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Schwenkfelders and the Sacraments - Then and Now · Centrally Speaking

0:01
SPEAKER_00: Centrally speaking, it's the central strength of the church's podcast.
0:05
SPEAKER_00: It speaks about issues that would be of interest to our society.
0:09
SPEAKER_00: In particular, it addresses how a Christian worldview intersects with Western secular culture.
0:15
SPEAKER_00: In the spirit of the church's founder, we take the perspective of the middle way, which is in agreement with the historic Christian Church.
0:24
SPEAKER_01: I'm Dr.
0:25
SPEAKER_01: Drake Williams, Minister of Mission and Theology of the Church.
0:28
SPEAKER_01: Our website is www.cstfamily.org.
0:33
SPEAKER_01: Our subject today is Schwankfelder's in the Sacraments, then and now.
0:37
SPEAKER_01: And we're very fortunate to have Reverend Dr.
0:39
SPEAKER_01: Martha Krebel here with us today to speak with her about a subject that she's thought about for many, many years.
0:45
SPEAKER_01: Martha Kriebel uh graduated first from Lancaster Theological Seminary in 1959 with her M.
0:51
SPEAKER_01: Div, then Lutheran Theological Seminary in 1965 with her STM, and then had her Doctor of Divinity conferred upon her from her Sinus in 1984.
1:02
SPEAKER_01: She's uh been serving with the Schweinfelder Church, uh, or first started serving with the Schweinfelder Church in 1959 to 1972 at the Palm Schweinfelder Church, then served with the Pennsylvania Southeast Conference from 1972 to 1978, and then has been serving at Trinity Reform Church in Collegeville from 1979 to 2018, and now as pastor emeritus since 2018.
1:28
SPEAKER_01: But she continues on with her pastoral work as a pastoral staff volunteer at Augustus Lutheran in Trapp, Pennsylvania.
1:36
SPEAKER_01: She's uh all told us uh 65 years of ordained ministry, which is plenty of time to think about the sacraments, isn't it?
1:43
SPEAKER_01: And has also had uh plenty of time to also put uh her thoughts into other books, such as Retracing Our Roots, a book called A Stall is a Tow, uh, A Promise Also Kept Through the Paint Brush, and then Hidden Histories.
1:57
SPEAKER_01: So these are some of the many works that uh Reverend Dr.
1:59
SPEAKER_01: Martha Kriebel has worked on.
2:00
SPEAKER_01: And I'm so glad that you can join us today, uh Martha, and uh speak about this uh this important topic that you've thought about for so many years.
2:08
SPEAKER_01: Welcome to the show.
2:10
SPEAKER_01: Good.
2:10
SPEAKER_01: My treat.
2:11
SPEAKER_01: Our treat to have you.
2:12
SPEAKER_01: Let's go back a number of years and uh let's talk about this book uh that's been influential on the Schwankfelder's um uh Schwankfelder's in the Sacraments.
2:20
SPEAKER_01: Uh why did you write this book?
2:22
SPEAKER_02: At um Mount Erie, Lutheran Seminary, uh you had to have a dissertation and subject.
2:28
SPEAKER_02: And my subject that I picked was really the meaning and the history of confession and the assurance of pardon in the service of worship.
2:35
SPEAKER_02: And I had a wonderful professor who was going to take sabbatical the next year.
2:39
SPEAKER_02: So it meant I had to pick another subject.
2:41
SPEAKER_02: And that's when I switched to the Schwankfellers and the Sacraments and was privileged to have as my supervisor a Dr.
2:47
SPEAKER_02: Tappert, who's tops in history.
2:50
SPEAKER_02: But it really goes back to when I was confirmed and had my first communion at age 13.
2:54
SPEAKER_02: I sat there in the church holding a squishy piece of bread.
2:57
SPEAKER_02: I kept looking at it and wondering how, when the liturgy invites us to take and eat, Christ was ever associated with it.
3:05
SPEAKER_02: And that started me on a quest that has gone on and on through the years.
3:09
SPEAKER_02: Coming from the German Reformed background in the old liturgy, the answer came.
3:13
SPEAKER_02: Our blessed Lord and Savior Jesus Christ instituted the Holy Communion of His body and blood, that it might be the abiding memorial of his atoning death, the seal of his perpetual presence in the church through the Holy Spirit, the mystical representation of the sacrifice of himself on the cross, the pledge of his undying love for his people, and the bond of his living and union and fellowship with them to the end of time.
3:34
SPEAKER_02: Those are the words that got to me.
3:36
SPEAKER_02: But it never became personal.
3:38
SPEAKER_02: I was carried by the words.
3:39
SPEAKER_02: Really, what influenced me is at Lancaster Seminary, I was exposed to what's called the Mercersburg theology.
3:46
SPEAKER_02: And that's a weighty one.
3:47
SPEAKER_02: Really, it wrestles with how is Christ present in the sacrament?
3:51
SPEAKER_02: And it gets into the whole Lutheran, Roman Catholics, Frankfelder, the whole view.
3:55
SPEAKER_02: I was introduced through Reverend Howard Payne to the centuries of Christian worship.
