"It's not fair!" We sometimes hear such complaints about Lent Madness. And..of course it's not fair. Which is why we call this little devotion Lent MADNESS and not Lent FAIRNESS. Thus, we end up with matchups such as today's that pit a well-known Reformer of the Middle Ages against a lesser known late 19th, early 20th century Native-American convert to Christianity. So while all may be fair in love and war, all is decidedly not fair in Lent Madness.
Yesterday, to further illustrate this point, was the Battle of the Augustines aka Augustine Anarchy. Going into this matchup one thing was crystal clear: Augustine would emerge victorious. In this case Augustine of Canterbury bested Augustine of Hippo 57% to 43% to advance to the Saintly Sixteen.
And if you missed yesterday's epic edition of Monday Madness, you can watch it here. Tim and Scott discuss the week ahead and answer some very pertinent viewer mail.
Martin Luther
Just before the beginning of the twenty-first century, the Arts & Entertainment Network (A&E) compiled a list of the 100 most influential people of the millennium. A sixteenth-century former monk from a small town in Germany would have been very surprised to find himself ranked number three on this list!
Born in 1483, Luther’s parents encouraged him to study law. But in 1505, he was caught in a terrible thunderstorm while returning to the university from a trip home. Fearing for his life, Luther pledged to become a monk if his life were spared. He survived the stormy night and honored his commitment.
Luther served as a monk, university professor, and parish priest. As he studied, taught, and preached, he became increasingly distressed by what he saw as pernicious failures of the Roman Catholic Church. Among the most troubling were the selling of indulgences (paying to receive pardons for sins), a focus on vocation as being under the sole purview of those called to religious life, the insistence upon clerical celibacy, and the crippling lack of faith formation among the common people.
The posting of his 95 Theses on October 31, 1517, is commonly regarded as the beginning of the Protestant Reformation. Five hundred years later, we can clearly see his legacy. He was intent on making worship the center of the life of the Church, including excellent preaching and music, and focused his teaching and preaching on God’s grace. He admonished priests to teach parents how to make their homes the center of childhood faith formation by using his Small Catechism. Luther called for an end to corruption in the Church, especially through the sale of indulgences, and translated the Bible into the German vernacular, allowing common, literate people to read the word of God in their mother tongue.
His marriage to former nun Katarina von Bora and the lively home they created together offered a space for Luther and other scholars to debate around the kitchen table while enjoying Katarina’s generous hospitality. Martin Luther died in 1546, but his influence continues to echo mightily across new generations, as they discover his theology of a grace-filled God.
Collect for Martin Luther
Almighty God, gracious Lord, we thank you that your Holy Spirit renews the church in every age. Pour out your Holy Spirit on your faithful people. Keep them steadfast in your word, protect and comfort them in times of trial, defend them against all enemies of the gospel and bestow on the church your saving peace, through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.
David Oakerhater
Making Medicine (O-kuh-ha-tuh), also known as David Pendleton Oakerhater, was born into the Cheyenne nation (Oklahoma Territory) around 1847. He participated in his first war party at a young age, and over time, he gained a reputation among the Cheyenne as a skilled warrior.
Making Medicine first came into conflict with the United States after a retaliatory raid on poaching settlers. The US government responded to the Cheyenne with a war of attrition to deprive the Cheyenne and other affiliated tribes of food and supplies. By 1875, Making Medicine and several fellow warriors surrendered to the United States at Fort Sill. A group of seventy-four of those who surrendered were arrested, detained without trial, and moved to Saint Augustine, Florida. Making Medicine and his fellow captives were forced to assimilate into American society. At Fort Marion, he and his fellow captives learned English, taught art and archery lessons, and had their first encounters with Christian missionaries. By 1877 Episcopal deaconness Mary Douglass Burnham made arrangements to sponsor the remaining Cheyenne prisoners for positions of service in the church.
Making Medicine was sponsored by Alice and George H. Pendleton and brought to Paris Hill, New York, where he became affiliated with St. Paul’s Episcopal Church. Under the guidance of the parish priest, he was educated in the scriptures and baptized in 1878, taking the name David from the Bible and Pendleton in honor of his sponsors. His theological formation continued, and in 1881 he was confirmed and ordained as a deacon.
Not long after, Oakerhater returned to Oklahoma as a missionary and took part in the founding of schools and missions, including those in Bridgeport and Whirlwind. He continued serving his people until his death in 1931. Upon his return to Oklahoma, he told the Cheyenne, “You all know me. You remember when I led you out to war I went first, and what I told you was true. Now I have been away to the East and I have learned about another captain, the Lord Jesus Christ, and he is my leader. He goes first, and all he tells me is true. I come back to my people to tell you to go with me now in this new road, a war that makes all for peace.”
Collect for David Oakerhater
O God of unsearchable wisdom and infinite mercy, you chose a captive warrior, David Oakerhater, to be your servant, and sent him to be a missionary to his own people, and to exercise the office of a deacon among them: Liberate us, who commemorate him today, from bondage to self, and empower us for service to you and to the neighbors you have given us; through Jesus Christ, the captain of our salvation; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
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269 comments on “Martin Luther vs. David Oakerhater”
Luther is already well known -- vote Oakerhater!
