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In the United States, today is Labor Day. A day given aside presumably to honor those who work, even though like most summer holidays it is mostly used to recreate, grill, and watch sports. Well, that’s the American way, we don’t take all that much seriously.
But Luther, the great theologian of vocation is an apt source for the day, so here are a couple of extracts from him on the day, courtesy of Gene Veith.
If you are a manual laborer, you find that the Bible has been put into your workshop, into your hand, into your heart. It teaches and preaches how you should treat your neighbor. Just look at your tools—at your needle or thimble, your beer barrel, your goods, your scales or yardstick or measure—and you will read this statement inscribed on them. Everywhere you look, it stares at you. Nothing that you handle every day is so tiny that it does not continually tell you this, if you will only listen. . . .All this is continually crying out to you: “Friend, use me in your relations with your neighbor just as you would want your neighbor to use his property in his relations with you.”
Martin Luther, “Commentary on the Sermon on the Mount” (Luther’s Works 21:237)
Interestingly, as an electrical worker, my main supplier of hand tools is M. Klein and Sons. It got its start because he was a blacksmith and a Western Union lineman came in to get his pliers repaired, so Klein forged a replacement half for him – a couple weeks later he came back to get the other half, now broken replaced. Thus started one of the legends of American quality, to the point that by the time my dad started work in the 1920s those pliers were (and are) simply referred to as Kleins. The apropos point here is that one of the phrases that Klein’s publicizes for hand tool safety is,
“Take care of your tools, or they will take care of you”
How much more appropriate is that to us in our relations with our neighbors, and how much more important.
Although the Christian is thus free from all works, he ought in this liberty to empty himself, take upon himself the form of a servant, be made in the likeness of men, be found in human form, and to serve, help, and in every way deal with his neighbor as he sees that God through Christ has dealt and still deals with him. This he should do freely, having regard for nothing but divine approval. He ought to think: . . . . “I will therefore give myself as a Christ to my neighbor, just as Christ offered himself to me.”[i]. . .Just as our neighbor is in need and lacks that in which we abound, so we were in need before God and lacked his mercy. Hence, as our heavenly Father has in Christ freely come to our aid, we also ought freely to help our neighbor through our body and its works, and each one should become as it were a Christ to the other that we may be Christs to one another and Christ may be the same in all, that is, that we may be truly Christians. . . .We conclude, therefore, that a Christian lives not in himself, but in Christ and in his neighbor. Otherwise he is not a Christian. .He lives in Christ through faith, in his neighbor through love. By faith he is caught up beyond himself into God. By love he descends beneath himself into his neighbor. Yet he always remains in God and in his love.”[i]
Martin Luther, Freedom of the Christian, LW 31: 366-67, 371.
Well, we’ve seen that put into practice the last fortnight in Texas, haven’t we? One thing that struck me in reading an article by a British woman who got caught in Houston was how amazed she was by such things as this…
The hotel manager, a Syrian Christian, said we stood only a 50/50 chance of getting to the airport as most of the roads had been closed during the night due to flooding. He told me I must trust God’s will. The freedom to mention God and pray without being mocked was comforting.
From Karen Harradine: Fear, chaos and the kindness of strangers in the eye of Hurricane Harvey
How remarkable it seemed to this flyover American to be amazed at this. It just the way we do business, especially when things go wrong. It is perhaps why the US is what it is.
Truly did Dame Julian say,
“all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.”
All Along the Watchtower 
An uplifting piece, NEO. Happy Labor Day to you and yours.
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Thanks Nicholas,
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Poor good brother Luther, he had to find out about his religion the hard way.
The luxury, lewdness, and impiety that shocked him in the first Italian towns he had entered, and which had attended him in every step of his journey since crossing the Alps, were all repeated in Rome on a scale of seven-fold magnitude. His practice of saying mass at all the more favoured churches brought him into daily contact with the priests; he saw them behind the scenes; he heard their talk, and he could not conceal from himself – though the discovery unspeakably shocked and pained him – that these men were simply playing a part, and that in private they held in contempt and treated with mockery the very rites which in public they celebrated with so great a show of devotion. If he was shocked at their profane levity, they on their part were no less astonished at his solemn credulity, and jeered him as a dull German.
One day he chanced to find himself at table with some prelates. Taking the German to be a man of the same easy faith with themselves, they lifted the veil a little too freely. They openly expressed their disbelief in the mysteries of their Church, and shamelessly boasted of their cleverness in deceiving and befooling the people. Instead of the words, “Hoc est meum corpus” – This is my body etc. – the words at the utterance of which the bread is changed, as the Church of Rome teaches, into the flesh and blood of Christ – these prelates, as they themselves told him, were accustomed to say, “Panis es, et panis manebis,” etc. – Bread thou art, and bread thou wilt remain – and then, said they, we elevate the Host, and the people bow down and worship.
Has anything changed with the Church at Rome?
Yes
Its gotten even worster.
I hope they execute Cardinal Pell.
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Hey Bosco,
“It got worse!” LOL!!!! I can’t help it Bosco, sometimes some of the things you say just really gets me tickled. That is okay, though I may not agree with it, it does give me a chuckle in a good way.
On a serious note to maybe help you understand something regarding Cardinal Pell. I understand the way you feel, and you have every single right to feel that way. It is very hard to make sense of how anyone could hurt a child. But Bosco, I am one of those children from the age of 9 to 14.
It was one of the most horrible times of my life. At the age of 9 everything about my childhood was over. Yet one is still a child who has been forced into adulthood way too young. So you learn how to survive, the fear, the memories and the flashbacks which hit you at any given moment for the rest of your life.
