By now, most of us have heard the media rollout of the 500^th anniversary of the Reformation. In particular, Martin Luther nailed a document of his 95 theses to the door of the cathedral of Wittenberg on October 31, 1517.

One of the highlights of my holiday was visiting the Morgan Library Museum in New York City. They are featuring an exhibit on Martin Luther until January 22, 2017. It is a small exhibit but worth seeing if you are near NYC.

To prepare for our visit, we listened again to the two-hour PBS Documentary on Martin Luther, narrated by Liam Neeson and starring Timothy West as Martin Luther. This helped us put the items on exhibit into perspective. After seeing the exhibition we listened to the documentary again to clarify details we had missed the first time.

The main elements of the story are well-known: the background of harsh discipline by Martin Luther’s parents; the effect of the plague on the society during his youth; his encounter with God in a thunderstorm leading to his becoming a monk; his insatiable quest for justification from God; and his fierce opposition to abuses of indulgences that triggered the 95 theses he put up for discussion. What was not as well known to us was the critical role played by Luther’s neighbor, friend and artist, Lucas Cranach the Elder. The exhibit displayed fascinating sculptures and paintings by Cranach that had a significant impact on portraying the ideas and concepts advocated by Luther. The PBS documentary had relatively little to say about this artist. The exhibit also featured many original and period artifacts that brought that era to life.

The account of Martin Luther’s stand at the Diet of Worms is also well known and often publicized. What was of more interest here was the development of ideas by Luther as he progressed in his ideology. He wrote the Augsburg Confession, still dominant in the Lutheran church, and translated the Bible into German from the Hebrew and Greek. He got married and had six children. He died of a massive heart attack at age 62. During that time he also seemed to advocate paradoxical views. On one hand, he wrote strongly against using violence to promote the gospel. On the other, he urged in harsh terms that the civil leaders should use violent means to quench the peasant rebellion. On one hand, he strongly defended the rights of Jews but on the other, he wrote some troubling anti-Semitic articles.

Luther was a dynamo, driven to work excessively and producing many hymns and orders of worship in addition to all his books and his teachings. Without a doubt, he ignited a movement that went far beyond what he intended and imagined. The past 500 years are worth contemplating in the light of his remarkable life. Because of him and the remarkable role of Frederick the Wise, the prince of Saxony, that region of Germany played the starring role in the beginning of the Reformation.