From the Pastor: Fear and Peace of Mind

If you have ever received a chain letter by snail mail or email then you may know the totally irrational fear that if you delete it or throw it away, you may suffer some horrible consequences. It doesn’t make sense, of course. It’s just a letter, but admit it, there is that lurking fear that something bad will happen if you break the chain. I have some good news for anyone that fears breaking a chain letter.

Let’s say you received a chain letter and emailed it on to just five people, and asked those five recipients to send the letter to five more people. Those five would send it out to twenty five people, who would then send the email to 625 people. In less than fifteen “cycles” that email letter would reach over 6 billion people! No one would be doing anything but sending and receiving chain letters, so you can actually save the world’s economy, by simply squashing the next email chain letter you receive. Such a noble gesture on your part!

Fear is a powerful force in our lives. There was a time when people feared God. And there was a time when people- in the name of religion - took advantage
of this fear.

Johann Tetzel was such a man. Brother Tetzel was the Dominican Friar who spent the last fifteen years of his life selling indulgences in the 16th century Germany. It was this outrageous sale of indulgences which prompted Martin Luther to nail his 95 theses to the Castle Door in Wittenberg, effectively launching the Protestant Reformation.

The sale of indulgences had some appeal. Tetzel taught that anyone who bought an indulgence was freed from punishment for confessed sin and could even choose to set a relative’s soul free from Purgatory. The irreverent of us might even go as far as to suggest that Brother Tetzel is the Father of Consumer Marketing, for he huckstered his indulgences by reciting a rhyming little jingle. It’s such a good jingle that not only does it rhyme in German, it continues to rhyme when translated into English: “When in the box the money rings, The Soul from Purgatory springs.” Four and a half centuries before the term was even coined, Tetzel understood “global marketing.”

Tetzel was successful. People who understood God to be stern, vengeful Judge would buy indulgences hoping to save souls from God’s wrath. Martin Luther opposed the sale of these indulgences but, it should be noted, had Tetzel crossed Luther’s path but three years earlier, Luther might have been a customer. Martin Luther had been terrified by God, but he spent three years questing for a Gracious
God whom he found in the writings of St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans.

Prior to his conversion on the road to Damascus recorded in Acts 9, Paul had been like Luther, in that he too had understood God to be an angry judge who was pleased with Paul’s persecution of the early Christians. That conversion experience would change Paul to the point that when he was arrested for his work in proclaiming salvation in Jesus, he would tell the jailer who guarded him that the only thing this jailer needed to “do” to be saved was to “Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved.” (Acts 16:31) This is grace.

Tetzel taught that salvation can be purchased. It can’t be. But, there is a “reasonably equivalent value” found in the Christian faith... it’s peace of mind and that is beyond cost. Jesus offers us that peace of mind, not as escape from life, but as full entry into it, and once we have it, it never lets us go.