A Foretaste of the Banquet of the Kingdom

Image by digital cat  via FlickrAnother report from this year's Ecumenical Kirchentag, copied from the Church of England, Council for Christian Unity's European Bulletin – No 65, September 2010.  Two other reports have been featured on this blog here and here.  This third report is by Tony Dickinson.

“In a main square in Munich there was a foretaste of the Banquet with a thousand tables and ten places on each set with water, apples, oil and bread. At a podium at one end of the square choirs from Orthodox congregations of Munich sang the praises of God in Russian, Greek, Romanian and German, and Orthodox clergy celebrated evening prayer with age-old chants and clouds of incense. Those at the tables shared their bread with those waiting on the margins of the square. A wonderful parable of the Kingdom.

Wonderful, too, was the number and range of people who visited the Diocese of Oxford stand in the Agora, the huge market-place where over a thousand organisations set up their stall to entice and enlighten passers-by.

Meanwhile, in another part of the Kirchentag forest, Bishop Colin Fletcher joined the sociologist Grace Davie and Catherine Pepinster of “TheTablet” at the first ever wholly English-language event to explore what Christians in Germany might learn from British experience of being “Church” in a secular society, while Bishop Alan was busy combining his daily blog from Munich with the occasional comment piece for the online section of a national newspaper.

Large crowds flocked to the discussion between the veteran theologians Hans Küng and Jürgen Moltmann (standing in at the last minute for his fellow-veteran Eberhard Jüngel), to Chancellor Merkel’s lecture on “Social Cohesion” (where the “house full” signs went up half an hour before the scheduled start).

Talks by Andrea Riccardi, the founder of the Sant’ Egidio Community, and Laurence Freeman of the World Community for Christian Meditation attracted those for whom contemplation and action are the two sides of the Christian coin. There was also much to ponder for those who are concerned about inter-faith relations. A woman rabbi from Jerusalem commended the way in which Christians had taken the lead on all to do with interfaith discussions and warned those of other faiths not to take this for granted. A Bible study on Matthew 25:31-45 in the form of a dialogue between the British Muslim scholar Ataullah Siddiqui and the newly appointed General Secretary of the World Council of Churches, Olav Fykse Tveit, brought out the commonalities between the two faiths and emphasised the need to develop respectful and hospitable theologies. Dr Siddiqui, in his very sensitive handling of the text, noted that the key division was between those who serve Christ without knowing him and those who know Christ without serving him.

The closing service, despite the rain which made numbers smaller than they might have been, was a great success. An extended meditation on Luke 1:46-55, it used traditional and modern hymns, Taizé chants and sign language to expound the meaning of Mary’s song of praise, book-ending the celebration with the first and last movement of J.S. Bach’s great setting of the Magnificat. Four short, but powerful, reflections by representatives of the Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox and Methodist traditions punctuated the liturgy, which concluded with a final message from the two Presidents. Reflecting on the events of the week their repeated message was that the Churches in Germany “need a new departure” on the ecumenical journey.”

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Second Ecumenical Kirchentag 2

The following article is the second I have found about May's Ecumenical Kirchentag.  It is from the latest edition of the Church of England's European Bulletin.  If you would like to know more about European Ecumenism, you can subscribe to the Bulletin from this page on the Methodist Church website.

Perhaps Hope Together will be the equivalent of the Kirchentag in Britain?

This second ecumenical Kirchentag, which took place in Munich from Wednesday 12 to Sunday 16 May, brought to light a strong participation from the UK and the continuing interest of its people in the Kirchentag. In all there were over 250 participants from the UK including bishops from the Church of England. The theme for the gathering was ‘That you may have hope’. It was an ecumenical feast making visible the diversity of Churches and Christian fellowship. Munich was transformed into a city in which the old and young met in order to pray and worship together and to engage with current political and theological issues. At the inaugural service the President of Germany spoke of the importance of ecumenical unity at a time of challenge – noting particularly the abuse crisis in the Roman Catholic Church. One of the key theological issues under discussion was the Eucharist and why Protestants and Roman Catholics cannot share together in it. There were several appeals to begin practising common Eucharist wherever possible in order to then put in place the appropriate theory (first praxis then theory).

The Meissen Service was hosted by the Anglican/Episcopal Church of the Ascension and the Evangelisch-Lutherische Emmauskirche and held on Thursday May 13. The Munich Concert Choir added to the festive atmosphere in a church filled to capacity. 7 Anglican and 7 Lutheran bishops were present. The Church of England Co-Chair of the Meissen Commission and Bishop of Croydon, The Rt Revd Nick Baines was the celebrant and the EKD Co-Chair, Bishop Friedrich Weber preached.

