My wife and I just returned from a two week visit to Saxony, Germany for a few days of vacation and a week-long conference with representatives of international partner churches. It was an incredible visit full of rest and exploration, new connections and relationships, and curiosity about how churches living thousands of miles away from one another can take seriously the call to be the neighbor across an expanse.
The week with partner churches was a testament to the power of the Gospel and the ties that bind churches to one another despite different contexts, cultures, and experiences. I was struck by the way cultural differences about time, trust, history, and storytelling showed up in the gathering and the ways that international partners navigated these differences. I was impressed and overjoyed with the joy that many churches took in introducing their own country, context, and culture and it challenged me to think about my relationship with my own country and context.
But one thing that kept holding my attention over the course of two weeks was the very immanent and immediate presence of history in the physical world of Germany and in the culture of her citizens.
We spent our first three days in the city of Dresden, the capital city of Saxony, walking the streets of Neustadt – a part of the city populated by young people, leftists, and artists, and the cobblestone streets of Altstadt, the “Old Town” and cultural center of the community.
In Altstadt, the Frauenkirche (Our Lady’s Church) stands tall on the horizon and at the center of the main square. This massive bell-shaped, Baroque Lutheran church is one of the most beautiful churches I’ve ever been inside. Kristin and I climbed to the top of the bell tower to get a view of the whole city, we sat in the pews and listened to the organ while reveling at the dramatic colors and architecture of the church, and we prayed joining our voices with the generations of Christians who have prayed there over the centuries.
The Frauenkirche, like most structures in Dresden, was destroyed in February of 1945 by British and US forces in a devastating carpet bombing that was seen as disproportionate even at the time. It sat as rubble for decades, a memorial to the destruction of war, and later the crushing oppression of the GDR. In the 90’s, after the Peaceful Revolution and the fall of the Berlin Wall, efforts to restore the church were begun.
The church is a marvel of restoration and rebuilding, and when you sit inside of it you would struggle to believe that it had not been standing in its current condition for centuries. But outside, there is a tell. Many of the original bricks were catalogued and used in the reconstruction and they are quite easy to spot. They bear the blackened char of the destruction of Dresden. The stark difference between original and new brick on the outside of the building is at first jarring but holds within it the story of the city’s history.
One cannot look at the Frauenkirche without being reminded of the medieval, renaissance, and baroque history of Germany reflected in the beautiful architecture and it’s setting within the main square. You cannot help but be reminded of the Reformation and the movement launched by Luther in the structure of the altar and the altar piece. It’s impossible to forget about the horror of Hitler’s regime and the destruction it wrought in the charred and blackened bricks that pepper the face of the imposing church. And it’s impossible to forget the years of repression under Soviet rule when observing the church in the context of the large main square, where peaceful demonstrations in the late 1980’s led to the fall of the GDR.
This history, this story of Dresden and of the German people is written right into the very architecture of Frauenkirche and other nearby places like the Kreuzkirche, the location of prayer meetings and peaceful protests during the Peaceful Revolution. It got me thinking about how I notice and reflect on the history and the story of my own city and neighborhood. In a culture that so often replaces “old things” with new, and which can all too often avoid telling the full story of our history, I wondered what I might learn from my German neighbors.
When we take seriously the story and the history of our places, the neighborhoods where we live and worship, we are reminded that the story is not centered on us or on our generation alone, but on a long lineage of neighbors making life together over the years. We are reminded that our neighborhoods, the places where we live and worship, are not just locations for our action, but living things participating in the story of God’s activity and the struggle of life, death, and renewal.
When we allow history and the long story of our neighborhoods to be present in very real and observable ways, we deepen our capacity to face the painful and the destructive parts of our past and our present. Resisting the urge to whitewash or to jettison the parts of our story that cause us pain helps us to embrace patterns of confession and repentance and to learn from past failures, and by the grace of God, to practice something new in our own time.
In the Minneapolis area, George Floyd Square has become just this kind of historical presence – a place that holds memory, that tells the story, not only of George Floyd’s murder, but his life and legacy and the story of a city transformed in the wake of a city-wide uprising.
I’m curious to discover places and signs of history and story within my immediate neighborhood. What are the places that tell the long story of my neighborhood and the neighbors who have built it. What are the signs and symbols of joy, celebration, pain, and destruction? How do the physical space, the land, the architecture, the churches, the public art, tell the story of a community over the ages? And what small contribution can I and my faith community add to the narrative? How about for you and your community?
We are participants in God’s unfolding story in the places where we live and worship, and I believe a part of that work is to identify, amplify, and tell that story in as many ways as possible. May we learn from our neighbors, near and far, and embrace the long story of place that God has called us to be a part of.
