Wednesday after Laetare, March 17, 1518 This and the following sermon, preached in the midst of the uproar of the indulgence controversy, are warm, simple, practical, positive expositions of the central content of faith, with no reference, except an announcement appended to the second, to the controversy or Luther's part in it. The first was preached on the day the Wittenberg students publicly burned some eight hundred copies of Tetzel's Frankfurt theses which had been prepared by Wimpina (cf. Boehmer, op. cit., p. 204). These are also the days when Luther was completing his lectures on Hebrews. Neither of these sermons is a direct transcript. They were translated into Latin by his students and were not published until 1702, when they appeared, translated into German, in the Halle edition of the collected works.
German text; WA 1, 267–273, compared with MA3 1, 113–124.
You well know, dear friends of Christ, that I do not understand much about preaching and therefore I shall preach a foolish sermon; for I am a fool and I thank God for it.1 Therefore I must also have foolish pupils; anybody who doesn't want to be a fool can close his ears. This Gospel compels me to take this attitude; for you have heard in this Gospel that Christ is dealing only with the blind. And Christ also concludes that all who see are blind and all the wise and prudent are fools. These are his words. If I were to say it, I would be reviled as a new prophet. But Christ will not lie. Now listen to what St. Augustine says in his exposition of this Gospel: All that Christ did is both works and words; works, because they happened and were done by him; words, because they signify and teach something.2 Now this is an event, because the blind man received his sight. But it is also a word, for it signifies every man born of Adam.
For we are all blind and our light and our illumination comes solely from Christ, our good and faithful To distinguish these from one another, works and words, requires an enlightened mind; for how many there were who saw this work and yet did not see its significance. They looked upon it as a work, but the word, the significance, remained hidden from them. But if they had recognized it, they undoubtedly would have said, "Oh, I am far more blind than he is." And that's the right understanding of it; and so it is to this clay, that the number of them is great even among those who shine before the world in their great power, culture, wisdom, piety, holiness, chastity, purity, and so on. But it is certain that always it has been so ordained that with a powerful man there is found an outcast, with the wise a fool, with the pious an impious, with the holy an unholy, with the healthy a sick man, with the handsome an ugly man, and so on.
Just look at the human race and you will find rich and poor, beauty and ugliness, gaiety and dreariness, joy and sorrow, culture and stupidity, wisdom and foolishness, piety and wickedness, and whatever else you may name, crooked and straight, high and low, and so on.
And it is not without cause that God in his unspeakable wisdom should so desire to cast down the rule of the proud and the wise. Therefore let each one take heed, whether he be blessed with many or few of these gifts, that he by no means regard himself, but rather his neighbor, who does not possess the gift.
Then he will say, "Ah, dear God, I am learned, or devout, and so on; but in the sight of God I am ignorant and full of sin, like this my brother"; then that person will find out what is his real condition. For God has established a fixed rule: everything that is high and praised of men is disregarded and abominable in the sight of God. Isaiah writes: God does not judge by the sight of his eyes or the hearing of his ears, but rather he will judge righteously [cf. Isa. 11:3–4]. It is as if he wanted to say: A man, because he is a man, judges no further than he sees or hears. So if he sees a rich man, a powerful man, a handsome man, a devout man, etc., that's what he calls him, just as he sees him. If he hears something amusing, sweet, lovely, that's what he calls it. But God turns all this upside down. Everything we call beautiful, jolly, rich, etc., he calls poor, sick, weak, impotent.
So let every man, if he has received a blessing or gift from God, learn to divest himself of it, shun it, give it up, in order that he may not look to himself, but rather note how his neighbor looks and how his neighbor is reflected in himself. Then he will surely say, "Ah, there God has hung a mirror before my eyes, and a book in which I am to learn to know myself. Ah, God, now I see clearly that what my brother
- 20 is outwardly, I am inwardly." Thus he learns to know himself and not to exalt himself. So it is ordained and nobody can evade it. For we see in all the words and works of Christ nothing but pure humility.
