Martin Luther's Advent Sermon

Michael Streich, July 7, 2011

Martin Luther’s sermon for the First Sunday in Advent was part of his Church Postil and completed in 1521. Referring to the term apostil, the writings reflect back on the Scriptures, notably the New Testament; the First Advent sermon is taken from Matthew 21: 1-9. While “advent” refers to a “coming” or an “important arrival,” specifically Christmas and the celebration of Jesus’ birth, Luther elects to focus on the already-born Christ who comes as a king: “He sits not upon a proud steed, an animal of war, nor does he come in great pomp and power.”

 

Luther Begins with Matters of Faith

 

Luther’s ability to translate and interpret the New Testament humanly was a singular gift and most well associated with his vernacular Bible. His sermons reflect the same abilities. According to Professor Jaroslav Pelikan, “…he applied himself …to reconstructing the history of the Jesus of the Gospels and making him live for his hearers.” Pelikan identifies Luther’s Christ as “Jesus as Mirror of the Beautiful.”

 

Luther personalizes faith in Christ as the Savior. In doing so, he distinguishes between the faith of knowledge and the faith of personal appropriation. The king on the donkey entering Jerusalem is the perfect example of being meek and lowly. Luther argues that to be “lowly,” according to the meaning of Scripture, is to be godly and righteous.

 

According to Luther, the “…Gospel is a sermon from Christ…calling for faith in him.” Further, “This Gospel encourages and demands faith…” A key element of Reformation belief was that man is saved through God’s grace through faith in Christ.

 

Luther begins by reminding his listeners that true faith comes through the Gospel and is not something inherent in man. The man of faith sits with Jesus at the table in the full imitation of Christ, even as the New Testament states: “My yoke is easy and my burden is light” (Matthew 11:30).

 

Luther’s Definition of a Christian

 

Followers of Christ must recognize his love and “magnify his grace.” Christians are only holy through Christ, which refers back to faith. All good works done in Christ’s name are meaningless unless they begin with Christ and flow out of his grace as manifested in the lives of his followers.

 

Luther also refers back to the erroneous notion that faith can be understood by knowledge: “everything that concerns faith is against reason and nature…” It is important to recall that Luther departed from the traditional, scholastically approved allegorical interpretations that are associated with medieval Catholicism and found in some of his own early Bible commentaries written prior to 1517.

 

Who was the King that “Cometh?”

 

Luther references Old Testament prophecies to demonstrate that Christ came not as an earthly king, but as God’s son, brining certainty to life. To Christ’s followers, no power on earth or in the heavens could separate them from his love.

 

According to Luther, the king sought out his own. He was not picked by the crowd; there was no democratic election. Rather, “You do not find him, he finds you.” Even as faith was a singular gift from God, so also was the love that separated man from evil. In many ways, Luther used this to give his listeners an everyday lesson in the applicability of the Gospel: “Where there is sin there is no clear conscience.”

 

The king, Luther argues, was sent by God “out of pure grace.” It is the king who personifies the faith that brings man to God: “Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith…” (Hebrews 12:2). It should be recalled that one of the Reformation pillars of belief was sola fide, only by faith are those separated from God’s love made just.

 

Luther interprets “justice” as the mercy of God or godliness. In this, he differentiates between the severe view of a punitive judge sitting on a heavenly throne, a depiction Luther had lived with before he discovered the Pauline message in Romans, a message that, according to Luther, opened for him the gates of paradise.

 

Blessed in He who Comes in the Name of the Lord

 

The text Luther used ends with the people acclaiming Jesus as “Our Savior, the Son of David…” This was Luther’s “spiritual interpretation” in the First Advent sermon. Luther writes, “Christ should be preached and made known in all the world, as the victorious and invincible King against sin, death, and the power of the devil…” In contemporary homiletical usage, this is the lesson, the challenge, the moral to be gleaned from the Gospel. According to Luther, this was the message of redemption.

 

The king is blessed because he fulfills God’s promise of redemption. Everything Luther wrote subsequent to his final paragraphs builds the case for the reality of redemption, tied to a faith that originates also with God. Luther’s final challenge is to join in song (Matthew 21:9), “…that God may put away all human doctrine and let Christ alone be our king, who governs by his Gospel…”

 

The Advent of the Reformation focused not on a Bethlehem manger, but on a heavenly king whose example of meekness and love would confound man’s reason and fallen nature. It can be argued that for Luther, this “important arrival” prefigured the Adventist interpretation associated with millennial hopes. Luther’s sermon, however, is a simple message of faith and grace through Christ.

 

Sources:

 

Jaroslav Pelikan, Jesus Through The Centuries: His Place in the History of Culture (Yale University Press, 1985)

Sermons of Martin Luther, Volume 1, edited by John Nicholas Lenker (Baker Book House, 1988)

The New Testament In The Language Of Today, William Beck (Concordia Publishing House, 1963)

The copyright of this article is owned bt Michael Streich. Any reprints required written permission by Michael Streich.