Sermons

Michael Zimmer: Sermon on "Our Lady's Assumption into Heaven"

Dora Maria Teidelt: "God Living in a Thorn Shrub ..."

Christoph Gerdemann: This is a Parting Gift

Hans Sanders: Christmas Sermon in St George, Hohenholte

Gospel: Lk 1:39-56

Dear sisters and brothers, the gospel of today's feast of Our Lady's assumption into heaven tells us of a meeting; the meeting of Mary and Elizabeth in a town in the mountain country of Judea.

We all experience daily meetings in very different ways: The greeting in passing, the business date, the common meal in the family, the tender contact of the woman or the man ... Perhaps we experience non-meetings on some days also: that we wish ourselves readily a meeting, which then is missing however ... In each meeting we experience us also as function carriers - in our occupation, or completely privately in our family...

In my life I have made the experience that I cannot plan the crucial meetings; they happen; they are given. With this experience I came also on Sunday home from Berlin. Ten days of retreats on the street lay behind me, of which I want simply to tell you a little, because there occurred so much of encounter.

Retreat means exercise. We mostly say: Spiritual Exercises. The ten day exercises on the street are concerned above all about practicing respectful seeing and hearing. By that we were lead by a narration from the Old Testament, known to many of you: Moses meets God in the burning thorn shrubs (Ex 3.1-4.17). In this meeting God says to Moses: "Take off your shoes. The place where you stand is holy ground." (Here I took off my shoes under smiling of the parishioners. It did simply fit in so.)

In this "taking off the shoes" there is much respect for the other person, but also the "total entering into an encounter." Shoes are a symbol for protection, which we so often build around us, in order not to be, in the long run, open to attacks, to be invulnerable, untouchable. Even if life very often demands distance from us, such an attitude prevents also very much of encounter. Where we are longing for real meeting with people and with God, there is needed this readiness for respectful seeing and hearing, for encounter, with which we "take off our shoes." How then has that been in Berlin...?

Invited by the group of "Religious Sisters and Brothers against Exclusion" we - five men and four women, who were guided by two Jesuits and two Sisters - lived in an emergency accommodation for homeless people in the cellar of the parish centre St Michael in Berlin-Kreuzberg. Here up to 1989 the wall separated not only the city Berlin, but also the Catholic parish St Michael into east and west. Also after the opening of the wall this separation could not be overcome yet. Each morning we met to breakfast and Morning Prayer. Subsequently, all of us went on the streets of Berlin. In contrast to the tourist visitors of Berlin I carried along neither bag or guide or city plan. To let oneself be lead from what is there, in the inside, of thoughts and feelings; to let oneself be lead by people whom I meet on the street; to be lead, in the long run, by God who is meeting us in our own heart, and in other human beings.

This was not simple for me and needed time. My normal everyday life as minister is nevertheless quite shaped by dates and obligations, by my own ideas, and by tasks imposed on me. To come out from this "functioning duty" is not so simple at all. The function protects also. But when I always function only, like a gear wheel in the transmission of world and time, there will be covered and buried much of my human being.

Simply to see and hear respectfully the things that meet us - people and places; without subordinating everything and everyone to purposes or a certain aim; simply to be there, to let oneself be lead by the liberating experiences of reality, that was one of the liberating experiences which I take home from the retreat; however, an experience that had to be learned by me again.

To two places in Berlin I was drawn at once several times: In St Hedwig Cathedral to the grave of Bernhard Lichtenberg, Provost at St Hedwig Cathedral, who died on November 5th 1944 on the way to the Concentration Camp Dachau. And to the execution place in Plötzensee, which is today the Memorial Place for the resistance fighters of 20 July 1944, and for all who resisted already before this date the Nazi System, and were executed. Especially for that occasion a drop hatchet was brought from the Detention Centre Bruchsal - hence from our homeland of Baden - to Berlin Plötzensee.