That's what happened also in this Gospel. The blind man was a sign of the blindness that lay hidden in our hearts. And it follows from rigs that what Augustine said is true, that the works of Christ are words and the words are works. Therefore at the end of this Gospel, when the aloof and spiritual Jews said, "Are we also blind?" our Lord concludes, "If you were blind, you would have no guilt; but now that you say,
'We see,' your guilt remains" [John 9:40–41]. Look, what an upside-down judgment that is for Christ to make! Therefore one must try to understand all the gifts that a man can have. Those whom we think are learned are ignorant in the sight of God. And anybody who does not know this will have a bad time of it in the judgment of God.
This is what Paul says to the Ephesians [Phil. 2:5–8]: Oh, dear brethren, your attitude should be like that of Christ, who did not exalt himself in the form of God, even though he could be equal with the Father, but emptied himself and utterly lowered himself, and took on the form of a servant, and was found in every degree and way a man and like a man, like him even in that he died for the sake of obedience to his Father.3 Note, dear friends of Christ, what a choice, profound saying that is. We should all be equal.
For he speaks, not as a mere man, but as one in whom is the form of God, the very presence of power, honor, righteousness, wisdom, piety, and purity, who never did evil, who is full of every virtue even in his humanity, who desired to be equal with us, not with God, not like Lucifer who desired to snatch the image of God, nor like the proud, who so look down on their neighbors that they can scarcely recognize them as grasshoppers. This Christ did not do: he put off the form of God and was found in the form of man, in sinful flesh, though he never sinned; nor could he ever sin. So he became a fool, the object of mockery, reproach, and derision by all the people; he bore our misfortune, and in him were found all the titles of our poverty. And this he did in order that we might freely follow him.
This, then, is the meaning: He who finds in himself the form of God, that is, has title to the gifts we spoke of above, let him not exalt himself but rather abase himself and sincerely believe that he is the lowest in all the world. And this must happen, if he is ever to get to heaven, whether it happen voluntarily or against his will. Thus his works are words. And therefore he [i.e., Augustine] is right when he says, "He who does not see the mystery of God is blind. Therefore this man is not merely blind, but is rather a figure of the blindness which is within the soul." This means that he who does not see and know God's hidden holiness is blind. And therefore this man in the Gospel is only a figure of that other blindness which is in the soul.
But then, the reason why all this is said and what causes it, says Augustine, is the transgression of Adam, to whom the devil said, "Your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil" [Gen. 3:5]. Oh, you villain, scoundrel, and betrayer! You see what he is doing; he is trying to lead them to the form of God, so he says, "Your eyes will be opened," that is, they will become blind. Before their eyes were dosed, but after the Fall they were opened.
The consequence of this, as Origen, the wise and acute schoolmaster teaches,4 is that man has two kinds of eyes, his own eyes and God's eyes. But the fact is that both kinds of eyes, our inward eyes and outward eyes, are God's. Indeed, all our members and everything that is in us are instruments of God and nothing is ours if they are ruled by God. But they are ours when God forsakes us. This means that, as Christ says, we must pluck out the eye that scandalizes and offends us and throw it away [Matt. 5:29].
That's why it is that we would rather see what is fine and pretty and well formed rather than what is gold or silver, rather a young Jill or a young Jack than an old woman or an old Jack. And this is the mousetrap that dupes our minds, as is written of Adam in the book of Genesis. So our eyes have been opened, which really means that we have become totally blind, so that, as was said a moment ago, we consider the sham to be good and what is poor and misshapen to be evil. This the devil taught us, and it is his eyes that do it.
But Christ came to teach these eyes to see and to take away the blindness, in order that we should not make this distinction between young and old, beautifill and ugly, and so on. Rather all are equal, wise man or simpleton, sage or fool, man or woman; it is enough that he is a man with our flesh and blood, a body common to all. For such perception one must have a fine, acute, and well-trained mind.
Christ pays no attention to distinctions we make, for he bestows children and honor upon an old unattractive woman just as readily as upon a beautiful woman, which is clearly illustrated in Rachel and Leah [Gen. 29:21–30:24]. It makes no difference to him wherein he allows his work to appear. Therefore
- 21 God says, "I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the cleverness of the clever I will thwart" [I Cor.
