Landsberg
Sermon
WHAT DOES THE LORD REQUIRE?
Meditations On Major Moral And Social Issues
On Memorial Day we remember the sacrificial service of people who have fought and died in our country's wars. Recently, the movie Saving Private Ryan has reminded us of the horror of the Second World War and Tom Brokaw's book The Greatest Generation has reminded us of the courage of the people who fought it. Our world needs to be reminded of the profound lesson that some learned from that experience. It was a lesson about the utter futility of war and of the urgency of the world's need to learn a better way for peoples and nations to live together in this one small world we inhabit. Let me tell you a story that may help you to remember. It is a story about something that actually happened.
One beautiful afternoon in the summer of 1990, a tour bus full of American church people traveled across the beautiful German countryside on the way to Oberammergau. They were going to see the famous passion play. The pastor, who was leading the group, sat looking out the window and enjoying the scenery. It was Sunday afternoon and he had asked the guide to find a place to hold a vesper service. He had prepared a talk and he reviewed the message in his mind as he gazed out the window. The country was beautiful. The people seemed prosperous and happy. German young people were racing around the countryside on expensive motorcycles. They would later see others paragliding off of the mountaintops. Everything was beautiful. But the pastor could not stop remembering that this was the country with which his country had been at war once while he was young. The memories of the stories that had come back from that war were not beautiful.
Evidently, another member of the group was having similar thoughts. An older man, who had fought his way across this part of Germany as a combat infantryman, came and sat in the seat across the aisle from the pastor and started fumbling with a map and looking out the windshield for landmarks. He said, "There is supposed to be a town called Landsberg up here somewhere. We liberated a German concentration camp there." He told of the half--starved Jewish prisoners, of the wagons full of corpses, of the long trenches prepared for their burial. He said, "It was there that I finally understood why I needed to leave my home and go to war." Landsberg had another distinction. A young Adolf Hitler was put in prison there for his early political activities. While he was there he wrote, Mein Kamph. The old soldier saw no familiar landmarks so he folded his map and went back to his seat wondering if Landsberg still exists.
The pastor's mind wandered back to a trip he had taken the previous year to Coventry England. There he had visited the cathedral which had been destroyed by German firebombs. On the day after the bombing, a priest wandered across the nave of the burned--out shell of the building. He found it littered with great, old handmade nails from the burned roof. He picked up three of them and fastened them together into a unique cross that has now become a familiar symbol. He stood it on what was left of the altar in the hope that the cathedral would rise again. It did, indeed, rise again. The ruins of the old church were left as a reminder of the destructiveness of war. But, with the help of people all over the world, a new cathedral was built. It became a center of Christian ministries of reconciliation and peace. People from all over the world became involved in those ministries. And the symbol of those ministries was the Coventry cross of nails.
The guide interrupted the pastor's thoughts by telling him that they were coming to a place where there might be a church in which they could hold a vesper service. The pastor had explained to the guide that they really didn't need a church building, but she didn't seem to understand that. The town looked like an attractive modern suburb of some city. Soon the bus was parked in front of a church. The guide found that the building was locked but that there was a courtyard in which the group could hold a worship service. The building caught the pastor's attention immediately. There was something very special about this building. It was a stucco building with a steeple through which worshipers entered a courtyard. On top of the steeple was a Coventry cross. The pastor was amazed to see that symbol there in Germany. It soon became apparent that there was even more to ponder. The building was an architectural sermon. It preached the same sermon that the Coventry cathedral preaches. As the group entered the courtyard through the base of the steeple, they found themselves surrounded by heavy wooden plaques, written in different languages: German, English, French, Spanish, Italian, Greek, yes, and Hebrew. Each one saying "Be reconciled to God," as if there is no other reason why anyone should enter that place. And over their heads hung a heavy metal sculpture representing a crown of thorns, suggesting that the only way to be reconciled to God is through the suffering of Christ. In the courtyard was a fountain on the bottom of which was a mosaic representing the sign of Jonah. The pastor remembered that, just after the Second World War, there was a play that was presented all over Germany. It dramatized the need for repentance among the German people. It's title was The Sign of Jonah.
