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In 1525, Luther wrote a lyrical hymn praising the church:

To me she's dear, the worthy maid,
and I cannot forget her;
Praise, honor, virtue of her are said;
then all I love her better.

On earth, all mad with murder,
the mother now alone is she,
But God will watchful guard her,
and the right Father be.

To the eyes of faith, the church is a "worthy maid," the Bride of Christ. But by the standards of the world, she is a poor Cinderella surrounded by many foes. Wrote Luther: "If, then, a person desires to draw the church as he sees her, he will picture her as a deformed and poor girl sitting in an unsafe forest in the midst of hungry lions … in the midst of infuriated men who set sword, fire, and water in motion in order to kill her and wipe her from the face of the earth." In God's sight, the church is pure, holy, unspotted, the Bridegroom, Christ: "hacked to pieces, marked with scratches, despised, crucified, mocked."

As evangelicals and Catholics pursue theological dialogue, moved by our love for the truth and for one another, we must not forget this ecclesiology by opting for an easy armchair ecumenism, heady and aloof. All our plans will ring hollow unless we stand in solidarity with our brothers and sisters in Christ, who live under the shadow of the cross and whose faithful witness is leading many of them to the shedding of their blood for the gospel.

Several months ago on a visit to Germany, I was taken to what remains of the concentration camp at Buchenwald near Weimar. Here more than 65,000 people were put to death by a totalitarian regime which saw in the Christian faith, in both its Catholic and Protestant expressions, a threat to the ideology of death. At Buchenwald there was one block of cells reserved for especially "dangerous" prisoners.

In cell 27 they placed Paul Schneider, a Lutheran pastor, who came to be called "the Preacher of Buchenwald." From the small window in his cell he loudly proclaimed Jesus Christ in defiance of the orders of the Gestapo guards. In cell 23 they placed Otto Neururer, a Catholic priest, whose work on behalf of the Jews and other so-called undesirables had made him a threat to the Nazi war lords. He too ministered to the prisoners in Jesus' name.

Together, a son of Rome and a son of the Reformation, separated no longer by four centuries but only by four cells, walked the way of the cross and together bore witness to their Lord. Their common witness does not remove all the differences between their respective communities of faith. But we remember them and thank God for them as well as for the countless others who have and will share a fellowship in the sufferings of Jesus. For today, as in ages past, the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church—the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church.

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June 15 1998, Vol. 42, No. 7