Preaching at the Schlosskirche

November 21, 2023 Sarah Hinlicky Wilson

Techincally speaking, “so unbelievably awesome” should not qualify as a theological category. But then, some experiences are category-busters, and this was one of them.

I’ve been visiting Lutherstadt Wittenberg (as it’s officially known) since 1999 or 2000, when I came for the first time to assist my dad in a college-level May term he was teaching. After I started working at the Institute for Ecumenical Research in Strasbourg, my colleague Theodor Dieter and I developed our two-week intensive course in Luther’s theology, which we led in partnership with the LWF Center in Wittenberg. I’ve taught it every year since 2009, to by now hundreds of Lutheran pastors from all over the world: Greenland to Myanmar, Suriname to Senegal, Taiwan to Estonia. Oh yeah, and the US and Canada, too!

Unsurprisingly, the last three years were conducted remotely, so now in 2023 we are back in person for the first time since 2019. And what a delight it has been to return in person—and not only for easy access to German bakeries, cheap Ritter Sport marzipan chocolate, and more potatoes than you can shake a sausage at.

But this year’s visit breaks all previous records in the so unbelievably awesome category, because this year I was invited to give the Sunday sermon at the Schlosskirche! That is, the very church upon whose door Martin Luther nailed the 95 Theses…

Shut Up, Luther: A Poem

June 20, 2023 Sarah Hinlicky Wilson

Shut up, Luther,
Reckless truther!
Stop disturbing public peace and keep your thoughts in line.

Bold reformer?
Crude informer!
Flapping lips like yours unload our priceless pearls on swine….

Lutheran Saints #18: Robert Barnes

July 20, 2021 Sarah Hinlicky Wilson

It was February of 1526 and Robert Barnes was on trial.

This was not where he expected to be. Before the age of twenty he’d joined a house of Augustinian friars and showed such great promise that he was sent first to Louvain on the continent to earn a Doctorate of Divinity and then, on his return to England, was made prior of the Augustinian friary in Cambridge and earned yet another Doctorate of Divinity. Finding in the famous university town other like-minded humanists, Robert gathered around him an intellectually and spiritually reform-minded community that met for lively debate at the White Horse Inn.

In time, they felt they had to go public with their concerns, and Robert was the obvious choice. On Christmas Eve 1525 he delivered a firebrand sermon, skewering the luxurious lifestyle of the high-ranking clergy. In no time at all accusations of heresy were flying, there’d been a student demonstration, and Robert—with a handful of others—found himself dragged to London and imprisoned.

At the end of his three-day trial before Cardinal Wolsey, Robert was forced to read aloud a recantation in front of the huge crowd, the alternative being death at the stake. He had to kneel before the bishop and beg for absolution, which was denied him until he agreed to whatever penance the bishop chose to impose. He agreed and discovered the next day what it was to be.

At an even bigger and more lavish gathering of clergy, a bishop railed from the pulpit against Robert as well as Martin Luther, made the accused men ask again for forgiveness, and then had them carry the firewood for the ceremonial burning of heretical books. Only then were the offenders absolved, at which point the crowd was granted an indulgence for having witnessed the whole affair, and Robert was sent to Fleet Prison for another six months.

When his time was up, Robert was transferred to the Augustinian friary in London for house arrest. But he evidently had not learned his lesson from the whole sorry debacle. Immediately on arrival he got involved in the sale of Tyndale Bibles—translations of the Scriptures into English—and when rumor circulated that this time Robert really was going to be burned for his troubles, he hatched a plan. He left his clothes at the edge of the Thames with a suicide note appended but actually escaped to Antwerp with the help of German merchants…

Lutheran Saints #10: Eivind Berggrav

January 7, 2020 Sarah Hinlicky Wilson

How unlikely that an unbelieving student, who on principle declined to receive the Lord’s Supper for a decade, would go on to become bishop of Oslo and spend three years in solitary confinement as the cost of his public faith!