I had to vote for David since he was matched against a Goliath of Christian history. As a Red Sox fan of the old school, I go for the underdog every time.
David and Goliath--brilliant!
I feel sure that Martin Luther will contend for the Golden Halo - as he deserves! I voted for Making Medicine so that I could recognize the saving grace of God which enabled Oakerhater to turn from war to peace and to teach and lead his Nation toward Christ!
Madness can mean anger, or merely irrational. Without malice , I opt for O-kanh-ha-tuh , leaving Luther support to others.
Space and, I suspect, political correctness prevented the author's inclusion of Martin Luther's vicious and murderous anti-semitism and his key role in instigating the wars of religion that crippled Renaissance Europe. I voted for David.
That was an exceptionally kind write up of Martin Luther. When we consider how his influence echoes on today we also need to consider the "sinner" part of the saint...Such as his work "The Jews and Their Lies" which continued to promulgate anti-Judaism and anti-Semitism in Germany and beyond. Even if Martin Luther is celebrating an anniversary, today's climate and Luther's scathing words lose his vote for me.
Vote for Oakerhater!
I wonder how much Luther's anti-Semitism may have influenced later generations of Germans. For certainly the cancer of anti-Semitism metastasized in Germany during the second quarter of the 20th Century (and that cancer is still not completely eradicated there or here in the States, where we sadly have had a marked increase in anti-Semetic hate crimes in the last four months).
Barring a late day surge for the Deacon, I suspect we will see more of Luther. Sigh.
I'm wondering the same thing, Miss Jan. Luther is so much a part of German culture that it's hard to imagine that his antisemitism didn't to at least some degree find its way into that of the Nazis. I'd expected to vote for Brother Martin but just can't.
And a vote for Oakerhater seems so easy to me. I don't think the historical and cultural circumstances of his exemplary life should be held against him, and I'm very impressed by Katharine Kroeber's comment posted at 10:45.
Martin Luther's contributions and influence cannot be ignored. I'm not particularly fond of him as a person, but he gets my vote today.
This may be the first day that my pick doesn't win 🙁
Please, the modern saints need more recognition!
voted for David Oakerhater, dragged away from his homeland in captivity to what must have seemed a foreign country, forced to deny his culture and language by his captors, rescued through the mercy of a white woman, sent to an even more foreign-seeming part of the country, instructed in the Christian faith, and returned home as a deacon to bring that faith to his people, showing it to be none other than the way from war to peace, from darkness to light, from despair to hope. I can imagine asking him to intercede for me, but Luther? As we see in his writings (and presumably his life) that he was so full of venom towards others that I suspect he's still serving time in Purgatory. Saint David Oakenhater, pray for me!
"Born in 1483, Luther's parents . . ." Oh, really? Luther's anti-Semitism is a real turn-off. Never heard of it in the Swedish Lutheran church where my mother was raised, only "Sola Scriptura." Maybe Luther took it t too literally.
Martin Luther has had more biographies written about him than any other man who ever lived. He, too, was a warrior. Oakerhater was a Cheyenne, at one time measured by ethnographers to be the largest people on earth (by height). They were expelled from their native lands and forced to make a life and a culture on the run. They produced the Sundance for their own worship and this gentleman for ours.
If Oakerhater can't get love here, where can he? May the #nodapl lobby rise up and call him blessed!
here here!
Today was a tough one. I would have voted for Oakerhater but just had to go for Luther on this anniversary year. I wish I'd read more about Luther's writimg but now I know. Shame on me.
"Pour out your Holy Spirit on your faithful people." One word: LUTHER. I cannot not vote for Luther today, as much as I wish to support an American Indian deacon and the aspirations of indigenous peoples. I have always admired Luther. I recognize that my visual image of him looks like Ralph Fiennes and that he was a rootedly medieval man who never fully entered nascent modernity. His response to the Peasants' Revolt was brutal and reactionary. He was not entirely "woke." However, his passionate commitment to lay education, to spiritual formation for all the baptized, and to a vibrant, living church are still hugely important themes. Above all, he lived! Miracle of miracles: he stayed alive, and many reformers did not. That is a fact that we almost cannot comprehend in our modern world, although with white nationalism and political corruption forcing their way into our fragile democracy, we are beginning to face the costs of commitment to a worldview based on social justice. (Some of "us" always knew those costs.) May we like Luther survive. For me above all, Luther's sense of humor delights me. He writes with vigor and wit. He is an earthy man but highly educated, and his tracts to Leo X are scorching. I have laughed out loud reading Luther. Luther and Paul are mountains of passion in the church. It seems to me they are bulwarks making possible the more subtle wit of figures like Erasmus and C.S. Lewis. And he married . . . The idea that clergy could marry is, I believe, of theological importance. It challenges the idea that God is male/solo/abstract, and it challenges the church institutional structure to think about property in terms of human need and not monarchical privilege. To have married clergy and a lay- and family-centered spirituality seems like a return to Jewish roots. That may not counter the anti-semitism that was central to medieval religious thought--or the anti-semitism cropping up in our culture today, even among so-called "evangelicals"--and it may not rescue Luther from his own limitations with respect to acceptance of the Other, but it seems like a radical gesture that allows Christians to think about the body in a more accepting way, that integrates our corporeal and our spiritual selves. In my Christian freedom, I am casting my vote for Luther.
