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Good morning. 500 years ago today, an unknown professor in a new and uncelebrated university, stuck a notice on a noticeboard proposing a debate – and triggered a revolution. It sounds more dramatic when it is said that Martin Luther nailed 95 Theses to the door of All Saint’s Church in Wittenberg, but really his document, written in Latin, was meant only for his fellow professors, and the church door was where such notices were posted – which makes this a pretty unlikely beginning for a movement which would, in quick time, fundamentally reshape the religious, social and political life of Europe. The debate which Luther proposed was to be about indulgencies. The church claimed to grant such indulgences letting you off punishment due for sin, by drawing on a great treasury of merit which Christ and the saints were said to have deposited in a veritable heavenly piggy bank. At the time of Luther, these indulgencies were being bought and sold. But it wasn’t in the end the trade in indulgencies which really bothered Luther. What he objected to was the wider understanding of salvation on which the whole business depended. That understanding was that salvation had to be earned – and the young Luther had become a friar at the age of 22 with just that idea in mind. He had taken on the rigours of the religious life - chastity, poverty, obedience and a gruelling round of prayer - for the sake of saving his soul; ‘to escape hell’, to use his words. So what happened between 1505, when he joined the friary, and 1517, when he proposed that debate? The older Luther’s answer would be that in the intervening years, during which he studied the Old and New Testaments in their original languages, he discovered the Bible’s true message about God. He had been taught that God’s righteousness was a matter of God judging and punishing sinners. But as he meditated on the scriptures, Luther came to see that God’s goodness is a matter not of his judging, but of his justifying the sinner. Salvation did not need to be earned, and certainly not by purchasing the merits of others through indulgencies. But even our very own efforts to win merit are wrong headed – contrary to what the earnest young Luther thought, you don’t get to heaven by mortifying the flesh, by fasting, by going on pilgrimage, nor even by works of charity. Salvation is not won by our striving to justify ourselves – but is the unmerited gift of God to the faith of a sinner. Luther’s message made its way in the world for a host of reasons – not least because of his own courage, charisma and powerful advocacy. But he is, as a recent biographer put it, a ‘difficult hero’. He was irascible, jealous of his preeminence, anti-semitic, misogynist, rather too inclined to trust established political authorities and to distrust the people – and his sense of humour generally relies on the sort of words which make three year olds giggle hysterically, but which everyone else finds rather revolting. But then, I don’t think the celebration of the Reformation needs to be a celebration of heroes. What we celebrate is the discovery, by a very flawed man, of the Bible’s message to us flawed people, of the generous love of a gracious God.