this, that would have enough weight to solve this, was Martin Luther. So he wrote letters to Martin Luther, who lived in Wittenberg at that time with his wife, Katharina von Bora, ten children, six biological, four adopted, and a household of young boarders and groupies, we'd call them today, that were fans of Martin Luther and that came to study at the university. And when Katerina heard the news that he had to go to Eisler, and it's February, there's snow on the ground, his health is not good, she begged him not to go. female intuition, call it what you will, she begged him not to go. She was sure this was not a good thing for him to do. And she was right. He got pneumonia on the way, in already frail health. He had two of his sons with him, and insisted on preaching four times in St. Andrew's Church there in Eisleben, and did die at the Graf von Mansfield Hotel, which I always take my tour groups when we're in Germany, we stay in the Graf von Mansfield Hotel. There's a death house for Martin Luther, but don't let them fool you. He didn't actually die there. It's just the collection place for some of his memorabilia and story at the end. so that they don't have a whole bunch of tourist traffic coming through the hotel. But he died on the second floor in one of the rooms there at the Graf von Mansfield Hotel. When Katerina got the news, he died February 18th, she was in distress. And she said, I can't sleep, I can't eat, I can't even write. And as a writer of historical fiction, we're always looking for that way in, that wedge into the story that will give us a lens to the story that's sort of a unique perspective. And for me, that was it. So Luther in Love is actually written as if it were what she was writing. She was having trouble writing after he died. So it's written in a memoir-esque sort of way from Katerina Van Boren's perspective. So, I wasn't going to write one until I found what I felt was a unique sort of perspective on that. I thought I would give you in Sunday School this morning for the next little bit, and hopefully a little bit of time for some questions and answers. I blab, blab, blab, blab, blab. My wife always says, stop sooner so you can talk to people on the phone. Maybe they want to ask a question. So, I'll try to do that. But I thought I'd give you a sneak preview on something I'm working on right now, which is a non-fiction book on marriage. I think that Christian marriage is particularly under attack in, I don't have to be a prophet to say that, in our world today. And so this would be, and I don't have a good title, so I need your help. You can come up with good titles for me on this. I can give you some suggestions. But it's going to be on the good, the bad, and the horrible. marriages of Christendom, particularly the Reformation, but surrounding that too. And this is what I'm about to read to you. It will be one of the chapters in some form or another in that book. And just a word about that, there were some horrible marriages, through no fault of the Christian spouse, in the Reformation. Godly women who were subject to an arranged marriage with a monster. a monstrous leader of the Christian gospel. So there'll be some downer chapters in this book as well. This isn't one of them. I think those downer chapters are actually encouraging to us as well, because a dear friend of ours has been praying for her husband for 15 years. Actually, it's more than that now, when I first met her. It had been 50 years, so it's probably been closer to 60 years now. They were both unbelievers when they met and fell in love and got married. And then Sarah became a Christian by the grace of God. She was introduced to the Gospel and the Spirit of God regenerated her heart. but not her husband's heart. And so she has prayed earnestly for her husband and tried to be a light to him for a very, very long time. And she hasn't given up, but she also knows that God is sovereign and that He showers His grace down, pours His grace down according to His perfect wisdom. So she prays on, she prays on, not my will but thine be done, but surely you would want my husband to be a follower of Jesus and to be a Christian. Well, enough said on that, let me just jump right in. Luther, in 1525, is going to get married. He is an apostate monk, Augustinian monk and priest by this time, and he wrote a treatise on marriage I mentioned on Saturday. while he was at the Bartburg Castle. That set the ball rolling, so I'll put in here. Here's merely a monk who wants a wife, so the Pope dismissed Martin Luther when first he heard of the Saxon monks decrying of the papacy. But then in 1521, during his compelled sequester in the Bartburg Castle, Luther began hearing of many former priests taking wives. Good heavens, he retorted, they won't give me a wife. Even his colleagues Karlstadt and Melanchthon had married, but Luther was at first adamant no one was going to give him a wife. Not that he was a sexless stone, but it made no sense for a man under the sentence of heresy, the stake looming, to marry, only to leave his bride a widow. Perhaps the matrimonial