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Several years ago, across the span of a summer, I lived, studied and wrote in Wittenberg, Germany, where Martin Luther sparked the Reformation. Each week, people from around the world would shuffle down the cobblestone streets as they toured the city, including the church where Luther is buried. There each group would gather around his grave and sing, in their own languages, “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God.” I would often sit in those church pews, watching in wonder. As they sang, some dug in their pockets and purses and fished out handkerchiefs and tissues to bury their eyes and noses at the intensity of being there.
During these weeks, a small group of tourists and residents would gather around tables for the German tradition of the Stammtisch, or “regular’s table” meeting, which made space to build community. Most of the time, those gathered would speak in English. In those conversations, connections were made. In those connections, grace showed up.
Early on in my stay, a resident asked me, “Do you trust that God cares for you? Do you know God loves you?” Those around the table grew silent. No one there knew that I was a pastor and a teacher. At that table, as the day gently faded, the questions invited a more profound light to rise, under which comfort, strength and hope could find us.
As with those who gathered around Luther’s grave, tears began to form at the corners of my eyes. “Yes,” I replied. Some leaned in; others folded their arms and leaned out. One person asked, “From where does this trust come? It’s hard to trust anyone these days—and even harder to believe anyone cares about me.” I nodded in agreement. I understood. I watched people’s faces as they nodded their heads in agreement.
The question of God’s care invites us to rest our weariness under the umbrella of a God who is closer to us than we are to ourselves, a God who knows and identifies with our pain and struggle and suffering, a God whose response to the world’s umbrage is a love deeper and wider than we either desire or deserve. The apostle Paul wrote, “It is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me” (Galatians 2:20).
In his discussion of the Lord’s Supper in the Small Catechism, Luther wrote, “Where there is forgiveness of sins, there is life and salvation.” Both this life and salvation are sheer gift, given by a God who is for us. In Jesus Christ, whose life is poured out on a cross and who is raised from death for our sakes, God redraws the contours of God’s relationship with us—and our relationships with one another. There is not one thing that holds God’s love back from us. No matter who we are or what we face, God draws near to us. God cares for us.
Still, in the face of all the things that crowd in around us, it can be difficult to lean into the grace that surrounds us. Our weariness sometimes casts shadows against a promise whose presence changes absolutely everything for us and the world God so loves.
Even though the gift of grace sets us loose and free in Christ, the loss of what was once all we knew can sometimes prevent us from recognizing that the goodness of God’s amazing grace dwells with us, and that God is with us, come what may. Grief is not the absence of grace. Rather, hidden “beneath the sign of the opposite” (as Luther called it in the Heidelberg Disputation), grief whispers that the grace we long for is already present and at work among us.
The cross is more than Jesus’ death for us. The cross includes Jesus’ resurrection for us as well.
“The cross alone is our theology,” Luther said in his first lecture series on the Psalms. The cross is more than Jesus’ death for us. The cross includes Jesus’ resurrection for us as well.
Remember the story of the resurrection in which Jesus appears to Mary, who mistakes him as the gardener (John 20:11-18). Grief shields her eyes from recognizing who stands in front of her. The resistance in her misidentifying him is something with which we can identify. Grief can so confound us that even when Jesus comes into our midst, we cannot recognize the grace and love of God in Christ.
“I believe that I cannot by my own reason of strength believe in Jesus Christ, my Lord, or come to him,” Luther wrote in the Small Catechism. This is not the end, though. It’s a new beginning, one that invites us to grieve what has been but is no more. We do this wearily, but not out of fear.
There’s a medieval sensibility in the fear of God that some have—and in the apathy toward God that others have. Still, for Luther, what revealed itself on the other side of fear was trust in the promises of a God whose care changed absolutely everything for us all.