The most horrible thing about it is, as a child it becomes your secret, and it is not. That is one thing people who prey on children depend on.
Preying on children in any form or fashion is a disgusting evil act.
Bosco, never did I wish or hope that he would die. I really do not know why? About 30 years after it had happened one day I was able to offer a prayer for his soul. For his repentance, and I wanted him to tell me, “He was sorry.”
One day on a coincidence we met. He did indeed tell me he was sorry. He also told me he had asked God for forgiveness.
The only choice I had at that moment was to forgive him too. I did.
Now that is not to stay I do not still live with the memory of it. It is not to say a flashback will not hit me at the oddest of moments. When they do, peace also comes with it.
I am not writing this because Cardinal Pell is a Catholic. In fact it has nothing to do with being a Catholic.
I am writing it because if we can just pray for those who injure and hurt us so deeply, there is always hope, for that soul. God wants that soul.
I still see this man. When I do, I can actually smile at him and say hello. He is very old now.
He was evil and what he did to me, is inexcusable on our terms. I do not know how many others he did it to.
I know this, God can change the most evil of hearts. If I had not of believed that, I probably would not of survived it.
Just thought I would share with you. God Bless, SR
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Good sister SR, you did the godly thing by forgiving the man. I assume he was a clergy or priest of some sort. Its so hard to forgive that kind of person. But Jesus asked us to forgive.
I have reasons to forgive adults when I was growing up, but not for physical abuse. Teachers being mean and stuff. But where I grew up, us kids were the wild ones. We would make them sorry. We would have been all over them if they tried sex abuse. We lived for harassing adults ,that weren’t our parents of course.
How will Jesus forgive us if we don’t forgive others? My knee jerk reaction to cardinal Pell was just that. I know they don’t execute for child abuse. The number 3 man in the Vatican is up on sex abuse charges. Its admitted that there is a gay cabal in the Vatican. Its not 2 or 3….its most of them. Ive been told that the CC is a hospital for sinners. Dupes and fools. How come the clergy stay perverted and never change.? Hospitals make you well, not let you stay sick.
jesus is at your door and he will give you rest. Great to hear from you good sister.
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“That weren’t our parents of course.” LOL!!! So there was some common sense in their somewhere during those wonderful youth days! 🙂
No Bosco, it was not a priest nor clergy of any kind. It was a family member. That is a point I would like to make.
People who prey on children are your next door neighbor, the person who shares an office with you, your grocery clerk, a teacher, a principle, the person who reads your electric meter, a father, a mother, a brother, a sister, a priest, a pastor, and a Sunday School teacher, etc…. It is the best kept secret in the world Bosco, until one gets caught.
There are many, many out there who do not only wear the collar of a priest, not excusing them in any form or fashion. Some are upstanding in their community. It is just that those are not made as public as when someone does in it a Church. Mainly, my Church. I am thankful for those who do it, that they are exposed!
They need to be and they need to go to jail.
Thank you for calling me a “good sister in Christ.” I do not know if “good” would be the right word though, as I do not know if I forgave him for my soul or his, or both? I do not know if I will ever have the answer to that one? I do not know if it even matters or not? I just thank God I was able to do it.
Anyways, I will take you as my “good brother in Christ,” even though you have “knee jerk reactions.” One who would not understand that reaction over something such as this, needs to rethink things, don’t ya think??? I have had a few myself and will probably have many more. 🙂 God Bless and again, thank you. SR
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To my Protestant brothers and sisters here, a question what is the Augustine document that Luther read that really shapes his theology of justification? I want to read it, I’ve heard it before, but Augustine has so many writings, I’ve forgotten.
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Me too, Philip, I’ve heard of it, maybe even read it, but I’ve also forgotten. The cheap and easy answer is according to Wikipedia, for what that’s worth,
“Luther explained justification this way in his Smalcald Articles:
The first and chief article is this: Jesus Christ, our God and Lord, died for our sins and was raised again for our justification (Romans 3:24-25). He alone is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world (John 1:29), and God has laid on Him the iniquity of us all (Isaiah 53:6). All have sinned and are justified freely, without their own works and merits, by His grace, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, in His blood (Romans 3:23-25). This is necessary to believe. This cannot be otherwise acquired or grasped by any work, law, or merit. Therefore, it is clear and certain that this faith alone justifies us…Nothing of this article can be yielded or surrendered, even though heaven and earth and everything else falls (Mark 13:31).”
I suspect a lot of it comes directly from Romans, for whatever that is worth. Maybe somebody else has a better answer, it shouldn’t be too hard. 🙂
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Yes – to understand Luther’s view of salvation and justification, we have to see it as a matrix of verses. of course, we need to make a distinction between his understanding of faith/belief and the understanding informed by Paul’s Second Temple context. Much of the debate gets bogged down in the view of faith as belief in a proposition (for more, see the tripartite definition of knowledge in epistemology). But pistis is better translated by a constellation of phrases, with loyalty/allegiance at the core: “believing loyalty”, “committed allegiance”, “trusting allegiance”, etc. Pistis often means “faithfulness”.
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Indeed. Luther was hardly a systematic thinker anyway, and his views, well he never did all that much to systemize them, a lot of that was done by Melancthon, especially for use in the controversies with the radical reformers.
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Yes, I suspect Luther relied a great deal on his spiritual intuition, whereas Calvin seems to have been more of a plodder. We also have to accept the limitations of their age, which shows how remarkable their achievements really were.
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Not wrong, in my estimation. Luther was anything but systematic, and part of Melancthon was doing was refuting Calvin who was, to an extent, but even more Zwingli.
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