Saturday, June 29, 2013
Lots of pictures from the Bond Reformation Tour 2013
Friday, June 28, 2013
BOND REFORMATION TOUR: Lunch at the Wartburg Castle and Eisleben
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| Wartburg |
From there we were able to postpone our lunch at the Wartburg where Luther translated the New Testament from Greek to German in 11 weeks! A marvelous German meal, so well appointed, and fine attentive service--and in such a setting! Passed by Bach's birthplace in Eisenach and connected his magnificent music and gift to his Lutheran roots and his determination to do everything SDG, soli Deo gloria.
Then off to Luther's birthplace in Eisleben, where we stayed in my favorite hotel so far, the Graf von Mansfield, also the actual place where Luther died. So our tour folks spent the night and had another dotingly wonderful German meal(s) under the ribbed vaulting and surrounded by the medieval POST TENEBRAS LUX!
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| Eisleben, Luther tearing up the Papal Bulls |
BOND REFORMATION TOUR--Heidelberg Castle and Catechism
Question 1. What is thy only comfort in life and death?
Answer: That I with body and soul, both in life and death, (a) am not my own, (b) but belong unto my faithful Saviour Jesus Christ; (c) who, with his precious blood, has fully satisfied for all my sins, (d) and delivered me from all the power of the devil; (e) and so preserves me (f) that without the will of my heavenly Father, not a hair can fall from my head; (g) yea, that all things must be subservient to my salvation, (h) and therefore, by his Holy Spirit, He also assures me of eternal life, (i) and makes me sincerely willing and ready, henceforth, to live unto him. (j)
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| With Beth and Austin stationed in Germany |
(a) Rom.14:7 For none of us liveth to himself, and
no man dieth to himself. Rom.14:8 For whether we live, we live unto the
Lord; and whether we die, we die unto the Lord: whether we live
therefore, or die, we are the Lord's. (b) 1 Cor.6:19 What? know ye not
that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye
have of God, and ye are not your own? (c) 1 Cor.3:23 And ye are
Christ's; and Christ is God's. Tit.2:14 Who gave himself for us, that he
might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto himself a peculiar
people, zealous of good works. (d) 1 Pet.1:18 Forasmuch as ye know that
ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold, from
your vain conversation received by tradition from your fathers; 1
Pet.1:19 But with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without
blemish and without spot: 1 John 1:7 But if we walk in the light, as he
is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of
Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin. 1 John 2:2 And he is the
propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the sins
of the whole world. 1 John 2:12 I write unto you, little children,
because your sins are forgiven you for his name's sake. (e) Heb.2:14
Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he also
himself likewise took part of the same; that through death he might
destroy him
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| Gillian (well again) and buddy Grace |
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| Church of the Holy Ghost, Heidelberg |
BOND REFORMATION TOUR: Worms, "Here I stand!"
"Your Imperial Majesty and Your Lordships demand a simple answer. Here it is, plain and unvarnished. Unless I am convicted [convinced] of error by the testimony of Scripture or (since I put no trust in the unsupported authority of Pope or councils, since it is plain that they have often erred and often contradicted themselves) by manifest reasoning, I stand convicted [convinced] by the Scriptures to which I have appealed, and my conscience is taken captive by God's word, I cannot and will not recant anything, for to act against our conscience is neither safe for us, nor open to us. On this I take my stand. I can do no other. God help me. Amen."
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| Maguskirche, Worms |
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| For Grandma Bond! |
Tuesday, June 25, 2013
BOND REFORMATION TOUR: Calvin and Bucer in Strasbourg (awesome hotel!)
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| Our microcosm of the Body of Christ |
Cheryl really needed a break (and a sainthood, in my opinion) so after our morning full of Gutenberg, Bucer, Calvin and the rest, visiting Gutenberg Square, the cathedral, St Nicholas Church where Calvin primarily preached, and St Thomas Church where Bucer primarily (we sang I Greet Thee Who My Sure Redeemer Art here), I came back to the hotel, read to Gillian until she fell asleep, then did, no, check that, am doing this.