4:01
SPEAKER_02: And so I got hooked on it.
4:02
SPEAKER_02: That's where I went.
4:03
SPEAKER_02: I put it in a much larger context, and it's been there ever since.
4:06
SPEAKER_02: Oh, and then when we went to Palm, there's the Schulstein still being practiced by a few members.
4:12
SPEAKER_02: When the bread and the cup were passed, they just sat there, put their heads down, and shook their heads now and wouldn't participate.
4:18
SPEAKER_01: Oh wow.
4:19
SPEAKER_01: Even since 1959 or so.
4:21
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
4:22
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
4:23
SPEAKER_02: I mean, this carried on.
4:24
SPEAKER_02: And that's what really got me to dig into Schwenkfeld and the sacraments.
4:29
SPEAKER_02: What influenced him?
4:31
SPEAKER_02: What did he really believe?
4:33
SPEAKER_02: Tracing his motivation on through the history of his followers up to then, the 20th century, and the dissertation.
4:40
SPEAKER_02: And it has been going ever since.
4:42
SPEAKER_01: You you mentioned several schools that uh were influential in your thought.
4:46
SPEAKER_01: How about specific people that were inf influential on this topic of Schweinfelders and the Sacraments?
4:52
SPEAKER_02: It would not be specifically Schweinfelders and the Sacraments.
4:56
SPEAKER_02: It was the sacrament itself.
4:57
SPEAKER_03: Okay.
4:58
SPEAKER_02: I then put it alongside.
5:00
SPEAKER_02: Later when I talk about this, but I'll bring it up now.
5:03
SPEAKER_02: What has frustrated me, and being a stubborn German at times irritated me, is we study our history and our theology and our liturgy in a vacuum.
5:12
SPEAKER_02: We never look beyond to those who are around us.
5:14
SPEAKER_02: And I think in the Reformation this became really true.
5:18
SPEAKER_02: And the circumstances were such that you had to stay within yourself, and your beliefs become a shield and a sword.
5:24
SPEAKER_02: And you you you just don't have the situation to sit down and try to wrestle together with it.
5:30
SPEAKER_02: And we've had some attempts.
5:32
SPEAKER_02: In the 1500s, there were some good ones.
5:34
SPEAKER_02: And uh they were almost at the point of agreeing on how is Christ present in the sacrament.
5:39
SPEAKER_02: They were all ready to agree.
5:41
SPEAKER_02: I must confess, one of the reforms got made and walked out.
5:44
SPEAKER_02: It killed the agreement.
5:45
SPEAKER_02: And of course, we're still there now.
5:46
unknown: Yes.
5:47
SPEAKER_02: We haven't gotten very far.
5:48
SPEAKER_02: We live in hope.
5:49
SPEAKER_02: Sure.
5:49
SPEAKER_02: I would say it was it was individuals who pointed me to the resources.
5:54
SPEAKER_02: And from the Schwangfellers, the most influential one was Peter Erb and Celina Gerhardt Schultz.
6:00
SPEAKER_02: I got in on the end of her eighties.
6:03
SPEAKER_02: She was a member at Palm.
6:04
SPEAKER_02: And uh when I was working on a dissertation, I get out of the library, and there she'd be plugging away in her late 80s and really respect and admire her.
6:12
SPEAKER_02: These were the pieces in the whole thing.
6:14
SPEAKER_01: And those pieces led to the book Schwankfelder's and the Sacraments, which was published in 1968 through our um board of publication at the Schweinckfelder Church.
6:24
SPEAKER_02: I was grateful to you folks because it was really a dissertation completed in 65, but then the board of publication took it on.
6:32
SPEAKER_01: But now you've had many, many years uh to reflect back on the on uh just the sacraments in general.
6:39
SPEAKER_01: And I'm wondering about um uh your thoughts now.
6:42
SPEAKER_01: I mean, you you mentioned at uh age 13 uh uh being in church and thinking about uh this uh piece of bread and this cup in your hand.
6:49
SPEAKER_01: But now, as a someone who's had over 65 years of uh ordained ministry, how important are the sacraments uh do you feel for the life of the Christian and the life of the church today?
7:00
SPEAKER_02: For me, they are critical to the point of being essential.
7:03
SPEAKER_02: We need markers in life.
7:04
SPEAKER_02: Uh our one professor at Lancaster Seminary, Dr.
7:06
SPEAKER_02: Bella Vassity, uh, what he said, the Apostles' Creed is what I would say the sacraments.
7:11
SPEAKER_02: It's both a crutch to lean on and a break to hold us back, so we don't go off in some wild ideas, but in our deepest, most hurtful, empty moments, that which we lean on.
7:22
SPEAKER_02: And I think of all of them, the word and sacrament, which were the core of the Reformation, are what's still are the core of the church.
7:29
SPEAKER_02: Here's one of my prejudices shows, you know, we have so many different churches.
7:32
SPEAKER_02: When I came to Trinity, I witnessed six churches come into being.
7:36
SPEAKER_02: We had all the traditional, but these were new people.
7:38
SPEAKER_02: They'd start their own little church, and two have now gotten huge.