1:19; Isa. 29:14]. Isaiah says, "I will choose what they mock at and despise."5 Also Paul says, "Thus is the call of God, that it receives the sick and the fools, in order that he may confound and shame the wise" [I So because Christ does this and considers that evil which we consider good and vice versa, he takes away that which we delight in and gives everything that vexes us. This Christ practiced and proved; for God became man, as was said above. And in his last days we find what we consider the worst of all evils: we find him dying a shameful death. And when we view his whole life, we do not find that he undertook anything that the world considered good. Once he rode into Jerusalem with great honor, but his joy was embittered with sorrow. Now the most precious thing God has is death and dying; and Christ accepted it in love, joyfully and voluntarily, out of obedience to his Father. We flee it and consider life more precious than death. He embraced it as a thing of sweetness and gave his life unto death, and just because he is to ascend to the throne of glory and reign eternally with the Father, he must (and he does it willingly) die on the cross; he lets go of life and accepts death.
Now, if Christ did this, then fie on everyone who would try to get to heaven without following his example. And this is the true holy relic,6 of which the prophet says, "In reliquiis tuis praeparabis vultum eorum."7 "In thy relic," or in try testament, which consists in cross and suffering, "wilt thou prepare their face." This is so holy and so sublime that it cannot be put into any monstrance, in any silver or gold. It is not the wood, stone, or vesture which he touched, but rather the suffering, the cross, which he sends to his devout children. All the goldsmiths together cannot make a vessel to enclose this relic. It requires a spiritual, living, eternal monstrance. For this sacred relic is a living thing like the soul of man. Therefore, it is the inward relic we must seek, not the outward. Nevertheless, we ought to encase the bones of saints in silver; this is good and proper. Many things, like images and the like, may be permitted for the sake of the sucklings which must be forbidden to others.8 Therefore those who are farther along should pay little regard to these things and lift their eyes higher; for Christ will bring to their very door something better than they can find anywhere in the world. For he will send them reverses, tribulation, anxiety, care, grief, poverty, ill will, and so on. He will send you sickness, and at the end of your life, in the throes of death, the devil will assault you unceasingly and terrify you so cruelly that you will well nigh despair. Indeed, he will press you to the point where he will snap his fingers at you and jeer: Yes, good pal, do what you will, you are mine anyhow. You have to listen with Christ to this mockery: "If he is the son of God, let him come down from the cross" [Matt. 27:40]. He will read you a lecture all right, and with spite tool Then let each one of us pay heed to what is pleasing to God in order that we may joyfully say: Oh, my dear God, I firmly believe that thou art sending this to me. Welcome, beloved relic. I give thanks to thee, my faithful
God, that thou dost consider me worthy of what was most precious in thy life. Ah, my beloved, faithful Christ, help me and I bravely accept it, and freely imitate thee in the surrender of my will. Then all the power of the devil will forthwith fall to the ground.
This is the most precious relic of all, quod obviis ulnis et osculis debemus accipere,9 which we ought to accept lovingly and gratefully. For this relic God himself hallowed and blessed with his most precious will, and with the approval of his Father. But now—God save the mark!—we see our bishops and leaders fleeing from this relic. If you take something away from them or speak too plainly to them, they would rather tear the whole place down than give in. So far has this childish veneration and holiness gone that they have started this game of excommunication, and the letters are flying about like bats, all because of a trifling thing. Their defense of this is: It is proper that we should guard and preserve the patrimony and legacy of Christ and St. Peter; we are doing it because it is right. O you poor Christ, O you wretched
Peter! If you have no inheritance but wood and stone and silver and gold, you are of all the most needy.
Ah, but the good God wants what Isaiah speaks of in the last and also the first chapter [Isa. 66:1–2 and 1:10–17]. These things are all the works of his hands, which he has made. Therefore he does not need our goods, say David and Job [Ps. 34:16–21; 40:8–11; 50:8–15; 51:18–19; Job 22:23–27; 5:17–19; II Sam.
7:6–11; 18–29]. But when God sends it to us, we run away and flee from it. He wants to give it to us, but we don't want it. Nor are all of us worthy of it. In fact, it is the peculiar mark of faithful children of God.
He bestows it often, but we do not know what to do with it. And so it comes about that we think we see clearly and yet are totally blind, so that we call evil what Christ calls good.