Among the murdered was also the Jesuit Father Alfred Delp, born in Mannheim, who was condemned by the People's Court under Roland Freisler to death, and executed on February 2nd 1942 in Plötzensee. I asked myself time and again, why I was drawn just to that place. Surely the dire alliance of law, administration, and National Socialism has frightened me; to see, how jurisdiction makes itself the tool of a system that despises human beings. Surely the attitude of the women and men, who have given away their lives here for their creed, has touched me.

But the dead have also become my friends; they remind me of valuable sides in me; the dead create room where I could be simply there; I could release and entrust to them the things by which my innermost heart was moved; and time and again that was expressed also by tears. Perhaps also you know such wholesome encounters with deceased people.

On the fifth day in Berlin I was drawn to the wall. Before the St Michael Church in the east I met a man who told me about the situation here at the border during the GDR-time; about people who were allowed to live in the east here at the wall, officers of the border crews and party members, who live still here today and grow old.

He described me the run of the wall, and sent me eventually to the East Side Gallery. I would never have got the idea to visit this section of the Berlin Wall, which had been painted by artists of different countries. When I arrived, I saw directly at the beginning a sign with the label: 800 meters - view behind the wall. That interested me. Soon I found the gap in the wall and went through. In the first instant I was speechless about which I saw: a sand beach in the middle of Berlin on the bank of the Spree river, where up to the fall of the wall had been the Death Sector.

I took off my shoes off, enjoyed the sand under my feet, and sat down on the bank. This surprise triggered gratitude in me. Suddenly my heart was completely filled with it. Perhaps you know such moments, which can hardly be described; when we are touched however by someone larger than we, and can only be astonished and thankful in the end. I want most of all to hold such moments, because they are simply so beautiful. But it is not only beauty that touched me internally in Berlin - as it had done already so often.

On the next to last day of the retreat - perhaps it needed that time of ripening and becoming free - this experienced abundance burst out from me. There were many tears. So much of mourning and disappointment, of rage and inability, which had simply to be out-cried ...

When I found peace again, well, I was exhausted, but felt relieved and free. As for the grace of abundance I said God thanks also for this grace of tears, even if they let me stand here with empty hands; without any experience or guarantee of success, without hard facts and numbers, without proofs. I have actually nothing in the hand. But I was allowed by this retreat to experience particularly intensively that God will fill our empty hands, our open heart, sometimes with joy and deep luck, sometimes with mourning and tears.

After Eucharist and dinner we met each evening for the exchange in two small groups. We told each other of our experiences on the street, of people and places and - of this I am convinced: We have told thereby of God, who is in the middle of life, in the middle of the street with us men, particularly with the poor, homeless people and the weak; with those who do not "function", and do simply not fit into a system.

In the conclusion service of the retreat group we heard the gospel about the Emmaus disciples: what they told the stranger, what happened in Jerusalem and what moved their hearts; and how this telling about their lives became for them a meeting with Christ. Encouraged by it we told each other of our "way stories" in the Sunday's service of the parish St Michael, and let us bless by the parishioners.

I simply wanted to pass on a few fragments to the people with whom I am living here in Baden-Baden, and with whom I am allowed to work. I connect with it the hope that our church, our parish here in this place, the family and the communities in which we live will become more and more 'telling communities'. Where life is, there is God. And where we tell about life, there we tell about God. And perhaps in our life will then occur what Mary and Elisabeth experienced in the mountain country of Judea: That we are touched in our inmost heart; that life is moving in us, and wants, like by a child birth, to come into the world. Amen.

15 August 2003 in St. Dionys, Baden-Baden

Exodus 3:1-15 Gospel: First Sunday after Epiphany) and Dtn 33:16)

1. Moses Everyday Life:

He is guarding the sheep and goats of his father-in-law Jitro: In the morning leading them out into the steppe, in the evening back again - all day long on his legs, like the animals.
And he has time. Moses is moving in the pace of the animals. And they will stop time and again, for a longer or shorter while. Then he takes place on a stone and -, yes, what will herdsmen do then (until today) - during so many hours of the day?

They will day-dream, or observe the animals, or the surrounding area. They will think about this and that, observe nature. Sometimes perhaps they will also dream about the future. Like that it is day for day with Moses.

