The Overseas Trip Where Language Didn't Matter

Our missions trip was scheduled for September 2001. We’d been preparing all summer. But 9-11 intervened, and the trip was postponed.  

We were an unusual missions team. The mission we’d be visiting had specifically asked for it – a small team devoted to communications to help the mission tell its story, produce a short film for a building fundraiser, and interview missionaries who could use videos and stories to send reports to financial supporters and home churches. We were a team of three: team lead/logistics guy/organizer/general factotum; the videographer, aka the guy with the camera; and me, the writer, the guy with the laptop who would be typing away in airports, planes, homes, offices, and in the car. 

 

We’d be in central Europe for a week, with a schedule so packed I thought we’d need slotted times for breathing. Four countries, five languages, cultural shocks, and no time to detox from jet lag.

 

I could probably write pages about that trip, story after story, detail after detail. But what sticks with me were a few examples of how communication didn’t depend upon language.

Photograph of Dresden by Lukas D via Unsplash. Used with permission. 

Some Thursday Readings

 

Poet Laure: Going Fishing with Dad – Donna Hilbert at Tweetspeak Poetry.

 

“Casey at the Bat,” poem by Ernest Thayer – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

“In School-Days,” poems by John Greenleaf Whittier – Anthony Esolen at Word & Song.

 

 

Some Wednesday Readings

The Most Valuable Class I Ever Had – Chris Martin at FYI.

The Nazis Did Not ‘Weaponize’ Free Speech. They Crushed It – Andrew Roberts at The Free Press.

Catchin’ Sheeps: The Value of Hard Work – Kirk Brooks at Front Porch Republic.

No winners in Germany – Elisabeth Dampier at The Critic Magazine.

Bedazzled by Brainwork – Andrew Klavan at The New Jerusalem.

Here and There: Reading Hannah More – Joseph Bottum and Karen Swallow Prior at Poems Ancient and Modern.

A BBC Documentary – Brought to You by Hamas – Adam LeBor at The Free Press.

Lydia Maria Child and the Anguish of War – Frank Cirillo at Emerging Civil War.

“End of Winter,” poem by Luise Gluck – Andrew Roycroft at New Grub Street.

The Jumblies Sail Again – poem by Jennifer Trafton at Rabbit Room Poetry.

Engraving: Lydia Maria Child.

"With or Without Me" by Esther Maria Magnis

When she was 15, Esther Maria Magnis learned that her father had terminal cancer. He was given anywhere from three weeks to three months to live. 

Magnis was the middle child of the family, with an older sister, Steffi, and a younger brother, Johannes. The three of them spent the next two years (their father lived longer than the doctors’ prognosis) trying to be supportive, dealing with their own pain, supporting their mother, and often taking care of themselves as their parents tried everything to find a cure, including traveling to doctors and clinics both in Europe (the family lived in Germany) and the United States. 

 

But With or Without Me: A Memoir of Losing and Finding, translated by Alta Price, is not so much a cancer journey as it is a story of a faith journey. Magnis had had faith as a child, lost it as a young tee, and then struggled, and struggled mightily, once the family knew her father’s diagnosis. 

 

This is a journey that is often raw, angry, hopeful, searing, sacred, and profane – and often all at the same time. Magnis would come to cling to God even as she screamed at him, doubted his existence, and raved and ranted at him. It’s not an easy story to read, but then it was almost an impossible story to live. 

 

Esther Maria Magnis

Several years after her father’s death, her beloved brother Johannes was diagnosed with melanoma. Things looked promising after a surgery on his face; they doctors had gotten it all. But there was more to come, and she would eventually lose him as well.

 

Most of us can’t even imagine a journey like this, the pain of losing both a father and a brother to a harsh disease that seems to offer no pity or respite. She experiences when it didn’t even seem like she was enduring. “If God is love,” she writes, “it’s a kind of love I do not understand.”

 

Magnis, born in 1980, studied comparative religion in Germany and Italy and has worked as a journalist. She now lives and works in Germany. 

 

With or Without Me is intensely personal. It will tear at your heart, mind, and soul. It will bring you to tears. And it will astonish you with its honesty and depth.

“Martin Luther” by Eric Metaxas

I was raised a Missouri Synod Lutheran. That meant that, when I was 12 and 13, I spent every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon from 4 to 5 p.m. during the school year in Pastor Nelson’s office with 10 to 15 other students my age, being taught from the Small Catechism of Martin Luther. The point of all of those classes was our confirmation, which happened during Sunday worship services in late May of our second year in catechism.

Part of confirmation was being quizzed by the pastor – in front of the entire church. It was always helpful to have a large confirmation class, because then you would get only one question at most. Mine was the smallest they’d ever had, before or since – four of us, and I was the only boy. That was a great relief to the three girls because they knew Pastor Nelson would ask me the hard questions, including the one every person in every class dreaded because the answer was so long – explaining the “Jesus section” of the Apostles Creed. They were right to be relieved. That was one of my questions. Somehow, I was confirmed in spite of my answers.

