Silver Anniversary service Saturday 6th October 2012
Sermon by the Reverend Elizabeth Welch
I am delighted to be here at this twenty-fifth anniversary service of the Leipzig-Grunau Milton Keynes partnership. I remember the early days of the formation of this partnership including the key role that Clive Fowle played from the English side in setting it up. 20 years ago this month, I was one of the group that went to Leipzig-Grunau. I had previously visited Potsdam for a World Council of Churches conference, before the wall came down, but the visit to Leipzig was my first visit to the east after the wall came down.
This evening I want to reflect back on three memories from that visit, within the setting of the readings chosen for this service, in order to see the significance of this partnership for the future.
The readings chosen for today pick up on the theme of the ‘other’, the person who is outside, the person who might seem to be the stranger or the alien.
In the Gospel, the focus is on the Centurion who seeks healing for his servant lying on his death bed. In the Jewish world, the centurion, as a Roman and representing the powers of the death, could well be thought to be the stranger and the alien. Yet it was clear that this centurion had already built bridges with the Jewish community, for he had indeed physically built them a synagogue. He is portrayed as a person who is open to the one who is different. The point of the story is not so much the healing of the servant as the trust the centurion puts in Jesus. Jesus comments favourably on this, that he sees more trust in this Roman centurion than in the whole Jewish community.
Out of this story come the words which I hear said regularly in the Roman Catholic Mass, words of complete trust in Jesus: ‘Lord I am not worthy to receive you, but only say the word, and I shall be healed.’ Week by week the faith of the centurion is remembered throughout the Christian world, as the basis of the faith that we can share in Jesus Christ today. In an increasingly secularised Europe, we are drawn back to the centrality of our faith in Christ and the ways in which we can grow in that faith by our sharing together.
In the letter to the Corinthians, we get a different angle on the building of bridges between people. Paul writes of his desire to so identify himself with the ‘other’ that he will win them for Christ. He is even identified with the community from which he has come, the Jewish community, for the sake of the Gospel. He comes as one who is in Christ, but who desires to share the good news of Jesus with others as they are, so that they may know Jesus’ blessings. His starting point is not to look to the other and say ‘here is a stranger or an alien’ with whom I will have nothing to do. His starting point is to be alongside the ‘other’ and build the relationship.
These two passages are resonant of Paul’s words in Ephesians, in chapter two when he writes of the way in which Christ breaks down barriers between people, who then are ‘no longer strangers and aliens, but citizens with the saints and members of the household of God’.
Jesus comes to heal, to teach, to build bridges between people of different backgrounds and communities, that all might be one in him.
Building bridges between God’s people involves giving and receiving. It involves that difficult work of becoming the ‘other’ for the sake of receiving the ‘other’. Building bridges becomes possible because we recognise that we are each sharers in the bridge that has been built by Christ, in reconciliation of the world.
Building on the setting of these two passages, I want to share three memories and reflect on what they stand for in terms of this partnership and of our proclamation of the Gospel today.
The 1st memory is the story of the peace prayers at the Nikolai Kirche. I remember on that visit to Leipzig 20 years ago, being taken in to the Nikolai Kirche and listening to the voices of those who had been involved in the peace prayers and the lighting of candles as a sign of the hope for change. I remember particularly hearing of the day when the people came out of the church to face the soldiers outside, not knowing whether they might arrest people or fire on the protesters. Gradually the soldiers just moved back and let the crowd go. It was a sign of the possibility of peaceful change. I was moved to tears at hearing the witness to these significant events. People from different backgrounds and faith positions had come together to protest peacefully and change had come.
This story still speaks to me of the possibilities that God opens up of hope and of unexpected change. Who would have thought that the wall would have come down without violence? Who would have thought that Mandela would walk free without civil war? Who would have thought that the Burmese protester You +1'd this publicly. Undo Aung San Suu Kyi would be talked about as a next possible president of her country? We need to go on looking for and telling the stories where faith in peaceful change has led to courage to resist the powers that oppress. We need models of resistance, when we look to those parts of the world which are moving towards ever increasing violence, such as Syria, or Afghanistan. We need to go on telling the stories of peaceful resistance, and open up new ways of peace-making
My 2nd memory is of a different kind.
I remember the music that was played at the beginning and end of the services, and the way in which people sat still and listened. It struck me because of my experience in this country of the way in which the music at the beginning and end of the service is often a time for movement, for people to come or go.
I have also a larger memory of the musical tradition of Leipzig through the life and work Johann Sebastian Bach and his 27 years as cantor and Director of music. The magnificent music of Bach has been a gift to the whole church and across the world. We have all been his inheritors of Bach. One of the great gifts of music is the way in which it unites a people in a way that goes beyond words. Bach’s settings of music for the Mass lift people together to the heights of heaven.
Music is both a reality of worship that transforms God’s people and is a symbol of what it’s like when God’s people come together. Each musician has his or her own instrument. Each person who sings has his or her own voice. Yet together, something much more powerful happens. In both Milton Keynes and Leipzig we celebrate the way in which Christians across different traditions can share together. It’s an important gift to be offered to the wider church. When we participate in God’s music, our differences our taken up together in a larger harmony, to the greater glory of God
My 3rd memory is only of a small incident, but one that has major implications. At the end of the visit 20 years ago, I went into a big store in Leipzig, in order to buy gifts to take back home with me. I specifically wanted to take back something that was from Leipzig, or from eastern Germany. So went to a counter and asked where I could buy something that was made in the east. The person just looked at me and said ‘we only sell goods made in the west.’
The question of economics and the issues of the financial crisis Europe and the rest of the world are going through, is one of the biggest challenges we have to face at present. The framework for the debate is often one which puts money, consumerism and the free market at the heart of the matter, with the assumption that these are normative values. The danger is that the pursuit of these values fragments the human community and puts people against each other – rich against poor, German against English, north against south.
As Christians, we stand together against values that fragment human communities and are destructive of people and of creation. We stand together for values that come out of our faith – faith in God who chose a person and a community and the creation through which to reveal himself. Our shared Christian faith values the person and the community at the heart of the matter, not in isolation, but in fundamental solidarity with all God’s people.
Paul, in the passage we heard from the letter to the Corinthians knew that the road he was travelling down was not going to be an easy one. But he wanted to give himself fully to this race he was running, whatever the cost. We share today in that costly journey, as we build partnerships that take us across boundaries and as we witness together to the Christ who comes to overturn this world’s values.
To God be the glory, in Christ Jesus and to all eternity.
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