Moses Thorn Shrub Experience
Our Bible text describes a special day. It begins like always: Moses went out, a little bit further than usually: "Beyond the steppe"(V.1). Into the desert to the "mountain of God, Horeb"(ib.). The name "Horeb" is found frequently in the Old Testament; for the knowing listener it is a note: here God is not far; but one after the other.

In the desert it is still more meagrely than in the steppe, there is scarcely any vegetation yet, but many stones and much sun. There a burning thorn shrub attracted Moses' attention. And although a thorn shrub has not much fuel, that shrub was not burnt up. Moses was looking and looking. Time and again he must look there - how strange. He became interested in this thorn shrub. It caught his attention. He went nearer. When he almost reached the shrub, he stopped. Someone was calling his name: "Moses, Moses!" He stopped and answered: "Here I am" (V.4).

Now Moses is standing before God. Because the fire in the thorn shrub - the listener knows it earlier as Moses - is "the angel of the Lord" (V.2). "God is living in the thorn shrub..." (Dtn 33.16). Now it is no longer about the fire which does not end, now it is about the encounter of God and Moses. The thorn shrub is the "medium" by which God enters into Moses' life. It lasts, until Moses understands. The burning thorn shrub brings it about that Moses pays more attention, comes nearer (and leaves everything behind for some time), remains standing - "do not step nearer! " (V.5) - to stay and to hear what God says.

First his name, "Yahweh" - in English: "I am there" (V.14). I am there for you - always! I am present - like now, in this instant, at this thorn shrub, day for day. And then, "I have seen the misery of my people, and have heard the crying of the suppressed ... I will bring them into a country where milk and honey are flowing" (V. 7f). Here at this thorn shrub Yahweh assures Moses that he wants to lead the Israelites into liberty, and to accompany them on this way out of servitude. And Moses needs no longer hide himself. (After he had killed an Egyptian keeper, who had flogged an Israelit, he had fled. In exile he had married, and had found lodging in Midian.) All misery will turn.

Moses "takes off his shoes" because he feels, "this place, where I am standing, is holy ground"(V.5). So far the history of Moses [the conversation between God and Moses still continues. In the end Moses will do what God demands of him: he will lead out the Israelites. And he "went there" out of the desert, back to his father-in-law Jitro (4,18), to his everyday life].

2. My "Everyday Life" in Berlin
My life surely differs from that of Moses. But I would nevertheless... like to tell you again of my time in Berlin. Day for day I ran through Kreuzberg (a suburb of Berlin): strangely - not because of the unknown streets, but because it differed so from my usual life (so without money, among so many Turks and people who are living on the street); aimlessly, without task, without firm routine of the day, occasionally with "boredom", sentenced by myself to go "through there". I had much time, which "had" to be spent by me. I did not know anybody, was alone (despite so many people around me) - like Moses in the desert.

My "Thorn Shrub Experience"
I too had such a thing like a "thorn shrub experience". During the whole time I had in the back of my head, how I could manage it to get into contact with people of the street. My conception was: they will not talk at all with such an "established" person like me. Several-day-long I thought: It will never happen! After some days of "dryness" there was free a bench at the Kottbusser Tor, where I sat down with pulled up shoulders, as it were, "just in the middle of it". I did not feel good - neither when sitting down nor when sitting there - until I saw a note at a tree in five metres distance. I tried to decipher it from afar. I looked and looked: "We are mourning about you, dear Ute". Below it some names and small painted flowers.

That touched me: on the one hand the fate of that Ute, unknown to me - the fantasy that she rather miserably and possibly lonely kicked the bucket on the street; on the other hand that there are friends to whom it is important to express their embarrassment about Ute's death.

And a third thing touched me: A young man came, read the note; again and still again ..., he felt his clothes, disappeared, came back after a whole while - and had got a pen. With it he wrote his name (and that of his dog) to the others on the note.

And a fourth thing was added: Two young men, who were sitting on the next bench, went to the tree and read the note. I plucked up courage and addressed them: if they had known this Ute. They did not know her, but - we began to talk with one another!!! One of them spoke to me: "Have you one Euro for me?" I had not, and explained to him why (social experiment, without money on the way). To that his buddy said, "About half past four will come the welfare army. They bring hot soup, tea, and coffee - gratis!"

