Day 06 - Lake Constance/Waldshut/Zurich

It’s been a long day by land and sea, and we lay our heads down in Switzerland. 

It was an early morning- by 7:45, we were on our way from Füssen to Lindau on the banks of Lake Constance to catch our boat to Meersburg. On the way, we had our morning devotional on the bus- Galatians 3:15-26 and introduced our “idea of the day”. It was “vocation”. Vocation comes from the Latin for “calling” and assumes that God is doing the calling, but to what? Does God need us all to have “religious jobs”? Do we need to be monks, priests, or even pastors to please God? 

The Reformers taught, along with verses like Romans 12:1, 1 Corinthians 7:17, and 1 Peter 2:9, that God calls us to all kinds of jobs- from parent or child and friend to whatever our “9 to 5” might be. The idea was that God has redeemed us to serve our neighbors on his behalf. God doesn’t need our Good works, but our neighbors do!

Once we arrived on the banks of Lake Constance, we sailed to Meersburg and then drove to Waldshut, a small medieval village (the Altstadt) with something of a “hidden” history. In fact, when we gathered at the steps of a church, a young lady (Leonie) came up to ask what a group of Americans (and 1 Aussie) were doing in her small town. 

Dan said, “To see where the Free Church and Anabaptist movement began.” She was unaware of the history of her own town, but so too was much of the city and region. She made Dan’s point that Balthasar Hubmaier, the father of the Free Church movement, who was defiantly (re)Baptized and then (re)Baptized, much of the town became a martyr for the early Reformation and the Free Church movement. 

A “free” church is distinguished from a state church, which the Catholics and some Reformers considered dangerous.

The group discussed a GoFundMe and a social media campaign to get this forgotten giant a plaque or statue in the town where he was pastor. 

We departed for Zurich, crossed over to Switzerland (goodbye Euros!), and will attend the Grossmunster, where Zwingli preached. We will walk in the steps of another branch of the Reformation.