What I didn’t know then was that what I learned those two years in catechism became my theological framework. While I might change somewhat or adapt or add or subtract over the years, what I learned from Luther’s Small Catechism is still inside my head more than half a century later.

So it was with some curiosity and then considerable delight that I began to read Martin Luther: The Man Who Rediscovered God and Changed the World by Eric Metaxas. I knew some of the basics about Luther (circa 1483-1546), and had even visited Erfurt in Germany, where he attended seminary. But the Luther I found on the pages of Metaxas’s book was not the myth but the living, breathing reality. In fact, I knew I was in good hands when the first thing Metaxas did was to enumerate and sweep away the myths that have grown up about Luther over the centuries.

No, he didn’t come from a family of peasants. No, he didn’t have a hardscrabble upbringing. No, there was no literal bolt of lightning that led him to become a monk (although there was a thunderstorm involved). No, his trip to Rome did not convince him of the need for a reformation. No, he didn’t literally hurl a pot of ink at the devil. No, the nun who eventually became his wife didn’t escape the convent hidden in an empty herring barrel. And no, he most likely did not nail his 95 theses on the church door in Wittenberg on Oct. 31, 1517. That probably happened two weeks later. What he did do on Oct. 31 was to send a letter to the Archbishop of Mainz, and it was that letter that officially began the process we came to know as the Reformation.

Perhaps the most critical thing Metaxas tells us about Luther is that he was a passionate reader of the Bible – and he was in a tiny minority, because most people, nobles, priests, archbishops, cardinals, and popes did not read the Bible. And it was his understanding of Scripture that framed the Reformation. The church’s practice of selling indulgences (allowing people to pay for time off in purgatory, for themselves and departed family members) was the flashpoint, but it was Luther’s knowledge of Scripture that propelled what could only be called the most significant revolution in human understanding and development of the last 500 years. And perhaps longer.

The church had become comfortable with the teachings of Aristotle. Luther, who also knew his Augustine, saw the inherent contradictions the church had either missed or glossed over.

The church taught that only the priests could drink the wine in communion. Luther made the startling claim, based on the Bible, that all people were equal in God’s eyes, and all people should partake of both the bread and the wine. That shocking idea of the equality of all people would find political expression more than 250 years later in a document called the Declaration of Independence.

Luther articulated the ideas of each person being free, subject to none, and each person being a servant, subject to all. He understood that anyone could understand Scripture – it wasn’t only church officials who could read and interpret. And to that point, as he stayed hidden in the castle of Wartburg while church and state looked high and low for him, he translated the New Testament into German. He did it in 11 weeks, and it was such a good translation, Metaxas says, that it is still used as the basis for new German translations today.

Eric Metaxas

Metaxas tells this story of Luther extraordinarily well; the man has a gift for storytelling. Never would I have imagined that I would become fascinated with the account of the theological debate between Luther and Johannes Eck at Leipzig in 1519, but I was – and that’s due entirely to how well the author tells the story.

Metaxas is the author of four New York Times bestsellers and the host of the Eric Metaxas radio show, broadcast daily to more than 120 cities. A Senior Fellow and Lecturer at Large for the King’s College in New York City, he is the author of numerous books, including Amazing Grace: William Wilberforce and the Heroic Campaign to End Slavery (2007); Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy (2011); Miracles: What They Are, How They Happen, and How They Can Change Your Life (2015); 7 Men and Their Secrets of Greatness (2016); 7 Women and Their Secret of Greatness (2016); and If You Can Keep It: The Forgotten Promise of American Liberty (2016).

Martin Luther is not only an outstanding biography. It is an incredible reminder of what one man accomplished, often in the face of great personal and professional peril. And it is a reminder that the Reformation was only something that happened 500 years ago, but something that is still happening, and needs to continue to happen, especially in our own hearts.

Related:

My review of If You Can Keep It by Eric Metaxas.

I Feel Like I Lost a Friend – Mark Sutherland on Dietrich Bonhoeffer by Eric Metaxas.

Top photograph: Memorial statue Martin Luther, Marktplatz, Lutherstadt Wittenberg in Germany, via Wikimedia Commons.

From Cicadas in the Wilderness to Erfurt, Germany

I’ve been reading The Wisdom of the Wilderness by Gerald May, as part of an online book group discussion over at the High Calling Blogs led by Laura Boggess. This past week, we read chapter 4 – Cicada Song.

May spends time in the wilderness as a kind of healing therapy, including experiencing some extreme conditions like below freezing cold, isolation, a bear in front of the tent, and hearing voices. In this chapter, he's a bit more conventional and talks about listening to the cicadas, including a mating pair. (Listening to the mating calls of insects in the wilderness – not my dream vacation but it’s his story so I let him tell it.)

At one point in the narrative, he says this: “I am lost now, lost into the firelight’s flickering on the tree leaves, warmth mingling with cool night star sparkles, all into the cicada song; I have been shown the way into the joining, I have been guided in a harmony path, to a oneness within which I am, once again, freshly and absolutely alive.”

