Invocavit Sermon 2 Monday March 11, 1522

The church was less full than yesterday and the format was different in that Luther began speaking soon after the meeting began. This time Martin took more liberties in his delivery; he walked around as he spoke and was fairly animated in his delivery - it reminded Heinrich of his college days. He began, “Dear friends, you heard yesterday the chief characteristics of a Christian man, that his whole life and being is faith and love. Faith is directed toward God, love toward man and one’s neighbor, and consists in such love and service for him as we have received from God without our work and merit. Thus the mass is an evil thing, and God is displeased with it, because it is performed as if it were a sacrifice and work of merit. Therefore it must be abolished. Here there can be no question or doubt, any more than you should ask whether you should worship God. Here we are entirely agreed: the private masses must be abolished. As I have said in my writings, I wish they would be abolished everywhere and only the ordinary evangelical mass be retained. Yet Christian love should not employ harshness here nor force the matter. We should preach the Word, but the results must be left solely to God’s good pleasure. When Paul came to Athens, a mighty city, he found in the temple many ancient altars, and he went from one to the other and looked at them all, but he did not kick down a single one of them with his foot. Rather he stood up in the middle of the market place and said they were nothing but idolatrous things and begged the people to forsake them; yet he did not destroy one of them by force. In short, I will preach it, teach it, write it, but I will constrain no man by force, for faith must come freely without compulsion. Take myself as an example. I opposed indulgences and all the papists, but never with force. I simply taught, preached, and wrote God’s Word; otherwise I did nothing. And while I slept, or drank Wittenberg beer with my friends Philips and Amsdorf, the Word so greatly weakened the papacy that no prince or emperor ever inflicted such losses upon it. I did nothing; the Word did everything.

For it is almighty, and takes captive the hearts, and when the hearts are captured the work will fall of itself. Let me cite a simple instance. In former times there were sects, too, Jewish and Gentile Christians, differing on the law of Moses with respect to circumcision. The former wanted to keep it, the latter not. Then came Paul and preached that it might be kept or not, for it was of no consequence, and also that they should not make a “must” of it, but leave it to the choice of the individual; to keep it or not was immaterial. Paul says in Galatians 5:1 ‘Stand fast therefore in the liberty by which Christ has made us free, and do not be entangled again with a yoke of bondage.’

So it was up to the time of Jerome, who came and wanted to make a “must” out of it, desiring to make it an ordinance and a law that it be prohibited. Then came St. Augustine and he was of the same opinion as St. Paul: it might be kept or not, as one wished. St. Jerome was a hundred miles away from St. Paul’s opinion. The two doctors bumped heads rather hard, but when St. Augustine died, St. Jerome was successful in having it prohibited. After that came the popes, who also wanted to add something and they, too, made laws. Thus out of the making of one law grew a thousand laws, until they have completely buried us under laws. And this is what will happen here, too; one law will soon make two, two will increase to three, and so forth. Tomorrow we shall talk of those things which God gives us liberty to choose for ourselves. Until then, may God bless you throughout the rest of your day.”

With this, Luther stopped and Heinrich was surprised that it was over already; but then, eight sermons was a lot to do. Luther’s final words on endless laws made pictures in Heinrich’s mind. Laws were reproducing like rabbits and they were running all over the place as priests kept trying to catch them. But what caught Heinrich’s fancy was that the rabbits were not laws, but people’s freedom that had been let go. Heinrich wondered where  the truth would take them all. And would the priests try to catch them and put them back in the bag?