The two let me more into their lives than I them into mine! At the latest their sharing-with-me, their hospitality let - even if I had difficulty to accept them - become clear to me that there was "holy ground"! My shoes have been taken off by themselves ... Although this practical work happened four weeks ago already, it is still moving me. Somehow these hours there at the Kottbusser Tor had something for me of the "thorn shrub". And I saw them as "Advent": beyond of my usual everyday life (as Pastor in Hagen; I had left that behind me) to wait, to find the right place, to pause, to look time and again - and then to hear something that comes from a "different world" somehow, with which I cannot cope with my intellect. What is the heart?

3. "Thorn Shrub Experiences" in Your Life
Perhaps you will answer now: "Such things do not happen with me! I had nothing against it, but ..." The longing is there already. The question is: How can I get there? This longing and this question are just Advent - and a good beginning.

In Advent it is about experiences beyond of our usual everyday life. Most of us are little experienced to enter into situations that have not been planned or calculated by us, and could also not be planned. And nevertheless there - perhaps just there - God can "be there".

Advent is like an invitation to adjust us again and again to the possibility of "thorn shrubs", and to "reckon" with them; with the fact, that the "I-Am-There" is interested in our life, and will bring "all our need to an end". The 'thorn shrub' is a picture for the everyday life - as well of Moses' as of ours. The thorn shrub is a symbol for the voice of God that addresses us in the middle in our everyday life. The thorn shrub is a "mark": to pause, to stop, to look - perhaps to become aware: God is mine vis-à-vis here.

[Abraham or Jacob would have probably built an altar on the place of the burning thorn bush (Beth-el = "here is God's place - and I did not know it!").] "God, who is living in the thorn shrub" ... Let me put this "thorn shrub" to the Advent Wreath on the altar.

Dora Maria Teidelt

An attempt to report about a retreat way, which I began on the streets in Cologne, and in the midst of a group...

This (cup) is a parting gift. I got it on past Sunday at the end of my nine-day "retreat on the street" in Cologne.

When I drink my coffee from this cup, I remember those who participated with me in this retreat, Mechtild, the leader of a child and a youth centre, Franziska, an old people nurse, Pia, a teacher from Vienna, Irene, a 69 year old woman, and the spiritual guides Christian, a Jesuit and Alexa, a Franciscan nun.

I remember our unusual accommodation. It is an somewhat decayed office building opposite an enormous incineration plant. I remember our meal prepared by us, the morning rounds, our being on the street and staying in the city, the simple Eucharist at five o'clock p.m., the intensive exchange about our ways and experiences in the evening, and the usually good sleep despite load traffic and floodlight.

This cup, depending upon whether it is empty or filled with a beverage, reminds me also of the surprising and genuine encounters with people without shelter for body or soul or both. Some times my speaking had drained completely, and no words came over my lips. My view was not answered. My attention toward someone missed.

Do you know that?

I would like to take you along a little with these words into my experiences. In the last week I have asked myself repeatedly: Can that be done at all? To report of my inner experiences to people who have gone in that time a completely different way. And how many may be there who are not at all interested in it. However it may be, I have begun now.

The beginning of my days in Cologne is found in the Moses story that we already heard in the reading. In the midst of his work Moses saw something strange: a thorn shrub which was burning but did not burn up. Moses became curious. He wanted to regard the happening more exactly and went there. He heard a voice: "Moses, take off your shoes. Where you are standing is holy ground. "...

And God told him about the misery of his people, and how it moved his heart...

And Moses heard the name of God: I am "the one who is there. "...

We, who took part in the retreat, asked ourselves: Which thorn shrub places are there for me? And with that: round which thorny topics in my life history do I go rather than visit them.

We groped ahead on the way: Where do I feel a curiosity to visit such places where people experience various thorns of the life? And which shoes have to be taken off at these places?

