The Christmas story: Every year

a few months Ago returned in the Zurich grossmünster, an old, long-thought we had overcome time. The place of Huldrych Zwingli’s back turned in those powerful images of space, which the English had made Swiss reformation five hundred years ago, the finishing off. But the colourful figures of saints, side altars, where the priest offered once sacrifice of to sacrifice, and the incense-filled air were just a backdrop. For the Faith, the radicals, in the churches of the second Reformation up to today, the binding message, is Verdi good is resembled and Symbolized of at best as a decoration. You draw from the Actual from the presence of God in his word.

Daniel Decker

in the political editorial team responsible for “The present”.

F. A. Z.

With the stories of the birth of Jesus, which is read every year, and sung to be played, does not, strictly speaking, is not much different. They are also decorative. In the earliest layers of transmission, in which a Jew is told, the of the Roman occupying power was executed, but beyond death is a wonderful attraction unfolded, we find no trace that led to the sentimental melodrama called “Christmas”, which falls on the Northern hemisphere of the earth even happened to be in the winter solstice.

For the author of the gospel of mark began with the Ministry of Jesus with the baptism in the Jordan. Birth, Childhood and youth – with brothers and sisters (!) – all this was not even a decorative accessory. To tell, in retrospect, that God had not left these people in death, but to recognize itself in its life in incomparable ways, it needed no shepherds in the field, even heavenly hosts.