It was with great regret that last year we had to say farewell to Sarah and Andrew Wilson and their son Zeke. They had been part of our congregation for seven years while Sarah was working at the Institute for Ecumenical Research in Strasbourg, and they contributed generously to our church life. Andrew, a gifted singer, served as Churchwarden and set up this website, Sarah preached memorable sermons and led equally memorable Bible studies, and over the years we saw Zeke growing from a shy small child to a confident boy. They are now back in the US, in St. Paul’s, Minnesota, but luckily many links remain.
“The Acts of St. Alban’s in Strasbourg”
This is the title of an article that Sarah wrote for the “The Living Church”, a magazine published by the Living Church Foundation in the US, http://www.livingchurch.org/, in its October 16 2016 edition. In it she reflects upon how her understanding of the Acts of the Apostles was influenced by experiencing church life at St. Alban’s, “not a monochrome congregation”, she notes, and “with a welcome that said: here, where nobody is at home, we are at home.” By kind permission of the editor of “The Living Church” Sarah’s article is available here (in four parts):
Living Church St. Albans’s 1 Living Church St. Alban’s 2 Living Church St. Alban’s 3 Living Church St Alban’s 4
“Here I walk – A thousand miles on foot to Rome with Martin Luther”
In August 2010 Andrew and Sarah left Erfurt, the city in which Martin Luther had lived as a student and as an Augustinian monk, to follow the route he had taken 500 years earlier across the Alps to Rome. They went on foot, as Luther himself had done, as fellow-pilgrims. One thousand miles in 70 days, to see, as Andrew writes, “what we could learn not just from Luther’s words but by walking in his footsteps.”
“Here I walk” is Andrew’s account of that pilgrimage: of the uncertainties and strenuousness of the route, with rain, snow and pounding traffic making progress difficult, of unexpected encounters along the way and spontaneous offers of help and hospitality. It is equally a story about Luther and the way his theology developed, as reflected upon by present-day pilgrims wanting to understand what Luther’s insights and beliefs have to do with the transient world in which they find themselves. And the fact that they set off in the wrong year from the wrong place does not detract in any way from the intensity of their experience, nor from that of the reader.
More information on Andrew’s website: http://www.hereiwalk.org/. The book can also be ordered there.
