CYBERCOLUMN: ‘Luther’: Big movie, small crowds_younger_10603

Posted 10/6/03

CYBERCOLUMN:
'Luther': Big movie, small crowds

By Brett Younger

Martin Luther is arguably the most important historical figure of the last thousand years. “Luther” isn’t the best movie of the last thousand years, but it is a good movie about a great story.

The film opens with a law student caught in a spectacular lightning storm. Luther is so terrified that he prays to St. Anne, promising he will become a monk if she keeps him from becoming toast. People have gone to seminary for worse reasons.

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Posted 10/6/03

CYBERCOLUMN:
'Luther': Big movie, small crowds

By Brett Younger

Martin Luther is arguably the most important historical figure of the last thousand years. “Luther” isn’t the best movie of the last thousand years, but it is a good movie about a great story.

The film opens with a law student caught in a spectacular lightning storm. Luther is so terrified that he prays to St. Anne, promising he will become a monk if she keeps him from becoming toast. People have gone to seminary for worse reasons.

Luther works hard for the salvation the church has taught him he has to earn. He’s tortured by guilt even though his mentor assures him, “In two years, I’ve never heard you confess anything remotely interesting.”


Brett Younger

The brilliant monk is sent to Wittenberg to work on a doctorate, teach theology and preach every Sunday, because “We preach best what we need to learn most.” Luther is found by “a God whom I can love, a God who loves me.” He preaches, “To see God in faith is to look upon his friendly heart.”

Luther becomes disillusioned with a church more interested in fund raising than in being Christ. The selling of relics (first century souvenirs) and indulgences (tickets to heaven) becomes the target of Luther’s subversive wit. He points out that many saints left behind more body parts than they started out with and that “18 of the 12 apostles are buried in Spain.” He preaches that the people shouldn’t “obsess over relics and indulgences when Christ is here, in your love for each other and in the word.”

Luther emphasizes personal faith and the Bible in a way that challenges the authority of the Roman Catholic Church. Luther’s nailing of the 95 theses on the Wittenberg church door on All Hallows’ Eve 1517 looks more like what probably happened than how you would expect a movie to portray the event. Luther’s tract is just one of many documents hanging on the community bulletin board. The visionary priest did not envision the Reformation, but the conflict was inevitable.

In 1521, at the Diet of Worms, the church leaders demand that Luther recant. He responds courageously: “Unless I am convinced by Scripture and plain reason—I do not accept the authority of popes and councils, for they have contradicted each other—my conscience is captive to the word of God. I cannot and I will not recant anything, for to go against conscience is neither safe nor right. God help me, here I stand.”

It’s expecting too much to ask a movie to capture the passion, wit and intelligence of Martin Luther in two hours. It’s hard to do justice to it all—the translation of the Bible into German, the encouragement of clergy to marry and the anarchy let loose by Luther’s ideas. The movie is messy like the Reformation.

The film closes with “540 million people worship in churches with roots in the Reformation.” This, of course, includes every church in the Baptist General Convention of Texas. Christians owe a debt to Luther for proclaiming the priesthood of all believers.

You need to see Luther fast, because it’s not going to challenge “The Lord of the Rings” for box office supremacy. Our family went the evening Luther opened and shared the theater with only six others. (Not many are saying, “I cannot do otherwise. Here I sit.”) It’s not often that major figures of the Christian faith are depicted in feature films; so if you see only one movie about a 16th century theologian this year, make it this one.

Brett Younger is pastor of Broadway Baptist Church in Fort Worth


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