We have recently moved house and in talking to neighbours we are assured that we are unlikely to have hoards of marauding trick or treaters to come banging on our door tonight.
Halloween is a celebration that has always left me somewhat cold, not because of any fear of sinister forces behind it, but because it wasn't really part of our growing up, which was much more focussed on Guy Fawkes and the much more wholesome, child friendly business of throwing an effigy of a Catholic plotter on a bonfire! Whilst some rail at Halloween being an American import, which of course it largely is, in many ways it is largely just re-importing old Irish Catholic traditions around "All Hallows Eve" and its pagan antecedents.
But even in the most staunchly Protestant families of my youth, there was rarely reference on this day to the fact that the 31st of October was the day that Martin Luther allegedly nailed his 95 Theses to the door of All Saints Church at Wittenberg Castle in 1517, the 16th century equivalent of a blog post, intending to start a bit of a debate, but unexpectedly lighting the fuse of a theological stack of dynamite that would blow the western church apart... We are still picking up pieces of shrapnel more than 500 years later. There is a lot of debate about the historical accuracy of the accounts of this event, never mind the repercussions...
For those listening to Morning Worship on Radio Ulster last Sunday you will have heard my musings on this subject, as part of the broadcast service from Glenburn Methodist Church, and the following poem that Sally read... or rather part of it. A number of people have asked for a copy of it and I said I would post it later in the week. I originally wrote and posted it here a couple of years ago, but somehow, in transcribing it for another book project I have on the go at the moment I managed to lose the last verse by accident and only realised AFTER the broadcast. But I have restored it for this reblog! I think it is better...
Bang! Bang! Bang!
Nailed it!
Fixed to a fabled door -
A list of disputations
long-since-resolved,
but that doorway inevitably led
to another feud within a family
supposed to be distinguished
by their love for one another.
It freed many hearts and minds
to discover truth for themselves,
exploring the frontiers of faith,
and ultimately stepping over
the threshold to informed denial.
But also condemned millions
to domination and death
by petty pontiffs who (deliberately)
confuse faith with certainty
and piety with power.
Martin,
in your mid-night straining,
might you think again?
Was it worth the ink, and blood?
Think about a prior conjunction
of hammer, nail and wood,
and consider,
might there be another way?
A list of disputations
long-since-resolved,
but that doorway inevitably led
to another feud within a family
supposed to be distinguished
by their love for one another.
It freed many hearts and minds
to discover truth for themselves,
exploring the frontiers of faith,
and ultimately stepping over
the threshold to informed denial.
But also condemned millions
to domination and death
by petty pontiffs who (deliberately)
confuse faith with certainty
and piety with power.
Martin,
in your mid-night straining,
might you think again?
Was it worth the ink, and blood?
Think about a prior conjunction
of hammer, nail and wood,
and consider,
might there be another way?
Selah
Comments