An officer stands next to a glass case at the annual Nazi rally in Nuremberg. The year is 1923.
A German family, consisting of a father and a teenage boy and girl, stops by and looks into the glass case. The boy reads out the title on the exhibited antique book: “On the Jews and Their Lies, Martin Luther.”
“Is this the same Martin Luther, the Protestant reformer?” the girl asks her father.
“The very same,” the father responds. “What a great man!”
The year is… well, the same year you are reading this book. You are googling pictures from the holocaust. Among the horrifying pictures, some look like a visualization of these words in the ‘On the Jews and Their Lies’ article.
‘to set fire to their synagogues or schools’
‘their houses also be razed and destroyed’
Back to the year 1543, when Luther finishes the article. His neglected consciousness dried out over the years, his hands no longer show any resistance.
The pen signs Martin Luther. The friction between the pen and the paper makes a violent, high-pitch noise. The noise amplifies each time Luther’s eyes fall on these words in the letter: set fire, razed, and destroyed.
The devil makes creepy laughter, similar to what he did when the Pope was signing Luther’s excommunication letter. Nevertheless, that does not stop Luther as it did not stop the Pope.
His hand has difficulty finding the ink jar when he tries to put the pen back in. He faints and the jar falls over. The ink is surprisingly red, as red as blood. It spreads over the paper, covering the signature.
This was The Reformer, the story of Martin Luther.
The End.
His folded outfit sits on his empty chair. Luther is gone, but his writings last forever.
Sitting around the big table in the living room, Katharina teaches some little girls how to read. Her eyes are all red; she has not a tear left to shed. One of the girls, who is much younger than the others, is reading out loud from worn-out papers. Katharina has saved the papers through the decades. The first time she read them was 25 years ago when she was still a virgin nun in the Monastery of Marienthron—yet to be rescued by Luther.
“There must also be love, and through love, we must do to one another—”
“unto one another,” Katharina corrects the little girl.
“unto one another as God has done unto us through faith. For without love, faith is nothing.”
These are excerpts from Luther’s Invocavit Sermons. These were the words that reintroduced Katharina to the loving side of religion and opened her heart and filled it with the long-lost, yet familiar feeling of romance. Since that day, many things have changed, the most notable would be her beloved husband, the great reformer who spoke these very words. To Katharina, however, these are the words that truly represent Luther, and these are the messages that she will spread to many generations to come.
“Good,” Katharina says. “Sera, your turn.”
“Dear friends,” Sera continues, “the kingdom of God, and we are that kingdom, consists not in speech or in words, but in deeds, in works and exercises. God does not want hearers and repeaters of words, but doers and followers who exercise themselves in the faith that worketh by love. For a faith without love is not enough.”
This also was The Reformer, the story of Martin Luther. You take your pick.
The End.