Those who know Cologne can imagine that there is no lack of such places. As a little assistance various places from which we could select were suggested. E.g. places of residence for homeless people, drug-addicts, prostitutes and asylum-seekers, the psychiatry, the labour office, the baby flap, the grave field for vagrant people...

A place visited repeatedly by me is hidden behind the code on the cup: F 02. F 02 - so is written on a visitor mark for the prison in Cologne Ossendorf. For an inhabitant of Cologne it is the new "Klingelpütz". Everyone who wants to visit a prisoner has first in a small waiting-room to fill in the visitor form, to pull a mark, and to wait. A digital display shows then, who is the next to enter.

To find the entrance, I had to go round the prison first. The walls did not seem to end. This jail probably belongs to one of the largest: over 1.500 young people, women and men are here detained.

Arrived at the entrance I sat down in the waiting room. Many young women with children came, a punk, who wanted to visit his friend, a woman and a man, who wanted to see their son. Shame and fear are written on the face of the mother. Some knew each other probably already, and got upset together that not only the prisoners were punished but also their family members and friends. For the attendance controls and instructions rob much time, and extra nerves.

Time and again I looked at the prison building for a long time. The walls did not permit a view into the inside. There I notice how I recognize myself in the colluded glass of the entrance air-lock. It was as if I looked into a mirror. Questions arose: Am I sitting outside or inside? Where does the prison actually begin? Who is prisoner and who not? Is that only made clear by high walls and barbed wire?

Who am I, who am sitting here? Somebody who wants to satisfy his pure curiosity, someone who is possessed by his wish to help, one who is disconcerted by the supposed clear separation of being imprisoned and being free? I said good-bye with a prayer and went away.

On the next day I went again and waited. Rain poured down occasionally. At any time I took off my shoes and put my naked feet on the ground.

In the evening in the exchange round I told what had happened, how I had noticed that the ground, on which I stood with my naked feet, connected itself with the soil of the prisoners. So, as if they had pushed themselves together. I felt, we stood on common ground.

In this afternoon the prison walls got another weight. Their power to separate human beings into prisoners and free ones lost its significance. I felt how I was connected with them. Not equal but connected.

The question which I asked myself, read: Which shoes, in a figurative sense, did I take off? I did not know it exactly. Perhaps to mean, I were able to help.

Until today this experience resounds in me. Not dully. Rather facilitating and liberating. Thank God!

Christoph Gerdemann

Dear Fellow Christians!

An experience from this afternoon induced me to hold a completely different sermon as the before prepared: My first Christmas service was today in Münster in an institution which cares for the so-called 'brothers and sisters of the street' - in our colloquial language: for the bums, boozers, fixers, homeless persons.

On my way to the church I went past the eastern side of Münster's main station. There I could not fail to notice the group of just those people who are during the whole year on this place. Today, at Christmas Eve they were remarkably many: men and women of every age.

In the service with about eighty of such "types", while I was reading out the Christmas gospel, at the place, "And in the same area - as it were, next door - were herdsmen" something like a lightning went through my mind, "My God, only 150 m air-line distance from here I have just seen the "herdsmen"! - There, behind the station! Just to "such" people is announced from "heaven" THE piece of news of the birth of the Messiah, of God's child!"

For that you must know: At the time of Jesus the herdsmen had approximately the same social status as the "antisocial" types behind all stations - avoided and feared from the so-called decent people. Why is the Christmas message announced just to those first? Perhaps, because they - abhorred and avoided as impure just by the pious - had not any chance to come into contact with the Messiah's salvation. But, perhaps their hearts were filled-out with the longing for a better life with acknowledgment and appreciation.

And there it "clicked" by me! An experience came clearly back into my mind, which I had in Hamburg, also at the main station. At that time I took part in an advanced training in Hamburg. Priests and members of religious orders should learn, to look for the Risen Lord not only in churches, retreat houses, and at other "pious" places. For Jesus Christ there are not any impious places, he is everywhere and perhaps just where we "religious" people do not assume him to be at all.

