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Stuart's Briscoe Bulletin: Winding Through Germany & Austria
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
What do himmelfahrt, the autobahnen, the old Soviet Union, Martin Luther, and Johann Sebastian Bach all have in common? They were all part, in some way, of Stuart and Jill’s recent ministry to Germany and Austria. Read Stuart’s Briscoe Bulletin to learn about their recent trip and the vibrant German believers with whom Stuart and Jill have had a friendship for more than 50 years!
Germany and Austria Revisited
by Stuart Briscoe
I’ve had a special interest in Germany ever since I met my first group of young Germans shortly after World War II. It was hard to believe that if we’d been just four or five years older, we could have been shooting at each other, particularly as we discovered that many of us shared a vital faith in the Lord Jesus and a love of football! As a result of meeting these young people, I was invited to visit their country and have been doing so at regular intervals ever since.
I’ve always admired their attention to detail, their insistence on doing things properly, their industry, and their exceedingly sharp minds. But I have to admit I have not always admired their insistence of looking on the gloomy side and seeing a difficulty at every opportunity. When I first began to recognize words rather than baffling guttural sounds as they spoke to each other, I had to ask “What does schwerigkeiten mean?” because that was the word I heard most often. “It means difficulties,” they replied!
Almost fifty years ago, I met Peter and Runhild Wiegand and Runhild’s brother, Lutz. Shortly thereafter, they departed Germany for Austria and are still there. Lutz subsequently married Ute, an Austrian girl, and the four of them put together a team that has established a thriving international ministry in the intervening years. They renovated a Schloss (castle) and a ruined Burg (fortress) into a first-class Bible school and conference centre. Now in their seventies, they’re still actively on the job. You can imagine the reminiscing that we enjoyed when we got together after a long day of ministry.
Much more recently, in fact, ten years ago in the Philippines, I met Willi Daiker, a German born in Kazakhstan and raised in the Soviet Union. With his wife Irmi, who was born in Lithuania, he has played a prominent role in establishing and developing a Bible school and missions agency in Bonn, Germany, where we are frequent teachers. For the last few days, the four of us have been crisscrossing Germany at breakneck autobahnen speeds, mixing work with pleasure - although most of our work is unadulterated pleasure!
Willi has introduced us to many people like himself who retained their German heritage and Anabaptist faith while living in the Soviet Union. After being allowed to emigrate to the West, they established thriving families, businesses and churches. In a city rejoicing in its name - Schwabish Gmund - we spoke to a Wednesday night service well attended by young and old. The former in modern Western dress, the latter still wearing the clothes of Russian babushkas! Amazingly, they listened intently for 90 minutes – including translation.
The Thursday morning service was held in another beautiful new sanctuary. If you think Thursday morning service is a typo, let me hasten to explain it was “Himmelfahrt” – (literally “heaven journey” or Ascension Day). Himmelfahrt is a national holiday in Germany and a favorite time in German churches to celebrate the triumphant return of Christ to Glory! Sadly, in American churches that are non-liturgical, Ascension Day is an event that frequently passes unremembered and uncelebrated. I was granted an hour – with interpretation – to preach and did so with great enthusiasm as I explored the remarkable fact that after Jesus completed his work on the cross and resurrection, He delayed returning home for 40 days. (I assured the people that when I finish an overseas trip, I’m on the first plane home!)
We explored the reasons for this delay and concluded that He stayed because He couldn’t possibly leave His disciples in total disarray. The gospels outline their emotional and spiritual condition after the cross, and Acts 1:1-11 describes their confusion about resurrection, kingdom, Holy Spirit and mission despite the fact that He covered these subjects during three years of His teaching. So He clarified those issues for them – and for us.
One striking feature in the church service was the music. Young and old together making glorious music that lifted our hearts in praise and adoration in ways I will long remember and cherish!
We also took a couple of days to travel to Eisenach, a beautiful old town famous for, among other things, its connections with Martin Luther in the early 16th century and the Bach family of musical prodigies generations later. Four successive generations of Bachs - all whose name began with Johann although none included Sebastian - were choirmasters and organists at the imposing St. Georgekirche that dominates the main plaza.
