Pray for Germany on Sunday, May 4, 2014
Lectionary Selection: Luke 24:13–35
Prayers for Germany:
God, our daily walk is, like the friends and followers of Jesus, an Emmaus road. We worry, alone and together; we walk along with eyes closed to the solutions we seek for our lives – for our world. Your child Jesus chose the walk of Love, the only answer to our questions of How, and Why?
I thank you for the witness of the Evangelische Kirche Deutschland; for its commitment to atonement, prayer and justice – teshuva, tefilla, tzedakah – in remembering the victims of the Holocaust, and in working for a just world. Give these churches, this nation, and us all the vision to walk this road with eyes, and hearts, open. Amen
Mission Stewardship Moment from Germany:
Before I arrived at the Bergkirche last April, the pastors were concerned: American Christians are fundamentalists – what would they do with a fundamentalist intern, in a congregation that is committed to open welcome for everyone? If I’ve accomplished nothing else, I have changed the perception for some, of what an American Christian looks like. Along with my pastoral work, I have been asked to speak to various groups of pastors and lay persons about the meaning of the United Church of Christ’s tagline: “God is still speaking,” and what we mean by “extravagant welcome.”
I participate in various atonement projects, which not only honor specific victims of the Holocaust, but call the Church at the congregational and national level to acknowledge the “things done, and left undone” in the church’s dark history under Hitler. On April 27th in the Bergkirche, we will have the opening ceremony for an exhibition involving six local churches. Each congregation has researched the history and fate of their members who, due to Jewish ancestry, were persecuted and killed. Though the Bergkirche was the regional focus of church resistance, members were still lost, among them a church council member, executed for aiding a pastor’s widow with Jewish ancestry.
As a child of the South, I think of the silence, and complicity of the churches in the massive evil of chattel slavery and its ongoing aftermath – Jim Crow. I am grateful for the UCC/Disciples, for the EKHN, and for this partnership, that consistently sees God in every one of God’s children.
Thank you for your generous support and prayers that make this ministry and these programs possible.
(Prayer and Mission Moment by Rosalind Gnatt)
Mission Partners in Germany:
More information on Germany:
http://globalministries.org/mee/countries/germany/
Global Ministries Missionary in Germany:
Rosalind Gnatt serves as a long-term volunteer with the Evangelical Church of Hesse-Nassau, Germany. She serves in a pastoral leadership position in a local congregation, in coordination with the regional church body (EKHN), and the New York Conference.