news prompted Luther to set aside his German translation of the New Testament and dozens of other writing projects and write his great treatise on Christian marriage. This will empty the cloisters a prophetic friend observed. Overnight, Luther's treatise circulated widely, even into nunneries. Luther received a letter, a passionate appeal for his counsel from more than a dozen nuns who desperately wanted to flee a nunnery near Wittenberg, though escaping from a monastic cloister in 16th century Germany was a capital offense. Luther gave them a theological argument for why non-biblical vows are not binding. These girls wanted out, but they needed help. as if in a romantic comedy, Luther and his merchant friend Leonard Kopp cooked up a scheme to smuggle the apostate nuns out of the nunnery by some accounts in pickled herring barrels. A wagon load of vestal virgins has just come to town, said one of Luther's students at the news, all more eager for marriage than for life. God grant them thunder and lightning, probably too, right? Am I hitting something? All more eager for marriage than for life, God grant them husbands lest worse befall. The night before Easter in 1523, lest worse befall, Luther put on yet another hat, matchmaker, the roaring, German, spear-swirling, pudgelist version of Jane Austen's Emma. He felt duty-bound. After all, he had started the barrel rolling by decrying false doctrine in the Roman Catholic Church, including the unbiblical teaching about clerical celibacy. He had to finish it. Setting to work with his illimitable zeal, Luther soon had suitable circumstances arranged for all but one of the runaway nuns. spunky 26-year-old Katerina Vambora. After several failed attempts, choosy Katerina turned down more than one offer of marriage. She laughed off an aged candidate with the quip that she would rather marry Martin Luther than Dr. Glatz. all in jest, a jest, however, that began its work on Martin Luther. After a visit home wherein he shared his problem of finding a husband for an apostate nun, his father, with Teutonic bluntness, told Luther to marry the girl and give him offspring. Finally, Luther was resolved, he would do it, to please his father, to spite the Pope and the devil, and to seal his witness before martyrdom. Some think that Martin Luther, because he didn't believe that marriage was a sacrament, as the Roman Catholic Church had evolved marriage into a means of winning the favor of God for the common people, that he had a lower view of marriage. Far from having a lower view of marriage, however, Luther wanted to restore marriage to its rightful place in God's economy of grace. Just as there was no inherent grace in taking monastic vows of celibacy, so there was no salvific grace to be gained in marriage. Moreover, it was doubly scandalous when men who had taken vows of chastity so shamelessly violated those vows. Alexander VI, the Pope of Luther's youth, kept several mistresses and fathered numerous illegitimate children. On his pilgrimage to Rome in 1510, Luther witnessed priests consorting with prostitutes in specially sanctioned brothels reserved exclusively for clerics. master of the invective insult Luther declared of the Pope. You were born from the behind of the devil, are full of devil's lies, blasphemy and idolatry, are the instigator of these things, God's enemy, Antichrist, desolator of Christendom, and steward of Sodom. Due to the stranglehold such abuses had on the common man, Luther felt justified in resorting to such a vitriol. Later, however, upon more sober and gospel reflection, Luther said, I am more afraid of my own heart than of the Pope and all his cardinals. I have within me the great Pope himself. Nevertheless, he was called in violent times to decry unsupportable abuses. Rome itself, he declared, the most licentious den of thieves, the most shameless of all brothels. If marriage was not a sacrament, however, what was it? Marriage, said Luther, is the God-appointed and legitimate union of man and woman in the hope of having children, or at least for the purpose of avoiding fornication and sin and living to the glory of God. The ultimate purpose of marriage is to obey God, to find aid and counsel against sin, to call upon God, to seek love, to seek love and educate children for the glory of God, to live with one's wife in the fear of God and to bear the cross, but if there are no children, nevertheless, to live with one's wife in contentment and to avoid all lewdness with others. from his marriage treatise. Though at first adamant in his refusal to marry, it was only when Luther moved from writing theoretically about marriage to entering into the covenant of marriage itself that he came to see it as a lovely school of character, an ordinary means gifted by a gracious God whereby a husband and wife might grow and grace together and in the knowledge and love of Christ. At last, romance-challenged Luther was resolved to marry Katerina of Ambora, but seemingly without consulting her. What was she thinking of all of this? Given up to the cloister when she was five, Katerina