...As the days of our flight passed, I grew, if not
skillful, at least more proficient in the riding of a horse. We made our way
due east, traversing through such places as Epernay,
Verdun, and Metz. Passing into German lands, Cauvin
seeming loathe to his leave of France.
When we finally arrived in the grand city of Strasbourg, as with other places through
which we had passed, many flocked to greet Cauvin in that city. Notably one
called Martin Bucer warmly welcomed Cauvin, urging him to remain in Strasbourg, there to
preach and minister in the city.
“There is much good for you to do in this place,” said
the kindly Bucer. “Preach in the public square, in the grand cathedral
itself—you need not fear the sword or fire here in Strasbourg. God has granted great freedom for
his cause in this place. And there is good food and leisure—here you may relax
from your work; here you may recreate yourself. Do remain among us.”
“The demands of God’s beleaguered church,” said Cauvin,
“do not allow for thoughts of food and leisure.”
“I know of your
dedication to the work of God,” said Martin Bucer. “It is unrivaled. But human
nature has that weakness by which it cannot always concentrate on grave and
serious matters. There must also be provision made for certain relaxations from
work and useful studies and a certain recreation of the strength both of the
spirit and of the body in play and games. Such you may enjoy here in Strasbourg.”
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| Giles and his buddies |
I knew Cauvin
better than almost anyone, and I knew that, well-intentioned as Bucer’s urgings
were, they would not be received with favor by Cauvin. What is more, in
Strasbourg Cauvin was accosted on every side by enthusiastic reformers who
wanted him to preach, to teach, to debate, and to take pastoral duties among
them. These were all things Cauvin was reluctant so to do, and I knew this.
Hence, I knew that our stay in Strasbourg
would not be a long one.
“Tell no one of
where we plan to go,” I heard him telling du Tillet one evening. “I shall
assume the name Lucanius, and thereby shall I be enabled to find a quiet place
for study and writing. Bucer and the rest are well-meaning and faithful men,
but there is too much activity in this place. We must be away.”
I had had my
suspicions of du Tillet’s servant. There had been nothing of substance, but the
man was reserved and surly—as I often had been. Perhaps this was the manner of
the servant. In any event what transpired next was nearly to our ruin. We took
our leave of kindly Martin Bucer, and Cauvin asked him to tell no one of our
departure until a full day had elapsed. He arranged for us to board at his home
and place of birth in the small village
of Selestat, a comfortable day’s
journey on horseback south of Strasbourg.
It was there that
du Tillet’s servant showed his evil side. I know it is hypocritical in the
extreme for one such as I to record the petty guilt of one such as he, but, nevertheless,
did the man do us a great wrong.
It fell out after
this fashion. I awoke with a start early next morning. It must have been a
sound in the narrow hallway of the Bucer family house. Rising from my bed, I
moved with stealth, unlatching my door and straining to see in the predawn
darkness. I could make out the barest outline of a man’s shape as a light from
a lantern in the narrow street shone faintly through a window, partially
revealing him to my sight. I followed, but not knowing his intentions, I
followed far too slowly.
He had apparently already
made his horse ready, for within an instant I heard a racket of hooves on the
cobbles in the street. They clattered, echoing against the narrow timbered
houses that enclosed the street. Boldly did I attempt to saddle my steed and
give pursuit, but by the time I managed to secure the bridle in its place, the man
was gone. Certain it was du Tillet’s servant, I rode as best and as fast as I
could in the direction he had traveled, but if it was du Tillet’s servant, I
knew his riding, and I knew mine. It was a vain pursuit.
Fearing the worst,
I at last reined my steed in and returned. “What has he taken?” I inquired as I
came back into the house. All were awake by now.
“I have been
robbed!” cried du Tillet. “That worthless servant has robbed me of my purse! They
are all the same. That scoundrel servant! He has run off with every piece of
gold, every piece of silver. We are destitute!”