Yes, Luther was a terrible anti-Semite, and his writings about it did a lot of damage. I'm still voting for him. It took stunning courage to make his stand. He should not be blamed for starting the split into Protestantism and the wars of religion. Rome flat-out refused to even discuss his recommendations. There were many higher-ups in the Vatican who wanted reform. If the Pope had listened to Luther and others calling for reform, how much grief could have been avoided? But all Leo wanted to do with the Papacy was milk it for power and gain. Plus, the political situation was explosive. The German princes who protected Luther, which is why he didn't end up at the stake, were sick of sending money to Rome for the corrupt architects of St. Peter's to embezzle. Making Medicine sounds awesome, though; I join many others in wishing he'd been matched against somebody else.
I will continue to support David Oakerhater every time he's in the bracket until he finally wins the Golden Halo. Let's support the unsung hero. Martin is wonderful but gets so much attention!
Go Team Deacon!!!!!
Even though historically Martin Luther had much more impact, I voted for David as a remembrance of all the times the US government to this day oppressed the native peoples. Instead of being bitter, David returned and gave back to his people in a loving, Christian way.
Can we say Standing Rock?
Martin Luther, for so many reasons, not the least of which is his emphasis on meaningful liturgy and music in worship.
Martin Luther for me.
I attended an ELCA church for over 10 years and have a great respect for Luther, but as someone else commented I had to go for Oakerhater because he took a path from war to peace. Our First Nation brothers and sisters have shown true faith.
Either one of these gentlemen would be worthy of a win, but today I went with Making Medicine in honor of my dad, who was born in Cherokee, Ok.
I'm not aware that there's any evidence Oakerhater himself went around suppressing the Cheyenne language, or *forcing* anyone to convert. And while historical context does not excuse Luther's anti-semitism -- in the sense that while plenty of folks were as bad as he, plenty at the time were *not*, and there was quite the debate about Jews -- I think historical context does lighten the onus on Oakerhater. He had grown up seeing all First Nations peoples not only oppressed but literally slaughtered. He suffered a lot, and found a way through, and was concerned to keep people *alive*. As far as I know the educational institutions he supported kept First Nations folks in their home areas, and employed many First Nations folks, instead of forcibly snatching children and sending them hundreds or thousands of miles elsewhere, to be 'educated' exclusively by racist whites. Someone more knowledgeable may correct me on this. What religious institutions and folks did to First Nations people is horrendous (and as far as I know only the Church of Canada and the Episcopal Church have formally apologized)... but there also grew up a genuine, non-forced, faith, with cultural influence from the various tribes (the fry-bread scene in "Smoke Signals" springs to mind). Many First Nations people who have, rightly, reclaimed their older heritage are around only because people like Oakerhater found ways for their communities to survive, as communities, back then.
I don't doubt that Luther will tromple on through, probably a fair ways forwards -- especially when people discover he was a big fan of beer! -- but my vote is solidly for Making Medicine making his medicine through all the hardships of his times.
"like"
My heart still yearns to see Oakerhater seated, in leather, cross legged, musing over the embers of a long burning campfire, whisting upward at the heavens, but planted in the earth. In Christ there is no North or South. How do we deal with the dually based antisemitism and prejudice to Native Americans, one from the East, and one from the West (we meaning dominant white society that depends on prejudices to maintain power and financial strongholds). (Not to forget our social and religious support for slavery). God rescue us from our own disappointments. And thanks to the Lentmadness for allowing these thoughts.
Voting for one of the early deacons in the Episcopal Church. Easy call.
As much as I hate to admit it our Supreme Executive Council is right. Some of the match ups are not fair (today's smackdown for instance) but it this is Lent Madness not Lent Fairness.
I wanted to vote for the underdog, but Martin Luther's impact on history can't be denied.
All-in for Martin Luther: "t was the worst of times—1527—one of the most trying years of Luther’s life. Plagued by illness, it’s hard to imagine he had the energy or spirit to compose one of Christendom’s most memorable hymns: A Might Fortress."
I should read your comments before voting. They give different motivations. But I voted for Luther, despite anti-Semitism, hotheadness, and schism. Whether it is the most appropriate year to choose or not, this will be his anniversary year. His bold if simplistic reforms brought new life to the church, despite much else.
Sigh...let's try this again! All-in for Martin Luther: “t was the worst of times—1527—one of the most trying years of Luther’s life. Plagued by illness, it’s hard to imagine he had the energy or spirit to compose one of Christendom’s most memorable hymns: A Mighty Fortress.”