had not even been around men for the majority of her 26 years. And 42-year-old Luther had been a celibate priest for two decades and had heard only the confession of two women. in those two decades. Marriage between two people so utterly inexperienced, even in basic conversation with the opposite sex, was a matrimonial train wreck waiting to happen. If ever a couple needed extensive premarital counseling, it was Martin and Katerina. They didn't even have one session with their pastor. Luther was their pastor. Neither did they go out on a date, no pizza, no movie, no concert together. Where's the romance? Frankly, there was, was not a romance. Not by our standards. Post-modern, post-modernity, however, has relinquished the philosophical capital necessary to weigh in on anything to do with love, marriage, and sexual relations. Luther and Katie would have to do their falling in love in the years long after the last piece of cake was finished off, or platter brought worst, or beer stein emptied. first love is drunken," said Luther. But when the intoxication wears off, then comes real marriage love. If the Reformation was a revolution in theology, the recovery of the gospel was, after all, a recovery of true marriage, love, Christ's love for his bride, the Church. Luther's marriage was about to be, for him, a revolution in everything, including hygiene, Before I was married, recalled Luther, the bed was not made for a whole year and became foul with sweat. But I worked so hard and was so weary I tumbled in without noticing it. Imagine poor Katerina on their wedding night, Luther's greasy, hulking form outlined on the bedsheets. And their first home together? There was no chic apartment in Berlin's Kreuzberg district. Katharina was stepping into yet another cloister, the Augustinian Monastery in Wittenberg, gifted to Luther by his patron, Elector Frederick, a massive drafty medieval structure, purpose-built for and entirely inhabited by males. In the opinion of refined Renaissance Europe, German barbarian males. What's more, Luther's colleague Karlstadt, fleeing a peasant uprising, came pounding on their door on their wedding night. Little wonder that Luther called marriage the school of character. It was to be a lifetime tutorial that worked both ways. While Katerina had her work cut out for her, living with a colossal Luther, marriage would require still more radical adjustments for Luther. There is a lot to get used to in the first years of marriage, he wrote. One wakes up in the morning and finds a pair of pigtails on the pillow which were not there before. After their marriage in June 1525, it would be more than pigtails on the pillow that would change for Luther. Theirs was no modern world, grindingly protracted engagement. It was happening on the fly. While I was thinking of other things, wrote Luther, inviting a friend, God has suddenly brought me to marriage with Katharina. After a two week betrothal. To his cohort in the nun's escape, he wrote, I'm going to get married. God likes to work miracles and to make a fool of the world. You must come to the wedding. When wedding festivities ended, steins and platters emptied and the guests had gone home, Luther, now a husband, was confronted with the real business of being married to a real woman. The school of character would immediately expose many of his relational weaknesses. Brilliant scholar that he was, he had to start at the bottom of the class in this school. For starters, he had become almost overnight the celebrity preacher and writer of his day. With his popularity came mounds of fan mail and legions of responsibilities. I could use two secretaries, wrote Luther to a friend. I do almost nothing during the day but write letters. I'm reader at meals, parochial preachers, director of studies, overseers of 11 monasteries, superintendent of the fishpond at Litzkow, referee of the squabble in Torgau, lecturer on Paul, writer of a commentary on the Psalms, and then I'm overwhelmed with letters. I rarely have full time for my own temptations with the world, the flesh, and the devil. You see how lazy I am." And he was now husband to Katie and soon to be father of her children. His new bride came to the marriage as an adoring admirer of the man who had been the instrument of her spiritual emancipation. She had even contributed a letter to the pile of fan mail. Imagine her chagrin as she realized that the theological giant from afar was an intensely earthly man up close and personal. All wives can relate to that, right? On some level. Along with hygiene challenges, Luther was given to depression and insomnia and had rumbling bowel disorders. and he worked best when in a full, roiling rage. I find nothing that promotes work better than angry fervor, for when I wish to compose, write, pray, and preach well, I must be angry. It refreshes my entire system, my mind is sharpened, and all unpleasant thoughts and depressions fall away. We have clinical names for this. Imagine living with a husband who had such anger issues. Meanwhile, Katerina had the household to look after, without