Report from Germany

FIRST LETTER FROM FREIBURG     January 2015

We have now been in Germany for nearly a week.

My first thought is how blessed we are to have this opportunity, of being here and looking forward to six weeks as members of the community of people who make up the Anglican Church of Freiburg. And, as we have noticed before, there is wonderful reality that this apparently random collection of people – young and old, British and of many other nationalities – do make up a family - part of that world-wide family that is the Church of Christ, and which foreshadows the eternal gathering of “that great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language” (Rev 7:9.) And one of the great strengths of many of the congregations in the Diocese in Europe is that they have more of a sense of that universality of God’s people than we often experience in our more monochrome English settings.

Our accommodation here is a comfortable holiday flat in the small town of Kirchzarten, 20 minutes from Freiburg itself. We are surrounded by the hills, rivers and trees of the southern Black Forest. At the week-end, local trains and buses have many families setting off with skis, snowshoes and toboggans. Last Saturday we took the Höllental train to Titisee, which ascends through a narrow valley rising to over 830 metres above sea-level. There we walked round the (originally glacially formed) lake. Either side of the lake, the hills rose steeply, covered with snow-clad conifers; a beautiful and tranquil place, and the air was clean and stimulating.

Leading Sunday worship in a new setting always feels like a bit of a challenge, but it was once more a good and even enjoyable experience. There were some 70 or 80 people - a wide range of ages and nationalities (for many of whom English is not their first language). They meet in Petruskirche, a Lutheran church that has recently been extensively modernised, and provides a good setting for worship. As in all good Anglican churches, there was coffee and fellowship afterwards (interestingly, the Lutheran congregation had slipped away quickly after their earlier Communion service.)

It was encouraging and challenging to discover how many German people had come to faith or found their spiritual home with the Anglicans. It reminded me how often we in England  disparage the strengths of the Anglican mixture of tradition and openness, catholic liturgy and evangelical conviction. (We had a similar experience when we visited Singapore some ten years ago.)

So we are settling in, and getting to know people. We are about to go to meet a couple to arrange the baptism of their first child; there will be older church members to visit, and a variety of services to prepare. What a privilege it is to minister to people like this, touching their lives in important ways. 

EPIPHANY MUSINGS

Ironically for an event which is about manifestation and revelation, Epiphany is a rather hidden  feast – at least in England. (The secular French at least know about it through their galettes des rois, and in Bavaria priests visit and bless parishioners’ homes.)  Perhaps it’s because Christmas starts so early now; by Twelfth Night people have developed a sort of celebration fatigue, and just want to take the decorations down, and begin their detox.

Epiphany is an important festival – and about more than the coming of the wise men (though even that has been blurred by the presence in many cribs of the magi alongside the shepherds.) In Orthodox churches, it is more significant than Christmas, with its main focus on the Baptism of Christ, with distinctive liturgical observances.  In our Western calendars too there are three strands to the Epiphany – as is clear in the BCP lessons for the day; the Communion Gospel relates the familiar Coming of the Magi, but the readings at Morning and Evening Prayer tell respectively of Jesus’ manifestation as Son at his Baptism and as the Bringer of New Wine, in the Miracle at Cana. All these events have a strong element of the unexpected. So we might ‘rehabilitate’ Epiphany by recognising it as a time of surprises, a reminder to us not to become too complacent or conventional in our thinking about our faith.

We see that in the visit of the wise men - which must have been a source of astonishment, and then consternation, in Jerusalem. Their assumption was that the new king would be found in the centre of power - Herod’s palace; they are compelled to detour to Bethlehem, where (conflating Matthew’s account with Luke’s) the child is found in a much more humble and surprising setting. (The contrast is even more marked today; power is very much centred on Jerusalem, while Bethlehem suffers from the oppression and marginalisation meted out to most of the Palestinian territories.)

But there is also a powerful surprise element in the other narratives. The reader of the Gospel knows that the one who comes to the Jordan for baptism is God’s chosen one; yet he comes to be washed of sin by the prophet John. So from the outset of his ministry, Jesus is revealed as a different sort of Messiah from that expected by almost all his contemporaries.

The events at Cana, with the sudden super-abundance of premier cru wine, must have given the townsfolk a story to tell for years after! Once more, God’s surprising way of working is made clear by the unthinking words of the master of the banquet, “every man brings out the choice wine first and then the cheaper wine... but you have saved the best till now.”

These events make clear in different ways the full reality of Jesus as the Christ - as the word epiphany implies. They also remind us of the impossibility of limiting the activity of God. If we ever stop being challenged and surprised by what Jesus said and did, and what the Holy Spirit continues to reveal and enable, we are halfway to losing our faith and its power. And the central narrative, of the wise men, challenges our parochialism; from the beginning, Jesus is revealed as one who is not restricted to any one nation or philosophy.

We easily trivialise our faith and force God into safe categories of thought. Just as in the Narnia chronicles the children are reminded more than once that “Aslan is not a tame lion”, we need to re-discover something of the wildness and unexpected nature of our Lord. That can be uncomfortable; faith takes us into uncharted places.  Discipleship is often demanding and costly.

The God of eternal surprises does not stop catching us unawares, sometimes surprising us with joy, and sometimes leaving us bewildered when our false certainties crumble. But the good news is that he does not let go of us, or stop showing us new ways to meet him and receive his grace.