As we breakfasted,
du Tillet fumed in his agitation, cursing his servant, bemoaning how expenses
would now be covered, and generally lamenting as if disaster had fallen from
the heavens.
I remained quiet,
though I frequently fingered the hidden stash within my pouch, concealed deep
within my tunic. For some time now I had spent nothing from it. I was loathe to
handle it, as if the pouch and its contents were a poison, transmitted merely
by touch or by look. I cannot explain my feelings fully on the matter, but
looking back, I suppose it had become a sort of blood money to me. There was so
much I had not been able to arrange in my thinking; perhaps I never would fully
be able to do so.
After we had
finished our little meal, du Tillet said, “How can such a one as he, after all
of his privileges, most especially hearing the gospel these number of months,
how can such as he act so wickedly? It is unthinkable.”
Cauvin said nothing
but opened his Greek New Testament. After reading silently for a moment, he
closed the book and said, though I believe he was actually reciting from his
instantaneous translation,
“‘For if we sin willfully after we have
received the knowledge of the truth,’” he paused, looking at each of us, but I
felt that he lingered longer when looking into my eyes, “‘there no longer
remains a sacrifice for sins, but a certain fearful expectation of judgment,
and fiery indignation which will devour the adversaries,’ this from the epistle
to the Hebrews.”
Again he paused, the weight of which
pausing seemed to bear down upon my soul as if to crush me under its
insupportable burden.
“To whom God has granted much,” said Cauvin,
“he will demand far more on the judgment day. Your servant, Master du Tillet,
for spurning the grace of God, the many opportunities for repentance, for
sinning against the light of the Word of God which he has repeatedly heard, for
these your servant, should he persist in his stony-hearted rebellion, must
expect fearful judgment and fiery indignation from the Almighty.”
Again he looked at me, his piercing eyes,
as I felt them, penetrating into my very soul, and continued. “Let us, each
one, examine our hearts, and put off the hardness therein. Let us resist the
devil, mortify sin, humble ourselves before the grace of God, confess and
forsake our sinning. And then let us put on the righteousness of Jesus Christ,
mercifully imputed to our unworthy hearts.”
I felt his words were for me, and for me
alone. I shuddered, and I believe it was such a shuddering as even I could not
conceal by my art. If Cauvin could say such things about the petty stealing of
du Tillet’s servant, what would he have to say to one such as I, I alone who
was responsible for the great evil of condemning the innocent, of betraying the
faithful, of exchanging for money—again I fingered the pouch within my tunic—if
he knew that I had for these few glittering coins denounced his friend Etienne
and many others, would he so cheerfully extend to me this gospel of grace?
Could there be such a grace capable of covering such crimes as I alone had
committed? I believed there was not. How could there be?
His words pounded like hammer blows on an
anvil in my head: If we sin willfully
after we have received the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a
sacrifice for sins, but a certain fearful expectation of judgment, and fiery
indignation which will devour the adversaries.
In the days that followed, I liberally
spent the remains of my purse on our needs, though I made every attempt to
conceal my liberality in doing so. It was a small matter for me to make my way
to the market alone and secure food, even lodging and fodder for our horses,
now reduced to but three. All of which generosity I credited to others.
BOND REFORMATION TOUR: Sobering moments at Verdun, WW I battlefield and burial ground
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| Cross of 1000s of fallen French 20 year olds |
witnessed a flaming truck fire on the A4 to
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| Bones of sons who were never identified |
Here is what I read from a chapter in HOLD FAST in a Broken World as we pulled away from the fields of crosses and the interred bones of fallen boys.
...It was November 29, 1917, Jack’s nineteenth birthday. It was
also his first day of trench warfare. Some birthday party! Later he wrote about
that day. “The first bullet I heard ‘whined’
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| Truck trailer conflagration on the A4 |
One day he had been a fresh young
college student; now he was a soldier. After a hasty few months of training he
was dubbed a Second Lieutenant in the Somerset Light Infantry and shipped off
to France.
