TITLE: “On the Death of a Beggar”

In the name of the Father and of the † Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Martin Luther’s last words upon his deathbed in 1546 were a combination of German and Latin: “Wir sind alle bettler. Hoc est verum.” We are all beggars. This is true. That was Dr. Luther’s assessment of himself before the Almighty God. We are all beggars, only receiving what good gifts we may receive from the hand of God who gives us His own flesh and blood to eat and drink. We are all beggars.

It had taken Dr. Luther many years to come to that point in his life. He began his life intending to become a lawyer, and was plagued and hounded by the Law until such time that he was compelled to become a monk, and work his way out of the fix the Law had placed him in before God. But as Luther would later confess in one of his many hymns,

My own good works all came to naught, No grace or merit gaining;

Free will against God’s judgment fought, dead to all good remaining.

My fears increased till sheer despair Left only death to be my share;

The pangs of hell I suffered. (LW 353:3)

That was where the Law of God drove him, and no amount of prayers, fasting, self deprecation or good works could save him from such a fate. He was a beggar, with nothing to offer God to atone for his sins.

But the saddest part of this story is that the church of Rome did not point Him to Christ and the Sacrament for forgiveness and hope. Luther followed all their rules. He prayed the hours, used his rosary, he even made a pilgrimage to Rome to follow in the footsteps of Saints Peter and Paul. But it left him hollow and empty. Only Christ could fill his soul, and Christ was not there.

But God beheld his wretched state before the world salvation, and sent His only Son to die on a cross so that Luther the beggar would have peace for his troubled soul. He sent a preacher to Luther named St. Paul. Of course, St. Paul used another preacher named Brother Spalatin to send his message, but between Luther’s tortured meditation of God’s Word and his own father confessors ministrations, God gave Luther the Gospel. He gave him Jesus.

This is what Jesus talks about when He says in our Gospel, I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing (John 11:5). You life is so bound to Jesus that you do not have any life apart from him. How long will a branch live if it is not connected to the vine? It can’t. It needs the nutrients which it can only get through the vine.

So it was with Dr. Luther, and so it is with you even today. Your life is bound to Christ’s so tightly that your very life comes from Him. Everything that is good in you is through His blood. Apart from Him you can do nothing. But the good news is that you are not apart from Him. You are in Him and He is in you. He forgives your sins and sets you up in the highest of places, at His eternal banquet table.

Dr. Luther considered himself a beggar who was not worth to sit at the master’s table. And so he was, just as you and I are the same. That realization of the Law, which we might call contrition or repentance, comes as a gift from God, for God cannot work in you all of the great things He has planned until you realize that you are the branch and He is the vine. He works that in you so that He can graft you into His side, and His flesh becomes your flesh, His blood your blood. And when that happens, dear friends, then you have life.

So come, little branches, and receive your life from Jesus Christ, the true vine who makes the Church His own. Remember Dr. Luther and all of the branches who have gone before us, and rejoice in the life which only Christ can give to you, His Church. Believe it for His sake. Amen.