On October 31st, we shall be celebrating The Reformation, when Martin Luther nailed the 95 Thesis to the Castle Church door in Wittenberg, Germany. The Reformation gets its name from Ad Fontes, “Back to the Sources,” which in art was to go back to Romanesque and Greek style, but in religion it produced the Devotio Moderna Movement and ultimately The Reformation that lead to going back to The Scriptures, and Christianity as found in the New Testament.
What is remarkable is that the towns from which the sweeping changing of the world would come, were obscure, and not considered prized by any contemporaries of the time. Nazareth, from which Jesus our Lord gets the namesake to differentiate him from others as in Jesus of Nazareth, had such a bad reputation that the disciple Philip said, “Nazareth? Can anything good come from Nazareth.” (John 1:46). And yet when Christ died upon the cross for all our sins, it was written by Pontius Pilate, “Iesus Nazarenus Rex Iudaeorum (Abbreviated INRI on Crosses), Jesus Christ of Nazerath, King of the Jews.” (John 19:19).
Wittenberg was also a backwater town in Luther’s time, not known for anything, that it would become the printing titan and from which the Reformation would begin as Luther nailed his rebukes of indulgences on the Castle Church door known as 95 Thesis is a testament to that “God’s Ways are not man’s ways” (Isaiah 55:8-9), for more people would have expected it to come from one of established presses in Prague, or Antwerp, than the small village town.
The improbabilities of Nazareth and Wittenberg being the centers from which the Redeemer and Reformer that would change the world would come is sure sign of God at work. Man expects the great message, the mighty messiah to come from great cities like Jerusalem, and Munich. That it is from great kingdom places that God will raise up someone. In the Old Testament this was true, Moses was taken from the seat of power in the great empire of Egypt, and David was raised up in the Saulian Era of Canaan when Israel would enter a golden age of kings. And yet this is not when God walked among us, and became flesh, that was in a time of persecution, when pagans known as the Romans ruled the world. And later it was when Roman Church equally evil in its stranglehold on the gospel was ruling that Martin Luther was raised to challenge it. And it was not from great cities that the Christ and Chosen Leader to start the Reformation came. Nazareth and Wittenberg are reminders to us not to scoff at the humble origins of where God will come and raise up someone. You could be one of those! In a a small town of no notoriety, as the people look for some great scholar or preacher to come from a major city, and instead Christ is calling you from some common town to speak, to be a voice for the Lord, crying in this Digital wilderness.
Do not let the obscurity of the place in which you live be a sign that the Spirit of God will not partner with you to accomplish something great for the Kingdom. For our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ is known as the Nazarene, and Martin Luther spent much of his life in Wittenberg, and from there fostered a reformation that got us back to a “.. a pure and simple devotion to Christ.” (2 Corinthians 11:3). We have to remember that God does not measure the same way we do, by the greatness of buildings, for remember what Jesus our Lord and God said of Temple, “you see these great buildings, not one stone will remain standing.” (Mark 13:2). Indeed a time is coming with al these great cities and structures will be consumed by fire (2 Peter 3:10), and what will matter is not how grand a place is, but whither people trusted in Jesus Christ (John 3:16-18). Amen.
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