Near Arras he
heard that first of many bullets. When not dodging those bullets, he wrote down
reflections on his experience.
The war—the
frights, the cold, the smell, the horribly smashed men still moving like
half-crushed beetles, the sitting or standing corpses, the landscape of sheer
earth without blade of grass, the boots worn day and night till they seemed to
grow to your feet… I have gone to sleep marching and woken again and found
myself marching still. Familiarity both with the very old and the very recent
dead… I came to know, and pity, and reverence the ordinary man.
April, 1918 at Mt. Bernenchon,
near Lillers, France,
an artillery shell whistled louder and closer than the rest. Then it hit.
Erupting in a deafening explosion, the shrapnel instantly killed Jack’s friend, who had been a father figure to him.
And it hit Jack. He wrote, “The moment just after I had been hit… I found that
I was not breathing and concluded that this was death.” Perhaps at the field
hospital at Etaples, perhaps at a convalescent camp on the Salisbury Plain,
embittered by his experience, Jack began writing a poem:
Come let us curse our Master ere we
die,
For all our hopes in endless ruin
lie.
The good is dead. Let us curse God
most High.
Laugh then and slay. Shatter all
things of worth,
Heap torment still on torment for
thy mirth—
Thou art not Lord while there are
Men on earth.
Jack was his nickname. His real
name was Clive Staples Lewis. The lines above appeared in his first book, Spirits in Bondage, a collection of
poems Lewis wrote while a young atheist and that he described to a friend as
“mainly strung around the idea that nature is diabolical and malevolent and
that God, if he exists, is outside of and in opposition to the cosmic arrangements.”
Perhaps after suffering the horrors
of WWI, his bitterness and cynicism is more understandable. There were horrors
aplenty. On the first day alone of the Battle of the Somme, 20,000 young men’s
lives were cut short, many of them so mangled by artillery shells, by the
tramping feet of advancing and retreating soldiers, the debris, mud, and
carnage that in the five-month battle more than 50,000 soldier’ bodies were so
obliterated that they have no known graves. Between 1914 and 1918, an average
of 5,600 young men died each day of those five years, more than ten million
lives. No wonder Lewis penned the cynical lines “laugh then and slay.”...
BOND REFORMATION TOUR: Calvin's birthplace, Noyon
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| Bond Ref Tour group at Noyon Cathedral |
We met our coach driver (Peter from Holland) and made our way north (seeing some impressive loop-d-loops from the Paris airshow underway right now) to Calvin's birthplace in the charmingly ordinary French village of Noyon. And then we had a brilliant break in the weather, bright sunshine, blue skies, the works, as you can see from the photograph in front of Notre Dame Cathedral, Noyon. Calvin spent his boyhood in and out the doors of this cathedral, his dad being a functionary for Charles Hangest, the bishop, and Calvin being good friends with the bishop's son, Claude... wait a second! What's a bishop doing with a son! Not only deeply flawed theology, but abusive malpractice of beliefs they were burning others who disagreed with their beliefs.
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| Calvin's birthplace museum |
Calvin's birthplace was actually flattened in 1918 while the British 5th Army tried to hold the town from the advancing German army. The house standing on the same spot was carefully reconstructed according to drawings and photographs.
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| View out our hotel window--no joke! |
April, 1918: The Bombing
In the war-torn village of Noyon-le-Sainte in northern France an old man, clutching the
hand of a little boy, mused on the war to end all wars. After three-and-a-half
years of bloody stalemate, it seemed less like a war to end war and far more like
a war that would just never end. In spite of the endless cycle of artillery
barrage, infantry advance, and entrenchment, inexplicably the cathedral, the
Town Hall, the renaissance library, and other medieval buildings remained
standing, awaiting the next cycle of bombing. Still more importantly to the old
man, his house, “Grain Place,”
as it had been known for centuries, yet remained standing. And he had his music
and his books.