Thus I joined a group which would for a whole day look for and get surprising meetings with the Risen Lord there at Hamburg main station. It was a day with really surprising experiences and meetings. I want to report here and now only of the last and most impressive encounter:

Toward the end of the day I felt a big hunger, and a longing for the first May sun before the station. Armed with a sandwich and a beer can I looked outside for a seat in the sun. I found a place on a stone bank just in sight with a group of the above mentioned "herdsmen". I ate my sandwich and drank my beer with relish.

There a still young man left suddenly the group of the "bums and boozers", came to me, and asked, "May I take a seat beside you?" "Yes, of course!" And then this man told me suddenly and without further circumstances his life: How he had dropped out years ago of the so-called civil world, how he had travelled through nearly the whole world - over Africa and India up into the high mountains in Tibet! Sometime he had then got the first drug, and had become drug addicted. For nearly ten years he had had no longer contact to his family, which had declared him, as it were, for dead.

Some days ago he had - infected by AIDS - got the message from the physicians that he had to live at the most still three months. And then he came to the core of his request, "Look", he said and pointed at the group which he had left, "they are my only friends whom I still have in the world. And it is well so, that I have at least them. But: If I am dead in some weeks, then also these buddies will after three/four days no longer know that I ever existed! No man in the world will still think of me! But also I have lived here on this earth! There must be nevertheless at least one, who knows about me - with my life dreams and hopes! I am nevertheless a MAN!"

Heavily breathing he showed me then his arm, lean as a rake, with many silver bracelets, and continued, "If I give you one of these bracelets, do you promise me to carry it in memory of me? To take it not just into your "other world" only to put it there into the night table drawer, and to have perhaps as it happened once in the year a memory of this day, and of a bum in Hamburg!"

Now it was I who sat there with big beating of my heart and heavily breathing beside this man with his enormous distress! In such a misery, as I so far had never met any, I could for Heaven's sake, not say NO! But, so it went terrifically fast through my mind: Which will my parishioners think, if I appear suddenly with such a bracelet, which cannot remain hidden, which one will see also when I stand at the altar, and administer other sacraments! Into this pause for thought the man asked, "What are you thinking about for such a long time? Do you not want it?" I told him who I am, and about the questions which went through my mind, and asked him to leave me just still another minute. "Because", so I said, "I do not want to lie to you! When I say YES, then it shall be also a real YES, on which you can rely." And then after a longer pause for thought I said: YES!

Dieter (in the meantime we had introduced to each other with our names) solved almost piously one of his bracelets and fastened it to this my right arm - here!! Then the just still completely unknown man - from a strange and completely different world - took me into his arms spontaneously, pressed me as firmly as he was able to in his critically ill state, and said: "Now I have a brother again!"

Both deeply moved we kept each other for a good time so embraced. Then sitting again next to each other I asked this brother Dieter, "How did you actually get the idea to address just me?" He answered, "You were for a long time the first from the other world who looked at us bums with good eyes!"

I had a bad shock: What luck for me and this man that we went religiously so well prepared into this day! Not to imagine, if I had had "bad" eyes at this day - as at so many other days of the year.

And thus I am again at the crib of the God child! God became man, so that we men can see the good and loving eyes of our God! I would like to wish all of us that the God child might give us such durably good eyes! Eyes, which become aware of the often hidden and nevertheless tormenting misery of the fellow man! (In German a play on words: wahrnehmen=take for true)

The last day in the parsonage we have been shocked and moved by a terrible event: The fifteen year old son of a well-known, middle-class, and Christian family has hung himself five days before Christmas, and killed himself!

Everyone here can imagine it today easily: Now parents, brothers and sisters, friends, neighbours and teachers ask themselves: Why did we not notice anything of this boy's obviously terrible distress? How could we fail to become aware of it?

When I wish now a good Christmas to all of you, then I mean with it: That these good Christmassy eyes with bright and clear sight may be given to us, which see the distress of people - or at least look so well at people, that they can take themselves a heart like Dieter, and reveal themselves to us with their distress. And: That these "Christmassy eyes" may, please, not be disposed with the dried up Christmas tree!

In this sense: Again: "Merry Christmas" - a joy which may remain strong through a whole year!

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