Eivind was a pastor’s son, and despite a reasonably happy upbringing in a country parish, doubts crept in and took over. The bitter factiousness of church and theology in the Norway of his youth certainly didn’t help. At his lowest point, Eivind even ripped out the page of his confirmation Bible that his mother had inscribed and burned in ceremonially. He turned to journalism, adding to it teaching, and in time, mysteriously, the wounds began to heal. Marriage to his gifted wife Kathrine helped, as did the fellowship of Christian students. Time spent reporting on World War I, on site in Germany, opened up to him the striking fact of soldiers’ faith. But it was only his father’s death in 1918 that brought about the of his confusion and pain. He knew, then, that he also had a call to serve in the ministry of the church, and he accepted it.

Eivind’s gifts for the work were immediate and enormous. He could talk to anyone, and would, whether villagers in rural Norway or prisoners at the Oslo penitentiary. Through à Nathan Söderblom he got involved in the nascent ecumenical movement and made friends across multiple national and confessional borders. He studied religious psychology and even spent time in Switzerland with Carl Jung before heading even farther north to serve as bishop of Hålogaland, the Arctic diocese populated by the Sámi and their reindeer. One of the most popular among his more than forty books was Land of Suspense, an account of his nine years there that honored both the culture and the faith of a people very different from the usual portrait of Norway.

In 1937 Eivind was summoned back south: he was appointed Bishop of Oslo and thereby the Primate of the Church of Norway. It was not an auspicious time…

Lutheran Saints #9: Katharina von Bora

December 21, 2019 Sarah Hinlicky Wilson

Proverbs 31 may as well have been written about Katharina von Bora, the former nun who married Martin Luther and thereby became the most world-changing wife in history. But in her case, to be a wife was not simply to be attached to a famous husband. Wife was truly an office, like the office of preacher or teacher or judge: a public role with vast responsibilities demanding faultless acumen. It is hard to imagine that anyone with less resolve, grit, and personality could have pulled off the role as first lady of the Reformation and personal companion to the energetic and irascible Martin Luther.

Though more is known about Katharina than just about any other woman of her time, that still amounts to precious little. Almost none of her own thoughts are preserved; what we know about her comes to us through other people’s records. Her birthyear of 1499, for instance, was mentioned by Erasmus of all people, and her exact birthdate of January 29 doesn’t show up in any records until 1733.

Her family is known as historically important landed gentry, relatively impoverished by the time Katharina came along. Her mother died early, which may account for why Katharina spent nearly twenty years in convents, starting at the age of six as a boarder in Brehna, then five years later joining two of her aunts at Marienthron in Nimbschen, where she eventually took her vows. There she learned to read, write, and sing and started on Latin—a remarkable education in an era that considered girls’ education to be a luxury at best—as well as the business of running a household economy. No one knows what she thought of convent life except for the sheer fact that, in the end, she left it…

The Reformation and the Renewal

November 29, 2017 Sarah Hinlicky Wilson

So, the dust has settled, and we are now on the far side of the Reformation anniversary. I spent so many years at the Institute for Ecumenical Research preparing for it that I’m still kind of in system shock that it’s all over. What next? Will anyone care about Luther in 2018?

Not being a prophet, I can’t say, though I do hope. But perhaps a look at one of the more interesting aspects of Luther research I’ve been engaged in during the past couple of years will point the way toward a possible future...

There We Walked

October 4, 2017 Sarah Hinlicky Wilson

October 31 of this year marks the five hundredth anniversary of Luther’s posting of the Ninety-Five Theses. It marks a more modest anniversary for me as well: the seventh anniversary of the conclusion of the long walk Andrew and I took in Luther’s footsteps. The idea germinated back in grad school, when one day it dawned on my hiker husband that the great reformer himself had once been a hiker, too. Friars on pilgrimage to Rome were expected to go on foot the whole way (a ferry crossing was apparently the one allowable exception). Luther must’ve been a lot tougher than the portly portraits of his later years suggest...

Explorations in Martin Luther’s Theology—in Chinese

September 20, 2017 Sarah Hinlicky Wilson

This book happened by accident.

In 2014 I was once again teaching an annual course called Studying Luther in Wittenberg. My colleague Theodor Dieter and I have led the November seminar (there’s also a March one) since 2009. It gathers Lutheran pastors from all over the world, about twenty of them, for a fortnight of intensive study in the heartland of the Reformation. We’ve had people from Senegal, Greenland, Myanmar, Colombia, and Poland—places you may not even expect to find Lutherans!...