Martin Luther felt bound to help with government affairs that seemed important to him. In the last days of his life he traveled to Eisleben to sort out a squabble among the local nobility. Eisleben was his birthplace and ancestral home. He had a strong commitment to its being governed well. He described the squabble among the nobility as "the most difficult of porcupines." So despite being quite ill, he traveled in the dead of winter to Eisleben while exhibiting what we would call the signs of congestive heart failure, perhaps suffering on the way even a heart attack by the way Luther described his symptoms: sweating, shortness of breath, tightness in the chest, and pain in the left arm. Yet, go he did. It would be his last trip. While he was in Eisleben he took to his bed for the final time, dying in the faith on 18 February 1546 in the town of his birth and childhood.

Luther's body was hardly cold when squabbles arose among Lutherans about the content of Luther's confession and the faith of the Lutheran Church. Lutherans themselves battled for more than 30 years until the Formula of Concord resolved struggles over significant Lutheran teachings, such as justification, law and gospel, the person of Christ, and the sacrament of the altar. Not only did squabbles arise among Lutherans but once the old lion was dead the enemies of the Lutheran Church certainly gathered to battle his corpse. The Roman Catholic Church commenced its anti-evangelical Council of Trent just weeks before Luther's demise, anticipating the event. When the old lion dies the young lions try to take over his pride. Soon after the death of Luther Emperor Charles V of the Holy Roman Empire and King of Spain made war against the German Lutheran princes defeating them soundly at the battle of Mühlhausen in 1547.

When the Emperor arrived in supine Wittenberg, loath to break into the Castle Church, he had subordinates look for the church Sexton to bring the keys to gain entrance where Luther's remains had been interred just 18 months previously. Upon gaining entrance, Charles strode to stand below the pulpit where Luther's mortal remains lay under the floor. When one of his subordinates suggested that they should dig up the remains of the German heretic and have them burned a la Jan Hus (1415), Charles said solemnly, "I do not make war on dead men," showing himself as magnanimous and gentlemanly in victory. He wasn't about to try to kill a dead man. Luther's body remains there to this day to be oggled by tourists and venerated by overawed Lutherans.

It is ironic that Luther died while on a governmental diplomatic mission. Yet, it is indicative of Luther's broad interest in the welfare of the German people and especially the people of his hometown, Eisleben. He would have died anyway, but he lived out his life to the end in love and in service toward his neighbor. That should be no surprise. It's no wonder then, that Charles declined to perpetrate any indignities on the remains of the old lion. It's too bad Luther's followers couldn't do the same theologically for the old lion. Following the death of Luther, the history of Lutheranism is really about how many tried to escape the hold of Luther's teaching on justification, the power of the gospel, and the evangelical administration of the sacraments as means of grace. But these things are God's things, not Luther's. They will survive his death no matter how hard we plot to kill Luther.