That night, windows shrouded in black, he
opened the volume he had been reading. A biography originally penned in 1577 by Jérôme-Hermès Bolsec, the old man’s copy had been printed in
1875. Far more a vengeful diatribe than a proper biography, the old man had
read enough not to think of it as real history; nevertheless, the scandalous
rant against a man Bolsec must have intensely hated was entertaining. Perching
his reading glasses on his nose, and leaning toward the lantern, he had only
just recommenced reading when suddenly the house shuddered to its foundation
stones.
“Grand-père!” cried the little boy at his feet. “Qu'est-ce que c'est?”
The old man knew what it was. Snatching the boy’s hand, he ran through
the house into the back garden, hoping to get the little one to the bomb
shelter in time. There was nothing an old man or a mere boy could do; the
defense of the town and of the Oise valley was
entirely up to the British 5th Army.
Shifting troop strength to the Western Front in April of 1918, Kaiser
Wilhelm II ordered his German army to redirect the gaping mouths of their massive
artillery, capable of firing one-ton bombs over nine miles, and to commence
thundering destruction on the Allied defenders and on what remained of the town
of Noyon-le-Sainte.
The apocalyptic Hindenburg-Ludendorff Offensive had begun.
Holding the trembling boy in his arms, the old man listened to the earth-shaking
staccato of German artillery raining death and devastation on the village above
them. And then would come the infantry advance. With deadly accuracy, the
British defenders who had survived the barrage valiantly went to work with their
Enfield rifles,
pee-oohing death into the waves of
German infantry advancing on the town. The Germans responded with the heavy
gut-lurching chattering of machine gun fire, cutting down all life in its path,
valiant or otherwise. But the old man had seen enough of modern war. He knew that
at the last it would be the coordinated German artillery fire, the molten
shrapnel, and the erupting debris that would carve out a path of death and
devastation for the German advance through his village, his home, and his life.
When at last the echoing of heavy guns had lapsed into an eerie silence, the
old man and the boy slowly immerged from the bomb shelter. What met their senses
seemed like a microcosm of the death of civilization. Everywhere the air was
thick with acrid smoke and the stench of death. The complete absence of
laughter, of the cheery sounds of children at play, of chattering housewives, of
yapping dogs created a silence so palpable that it unhinged the mental faculties
of some who had inexplicably survived.
Stooped and frail, the widow next door sat on a fragment of her front
steps—all that remained of her home. Moaning softly, her head bowed and shrouded
with a black shawl, she sat rocking, rocking as if thereby to find some comfort
for herself. Heaped about her radiated mounds of rubble: the remains of her home,
of a Gallo-Roman crypt, of the towers of the cathedral. An instant of
thunderous chaos had reduced the village to heaps of debris; order, antiquity,
and beauty devolving into crumbled heaps of stone, dust, and matchsticks.
The few buildings still standing looked as if a puff of wind would finish
the job. Stones chiseled into columns and arches by master stone cutters of the
Middle Ages, now seemed to stagger and sway like drunken men. The tinkling of
breaking glass broke the stillness; the old man shook his head in wonder: What
glass could yet be unbroken after such a bombardment?
Enormous as the loss in buildings, the loss of human life far exceeded all
other devastation. Though many had been instantaneously buried as their lives
were crushed by hailing stones and molten shrapnel, yet were there many bodies
undignified by such a burial. And as the April sun warmed the scene, grotesque
corpses swelled in the heat. Others were so disfigured that they had ceased to affright,
so inhuman had they become. Still others had instantly been obliterated, their
parts so ground up and mingled with the mud, stone, and earth that they no
longer existed, or so it seemed. Hundreds of townsfolk—men, women, and
children—had simply vanished without a trace, no mangled body, no dental work
to compare with records.