The pastor wandered around taking in all of the things that surrounded him and rapidly replacing the sermon he had prepared with one he was preparing on the spot. About that time, a young woman appeared. She had come to practice on the organ and she invited the group to come into the sanctuary for their vesper service. In the sanctuary, another Coventry cross stood on the altar and behind it hung a tapestry depicting Jesus on the cross, reaching out to those around him. There were stylized representations of human hands of all colors reaching out to him. Under it was an inscription in German, "I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself" (John 12:32).
For the vesper talk, the pastor simply interpreted the message of the building. He reminded the group that a great wave of repentance and spiritual renewal had swept the German nation right after the Second World War. That repentance had prepared the way for the resurrection of the nation. The building was a witness that, in Germany as well as in other countries, those who had fought most bravely and suffered most deeply had come away with a conviction of the utter futility of war, and a commitment to find a better way for the world, a way of reconciliation pioneered by the suffering Christ who came to show us how to love each other.
Some of you may remember that, right after the Second World War, there were many serious efforts to find a way to enable the peoples of the world to live together in peace. The United Nations was formed. Many people became missionaries, hoping to teach the world to love. A former chaplain, who could never forget holding a young soldier in his arms while he bled to death, organized World Vision, an interfaith organization dedicated to wiping out hunger and doing a work of reconciliation among people. Many took seriously the possibility that Jesus really had shown us the way that is the hope of the world, a way of reconciliation and love.
But somehow, in the years that followed, the noble vision got lost. There was the cold war. Fear grew and turned to hatred. People again began to think that the only safety is to be found in preparing for and waging war. You hardly ever hear anyone talking about reconciliation any more. If someone does suggest that there may be nonviolent ways of building a better world, most people respond by saying, "That would be nice, but it just isn't practical."
Recently, a theologian by the name of Walter Wink wrote a book in which he challenged that assumption. He listed the times in recent history when nonviolent ways of achieving social change were given a chance. He mentioned Gandhi's movement for the liberation of India. He mentioned the American Civil Rights movement. He mentioned the Solidarity movement in Poland and the movements that finally resulted in the dismantling of the Berlin Wall. All of those efforts have accomplished lasting and significant social change.1 But the history of warfare has shown that war always generates hostilities that fester until they break out into more wars. It may sometimes be necessary for nations to go to war. But when the war is over, the real problems still have to be solved, under more difficult conditions, in other ways.
Jesus came teaching a way of love. The world has never really caught the vision of what that could mean. We have never really sought to know what it would mean for nations to learn the way of reconciliation and respect. There are still some who believe that there is a real and practical and effective way to make love the strategy for solving the problems and resolving the conflicts of the world. The world probably came as close as it has ever come to catching that vision in the aftermath of the Second World War. But then the vision faded away and an obsession with warfare replaced it.
Now our country still spends much more on military preparedness than is needed to maintain an adequate defense. Congress often appropriates more than the Pentagon asks for. And when there is a problem we can't solve in the world, we send in the bombers. Shouldn't we be trying to learn a better way, a way that can actually produce peace with justice?
As the tour group walked back to the bus after the vesper service on the way to Oberammergau, the German driver came up to the pastor and said he had just discovered that the borrowed church was actually the chapel of a German army base. The pastor was amazed. He asked the driver the name of the town. He fumbled with his maps, studied the location, and said, "Landsberg." The pastor felt a chill of excitement sweep over his body. The fact that the chapel of the German army base in Landsberg was built to preach a sermon about reconciliation means that someone had once caught a vision.
There were those who learned the lesson that terrible war taught, but too few. And the way of love and reconciliation was evidently too hard to learn, and the way of war had evidently been learned too well. It seems we have forgotten that when we allow fear to rule, we can be turned into tyrants, and that when we resort to war to solve the world's problems, only war wins. But if Jesus Christ were lifted up, would he be able to draw all peoples to him? There was a folk song that came out of another time in history when the world's heart was being broken by war. It asks the question, "When will we ever learn? When will we ever learn?"