rotisserie chickens from Costco. Their cloister home would eventually be filled with six of their own children, an aunt and several nieces, four adopted children, and dozens of student mortars. And my Lord Kate, as Luther affectionately called her, had to feed them all. With wonder in his tone, he extolled his wife. She plants our fields, pastures, and sells cows. He described her slaughtering their pigs, chickens, even the cows, making sausages, cheese, and even brewing her own special beer, custom-crafted to be gentle on her husband's kidney and bowel disorders. Their son Paul grew up to be a physician and extolled his mother's mastery of natural cures for every ailment, especially her skill with massage. When did the woman sleep? On top of all, Luther had given her a challenge to read through the whole Bible. I have promised her 50 golden when she finishes my Easter. She's hard at it and is at the end of the fifth book of Moses. Not only was he hygiene challenged, he was also economically stunted. Where penniless Luther would get the money was a mystery. But Katie was the master of home economics. Her Bible, when she first took it up, must have fallen open at Proverbs 31, I'm thinking. She took the passage deeply to heart. The demands on Luther and thus on Katie make our busiest days seem leisure, but here's where some accounts of heroes in church history become fantasy. Luther and Katie were not angels. These two intensely busy people were fallen and in need of daily grace. With the pressures of life came irritation and impatience. All my life is patience, roared Luther. I have to have patience with the Pope, the heretics, my family, and my dearest Keta. and enjoyed calling her Kette, which is German for chain. at moments like these. One of the pressures on Katie was the extending of hospitality to the legion of student admirers that descended on the Luther kitchen at mealtimes. At these unscripted table talks, bombastic Luther was in his element. Once when her husband was expiating with gusto in response to a student's question, Katie broke in, here doctor, why don't you stop talking and eat? Luther retorted, I wish that women would repeat the Lord's prayer before opening their mouths. an admonition that Luther himself would have done well to heed. Yet is there far more recorded of Luther's affection and high esteem for his beloved wife. My Katie is in all things so obliging and pleasing to me that I would not exchange my poverty for the riches of Croesus. He extolled her with the highest praise, calling the epistle to the Galatians like Katharina von Bohr. Troubled that his devotion to his wife had become too excessive, a vice, not a virtue, Luther admitted, I give more credit to Katharina than to Christ, who has done so much more for me. How much happier would many marriages be if more men were slaves to such a vice? And how similar it sounds to Paul, husbands love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her. From giddy first love, Luther and Katie were growing into that true marriage love, seen also in the adoring titles with which Luther referred to his wife, to my beloved wife, Katerina, Mrs. Dr. Luther, mistress of the pig market, lady of Zollsdorf, and whatsoever other titles may be fit by grace. While Luther was rediscovering and proclaiming the doctrine of grace, he was also rediscovering the sanctity of all walks of life. Perhaps it was Katie's wholehearted and cheerful application of herself to married life and motherhood that helped Luther see the pig farmer or preacher, dungman or duchess, milkmaid or merchant, husband or wife, and God's economy, all these were sacred vocations to be done by his grace and for his glory alone. Giant that Luther was, without Katie, he would have had far less practical scope in his understanding and application of how the gospel affects every dimension of life, especially marriage and children. Proud men who marry to further their accomplishments and careers might wonder how much more Luther could have accomplished if he had not needed to stop what he was writing or teaching and tend to his pregnant wife when she suffered from morning sickness, or when she needed his assistance hanging out the diapers. Much to the amusement of his neighbors and students. Let them laugh, murmured Luther through the clothespins. God and the angels smiled in heaven. Luther, a man of books and scholarship, discovered that writing a biblical treatise on marriage and raising children was not enough. Most things worth knowing and doing cannot be learned in theory, much less taught to others. Chief among these is married life, howling babies, and squabbling children. Students tweeted with goose quills in Luther's day, their devotion to the great man giving us beautiful vignettes into Luther's home life. Child, what have you done that I should love you so? You have disturbed the whole household with your bawling. On another occasion, Luther watched his infant son, Paul, smacking and mewling at Katie's breast. "'Child, your enemies are the Pope, the bishops, Duke George, the emperor, and the devil,' he