Global Ministries

“April is the cruelest month, breeding /Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing

     Memory and desire, stirring/ Dull roots with spring rain.

     Winter kept us warm, covering /Earth in forgetful snow, feeding

     A little life with dried tubers.”

Lectionary Selection:  Luke 4:14-21

Prayers for Germany:  

God of Mercy, Ground of Being,
when your child Jesus was afraid, knowing the horror that lay in store for him;
when he was humiliated and tortured;
when his friends deserted him;
when he writhed in anguish on a cross designed for a criminal;
when, no longer able to hold himself up, he suffocated and died –
I believe you were with him – you suffered his fear, his loneliness, his agonizing hours.

I believe you are suffering with your children on this frail planet earth today.
Jesus died at the hands of Rome for proclaiming the kingdom of heaven on earth.
Ignoring the kingdom of heaven, we have built tiny kingdoms of our own with little
regard for your creation.

In this time of isolation, illness, and fear for the future, help us to remember our brother Jesus and his time of trial and 40 days of fasting and isolation in the wilderness; how he had to confront moral choices not unlike our own – the desire for comfort, power and recognition plague us. When slowly we come out of our isolation, our fast of human contact, help us to not forget we are just one of your unnumbered creations. Let us not forget this wilderness time. Help us to be more worthy citizens of our mother earth.

AMEN

Advent and Christmas went by in a flash. Now we’re well into 2020. Even when I was a young kid, the words, “Like sands though an hourglass, so are the days of our lives,” disturbed me. Do the days of our lives really run by as quickly as the hourglass on our black and white TV screen?

In 2015, the Evangelical Church in Wiesbaden, Germany recognized the opportunity to foster a new worshiping community to offer a diversity of worship practices familiar to Christian immigrants. The English Community Outreach Project was established to form a congregation uniting Protestant traditions in Germany with other cultural Christian traditions in worship. Today, members of the congregation come from Cameroon, Korea, Syria, Indonesia, and other European locations.

Rev. Rosalind Gnatt, pastor of the congregation and Global Ministries mission co-worker, invites you to a Good Friday service  remembering "the events of less than a day for the controversial teacher and healer, that ended in a borrowed tomb.  Both loved and hated by many, it seems he was misunderstood by all but one or two."

If you can join, here is the Order of Service. The musical meditations range from an 11th century poem, St. Patrick’s Schield, set by the 20th century composer Arvo Pärt, and Orlando Gibbons of the 17th century, to works of Bach, Chopin, Beethoven and Ottorino Respighi.

Click here to join the service by Zoom.

Palm Sunday Worship in the (Virtual) English Community in Germany

In 2015, the Evangelical Church in Wiesbaden, Germany recognized the opportunity to foster a new worshiping community to offer a diversity of worship practices familiar to Christian immigrants. The English Community Outreach Project was established to form a congregation uniting Protestant traditions in Germany with other cultural Christian traditions in worship. Today, members of the congregation come from Cameroon, Korea, Syria, Indonesia, and other European locations.

As news broke of nine people killed by an alleged far-right extremist gunman on 19 February in Hanau, Germany, World Council of Churches general secretary Rev. Dr Olav Fykse Tveit condemned the violence and extended condolences to family and friends of those who perished.

“Extremism and hate have no place in our world,” said Tveit. “We must continue to act together to stamp out the extremist and racist attitudes that lead to such brutal violence.”

The attack comes amid growing concerns about far-right violence in Germany. “We prayerfully support churches in Germany and across the world in stopping the tide of xenophobia that tears at the fabric of our one human family,” added Tveit.

Thirty years ago, on 9 November 1989, when the Berlin Wall fell, the Nicolaikirche in Leipzig had gained a reputation as a gathering point for events signalling the end of an era of communist rule in what was then East Germany.

The Leipzig city and parish church of St Nikolai had been the place where the "Monday demonstrations" took place in 1989, reaching a fever pitch before the Wall fell in a time of optimism at the end of the Cold War.

This sermon was preached by Rev. Dr. Barbara Kershner Daniel, former Global Ministries Board member, to partner church, Evangelical Kirchengemeinde Inden-Langerwehe in Germany on July 14, 2019.

Luke 6: 36-42

The way of the world is an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. The way of the world is: you hurt me, I hurt you even more. One country builds a bomb, another builds a bigger bomb. My fence will be bigger than your fence. My wall will be bigger than your wall and I will make you pay for it. The name of the game in the world is to win. At all costs. Despite the cost. That’s the way of the world. And we know how well that’s working.

A Call for the German Bundestag to Reverse its May 17, 2019 Resolution,
“Resisting the BDS movement decisively – fighting antisemitism”
May 23, 2019

Christians in Palestine are saddened and confused to learn of the German Bundestag’s passage of a resolution condemning the International Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement (BDS) and making it equal to anti-Semitism. The Palestinian BDS movement embraces the logic of peaceful means of resistance against the ongoing occupation and the Israeli human rights violations and discriminatory measures against our people. It means inviting Israel to the ways of peace, even by instituting some kind of pressure to help the government to open its eyes and see the injustice it is imposing on another people, the Palestinians.

Lectionary Selection: Luke 4:14-21

Prayers for Germany: 

Lord, our brother Jesus was rejected by the people who thought they knew him best – his hometown folk. They couldn’t believe that one of their own could have anything of worth to say to this tiny village. Freedom from poverty, oppression, illness? What nonsense; what audacity. Seventy-four years ago, you called Germany, decimated by the moral atrocity of the Holocaust, back into life. Clear-headed leaders, former enemies, came together to create a democracy with a socially just mandate. Now, though only a fraction of the size of the United States, Germany’s just society is unraveling as increasingly fewer people take over the resources of the land. Fear of and hatred for the stranger is on the rise. The numbers of children and elderly living in poverty increase yearly. We call on you, God, to help this nation restore its mandate of justice for all. Help us to take seriously our responsibility for each other’s welfare, knowing that in you, there are no national borders; that we are all one in your eyes. Help us, as US citizens and witnesses to the same ills in our own land, to be sisters and brothers together in the work of creating a just world for all; help us to be servants in building up the kingdom of heaven on earth.

Amen