7:42
SPEAKER_02: And to me, the test of the church is do they recognize the word of scripture and the sacraments of baptism and the Lord's Supper?
7:50
SPEAKER_02: And do they hold to the Apostles' Creed or a basic interpretation of it?
7:54
SPEAKER_02: It has to be interpreted.
7:56
SPEAKER_02: Because Schwenfeld did.
7:57
SPEAKER_02: His whole category, the reformers shape their confirmation material on the Apostles' Creed.
8:02
SPEAKER_02: Now I know today churches throw it out, and some churches really get very angry.
8:06
SPEAKER_02: They'll walk out if they hear you say the Apostles' Creed.
8:09
SPEAKER_02: But to me, it's it's a crutch and a break, and it's part of the sacrament.
8:14
SPEAKER_01: And something that the Christian can continue coming back to uh in all different seasons of life, that there's continuity here uh and a witness to Christ's work, I assume you'd also say uh as well.
8:26
SPEAKER_02: So I'm I'm very cautious of a Christian community that has come into being and insists that one of their tenets is not to say the creeds.
8:35
SPEAKER_02: Now, here's where Celina Gerhardt Schultz, I learned as a young whippersnapper to keep my mouth shut, but but Celina coined the phrase that Schweinfeld said the Apostles' Creed is Creed enough for me.
8:46
SPEAKER_02: And she said it in a negative.
8:47
SPEAKER_02: In other words, she opposed it that we are not a creedal church, but no, it was the opposite.
8:55
SPEAKER_02: And he was saying, the apostles' creed is creed enough for me.
8:58
SPEAKER_02: We don't need more than that.
9:00
SPEAKER_02: And I think we're still wrestling with that.
9:02
SPEAKER_02: You have to have a basis for the sacraments.
9:05
SPEAKER_01: Yes, and um uh and it's so important that we have uh that that basis, but uh but not having too much of a basis, which is what m I think is uh uh interesting with uh with Schweinkfelder thought uh in general.
9:19
SPEAKER_01: Let's go to uh at least some of the ways that uh other denominations uh might be celebrating uh the sacraments.
9:25
SPEAKER_01: Uh there are not a lot of non-denominational churches uh in the area, you know, many of them do uh recognize uh whether it be baptism or uh the taking of a communion.
9:36
SPEAKER_01: Some things uh though uh go uh assumed or not uh uh explained uh far enough.
9:44
SPEAKER_01: Maybe we could think at least a little bit about uh commonalities uh that uh Christians should be celebrating with baptism as well as uh the Eucharist.
9:54
SPEAKER_01: And then maybe we can move on to what some differences uh are.
9:58
SPEAKER_01: Can you see some commonalities?
10:00
SPEAKER_02: Uh I don't see the commonality.
10:02
SPEAKER_02: I I think those two become stumbling blocks.
10:04
SPEAKER_02: We we don't even get that far.
10:06
SPEAKER_02: I mean, you talk about baptism, that really can be a stumbling block.
10:09
SPEAKER_02: And that's a book I have cooking.
10:11
SPEAKER_02: I even have the title, Sculpted by Water: Living a Life Shaped by Baptismal Vowels.
10:16
SPEAKER_02: It doesn't matter how you do it, when you do it, where you do it, it's what you do and how that then nurtures you for the rest of your life.
10:23
SPEAKER_02: You know, we talk about the commonality.
10:25
SPEAKER_02: I think the minute we start to talk about baptism, you're gonna get off into how you do it, when you do it, and whether the way you did it is legitimate.
10:32
SPEAKER_02: I think we still have the problem.
10:34
SPEAKER_02: I think we have it more with baptism than we do with communion.
10:38
SPEAKER_01: But there's certain things that are are surely common, uh, or even if we were to uh have it the the broadest baptism involving water.
10:47
SPEAKER_02: To me, the the commonality is the confession, Jesus Christ, my Lord and Savior, and whose life I am baptized.
10:54
SPEAKER_02: I don't know enough about Schwank folk to have gotten into that.
10:56
SPEAKER_02: You you can pursue it.
10:58
SPEAKER_02: But to me, the tension in baptism is whether it's a cleansing act, period.
11:04
SPEAKER_02: Who acts in baptism?
11:06
SPEAKER_02: I think that's the issue.
11:07
SPEAKER_02: If it's the person coming, you know, I make my mind up that now I will be baptized and I will accept Christ.
11:14
SPEAKER_02: I say, where's God in this?
11:15
SPEAKER_02: In a sense, it's to be baptized is sub is to to submit to God's grace, God's love and action in Jesus Christ.
11:23
SPEAKER_02: It's God who calls, it's God who baptizes, and we respond.
11:28
SPEAKER_02: And there's a tension there.
11:29
SPEAKER_02: And I think Schweinfeld would would have agreed.
11:32
SPEAKER_02: I mean, his very nature, the Kentinus Christian experiencing Christ, that that was the reformers' big gripe with the church at Rome.
11:40
SPEAKER_02: They became the agents on behalf of God, where it's God who's the agent, and we respond.
11:46
SPEAKER_01: I think of uh Schweinfeld talking about uh an outer sign of an inward reality.