Those words could easily be structured into a poem; they sound poetic. But what really struck me about the passage, especially that last line about “a oneness within which I am, once again, freshly and absolutely alive.” Something like that happened to me, but it wasn’t in wilderness. Or maybe it was in a kind of wilderness.

In 2002, I was part of a three-man communication team sent by our church to Eastern Europe. We had Jack, the video guy; Steve, the guy who did all the logistics and planning; and me, the writer. Our charge was to meet with missionaries in Hungary, Czech Republic and Dresden in eastern Germany, interview them, and then use the resulting videos and stories in a variety of communication media – newsletters, videotapes and as “live reports” the missionaries could send back to their home churches and supporters. Our church had never had a short-term mission team quite like us, and for a while we were quite perplexing. The missions program coordinator who’d championed our team told us one thing that stuck in my mind: have your detailed plans and itineraries, she said, but be prepared to go where the spirit moves.

As we waited in St. Louis for our flight to Chicago (and then Frankfurt and Budapest), we saw on CNN that a shooting had occurred in Erfurt in eastern Germany – a shooting in a high school that sounded like a German version of Columbine. Several people had been killed. We saw the story but it didn’t register with us as a game-changing event for our trip. We’d no plans to be anywhere near Erfurt.

When we landed in Budapest Saturday, we were greeted by our missionary host with this: “They want to send you to Erfurt.” While we had been crossing the Atlantic, phones calls between our church in St. Louis, our denomination’s headquarters in Minneapolis and the Eastern Europe mission headquarters in Budapest had been occurring, with the discussion about the communication team switching gears and heading for Erfurt, to record what was happening and to help a young pastor. All we really knew was that this pastor had been counseling the families of victims – both the dead and the wounded – almost non-stop. What we didn’t understand was how we could help.

Jetlagged though we were, we talked about it for hours. It would clearly wreck the carefully planned (and packed) schedule. We weren’t sure what we were supposed to do, and no one could really tell us. And then we remembered what the missions coordinator had told us weeks before – be ready to go where the spirit moves. So we did. Driven by Gary, one of the mission staff in Budapest, we traveled to Dresden, arriving late Sunday night. The next morning, we met with a local pastor and a missionary couple as we had planned, and then left for Erfurt.

Erfurt was where Martin Luther had attended seminary. It’s close to what had been the border of West Germany, but all those years under communism had left a spiritual wilderness. We drove down the autobahn; the pastor of the church was waiting for us just off the highway.

His name was Mattias, and he and his wife were originally from Hamburg. He was pastoring a small church in Erfurt constructed from a former communist social hall (there’s something delightfully ironic in that – a communist social hall converted into a church). As we'd planned with all of our other meetings, I rode with Mattias and the rest of our party followed. This allowed some time for me, the writer and interviewer, to introduce myself and talk a little bit about our team and what we were doing.

As soon as I sat in the passenger seat of Mattias’ car, a strange thing happened. We looked at one another and began to laugh for no discernible reason. We just started laughing together. It was as if we had known each other for a long time, and then found ourselves in an odd situation. As he drove and we talked, this strange feeling kept reinforcing itself. We didn’t openly talk about it, but it was there.

We drove to the church. From the outside, it didn’t look like a church. But the inside was definitely a church, including the smell. The design was contemporary – light-colored wood, royal blue carpeting. We toured the building and met two other church members.

We set up the interview in the sanctuary. Our logistics guy and driver wandered off to explore. Jack started filming, and Mattias and I started talking. And in the course of that 40 minutes, something profound happened.

Mattias was close to physical and emotional exhaustion. The shooting had happened on Friday; for three days he had been meeting with and counseling and praying with family and friends of the victims. He had been going on virtually no sleep, and hadn’t seen his wife and children in all that time. There weren’t a lot of pastors around to help; Mattias had been pretty much on his own. I asked questions, and he talked. And then we talked together. And in those few brief moments, the three of us became as one. I can’t explain it. But never have I felt as “freshly and absolutely alive,” as Gerald May described his cicada moment. The interview ended with all three of us in tears. Jack and I knew what Mattias had been experiencing because we were now going through it with him, as one with him.

Steve and Gary reappeared and could see something had happened. But not one of us could adequately explain it. I could only offer Steve what Mattias had said during the talk: “God is in this place.”

The four of us then went to the school, where thousands of people had gathered. Thousands of people – and almost total silence. I think we were the only Americans there – and we were recognized as Americans, as “people who know what this is like,” a reference to Columbine.

The last thing we did before we left Erfurt that evening was to lay our hands on Mattias and pray for him. We did this on a street corner. And then we left, driving back to spend the night in Dresden. I said very little during the drive.

A few days later, when we arrived back in Budapest, we were having dinner. I tried to explain to Gary what had happened in Erfurt, but I could only come up with a rather lame description.

Finally, I said this: “I don’t know what happened. But I came from America and unexpectedly went to Erfurt, and found I’d come home.”