Heathersleigh Homecoming (26 page)

 46 
Christmas Dinner With Meat for Discussion

Late in the day, Herr Buchmann arrived at the Chalet of Hope for Christmas dinner. After carving the Christmas turkey, he and the five women took their places around the large table.

“Herr Buchmann,” said Sister Hope, “would you be so kind as to offer our appreciation to the Lord on this special day of thanksgiving and rejoicing.”

“I would be honored,” replied the schoolmaster.
“Our loving heavenly Father
,”
he began,
“our hearts are full of gratitude on
this day for what it means to those who know you, and for all those who are yet to know you.

“Thank you for this season, for the life you
have given us, for the ministry of this chalet, and for your great gift most of all. Thank you for
the reminder of that very special day when you gave your Son that mankind might know you as it had never known you before. Through him you revealed that deepest
aspect of your nature that you had not shown fully until that moment—that you are our Father.

“Thank you
, God. Because of the miracle of Christmas, we now know
to call you by that wonderful name. On this day
especially let us dare address you as Jesus did, as our very own and personal Abba. For Fatherhood is the
message of Christmas, as your own Fatherhood is your greatest gift to us—exactly as Jesus told us. Amen.”

Herr Buchmann turned to Kasmira sitting beside him as the platters began to make their way around the table.

“How long have you been with the sisters here at the chalet, my dear?” he asked.

“Three weeks,” she replied timidly, still somewhat shy of this outgoing, gregarious man who seemed to treat women as respected
human equals, and was therefore different from any man she had ever met in her own culture.

“I understand your husband died in the recent fighting?”

“Yes,” answered Kasmira, lowering her eyes.

“I was very sorry to hear of it. But I trust that you will find good in life in spite of it. Our Lord told us that death was not the end, you know. We still have much to hope for.”

She nodded.

“And what do you think of it here?” he asked.

“I am learning many new things.”

“I have always found that the atmosphere of the chalet tends toward that,” said Herr Buchmann. “Would you not agree, Sister Hope?”

“Such indeed is my prayer.”

“You know, Sister Hope,” said Anika thoughtfully, after a temporary lull in the conversation, “what Herr Buchmann prayed a few minutes ago was exactly what I might have expected to hear from you.”

“I confess,” smiled Sister Hope, “I did find his words resonating within my own spirit.”

“To what are you referring?” asked Herr Buchmann, intrigued.

“About God's Fatherhood being the gift of Christmas,” said Anika.

“Ah yes, one of my scandalous theological notions.”

“I don't find it scandalous in the least,” said Hope. “I might not have used those exact words, but it is that very thing, in principle at least, that I have been explaining to Kasmira today, that because of Christmas we can more fully know of the Father's goodness. She has grown up in a tradition where an angry God rules the universe. I have told her that the manger shows us God's love. It is the culmination of his many acts of mercy and goodness toward his children.”

“I have always thought that God's greatest gift to us was Jesus,” now said Sister Galiana, “and that
he
was the gift of Christmas.”

“Jesus is certainly a dear and precious gift to man,” rejoined Herr Buchmann. “But I have to say that I believe God's
most
priceless gift to us is himself. Of course it is impossible to separate Jesus from that. When God sent Jesus to be born, he was giving himself, wasn't he?”

“What do you mean?” asked Sister Galiana.

“Just this—that he sent Jesus, not as a gift to us merely in himself as the Son, but for the purpose of telling us that God is our Father. That is the one thing Jesus talked about above all else—the one thing
he tried most persistently to get through to his disciples . . . that God was their Father, a
good
Father, their loving and tender
Abba
.”

Amanda listened with fascination. She had not heard a theological conversation around a meal table like this since Heathersleigh. And yet, she supposed, today
was
Christmas. What better subject to discuss than what the day signified?

“What do you think, Sister Hope?” now asked Herr Buchmann, glancing toward his hostess.

“I would agree that when God sent Jesus to live among us on that first Christmas back in Bethlehem, more than anything he was revealing himself to us as Father.”

“That was the reason Jesus came after all, wasn't it?” added Herr Buchmann, “—to tell us about the Father.”

“I thought Jesus came to bring salvation,” said Galiana.

