World Cup Churches 19. Germany

Continuing a series of blogs heading round the 32 qualifying countries in the 2022 World Cup - I will pick out one church in each one.  I am not going to choose only churches that are to my liking.  This is an exploration not a recommendation! To see all in the series select the label 'World Cup Churches' below.

Germany has a remarkable World Cup record - and also a vast array of remarkable churches. I've visited a few and even spoken in one, but I've decided to go for a church that I have never visited.  Nevertheless, given the opportunity this is a church I would definitely go to see - Thomaskirche in Leipzig.

It may look like any other Germanic city church, but the story of this church is without equal.  It was a church where Martin Luther visited often and preached - this (with many counterparts in the German states) linked to the Reformation, the foundation of Protestantism which revolutionised Europe both ecclesiastically and politically.  It became, therefore, Lutheran - the Reformation in Saxony proclaimed in this church by Luther himself in 1539.

Forward about 175 years and a new cantor arrived.  His name?  Johann Sebastian Bach. Bach's influence on music was and is as profound as Luther's on religion and politics.  It is calculated that it would take decades to physically write down the works of Bach, yet he not only wrote the scores, he composed them.  Weekly a cantata for St Thomas's, larger works for feasts and festivals, other works for the three sister churches, and utterly amazing general music besides. Oh, and he had 20 children . . .

As if this church did not have enough in being at the heart of two great revolutions, Richard Wagner was baptised here, and both Mozart and Mendelssohn played the organ as visiting musicians. Sme churches have history, but this is on another level!

World Cup Blogs 12: Germany

One of the great values of international sport is that it brings people together, albeit in a competitive way.  However, when Argentina recently cancelled a game they had scheduled in Israel we were reminded that sport is not really above politics but is merely allowed brief glimpses of an unrealistic utopia.

Germany are winners when it comes to the World Cup.  But the country faces battles and has worked very hard to redress its 20th century story, a story which put paid to many sporting events.  There was no World Cup tournament in 1942 or 1946.

One, I think, very moving and impressive feature of Germany are Stolpersteine.


In the pavements of several German cities, towns and villages you may find them - in English literally stumbling blocks.   Stolpersteine are embedded stones with a small plaque on top. On the plaque is the name of someone who lived in a building nearby and who was taken away by the Nazis in or before World War II, never to return. Gunter Demnig, an artist from Cologne, made it something of a life's work to place these wherever research shows people were deported.

I photographed those below in an anonymous inner city street in Frankfurt am Main. Seven people whose 'crime' was to be Jewish.

Such is the irrational injustice of anti-Semitism that if I had stood in that street in the war as a Briton - the declared enemy - though I may well have been killed as a spy, I might have talked my way into a prisoner of war camp. 

But had I been a Jew, and that was my home city, perhaps the very street I grew up on, I would more certainly have been killed and my family with me.  We must never let the warm waves of sporting internationalism fool us into thinking that injustice can be eradicated by donning football shirts and kicking a ball.  It might help.  But justice costs more than that.

Aberfan

Yesterday I spoke at a Primary School Harvest Assembly.  One of the songs that was sung - by Year 3  (7/8 year olds) - was All things bright and beautiful.  Perhaps nobody else in the 400 plus people in the room realised the poignancy of singing that hymn this week.

On the morning of October 21, 1966 the primary school children sang it in assembly at the primary school in Aberfan, South Wales.  The assembly lasted from 9:00am to 9:15am.  I was many miles away in eastern England, though would have been an 8 year old in that assembly had Aberfan been my home.

Which is why I've thought about it a lot this week.  For 88 children just like me died at 9:15am straight after that assembly when the National Coal Board's reckless mountain of slag swept down the hillside and buried the school, sending into eternity a generation of my contemporaries, aged 7-9 and 28 adults.

There are many sad ironies about that particular hymn being sung which both at the time and on reflection have occurred to many observers.  Although we often blame Nature (and by extension its Creator who also makes the bright and the beautiful) for disasters, the Aberfan disaster lay squarely on the shoulders of man.  In South Wales at the time all that was dark and ugly in the landscape was man-made and all that was bright and beautiful was created by God.  But the hymn still feels wrong somehow,

Yet maybe today as the old school site has a peaceful memorial garden it is more helpful to think of the bright and beautiful as the long-term and the dark disasters as short term.  Of course they do not seem very short term to a village that lost a generation.  Yet worldwide from Cambodia to Congo to Hiroshima to St Petersburg there are places haunted by ancient awfulness which have returned to a brightness and beauty in their time.