At what is called the ‘Marketplace’ the partnership and links were on display. There was a specific Meissen-Stall with displays highlighting a number of the links and partnerships between the Church of England and the EKD. In addition to this the EKD-Stall provided constant information on Meissen.


On the whole this was a Kirchentag which made visible the fruits of almost 20 years of Meissen Commission work.

Second Ecumenical Kirchentag 1

Here is the first of two reports I have found about May's Ecumenical Kirchentag.  This first one is from the last edition of Churches Together in England News.

Looking out of the window for inspiration, several England flags wave at me from upstairs windows and a man with an England tee-shirt walks past. Dare I confess to a total indifference to football?! Does it date from when my brother, a besotted eight-year old, whiled away the tedium of car journeys with loud and enthusiastic commentaries on imagined or remembered games?



But I recently passed Manchester City's stadium before a game was due to start and had a strong sense of the spectacle and excitement of the game. Even from the car I felt the theatre of it all, the exhilaration of being part of a huge crowd. I'm not normally a crowd person myself but suddenly I understood the drama and – almost! – wanted to share it.


Football crowds? Ideal Home exhibition? Greenbelt? Spring Harvest? All those comparisons jostle for attention as I struggle to convey the experience of the second ecumenical Kirchentag. It was my first Kirchentag, although I have wanted to go for some time. I knew it would be big – but this big? If you are a numbers person, then some people said 130,000 people, some 230,000 people. I don't do numbers, but we took Munich over – local people offered hospitality and all the hotels were full. Everyone seemed to be wearing the distinctive Kirchentag travel pass or boasting the orange Kirchentag scarf. They stopped the traffic for us as we walked away from the exhilarating opening service, following the bands (a clever way of lessening the log-jam as they took different routes) and enthusiastically waving at bemused residents of upstairs flats as we went.


What shall I write about? The opening service with all those people, big screens ensuring we had a sense of what was happening? The various morning bible studies? The vast market-place, filling huge exhibition halls and showcasing every aspect of church life – mainstream and marginal, well-known and whacky? The various seminars all over the city, some in small rooms, some in exhibition halls? We managed to get to the one which included Angela Merkel speaking about social inclusion and were very impressed at the way people spoke affectionately of her – she has been a constant participant for years. We listened to Hans Küng – was I really in the same (vast) room as him? All styles of worship were available. I remember particularly the open-air Orthodox service, a thousand tables set on a dual carriageway, each set for ten, with a cloth, earthenware tumblers and jug of water, a bowl of oil, apples and a large cloth-covered loaf of bread. Half-way through the service, we turned our chairs to face each other round the tables, shared apples, bread and oil and, afterwards, shared scripture together too.


I've come home with scarves and bags, leaflets and badges. There's the Coventry cross I made from nails and the wooden angel which will grace my Christmas tree next year. I've come home with a myriad of memories and ideas. There's the thought, for example, that although the Kirchentag is aimed at Christians, with its mixture of worship, education and entertainment, nevertheless it was a powerful witness, demonstrating the vitality of the Church, young and old alike. It was good to be part of that.


But what has gone deep for me came from a seminar on inter-communion. Obviously the issue has been aired fairly regularly in my ten years as Field Officer. I've heard the arguments and counter-arguments, the explanations and the anger. Each time I participate in the celebration of Eucharist and am unable to receive bread and wine, my commitment to work for unity is strengthened. Each time I receive communion at Mass while my friends and colleagues receive a blessing, it hurts, and I know with every fibre of my being that our disunity is not what God wants. But I came away from the Kirchentag ashamed. I listened to a Jesuit from Oxford talking about his various friends who are in Inter-Church marriages. Philip spoke simply of their deep and constant pain, united in marriage – which surely supersedes ecclesial disunity – yet unable to receive communion together. In ecumenical circles we don't like not being able to receive communion together. It's uncomfortable and contradicts the fellowship we experience. For some of us, it's an affront, for a common table is a grace on the way to unity. For others, a common table is the fruit of full ecclesial unity, so it's a sharp reminder that despite the genuine fellowship and friendship, ecclesial disunity is real. But our discomfort is as nothing compared to the pain of those who 'live in [their] marriage the hopes and difficulties of the path to Christian unity' (Pope John Paul II at York, 1982). And, in the midst of the complaints and misunderstandings, I forget that. So I am ashamed. Yes, I want to be able to receive communion with my friends, but that is as nothing compared with the deep desire of inter-Church families. I can do so little, but I can remember them, remind other people of them, and keep them in my prayer. For me, that is the abiding fruit of the ecumenical Kirchentag.

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