Reformation Journey

ELCA Bishops with Presiding Bishop Eaton
at the Stadtkirche (Town Church) in
Wittenburg where Martin Luther regularly preached

This year our annual ELCA Bishops’ Academy was held in Germany under the theme “Luther and his Legacy Today.” Our goal was to visit key sites related to the Lutheran Reformation and to explore how that pivotal time in history continues to inform our world and shape our life as a church. Thirty four of our 65 ELCA synodical bishops participated in this journey, most with our spouses. 

ELCA Bishops' Spouses in Berlin

Since returning from this trip over a week ago, I’ve been looking for language to describe what we experienced.  Although our focus was on visiting sites of the Reformation related to the life and ministry of Martin Luther, it was much more. We also explored some of the challenging chapters of German history, from the Holocaust to the division of the country into East and West. I think I expected to return inspired and ready to explore exciting ways we can commemorate the Reformation here in our synod in 2017. Instead, I returned feeling thoughtful and sobered.

While I’d like to blame my melancholy on the weather, which was cold and cloudy much of the time, the truth is that this trip confronted me with some of the past and current ambiguities of our life together as a Lutheran expression of the church. I was reminded of the less-than-heroic side of Martin Luther himself. How can it be that someone who discovered the amazing power of a gospel of God’s grace could, at the very end of his life, preach sermons that vilified the Jewish people? It doesn’t help that his words were used centuries later to justify the Holocaust. How can it be that the theological insights of the Reformation—insights that hold such potential for spiritual renewal—instead became so institutionalized that it required a pietist reaction to move these insights from head to heart, from idea to action? How is it that the birthplace of our Lutheran way of being church is now one of the most secularized places in the world? What hope might there be for our companion churches in Germany to share an authentic witness to the gospel among people in the former East Germany who, as we heard more than one person say, have “forgotten that they have forgotten God”?

Sobering as these questions may be, there were more heartening moments in our journey that stood out for me:

A litany of baptismal renewal took place in the Church of St. Peter and Paul in Eisleben, where Luther was baptized. This congregation has become a center for adult catecumenate, with a focus on what baptism means today. The remodeled sanctuary—with a large baptistery as the focal point—is a beautiful blend of past, present and future faith. Tears came as we used the baptismal water to mark each other with the sign of the cross and broke into singing “Jesus loves me."

The Luther Garden in Wittenburg is a place to honor Reformation legacy and future. Tended by the Lutheran World Federation and inspired by words ascribed to Luther (“Even if I knew that the world would end, I would still plant an apple tree today.”) the Garden is home to 500 trees of varying types. Lutheran churches from around the world as well as other ecumenical bodies are invited to sponsor a tree and dedicate it with Scripture, prayer and song.  We dedicated two such trees, sponsored by the Southwest Washington Synod and the Eastern Washington-Idaho Synod.

As we visited St. Nicholas Church in Leipzig, we learned of the Peaceful Revolution of 1989, which was shaped by regular prayer meetings in the churches and culminated in 70,000 marching in the streets to the center of the East German secret police, who are reported to have said: “We were prepared for anything except candles and prayer.”  Without the guidance and role of the churches in this movement, the wall in Berlin may still be standing today.

In a visit to Buchenwald Concentration Camp, we were reminded of our human frailty as well as our human potential for both good and evil. Our prayer around a simple memorial in the ground, heated to the temperature of the human body and inscribed with the name of all the places from which prisoners in that one camp had come, left us without words and with frozen tears on our cheeks as we stood in the bitter cold

Our final days in Berlin were filled with an opportunity to grapple with the real-life implications of history as we explored the legacy of World War Two as well as the division then reunification of Germany. At the German History Museum we were introduced to the vast scope of people and events that shaped this part of God’s world, and I was reminded once again that if we do not allow ourselves to learn from what has happened in the past, we will be doomed to repeat it.

I’m still not sure how my experiences on this trip will shape how we might commemorate the Reformation here in the Rocky Mountain Synod. But I am grateful beyond measure for the opportunity to have made this journey, and humbled to be part of a church that is willing to confront and wrestle with the most complex aspects of our own story.

Yours in Faith,

Bishop Jim Gonia