I thought of that a couple of years ago when visiting the mountain retreat of the Third Reich in the Alps.  Beauty outlasts the Beast.  In the end nobody in heaven sings songs of mourning - not even the martyrs.

Hands

For the first time in absolutely ages we sang Nun danket alle Gott - well, Catherine Winkworth's translation of it - this morning.

One reason I chose it was because I heard it introduced by a nationally famous worship leader recently. "With hearts, and hands - we've all got hands haven't we?" he raises his hands as in prayer -"and voices". Cue the band. Cue a congregation thinking Martin Rinkart might have been encouraging some expressive hand movements in worship.

This was so far off the mark as to warrant a redemption, I thought.  Most of the people around Pastor Martin at the time were using their hands to bury corpses . . .

How much richer the truth is!

Bahnhofsmission

Beneath the soaring arches of Frankfurt's central station thousands of people rush past one another and past a few who are going nowhere. It could be London, New York or countless other major cities and their railway hubs at commuting time. But Frankfurt, like several other German stations, also has Bahnhofsmission.

With stations becoming more and more technological, machines replacing people, the mission station is again increasingly utilised.

It has in many ways strengthened and saved lives. They know it as the "Church at the station" prsenting the gospel for all people.

The rooms include a resting space suitablefor a variety of purposes: the business traveller needing an electrical outlet for his laptop, the elderly blind lady waiting over a cup of tea for thenext train to which volunteers will guide her, the homeless man seeking shelter and refuge who may read the newspaper and receive a small snack, or the young woman forced into prostitution who will safely spend the night on one of the Mission’s 20 mattresses, protected from her pimp. To the left of the Mission’s entrance is “the room of silence” where you can leave behind the hectic noise of the main station. An extra room is available for in-depth counselling and advice.

Last year, the Bahnhofsmission took care of almost 100,000 people, among them 6,000 children and teens. Over 20,000 received advice and small scale assistance. 15,000 elderly and handicapped men and women were given travel-related help. In about 4,000 cases, intensive counselling was provided. Such supplementary activities as short prayer services and musical meditations enrich the lives of those who come to the Mission, as do occasional art exhibits.

Die Gemeinde

German was never my strongest language. Die Gemeinde may be one of the reasons why. It is untranslatable into English because it means several different things at once for which, in English, we use different words. But one of those words is 'fellowship'.

Recently it was a special joy to get at last to Kelkheim, Germany, during my weeks away. Kelkheim is the twin town of High Wycombe and for a long time our church has had a link with the Evangelical Baptist Church there.

I set out from nearby Frankfurt on an early Sunday morning train in warm spring sunshine. I was probably unique on the train in not having a bike with me - I was certainly unique in not having a back pack! Walking and cycling are the draw to the Taunus Hills on a sleepy Sunday morning and the train wound its way upwards past neat villages until it reached the more substantial town of Kelkheim.

At this point it is worth recording that I had been in Germany for 24 hours, and previously never before. I was a long way out of my comfort zone.
Armed with my map I walked from the station through the warm sunshine and the quiet, hilly streets for a few hundred metres and there ahead of me was the Evangelisch-Freikirchliche Gemeinde (Baptisten). As befits a former shop it looked like, well, a shop!

When the service began the generous visuals on powerpoint and my low level GCSE German meant that I was never far off what was going on. Mysteriously, somehow these hundred or so people were not passing acquaintances but everlasting friends. Our language was often handshakes and smiles more than words but we were one people. I felt at home.

The only point at which I completely lost track was, strangely enough, the very last song. Following the benediction I leaned over to the worship leader and asked if she could tell me what it was about. It turned out it was a song about Christian fellowship and looking forward to meeting again soon.

I thought that was appropriate. The mystery in the whole morning was about fellowship, for which the phrase is Die Gemeinde. Intangible yet real across the borders of history and language I was more at home with these believers than in a body of unbelieving Englishmen. What a privilege it is to have been saved into the Church of the living God!