11:51
SPEAKER_01: Um I remember Dr.
11:53
SPEAKER_01: Jack Rothenberger speaking about that uh at Central Schweinckfelder.
11:57
SPEAKER_02: Uh how do you feel about uh that as well it's it's in the it's in the liturgy of the Lutheran Reformed Church, too.
12:03
SPEAKER_02: They they're all on the same page.
12:04
SPEAKER_02: In the in the liturgy, it's a it's an outward action.
12:08
SPEAKER_02: We enter into living communion with our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and show forth fellowship with one another as members of his church.
12:16
SPEAKER_02: We profess a desire to be numbered among his people and to walk in his ways.
12:20
SPEAKER_02: It's God who does the acting, it's God who does the parting, it's God who does the union with whose bonding love.
12:26
SPEAKER_02: And you can get the same quotes out of Schweinfeld.
12:28
SPEAKER_02: There they were all in that.
12:30
SPEAKER_02: I think the dilemmas with the reformers was they were caught up with the corruption of the Roman church and and the monasteries became the refuge.
12:38
SPEAKER_02: And that's where the gospel was being preached.
12:40
SPEAKER_02: I don't want to disparage Luther, but I mean he was nurtured in that.
12:44
SPEAKER_02: The gospel was never lost in in those little conclaves of a Christian community, which were your schools, they were your hospitals, they were your rescue stations, where the big business organization is doing its business, making its money, fighting its wars.
12:58
SPEAKER_02: I mean, that's where the tension is.
12:59
SPEAKER_02: I I always say one of Schweinfeld's disadvantages was his handicap, the fact that at age 29 he became totally deaf.
13:06
SPEAKER_02: If he heard everything, he could meditate and write.
13:09
SPEAKER_01: Not that anybody listened, but well, you brought up the uh the Roman church, uh, and so much of Schwenkfeld and his uh his uh uh response with the sacraments was against or counter to, or at least um taking um clarifying, uh maybe that's better said, uh the sacramental stance.
13:30
SPEAKER_02: He and the other reformers were against the corruption, but they were still caught up in the church itself.
13:35
SPEAKER_02: I mean, for example, he wrote his Passionel and prayer book, which really is a devotional handbook of the prayer life in a monastery setting before the Reformation, and that kind of became their refuge.
13:47
SPEAKER_02: It was the element that was not lost.
13:50
SPEAKER_02: And I think the question of the sacraments, Luther had such a high view of the sacrament that when he was ordained to conduct his first communion, he fainted.
13:59
SPEAKER_02: He missed it, he was so taken by it.
14:01
SPEAKER_02: And I think Schwankfeld was too.
14:03
SPEAKER_02: He was caught up in in the sense of the presence of Christ.
14:07
SPEAKER_02: It was the way in which the church misrepresented it and abused it and made a commercial enterprise out of it.
14:15
SPEAKER_01: I'd like to think it would be at least different uh for those that are of us that are trying to focus on the spiritual nature of uh the of the sacrament.
14:23
SPEAKER_01: Uh so whether it be uh an outward sign of an inward reality as we talked about.
14:28
SPEAKER_02: An outward sign of an inward grace.
14:30
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that's the phrasing, yeah.
14:32
SPEAKER_01: Or um the the opportunity to let's say commune uh uh spiritually in the heart uh with uh the glorified Christ.
14:41
SPEAKER_02: Um one of the Schwangfellers, I don't know if it was Levi Levi Hoffman or what, he said, I commune occasionally at the table, but with Christ daily.
14:53
SPEAKER_02: Now I don't think the one is separated from the other, and one is not in competition with the other.
14:59
SPEAKER_02: In our old tradition, all the people, whether they were Lutheran or wherever they were, I mean the idea was you don't commune too often, it'll become a habit and you'll lose its meaning.
15:07
SPEAKER_02: Well, here I am communing every single Sunday.
15:10
SPEAKER_02: I have to tell you, the more I commune, the more I'm drawn in.
15:14
SPEAKER_02: It becomes a deep spiritual experience, it's not a ritual.
15:18
SPEAKER_02: Uh and to me, um I I get to uh supply a uh at a nearby Episcopal church where they commune, of course, regul every time, but they commune any baptized person.
15:31
SPEAKER_02: And so you have a parent carrying up a baby that's been baptized, and you have a two-year-old kneeling at the rail, and when that child holds out his or her hands to receive the wafer, the look on the face, they know they're receiving Christ.
15:48
SPEAKER_02: It it is a spiritual moment.
15:50
SPEAKER_02: Uh and then that that's converted me.
15:53
SPEAKER_02: The the response of those who commune.
15:55
SPEAKER_01: Uh, some of our listeners may not be familiar with it.
15:58
SPEAKER_01: Uh, Schweinfelder's are uh generally taking communion about six times uh per year.
16:04
SPEAKER_02: We bumped it to six.
16:05
SPEAKER_01: I mean, but I think uh the difference between Palm and Schweinfelder uh and central Schwankfelder are maybe maybe one Sunday or two, but it it's not an every week activity.
16:14
SPEAKER_02: And well, it used to be twice a year when I was pastor, Easter and then the fall.