said. "'And there you are, sucking unconcernedly.' Little Paul threw back his head and let out a howl. "'Herein lies a lesson, dearest Katie,' said Luther with a laugh. "'We no more earn heaven by good works than little Paul earns his food and drink by crying and howling. As the household swelled to ten children, at a particularly chaotic moment, some of you had those this morning, I'm sure, if you're off. Sunday mornings sometimes are the real school of character in the home, aren't they? At a particularly chaotic moment, Luther shouted above the din, Christ tells us women must become like little children. Surely God does not expect us to become such idiots. a band of little heathens," Luther sometimes called his children, whose parents were charged with the solemn duty of nurturing them in the gospel of Jesus Christ. Several years before having children of his own, while at the Wartburg after his intrepid stand before Emperor Charles V at Worms, Luther penned a children's catechism next to the German Bible and his book, Bondage of the Will. Luther considered the children's catechism his crowning achievement. Imagine hearing his own children, Hans, Magdalena, or one of the others, responding to their father as he catechized them in family worship. I believe in Jesus Christ, who when I was lost and damned, saved me from all sin and death and the power of the devil, not with gold and silver, but with his own precious holy blood. and his sinless suffering and death, that I might belong to him and live in his kingdom and serve him forever in goodness, sinlessness, and happiness, just as he is risen from the dead and lives and reigns forever. That is really so. This theology of family now practiced in daily tutorials in the House of Character Luther began to mine the illustrative family material, impossible to ignore, surrounding him daily in his home. For example, determined to get his translation of the Bible exact, in the German the mother chortles to her infant, Luther spent much of the remainder of his life rewriting and revising. Words are like children, he said. The more attention you lavish on them, the more they demand. culminating on one occasion about the ignorance of a Roman Catholic critic, Luther Bluster. A seven-year-old child, indeed a silly fool, can figure it out on his fingers, although you stupid ass cannot understand anything. On another occasion, perhaps after a time of dryness in his own marriage, he declared, what a lot of trouble there is in marriage. Adam has made a mess of our nature. Think of all the squabbles Adam and Eve must have had in the course of their 900 years together. Eve would say, you ate the apple, and Adam would retort, you gave it to me. One wonders what Katie had to say and contribute to the post-sermon discussion about this remark. Perhaps it was being encircled by the sights, sounds, and sometimes earthy smells of a house filled with infants and children that made Luther able to write tender poetry about mothers and children. Once did the skies before thee bow, a virgin's arms contain thee now, while angels who in thee rejoice now listen for thine infant voice. Luther believed that God speaks to his children in the Bible and that God's children needed German hymns to respond to their Heavenly Father. As with everything, Luther felt strongly about this, declaring that anyone who did not appreciate music and poetry as a great gift of God was truly a clod and not worthy to be called a man. As in the carol above, Luther displayed a tangible, experiential knowledge of the themes about which he wrote in his hymns. Only a father who had held his teen daughter as she breathed her last and passed into eternity could have penned, Let goods and kindred go, this mortal life also, the body they may kill, God's truth the harvest still. Beneath all the bombast, Luther was a man of deep feeling. When he and Katie lost their daughter, Magdalene, he said, I am blessed more than all the bishops of Rome. Why then cannot I give thanks to our Heavenly Father? As they laid her body in the ground, he said, you are so loved, Lentien. You will rise. You will shine like the stars and the sun. Perhaps turning to Katie and comforting her in his arms, he said, how strange it is to know that she is at peace and all is well. And yet we here below are so full of sorrow. At last it would be Katie who would have to let Kindred go. February 18, 1546, when her beloved hair doctor died. She never called him anything but hair doctor. The formal German address to a scholar. He had been summoned by the magistrates of Islay in his birthplace to arbitrate a local dispute. Though he had fallen ill on the journey from Pittsburgh, he managed to preach four times. Luther responded to the illness that would take his life with characteristic wit. If I may get home to Wittenberg, I will lay myself in my coffin to let maggots feast on the stout doctor. Perhaps it was female intuition, but Katie had begged him not to go, not in midwinter, not with snow on the ground. Should I die on this journey? God will care for you. He had told