____________
1. Walter Wink, Engaging the Powers (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992), pp. 244--251.
One beautiful afternoon in the summer of 1990, a tour bus full of American church people traveled across the beautiful German countryside on the way to Oberammergau. They were going to see the famous passion play. The pastor, who was leading the group, sat looking out the window and enjoying the scenery. It was Sunday afternoon and he had asked the guide to find a place to hold a vesper service. He had prepared a talk and he reviewed the message in his mind as he gazed out the window. The country was beautiful. The people seemed prosperous and happy. German young people were racing around the countryside on expensive motorcycles. They would later see others paragliding off of the mountaintops. Everything was beautiful. But the pastor could not stop remembering that this was the country with which his country had been at war once while he was young. The memories of the stories that had come back from that war were not beautiful.
Evidently, another member of the group was having similar thoughts. An older man, who had fought his way across this part of Germany as a combat infantryman, came and sat in the seat across the aisle from the pastor and started fumbling with a map and looking out the windshield for landmarks. He said, "There is supposed to be a town called Landsberg up here somewhere. We liberated a German concentration camp there." He told of the half--starved Jewish prisoners, of the wagons full of corpses, of the long trenches prepared for their burial. He said, "It was there that I finally understood why I needed to leave my home and go to war." Landsberg had another distinction. A young Adolf Hitler was put in prison there for his early political activities. While he was there he wrote, Mein Kamph. The old soldier saw no familiar landmarks so he folded his map and went back to his seat wondering if Landsberg still exists.
The pastor's mind wandered back to a trip he had taken the previous year to Coventry England. There he had visited the cathedral which had been destroyed by German firebombs. On the day after the bombing, a priest wandered across the nave of the burned--out shell of the building. He found it littered with great, old handmade nails from the burned roof. He picked up three of them and fastened them together into a unique cross that has now become a familiar symbol. He stood it on what was left of the altar in the hope that the cathedral would rise again. It did, indeed, rise again. The ruins of the old church were left as a reminder of the destructiveness of war. But, with the help of people all over the world, a new cathedral was built. It became a center of Christian ministries of reconciliation and peace. People from all over the world became involved in those ministries. And the symbol of those ministries was the Coventry cross of nails.
The guide interrupted the pastor's thoughts by telling him that they were coming to a place where there might be a church in which they could hold a vesper service. The pastor had explained to the guide that they really didn't need a church building, but she didn't seem to understand that. The town looked like an attractive modern suburb of some city. Soon the bus was parked in front of a church. The guide found that the building was locked but that there was a courtyard in which the group could hold a worship service. The building caught the pastor's attention immediately. There was something very special about this building. It was a stucco building with a steeple through which worshipers entered a courtyard. On top of the steeple was a Coventry cross. The pastor was amazed to see that symbol there in Germany. It soon became apparent that there was even more to ponder. The building was an architectural sermon. It preached the same sermon that the Coventry cathedral preaches. As the group entered the courtyard through the base of the steeple, they found themselves surrounded by heavy wooden plaques, written in different languages: German, English, French, Spanish, Italian, Greek, yes, and Hebrew. Each one saying "Be reconciled to God," as if there is no other reason why anyone should enter that place. And over their heads hung a heavy metal sculpture representing a crown of thorns, suggesting that the only way to be reconciled to God is through the suffering of Christ. In the courtyard was a fountain on the bottom of which was a mosaic representing the sign of Jonah. The pastor remembered that, just after the Second World War, there was a play that was presented all over Germany. It dramatized the need for repentance among the German people. It's title was The Sign of Jonah.