16:19
SPEAKER_02: Well, even in colonial times, your your most liturgical churches had it twice a year.
16:24
SPEAKER_02: You had it uh before the winter freeze and after the fall.
16:30
SPEAKER_01: And what what was the reason uh then for only two times?
16:33
SPEAKER_01: Because I can remember the reason.
16:34
SPEAKER_02: We couldn't get there.
16:35
SPEAKER_02: I mean, you know, everybody couldn't get there.
16:38
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
16:39
SPEAKER_02: Well, and and the reason why it was infrequent in in all these churches, which now commune every Sunday, you didn't have a pastor.
16:47
SPEAKER_02: You you believe you had to have an ordained clergy.
16:50
SPEAKER_02: You know, you had a church that's maybe uh serving two, three, four, one one pastor was serving five churches.
16:57
SPEAKER_02: And in colonial times, that's a little difficult.
16:59
SPEAKER_02: It was the frequency, the availability of the pastor that determined whether or not you would commune.
17:06
SPEAKER_02: I remember with the Schwankfellers when they went back to communion, the the big search was how are they going to ordain the pastor?
17:13
SPEAKER_02: Who's gonna ordain him?
17:15
SPEAKER_02: One of the saddest stories is up at Newgosh and Hoppin Reform Church 1727.
17:21
SPEAKER_02: They were very close with the upper district, which was in three meeting houses.
17:25
SPEAKER_02: And the Schweinfeller pastor would supply for them back and forth.
17:29
SPEAKER_02: They had a close relationship.
17:31
SPEAKER_02: And in the mid-1800s, the Reformed Church could not find a pastor.
17:36
SPEAKER_02: And there was a wonderful preacher in the upper district, and they loved him, and he served them, and they wanted him to come.
17:43
SPEAKER_02: He couldn't, he wasn't ordained, he hadn't ordained yet, and the dilemma was so terrible he eventually died in the mental institution.
17:50
SPEAKER_02: The agony of it.
17:51
SPEAKER_02: You know, where were they gonna find it?
17:53
SPEAKER_02: There was nobody over in Europe that could still ordain.
17:55
SPEAKER_02: So they finally resolved it, I guess, through Hartford Seminary, and they just decided who ordained Levi Hoffman from up country and Oscar Crevel, Turkey Ham School.
18:07
SPEAKER_02: They were the first two.
18:08
SPEAKER_01: Going back then to frequency, though, uh, you're mentioning uh just twice a year before the f the thaw, before the freeze and after the thaw.
18:17
SPEAKER_01: I remember growing up at Central Schweinckfelder Church and six times per year, so that we wouldn't so that we wouldn't be caught up in the the ritual of it, but maybe would have a greater heart appreciation of for it.
18:30
SPEAKER_01: Of course, times change though, don't they?
18:32
SPEAKER_02: Wherever I had served as pastor, uh we would we would get it to six.
18:36
SPEAKER_02: But I always said it, you know, most of you say, Oh, the first Sunday of the month.
18:40
SPEAKER_02: I said, No, it's the first Sunday of the season of the church year.
18:43
SPEAKER_02: Because see, Trangfeldt never gave up the church year.
18:46
SPEAKER_02: Fortunately, I've always been in a parish where we could frame our worship in the calendar of the church year and the set readings.
18:53
SPEAKER_02: It gives a discipline to you.
18:55
SPEAKER_02: Especially this coming Sunday where the gospel is the beheading of John.
18:59
SPEAKER_02: The point is you had that setting, you had that tradition.
19:04
SPEAKER_02: And I know when we went back to it, we say, okay, we have it the first Sunday in each church year.
19:10
SPEAKER_02: So we have Epiphany, we already have Ash Wednesday, and and then uh Easter, of course, and Holy Thursday, because that's when it was instituted, and then Pentecost.
19:19
SPEAKER_02: And then, of course, we get worldwide communion Sunday in October.
19:22
SPEAKER_02: So, oh, that gives us another one.
19:23
SPEAKER_02: But the first Sunday in Advent would be communion, it was shaped by the the season of the church year.
19:29
SPEAKER_01: My personal reflections now is uh I think of the way that uh the world is becoming more secularized, um, the uh more frequent uh taking of communion probably is our aid, at least in connecting further with the transcendent and with the uh the historic gospel.
19:47
SPEAKER_01: Um I'm just curious, would what do you think of that?
19:50
SPEAKER_01: Would you agree with that?
19:51
SPEAKER_02: Well, it should be every Sunday according to scripture and and and the uh festival occasions in between.
19:57
SPEAKER_02: No, I think as I said, uh as I supply other churches that do commune every Sunday, they're the ones that have taught me.
20:05
SPEAKER_02: I see the look of the people when they come, and here they come to the rail, so I can see I I see the expression on their faces when they reach out to receive that wafer.
20:16
SPEAKER_02: Well, we usually had an individual cup now since COVID.
20:20
SPEAKER_02: It's beyond words.
20:21
SPEAKER_02: I mean, they are literally receiving Christ, and in the one congregation, it's the most delightful mix of people.
20:27
SPEAKER_02: Every social marital mix we got today, they're all there.
