Bishop Craig Johnson of the Minneapolis Area Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America was back on the job this week with a dandy "what I did on my vacation" story.
He was invited to Leipzig, Germany, to deliver a sermon commemorating the 20th anniversary of the "peaceful revolution" that led to the fall of the Berlin Wall. He preached in St. Nicolai Evangelical Lutheran Church, where in 1982 a small group of people launched a prayer mission aimed at ending the division of the country.
"For seven years, pastors and people prayed and talked and sang, and then a vast wave of humanity looking toward freedom emerged," he said in his sermon. On that fateful night in 1989, "The people spilled into the street. Guns and violence and sharpshooters held their fire as the candles were lifted up and hymns were sung."
Johnson said that delivering the sermon in the ornate sanctuary "was a humbling experience. Bach and Mendelssohn conducted music there."
The sermon was the last event on a trip that involved 18 people from Minneapolis, including Paul Pribbenow, president of Augsburg College, and Mark Peterson, president and CEO of Lutheran Social Services. It was an outgrowth of a sister relationship formed in 2002 between the Minneapolis Area Synod and the Leipzig District of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Saxony.
Between the two organizations, "we've had 20 exchange trips," Johnson said. "This time, each person met with their counterpart in Germany: education with education, social services with social services and so on."
Johnson delivered his sermon in English and paused after every paragraph so it could be translated by the Rev. Paul Rogers, who also made the trip from Minneapolis. The interludes gave him a chance to appreciate his surroundings.
"It was absolutely breathtaking," Johnson said of the sanctuary. "It's gorgeous."