The pastor wandered around taking in all of the things that surrounded him and rapidly replacing the sermon he had prepared with one he was preparing on the spot. About that time, a young woman appeared. She had come to practice on the organ and she invited the group to come into the sanctuary for their vesper service. In the sanctuary, another Coventry cross stood on the altar and behind it hung a tapestry depicting Jesus on the cross, reaching out to those around him. There were stylized representations of human hands of all colors reaching out to him. Under it was an inscription in German, "I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself" (John 12:32).
For the vesper talk, the pastor simply interpreted the message of the building. He reminded the group that a great wave of repentance and spiritual renewal had swept the German nation right after the Second World War. That repentance had prepared the way for the resurrection of the nation. The building was a witness that, in Germany as well as in other countries, those who had fought most bravely and suffered most deeply had come away with a conviction of the utter futility of war, and a commitment to find a better way for the world, a way of reconciliation pioneered by the suffering Christ who came to show us how to love each other.
Some of you may remember that, right after the Second World War, there were many serious efforts to find a way to enable the peoples of the world to live together in peace. The United Nations was formed. Many people became missionaries, hoping to teach the world to love. A former chaplain, who could never forget holding a young soldier in his arms while he bled to death, organized World Vision, an interfaith organization dedicated to wiping out hunger and doing a work of reconciliation among people. Many took seriously the possibility that Jesus really had shown us the way that is the hope of the world, a way of reconciliation and love.
But somehow, in the years that followed, the noble vision got lost. There was the cold war. Fear grew and turned to hatred. People again began to think that the only safety is to be found in preparing for and waging war. You hardly ever hear anyone talking about reconciliation any more. If someone does suggest that there may be nonviolent ways of building a better world, most people respond by saying, "That would be nice, but it just isn't practical."
Recently, a theologian by the name of Walter Wink wrote a book in which he challenged that assumption. He listed the times in recent history when nonviolent ways of achieving social change were given a chance. He mentioned Gandhi's movement for the liberation of India. He mentioned the American Civil Rights movement. He mentioned the Solidarity movement in Poland and the movements that finally resulted in the dismantling of the Berlin Wall. All of those efforts have accomplished lasting and significant social change.1 But the history of warfare has shown that war always generates hostilities that fester until they break out into more wars. It may sometimes be necessary for nations to go to war. But when the war is over, the real problems still have to be solved, under more difficult conditions, in other ways.
Jesus came teaching a way of love. The world has never really caught the vision of what that could mean. We have never really sought to know what it would mean for nations to learn the way of reconciliation and respect. There are still some who believe that there is a real and practical and effective way to make love the strategy for solving the problems and resolving the conflicts of the world. The world probably came as close as it has ever come to catching that vision in the aftermath of the Second World War. But then the vision faded away and an obsession with warfare replaced it.
Now our country still spends much more on military preparedness than is needed to maintain an adequate defense. Congress often appropriates more than the Pentagon asks for. And when there is a problem we can't solve in the world, we send in the bombers. Shouldn't we be trying to learn a better way, a way that can actually produce peace with justice?
As the tour group walked back to the bus after the vesper service on the way to Oberammergau, the German driver came up to the pastor and said he had just discovered that the borrowed church was actually the chapel of a German army base. The pastor was amazed. He asked the driver the name of the town. He fumbled with his maps, studied the location, and said, "Landsberg." The pastor felt a chill of excitement sweep over his body. The fact that the chapel of the German army base in Landsberg was built to preach a sermon about reconciliation means that someone had once caught a vision.
There were those who learned the lesson that terrible war taught, but too few. And the way of love and reconciliation was evidently too hard to learn, and the way of war had evidently been learned too well. It seems we have forgotten that when we allow fear to rule, we can be turned into tyrants, and that when we resort to war to solve the world's problems, only war wins. But if Jesus Christ were lifted up, would he be able to draw all peoples to him? There was a folk song that came out of another time in history when the world's heart was being broken by war. It asks the question, "When will we ever learn? When will we ever learn?"
____________
1. Walter Wink, Engaging the Powers (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992), pp. 244--251.