his wife. God is your ever present help in trouble, your refuge. He will be with you. It is his promise. Hold to God's word. When she explained that she was thinking not only of herself and their children, but the many people who needed Luther. He replied, I have long said, when this book, the German Bible, is in the hands of all, then Luther must retire and the Bible advance. This poor man must disappear and God in Christ appear. In news of her husband's death, Katie was devastated. God knows that when I think of having lost him and all my suffering, nor can I find the words to write. Life was hard in the 16th century, and Katie's, after her husband's death, was no exception. War and plague ravaged Wittenberg, and three times she and her youngest children, still at home, were forced to flee. Their cloister home plundered, their livestock stolen. In 1552, while fleeing for her life, Katie's cart overturned. She was mortally injured. Well nurtured by her husband on her deathbed in Torga, she said, I cling to Christ as a burr to cloth. Her final words. What would Luther and Katie say about marriage if they were transubstantiated into our world? There is no more lovely, friendly, and charming relationship, communion, or company than a good marriage. The school of character that marriage is, is not the school of self-improvement. Marriage is the school of grace made into a charming relationship by Christ the bride, who alone justifies his bride, and loves and keeps love in her, regardless of her failings and unfaithfulness. To honest readers who know their marriage is far less than it ought to be sometimes, what would Luther say to you? It would not be earth-shattering. It would not be another thunderbolt. He would give us ordinary means and tell us what made His marriage lovely. I must listen to the Gospel. It tells me not what I must do, but what Jesus Christ, the Son of God, has done for me. The ancient foe schemes to work low in our marriages and families, but his doom is sure. By keeping our eyes fixed on Jesus, we are enabled to work out marriage disappointments and troubles, sometimes with fear and trembling, but with confidence because it is God who has worked by His grace in our marriages to accomplish His good pleasure. Christ is our mighty fortress, and His kingdom is forever. Well, there's a little sneak preview. Pray for me as I work on the rest of the book this winter. Maybe I'll send the manuscript for Dax and Lori to read together and give me some critique on it when it's finished. Value that. Do you have any questions? How much time do we have? OK, time for two or three questions, depending on how much I'm allowed. Uh, no. She has a lot on her plate. Two rounds of soldiers passing through. a plea for her life in hell. And the plague, the bubonic plague, was a normal part of life in those days. Calvin would go off to the University of Paris as a 14-year-old, partly because there was plague going through the village of Noyon, and his dad wanted to get him out of there because he was afraid of the plague. The thing that ended the bubonic plague was the Great Fire of London in 1666. Also, the thing that largely ended leprosy was the bubonic plague. Choose your poison. If you have other questions or thoughts, maybe you've been to some of the other addresses during the last couple of days and have some questions that don't have directly to do with this, that's fine as well. It's not kind of a carryover. It is a carryover. I think that's a good point. I don't want to leave the wrong impression there. Luther was a reactionary. He was like we all do. And because marriage had become this sacrament, it was all the pomp and and ceremony, and sanctioned by... If you've ever been to a Catholic wedding today, they're about three times as long as a typical Protestant wedding, and there is a great deal of clerical oversight of what's going on. Luther wanted to get away from all that because of him creating marriage into a sacrament. a sacrament where you win the favor of God. If you're not going to join a monastery, if you're not going to take vows of chastity and celibacy and become a monk or a nun, your best shot at shortening your time in purgatory was to get married and make a lot of babies. And the church wanted that to happen for, unfortunately, lots of selfish reasons. And so they created it theologically. They said that it was a sacrament. This is a means of grace. You're actually winning the favor of God on some level. So Luther, hearing that, seeing what they've done to baptism, have all saving benefits in your baptism. You have to add your faith and your obedience, but you have that all. The sacrament of the Lord's Supper was actually a way that you win the favor of God observing it anyway, if not really participating in it. And Luther's response to all of that was to run as fast as he could the other direction. And I think he did. When you read his treatises on marriage, because he did write more than one, you see him going to an extreme that I wouldn't go to. He didn't believe that there should even be any clerical