The church in traditional Lutheran style, if free from embellishments apart from a striking altarpiece, has acres of hard straight-backed pews and three balconies wrapped round three sides of the main seating area. Over the centuries many events have taken place within these venerable walls. Imagine the tension in the packed galleries when Martin Luther preached from the ancient pulpit on his way home to Wittenburg after being censured at the Diet of Worms. He ignored the fact that his promise of safe passage was contingent on him NOT preaching on the way home as he had on his triumphant journey to Worms. Word must have spread quickly that night that the Reformer was in Eisenach, and the people must have thronged in a hurry to the church to hear him preach as the official report says the church was “overfull!” I wonder what went through his mind as he entered once again the cavernous building where as a boy he had sung in the church choir while attending Latin school prior to learning Greek and Hebrew! No doubt he put those thoughts aside and preached with customary passion, careless of his own safety, fired by his own discovery of biblical truth and a fierce determination to stand against the devil and his legions, of whose existence he had no doubts.
One other momentous event that took place within the walls of St. Georgekirche, Eisenach deserves mention. Ever since the post WWII agreement of the Allies to partition Germany, Eisenach had been part of East Germany under Communist rule. But in the cold winter months of 1989 there was a stirring in the cities and villages of the vast Soviet Empire as the people began to express their discontent with their lot and the Soviets began to lose their iron grip on their vast occupied territories.
After years of meeting in solitary small groups under all manner of threats and punishments, the believers in various countries of the Eastern zones were courageously gathering together more openly. Their numbers swelled, and one November night in 1989, the old St. Georgekirche was packed once again - this time with oppressed people bearing candles praying for peace and freedom. Within a matter of days, to the amazement of the watching world, the seemingly impregnable Soviet Empire collapsed.
On a much quieter occasion the considerable Bach family gathered in the shadow of that same pulpit and young Johann Sebastian Bach was baptized in the massive stone font. This child grew up to be not only a world-class musician whose innovations changed music forever, but also an ardent scholar of Luther’s theology and a stalwart follower of Jesus. His extensive library reputedly contains all of Luther’s theological books obviously carefully studied and copiously underlined.
The home where Luther lived as a boy has been turned into a museum and a coffee shop, thanks in part to the American government. After U.S. Forces damaged the building in their advance during WWII (as well as the home of the Bachs and the church), they immediately announced they would restore the buildings. Your tax dollars at work! The Bachhaus, as it is called by the locals, is a beautiful roomy old family homestead that houses a magnificent museum and interactive display of Bach’s musical innovations – I learned more about musical theory in a couple of hours there than in the rest of my life, which isn’t saying much of anything!!
Earlier I mentioned Luther’s long journey from Worms to Wittenburg with intermittent stops to preach, although forbidden. An alert Elector whose castle towers over Eisenach from a precipitous craggy mountain called the Wartburg was most concerned about Luther’s safety despite assurances of safe passage. He knew what had happened to Jan Hus in similar circumstances. (The church had ruled that since Hus was declared a heretic, promises of safe passage were no longer binding and they took him out and burned him alive.) So the Elector staged an “attack” on Luther’s party, “kidnapped” the Reformer and whisked him away to the Wartburg where he was “incarcerated” for ten months using an alias “Knight George.” Very few people had any idea where Luther had disappeared to, and most of the people in the fortress did not know the identity of the knight in their midst!
But Luther, despite experiencing periodic bouts of despair and depression, put his time in enforced seclusion to good use. He started his work of translating the New Testament into German in a small, plain, paneled room where disorderly knights were normally held! We stood in this confined space and wondered at the tenacity and bravery… the erudition and energy of this man of God. We remembered that up until Luther’s brave stand against the church that he loved, the common people were allowed only to partake of the bread in the Eucharist and had no access to the Bible, as most of them did not know Latin. Luther not only rediscovered the “priesthood of all believers” - he made it happen for all who recognize the priceless gifts of word and sacrament from the Risen Christ to His church.
If you enjoyed this, you can read archived J-Mails, Briscoe Bulletins and Monthly Letters from Stuart, Jill and Pete.
