Great are the works of the Lord ...

... they are pondered by all who delight in them. - Psalm 111:2
​

Special thanks to Franz Rathmair for our YouTube videos from the gathering.

The Wedding Feast

​Thursday began with the First Trialogue, which introduced the day's theme.

Franziskus Eisenbach, a Roman Catholic and former auxiliary bishop of Mainz, led off the first morning session by painting the picture of God the Father preparing a wedding feast for the end of history.​

Jesus, through His work on the cross, resurrection, and ascension is ready for the feast. But the Bride is not yet ready!  Amy Cogdell (Roman Catholic) then spoke beautifully about how the Bride is prepared, showing us the attractiveness of embracing the way of the cross.  

George Miley (an Anglican priest) followed this with a practical path of discipleship towards reconciliation - "spending time with Jesus to learn from Jesus how to be like Jesus".

Invited Into the Unity of the Trinity

The theme of the Wedding Feast was presented from another perspective in a beautiful piece of art created especially for the gathering.  This triptych - artwork in three panels - was constantly inviting us to the table of the Trinity.  It was created by John Michael Wall from the Christ the Reconciler community in Texas.  He conceived of the design as a modern version of a famous icon created by the Russian artist Andrei Rublev. 

​Rublev's icon depicts the three visitors to Abraham from Genesis 18, and interprets them as the three members of the Trinity.  This icon had become an important image to us in the 2014 gathering in Trento, Italy.  We were amazed to see that this image was prominently displayed around Wittenberg during our 2017 gathering!

Even more remarkable was that during the Shabbat service, Richard Harvey revealed that the Torah reading for the week of our gathering was ... wait for it ... the very passage in Genesis 18 shown by the artwork!  "You had to have planned this, right?" ... no, but apparently God did!  

So throughout our gathering, God was truly emphasizing to all of us the importance of the invitation to the Wedding Feast, and the necessity of preparing the Bride through the work of discipleship, repentance and reconciliation.

On Thursday night, we had a special message from Walter Heidenreich,
a father to the church in Germany, and founder of the FCJG Lüdenscheid community.

Click here for a YouTube playlist of all sessions.  
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