“He did,” rejoined Herr Buchmann. “Jesus came to show us the way to salvation, which exists nowhere else but in the Father's loving heart. What is a cross but two slabs of wood? Only a Son who knew the Father's love could take us, through the cross,
to
that love. Without God's Fatherhood there is no salvation. It is because he loves us with a Father's love that
he
—the Father—saves us. Such was Jesus' sole purpose for living, to take us by the hand and bring us to the Father's heart of love.”

“Now he sounds exactly like you,” said Anika, turning toward Sister Hope.

She laughed and Herr Buchmann joined in. “I want to hear more,” he said.

“Perhaps another time,” she said.

“But isn't what you say making less of Jesus' role in salvation?” persisted Galiana, who had never heard these ideas expressed quite so succinctly, even from Sister Hope.

“Is it? I don't think so,” replied Herr Buchmann. “Jesus never exalted himself, but only exalted the Father,” replied Herr Buchmann. “I sincerely hope what I have said is not to diminish the Lord Jesus, but rather to obey him.”

“So what is his role in our salvation, then?”

“Just what he himself said it was—the role of a loving Son carrying out the will of his loving Father. Such makes the atonement more beautiful to me, not less. The Father forgives our sin. Jesus leads us by the hand to that throne of forgiveness. It is a beautiful picture to
me, and makes me feel like such a loved and secure little child when I place myself in it along with the Father and the Son.”

Again it was silent for a few moments.

“What you have said sheds an entire new perspective on what happened that night back in Bethlehem,” Hope said.

“I think I have always thought of this day only in connection with the baby Jesus,” said Anika at length. “But God's gift at Christmas is so much larger than I had ever considered.”

“That can be said of everything God does and all he gives,” added Sister Hope. “
Everything
of his is so much larger than we think—especially salvation.”

“How do you mean . . .
larger
?” now asked Amanda, joining the discussion for the first time.

“I mean,” replied Sister Hope, “that men and women are so prone to place limitations upon what God does, or can do, or
might
do, so that they can explain his ways and means to the satisfaction of their small intellects.”

“I couldn't agree more, Sister,” said Herr Buchmann. “God's work has fewer boundaries than we generally think. Limitations speak of finiteness, but God is infinite. And especially are God's love and salvation not limited by man's interpretations and by the boundaries man would place around the extent of their reach.”

 47 
New Year and Changes

One by one the sisters of the Chalet of Hope returned to Wengen as the days of the year 1915 opened.

Changes were in the wind, and not only from the blustery black clouds swirling about the Jungfrau and other peaks that were now mostly lost to sight.

All immediately beheld the change on Kasmira Tesar's radiant unveiled face.

But they sensed an alteration in Amanda's spirit as well, not so visible yet perhaps extending as deep in different ways as the transformation that had come to the young Muslim. For though the pilgrimages of the two young women whose lives had intersected high in the Swiss Alps were very different, they were both learning to turn their faces toward Fatherhood, which is the central necessity of the universe.

Meanwhile, a hundred miles to the southeast, a young German teacher in a Catholic school in Milan resumed her duties after the Christmas holiday. As her class of little Italian girls filed from the room on their first day back at school, Elsie Reinhardt was surprised to see two men standing in the corridor outside the classroom, apparently waiting to see her.

She did not recognize either of them. Neither did she like their looks.

“You are Elsie Reinhardt?” said the smaller of the two in Italian.

She nodded, glancing at the other man as she did.

“Have you or someone in your family been traveling recently by train to Switzerland?”

“I have recently returned from a Christmas visit to Munich. I traveled through Innsbruck.”

“No—before the end of the year . . . weeks ago.”

“I . . . my sister Gretchen visited me two months ago,” she answered slowly.

“And did she return to Switzerland by train?”

“She was on her way back to Inter—”

The young teacher hesitated. Something in the man's eye caused her to stop. The sense came over her that these two were not here in any official capacity.

“Inter . . . what?” said one of the men.

“I think I should say nothing further,” replied Elsie, on her guard yet the more.

“Was a young Englishwoman with her?” now demanded the other man in a tone Elsie did not like.

“I know nothing about an Englishwoman,” she said. “My sister visited me and left . . . alone. What is this all about?”

“We are looking for the Englishwoman. She is a spy.”

“I know nothing about her.”

“Where does your sister live?”

“I really think I have said enough. Please . . . you will have to excuse me,” she added, now walking past them and down the hall toward the headmistress's office. She was relieved when she did not hear their footsteps following behind her.