20:32
SPEAKER_02: Uh racial.
20:34
SPEAKER_02: It's a mix, and they're they're brought together at one table.
20:38
SPEAKER_01: I wonder if we could go uh um back to uh some of the uniquenesses though of the Schwenkfelder um uh use uh or um taking of uh of communion.
20:50
SPEAKER_01: Some of our listeners won't be familiar with the steel stone and how that became such an important part of uh Schwenckfelder's.
20:59
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that that's right.
21:01
SPEAKER_02: The interpretation I have is one that other people don't have.
21:05
SPEAKER_01: Let's let's talk generally first.
21:07
SPEAKER_01: Let's uh just help our listeners understand what the steel stone was first, and then maybe we can get to our interpretation.
21:12
SPEAKER_01: Uh how did you see the steel stond?
21:14
SPEAKER_02: Uh historically 1526, was it when Schweinfeldt?
21:19
SPEAKER_02: It was because all the Christians could not agree.
21:22
SPEAKER_02: That's what precipitated it.
21:24
SPEAKER_02: And to me, Schweinfeldt was basing it on Paul's words in First Corinthians, the institution of the Lord's Supper.
21:32
SPEAKER_02: We don't read on to the end about eating and drinking unworthily, not discerning Christ's body.
21:39
SPEAKER_02: To me, that's the key.
21:41
SPEAKER_02: And and all of a sudden in meditation, it I thought that's like Triumph instituted the Stillstone.
21:49
SPEAKER_02: We cannot come to communion in our disunity, in our disagreements for desecrating the body of Christ.
21:55
SPEAKER_02: It was his high view of the sacrament, and of course.
22:00
SPEAKER_02: He waited.
22:00
SPEAKER_02: Here we are.
22:01
SPEAKER_02: We're still waiting.
22:02
SPEAKER_02: We we cannot agree.
22:04
SPEAKER_02: And to me, that was the actual thought and impetus behind the still stone.
22:10
SPEAKER_02: And of course, as his life went on and everybody's squabbling, each group is out to kill off another group.
22:16
SPEAKER_02: You know, the whole thing changes.
22:18
SPEAKER_02: As I said, we haven't, we're still not there.
22:21
SPEAKER_01: Just for our listeners, uh, 1526 Schweinfelder's uh refraining, at least from taking communion corporately, and then till the mid to late 1800s, then this within the Schweinfelder denomination, uh, we started taking communion again.
22:38
SPEAKER_02: The lower yeah, excuse me, the middle district that central's in.
22:42
SPEAKER_02: They they started to do it privately in homes.
22:45
SPEAKER_02: I mean, the tension is on.
22:47
SPEAKER_02: Other churches are doing it, you're not doing it.
22:48
SPEAKER_02: I said, Yeah, we really should be doing it.
22:51
SPEAKER_02: The upper district was different.
22:53
SPEAKER_02: They said, This is the supper of the Lord.
22:55
SPEAKER_02: You don't do it privately.
22:57
SPEAKER_02: When you do it, it's the meal of the church, and the church must decide to do it.
23:02
SPEAKER_02: And of course, the Schwankfelders debated it, and finally in 1885, they said, Okay.
23:07
SPEAKER_02: And and then picking up on Schweinfeld's, because he he wrote a lot, right?
23:11
SPEAKER_02: But he wrote a lot of stuff on how, when, and how to do the sacrament.
23:17
SPEAKER_02: Now, if he was opposed to it, why did he write all that stuff?
23:19
SPEAKER_02: And if the Stillstand was a protest, why did he write it?
23:23
SPEAKER_02: He was he was anticipating coming back to it.
23:26
SPEAKER_02: And when we get to come back, how will we do it?
23:29
SPEAKER_02: He was kind of making a worship manual, a handbook.
23:34
SPEAKER_02: Uh, as I said, we haven't gotten there.
23:36
SPEAKER_01: Well, I think this is fascinating that uh the Schweinfelders corporately would not be taking a communion, but there's tremendous amount of writing, not only from Caspar Schwenckfeld, uh, but uh also in the writings of uh George Weiss, who was uh the first uh first uh pastor uh that came uh here to America, the Schweinfelders.
23:56
SPEAKER_01: Uh so yes, it became it was certainly important, uh, even though they weren't taking it corporately.
24:02
SPEAKER_01: Um I'm sorry, go ahead.
24:04
SPEAKER_02: Take it corporately and take it spiritually.
24:06
SPEAKER_01: But still the taking of the supper was very important, even if they weren't going to celebrate it corporately, because it maybe wasn't up to what they really wanted to have it be in the broader Christian church at that time.
24:19
SPEAKER_01: Would that be fair to say?
24:20
SPEAKER_02: But to me, it was what they couldn't have it be because there was so much squabbling among them all.
24:24
SPEAKER_02: I mean, the Reformation was that way.
24:27
SPEAKER_02: Those reformers were thinking with a church set in the Latin language and the church of the West, where you know how we think we have to fix stuff.
24:40
SPEAKER_02: We have to ask why, what's going on here?
24:42
SPEAKER_02: We have to be the fixers, where your monastic movement is more to submit yourself before God.