oversight over marriage. In fact, he gave One of his most influential pamphlets was called An Appeal to the German Mobility. I mentioned it the other day. This was where he's looking around the church, he's calling for reformation. He wasn't trying to break with the church. He didn't personally break with the church. The church broke with him, excommunicated him, issued five bulls against him. Next time somebody tells you, why were these reformers so divisive? Why were they leaving the church? They weren't leaving the church. The church was trying to kill them. The church was censuring them and declaring them anathema. Luther wanted to get away from those things as fast as he could. And so, as he appeals to these German noblemen, who he saw as Christians, and some of them were, Philip of Hesse was an earnest, godly Christian. He's the one that would call for the Marburg Colloquy between Zwingli, the Swiss reformers, and between Luther, the German reformers, to try and come to as close a conjunction, theologically, as they could, so that there could be a military alliance. Because he was forward-thinking. He knew what was coming, and he was absolutely right. The Holy Roman Empire and its troops, its multinational troops, were coming. And they were. I did, and it was some estimate that half the population of Germany would die in 30 years' war between 1618 and 1648. And there never was fortuitous alliance. But Philip of Hesse, a godly Christian, in that same spirit, Luther wanted to see godly Christian magistrates, Christian magistrates, preside over the wedding ceremony, a civil ceremony, that would be honoring to God. He wanted the milkmaid to be worshiping the Lord as she did her duties. The dongmen in the street, you know, shoveling manure from the oxen and the horses and all that would pass through Wittenberg. He wanted him singing German hymns at his work, his pitchfork. And he wanted that civil magistrate to be singing the praises of Jesus. There would be a, it would be a Christian ceremony, but it would be presided over not by one of these drunk clerics, but it would be presided over by a Christian nobleman. So we have to understand Lutheran's context, why he went to those extremes. I don't entirely agree with that, but I do have to tell you about something. My wife and I were married 34 years ago in the garden of a seminary. Absolutely. All of my married children were either married outside, my eldest daughter was going to be married in the same garden we were married in, but it rained, thunder and lightning, and so we had to go into the chapel of the seminary, you know. And the others were married in the garden, the pastor presiding, the Word of God open the whole time and all, but we weren't actually married inside the confines. I know my other four children. I just thought of that, actually, when you were asking me the question. I put that together. I thought, wow, maybe I've been thinking about this for a long time. But I certainly don't think, on the other hand, that it's not a fully Christian marriage. It isn't inside the sacred walls. Yeah, there's extremes we can go to if we're not careful, especially when we're reacting. But our churches, especially Protestant churches, particularly independent churches, Baptist churches, I grew up in a Baptist church, tend to be very, we don't have ceremony. We don't have a procession, an Anglican church, an Episcopal church, and all that. There's a procession. A lot of Lutheran churches today, there would be a procession with vestments and holding the cross, holding the Bible, all that up the aisle. Those are all holdovers from medieval Roman Catholicism. And lo and behold, when we get to a wedding, what do we do? We process. We have a lot of the same features that used to be in marriage as a ceremony and as a sacrament. So that's all I'm saying. Maybe we should rethink the whole thing and say, OK, how would, if we didn't have that sort of in the back of all of our minds somehow, How would we conduct a Christian marriage in the church? To the glory and honor of Christ, not by works of righteousness, which we have done, not by winning the favor of God in any way as a sacrament, but as a school of character, as Luther came to see it. We all can say, yahoo, to that, can't we? Iron sharpens iron. There were some sparks this morning. I can see it on your faces out there. That's what happens. Sometimes Sunday mornings are the hardest morning on moms and wives. Pastors' wives. There's a lot of pressure. Kids got to look right. I have a chapter in here, Katie, getting the kids ready. Luther over there being pious, praying, reading his Bible, ready to preach. And she's over there trying to get these 10 kids ready for church, feeling the heat rising and the resentment rising. I mean, let's be honest here, okay? We're all deeply flawed. We can't confront our sins if we don't acknowledge that they're happening. If we come to church and we're all, everything's fine. And we're going to have a hard time being fully honest. Cut it off. Thank you so much for your attention. It's a delight to be here.