There was a new sound that made the old man frown. Faintly at first: the rumbling
of horse-drawn artillery, the clattering of hooves, the mechanical throttling
of trucks and the grinding of gears—and the advance of men. German infantry
soldiers in spiky helmets would be pouring into the streets across the town,
shoulder-to-shoulder, right arms swinging stiffly, their rifles over the left
shoulder, their boots echoing with every tread more fearfully than their
artillery had done before them. The old man had seen and heard it all before.
“Grain Place”
had been reduced to a chaotic mound of rubble. Dazed at first, the old man and
the boy picked through the debris that had been their home. It had been home to
many families over the centuries, the family names obliterated by the
forgetfulness of time, as were now its beams and stones.
Strewn amongst the chaos were tufts of stuffing from a pillow, and there
a mangled arm of a chair, here a broken leg of a table, and the battered head
and foot of a bed frame. Unlike other mounds of debris that had once been the
houses that made up the village, there were no human arms, legs, heads and feet
in the homey mound of rumble that had been “Grain Place.”
Recognition flashed across the old man’s face as he discovered the final
remains of his favorite chair and here and their a page from the Bolsec book he
had only the night before hurriedly laid aside to retire to the relative safety
of the bomb shelter in the back garden. With a cry, the boy snatched up the
shredded remains of his teddy bear, and a tear fell on the mangled creature’s face
as the boy clutched it, searching in the debris for an arm, a leg, an ear, the
innards of its torso.
More familiar objects poked out of the rubbish: the old man’s violin,
never to be played again, and black and white keys from his piano were scattered
about the debris like the shrapnel of a melodic grenade.
Then, scowling, the old man’s eyes fell on an unfamiliar object. It
puzzled him, because he could not remember having anything like it in his
possessions, yet here it was amongst the rubble that had been his home and his
things. Carefully picking his way to it, he bent low, with a hand clearing
aside gravel and powder that had so late been solid stone. It was a battered
metal chest, the same length and somewhat wider than an ammunition case for the
.303 caliber rounds the British soldiers had used in their Enfield rifles.
Lifting it from the debris, the old man blew the remaining mortar dust
away and studied the metal work on the case more closely.
“Grand-père,
qu'avez-vous trouvé?” called the boy.
“Je ne sais pas,” he replied
with a shrug.
He had no idea what it was, what it contained, but clearly it was very ancient.
The rumbling, grinding, and trampling grew louder. The old man, tucking the
chest under his arm, gripped the boy’s hand in his own and scrambled through
the wreckage back to the bomb shelter, now their only home.
Once underground, he took up a pries bar and worked at the lid of the
chest. As he worked so did his imagination. Perhaps there would be within
something of value, something of antiquity: bank notes from the 16th
century would be nice, family gemstones or gold jewelry better still, the title
to a vast estate best of all. Food ration coupons would do, he thought grimly.
With a sudden crack, the lid gave way. The man’s heart raced as he lifted it
and gazed inside.
Disappointed, he lifted a large sheaf of paper, yellowed with age. He
looked more closely within. Underneath the pages, nest-like, was the decaying remains
of a piece of cloth, silk it felt like; at one time perhaps a shade of blue.
The cloth was fragile with age, and as he turned it carefully in his hands, he
decided it had long ago been a chapeau
for the head.
Again he looked within. There was a small leather-bound book. Opening it
tenderly, he saw that it was a French Bible, hundreds of years old, it must be,
and perhaps of some value. Indifferently he closed the book, though cautiously
so as not to devalue it. He turned his attention back to the sheaves of paper,
clearly some kind of manuscript, written in a hasty agitated scrawl, but
legible for all that, and in French. The writer had used both sides of each
sheet of paper, and had allowed no room for margins, as if he feared he might
run out of paper, as if he had much to say and little time or space in which to
say it.
Who had written these words? the old man mused, thumbing the yellow pages pensively. It was eerie to
think that a man long dead had penned them. And the old man, whose emotions had
been dulled by the numbing years of war, felt a flickering of excitement at it
all. Why had the ancient writer walled this
manuscript up in this house? There would be no better way to find out than
to read the pages, perhaps aloud to the boy.
So he did.
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