24:49
SPEAKER_02: I mean, our Western minds would give us of our chemistry and biology, thank goodness, all that.
24:53
SPEAKER_02: Let me let me just throw something in here.
24:56
SPEAKER_02: Howard and I really underwent another spiritual experience when in 2013 on our own, we went back to Germany because we had a partnership, we were always back and forth, but it was with the Eastern part, the church under the communists previously.
25:13
SPEAKER_02: We went back, and of course, you always do Wittenberg and you do this and that and the other.
25:18
SPEAKER_02: But our seminarian we had at that time took us to Halle, H-A-L-L-E.
25:23
SPEAKER_02: And that for us was a religious awakening.
25:26
SPEAKER_02: Here we saw the Reformation 200 years later, where the school that's there trained pastors to go out as missionaries.
25:36
SPEAKER_02: It's German pietism, and I think this would fit in with Schweinfeld as you would practice it later.
25:42
SPEAKER_02: First of all, you do have a personal confession of Jesus Christ, your Savior, but you then become a member of his body, the church, where you participate in word and sacrament, and you are nurtured in that setting to then become the body of Christ.
25:57
SPEAKER_02: And when you go out, and they sent them in missionary work, you are trained to see what do the people need.
26:05
SPEAKER_02: First of all, you learn their culture, and you send all these samples back, and you go into the second floor library at Hala, and there's a display of what these people sent back from all over the world where they went.
26:16
SPEAKER_02: It's fabulous.
26:17
SPEAKER_02: So they went to see what the people need and what can we bring to these people.
26:22
SPEAKER_02: And so they were trained to set up pharmacies, libraries, schools, and churches.
26:28
SPEAKER_02: And to me, it it it it's what give us the the evangelical side of the church from the German sense, where you're out there to reach out and serve with what the people need, but you also learn what they bring to you, their culture, their language.
26:45
SPEAKER_02: As I said, it was it was a religious awakening for us, and where the church in the West has been more heady.
26:50
SPEAKER_02: They're always arguing with Heidelberg in the 1800s over words, I mean 1700s, 1500s, the catechisms, they're working over words, where in the east they're working over witness.
27:04
SPEAKER_02: How do we live the Christian faith in body, mind, and spirit?
27:08
SPEAKER_02: How does Christ claim us to then work through us?
27:11
SPEAKER_02: And that's a different mentality.
27:13
SPEAKER_02: It is and it wasn't until we got to Hollow that I saw it and began to understand the reformation with a totally different perspective.
27:22
SPEAKER_02: And of course, when we're talking about reformation, we're talking about the 1500s, but the real reformation influence is in the 1700s when these people are coming here and bringing their faith, which has undergone some changes.
27:35
SPEAKER_02: I mean, we do change in 200 years.
27:38
SPEAKER_01: Certainly, certainly we do.
27:40
SPEAKER_01: We also change as we uh think and reflect on uh uh materials from uh the time of the reformation and also practiced it as uh you know sincere Christians and as ministers, and just one final question to ask you for today.
27:56
SPEAKER_01: Um you've had a uh sufficient time to reflect on uh what you've written in Schwenckfelder's and the sacraments.
28:02
SPEAKER_01: Um, do you think that there are any things that the Schwankfelder Church should consider today regarding its understanding of baptism and the Eucharist?
28:09
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I did write that down.
28:11
SPEAKER_02: Where let me I I made notes.
28:13
SPEAKER_02: You talking about correctives.
28:15
SPEAKER_02: You talking about corrections, what corrections would you make?
28:17
SPEAKER_01: Or additions as just as additions, okay.
28:21
SPEAKER_02: Well, first of all, I I I would I would think to be able to talk about the effect of Schwank Father's thinking and everything in the larger setting.
28:35
SPEAKER_02: I've been blessed to really be impacted by the living faith and practice of the persecuted Christians.
28:42
SPEAKER_02: I mean, they cut through all this gobbledygook we do, and and they they have that core faith.
28:47
SPEAKER_02: They have the faith that people have gotten when they're sustained by word and sacrament.
28:52
SPEAKER_02: Christ is the essence.
28:54
SPEAKER_02: The other thing is I said I mentioned how Power and I were so affected by HALA and the Berlin Mission today, which reaches out all over the world, which includes former Schweinfeller lands.
29:06
SPEAKER_02: A matter of fact, when we could still visit back and forth, a Lutheran pastor serving in the Schweinfeller area, which is Poland, was in our company.
29:15
SPEAKER_02: He knows the whole history, he knows the background, and uh one of the things I thought is we've never dared to delve in and pursue the his remote, I think, oh you're prejudiced now.
29:27
SPEAKER_02: There is an influence from the old church before the Reformation, the medieval church, in Schweinfeld.
29:34
SPEAKER_02: It affected his devotional life.
29:36
SPEAKER_02: There is the influence when uh Silesia uh was converted to Lutheranism.
29:43
SPEAKER_02: Now, sadly, after the 30 years' war, it all went back to Roman Catholic.
29:47
SPEAKER_02: Not to be prejudiced, but I mean that influence.
29:50
SPEAKER_02: And there were commonalities there.
29:52
SPEAKER_02: I mean, Schweinfeld was converted through reading Luther.
29:55
SPEAKER_02: Now, of course, Luther always had indigestion and would get nasty and shout everybody out.
30:00
SPEAKER_02: But there were practices that continued before the exile, and when the uh Jesuits sent their mission in there to figure out who are these Schweinfelders and ended up deciding they don't deserve to live, and that's when the exile came.
30:13
SPEAKER_02: But before that, the Schweinfelders were worshipping in the Lutheran parish.
30:18
SPEAKER_02: And what surprised me at Palm when we we opened up the old meeting houses and had summer service, I looked in the pulpit at the Crasdale Meeting House, and there was this old, old book from the late 1800s.
30:31
SPEAKER_02: What is it?
30:32
SPEAKER_02: It's the sermons that the pastor at Harborstorf preached.
30:36
SPEAKER_02: They incorporated Schweinfeld's views.
30:38
SPEAKER_02: They were still reading them in the meeting house in the late 1800s until circumstances got intolerable, first for the Schweinfelders, then the Lutherans.
30:47
SPEAKER_02: They took after them too.
30:48
SPEAKER_02: Everybody who was Protestant ended up being cooked or whatever or prisoned.
30:54
SPEAKER_02: There was this tie.
30:55
SPEAKER_02: Schweinfeld never left the church here.
30:57
SPEAKER_02: He always followed that pattern.
30:59
SPEAKER_02: And there's these carryovers spirituality that show the tie was never broken.
31:04
SPEAKER_02: We've never pursued that.
31:06
SPEAKER_02: And it would really help.
31:08
SPEAKER_02: I know this um Lutheran pastor who I met through the Berlin Mission, who is from, and they all know the Schweinfeller history.
31:14
SPEAKER_02: He knew the people.
31:16
SPEAKER_02: You know, they kind of hunger because they're they're on their own out there.
31:19
SPEAKER_02: So that to me is one whole unexplored area that would enrich them as well as us.
31:26
SPEAKER_02: But you ask me the main thing, if I were to rewrite the book today, I wouldn't call it Schwankfelders and the Sacraments.
31:32
SPEAKER_02: I'd call it the Sacraments and Schwankfelders.
31:36
SPEAKER_01: And why would you re-retitle it that way?
31:39
SPEAKER_02: Because we would see ourselves as part of the body of Christ.
31:43
SPEAKER_02: Whether or not others see us that way, we are part of the body of Christ.
31:47
SPEAKER_02: We are baptized into Christ.
31:49
SPEAKER_02: We become living members of his body.
31:52
SPEAKER_02: And so when it comes to the discussion of the sacraments, a Schweinfelder comes to that discussion saying, What do Schwenckfelders bring to the table?
32:01
SPEAKER_02: To me, the continuum through this whole thing about Schweinfeld is that he traced the sacrament and the words of institution back to John 6.
32:11
SPEAKER_02: And he read it from the Latin, probably the Greek first, where the actual translation is, my body is this, namely bread.
32:20
SPEAKER_02: And that takes on a whole different dimension.
32:23
SPEAKER_02: I know when I take communion every Sunday and I hobble and kneel, you know, I hold that wafer and I say, My body is this.
32:33
SPEAKER_02: I am receiving Christ in me to feed me yet for whatever time remains.
32:40
SPEAKER_02: His life, his words.
32:41
SPEAKER_02: I think that's the main contribution Schwankvelts bring.
32:44
SPEAKER_02: Schweinfeld brings, and Schwankfelders have.
32:47
SPEAKER_01: Namely, that uh the inner communion with the person of Christ taking place at the at the European.
32:54
SPEAKER_01: What it is we're actually receiving.
32:56
SPEAKER_01: What it is we're actually receiving.
32:57
SPEAKER_02: And one of the words that we speak in the reform, I don't know, it's in the Schwankler one too.
33:04
SPEAKER_02: We become what we receive.
33:06
SPEAKER_01: Well, perhaps that's a good place for us to end this uh interview.
33:10
SPEAKER_01: Uh perhaps the the final thought here the prevalence of the sacraments.
33:16
SPEAKER_02: Thank you.
33:16
SPEAKER_01: And and uh what it is that we receive.
33:19
SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much for taking uh your time to uh reflect on uh the book Schwank Bellers and the Sacraments, maybe now rethought of as uh the sacraments and the Schwankfellers.
33:29
SPEAKER_02: Right, right.
33:30
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
33:30
SPEAKER_01: Oh, it's certainly uh thank you for your time, uh Reverend Dr.
33:33
SPEAKER_01: Martha Crewel, and wish you and your your husband and uh the family the very best.
33:38
SPEAKER_02: Uh and team and also the church that you and I want to thank you because this got me thinking and it got me reflecting.
33:45
SPEAKER_01: Oh, we wish you all the best.
33:46
SPEAKER_02: Being nourished afresh.
33:48
SPEAKER_02: Thanks so much for blessings on you and your ministry.
33:51
SPEAKER_02: Thanks.
33:51
SPEAKER_02: Thank you.