As many of you know, just after Easter I made a pilgrimage to the village of Taizé in the southeastern region of France. Joining me that week were hundreds of young people and older adults—a number that swells into the thousands once summer arrives.

They came from more than thirty different countries and spoke at least a dozen different languages. Fortunately for me, English was the language most of them knew in common.

Why did they come? Indeed, why did I go? To spend the week with the community of Taizé Brothers, singing, praying, and studying the Bible together in small groups.

While there, we lived simply. Most of the young people stayed in tents, while adults slept in barracks. I shared a room with an Englishman, a Frenchmen, two South Africans, and a Lebanese Armenian who now lives in Sweden.

We also ate simply. My last dinner there consisted of bread, water, an orange, mashed potatoes and one-and-a-half links of breakfast sausage. There was also a small cookie for dessert. In order to service so many people, we all took jobs. Mine was to do the dishes after dinner. Others bused tables, manned the food line or cleaned the latrine.

Perhaps by now you might be thinking, aside from its being nestled in the beautiful, Burgundy countryside, just what is the attraction of this place? The answer is simply that there is no other place in the world like Taizé. To understand why, you need to know something of its story.

In 1940, Taizé was a small, nearly abandoned village. One morning, a young Swiss seminarian named Roger Schutz rode his bicycle up to a run-down farmhouse on the edge of town. He had peddled all the way over from Geneva , some hundred miles away, a man on a mission from God. For in his prayers, he had heard God calling him to shelter refugees from the recent invasion, just as his grandmother had done during the First World War.

When he arrived at Taizé, only an old woman and her daughter were left in the village. The old woman led him around the small farm, which was owned by a family who had long since fled. Knowing that he was looking at other properties, the woman begged him to buy the old farm so that they would not be so alone. Roger was so moved by their plight that he soon took out a mortgage and moved in.

For the next two years, the farmhouse on the edge of Taizé became a safe-house for scores of refugees, particularly Jews fleeing for their lives. The Gestapo finally got wise to the operation in 1942 and shut it down, with Roger barely escaping back to Switzerland.

When the Allies liberated that part of France two years later, Roger returned and this time, somewhat controversially, ministered to German prisoners in a nearby POW camp. In this, he was joined by some of his fellow students. For, although he was soon ordained a Pastor in the Swiss Reformed Church, Roger desired nothing more than to be a brother among his fellow workers in Christ. God had put it on his heart to form a community at Taizé, where the brothers could live simply, pray three times a day, reflect upon Scripture, and minister as God saw fit to call them.

Soon, worshipers from surrounding villages began to join them in their Sunday services. The brothers welcomed them all. Whether Protestant or Catholic, the worshipers were drawn to the simplicity of the brothers’ worship, the purity of their hearts, and their desire for reconciliation within a war-torn Europe.

Over time, the brothers undertook missions to poverty-stricken areas both far and near. They ministered among local coal miners, and journeyed to the slums of Calcutta to work with Mother Teresa before she was well-known. In our own country, they worked in the depressed “Hell’s Kitchen” section of Manhattan. Elsewhere, they sought to bring reconciliation to strife-ridden countries such as Lebanon , Ireland , and South Africa.

Because of his desire for reconciliation within the church, Brother Roger was soon seen as a leader within the ecumenical movement. He was invited as a Protestant observer at the Second Vatican Council, and later, a guest of the Eastern Orthodox Patriarch, and the Archbishop of Canterbury.

As the brothers’ good works became known internationally, young people from around the world began to make pilgrimages to the Taizé community. By the 1960s, their numbers had grown into the thousands. Brother Roger and the others had neither expected this, nor even initially knew how to respond to their interest.

But they did know one thing: they must welcome them and offer them Christian hospitality. And so they erected tents in which the young people could sleep and meet with the brothers for Bible study. They found a means to feed them simple meals. And they constructed a plain but beautiful new church building to accommodate the growing crowds at worship. They named it the Church of Reconciliation.

Within the services themselves, the Liturgy was simplified and translated into many different languages so that all could participate and understand. The brothers composed melodic chants around single Bible verses, allowing music to unite the many diverse voices, and Scripture to sink deeply into the singers’ souls.

Adults often accompanied the Young People on their journeys, and they were welcomed too. In 1992, Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey led a group of a thousand young Anglicans from the British Isles. A few years earlier, Pope John Paul II accompanied six thousand young pilgrims from around the world. Still earlier, Mother Teresa brought a smaller group from India. And the list could go on.

That is what makes Taizé so special. To my knowledge, it is the only place on earth that daily draws together so many different parts of the Body of Christ. Protestant and Catholic, Evangelical and Traditional, Eastern and Western, North and South, people of all languages and races—they are all present, praying together, singing together, working together, studying scripture together.

That is what I experienced during my stay, and I can only describe it as a foretaste of heaven. I give thanks that there is a place like this on earth, that I was able to be a part of it for a short time, and that the ministry of the Taizé brothers continues now in the year following Brother Roger’s death.

When Pope John Paul II visited Taizé twenty years ago, he was invited to address the assembled masses. “One passes through Taizé,” he said to the crowd, “as one passes close to a spring of water. The traveler stops, quenches his thirst, and continues on his way. The brothers of the community, you know, do not want to keep you. They want, in prayer and silence, to enable you to drink the living water promised by Christ, to know his joy, to discern his presence, to respond to his call, then to set out again to witness to his love and to serve your brothers and sisters in your parishes, your schools, your universities, and in all your places of work.”

And so we see at Taizé, and in all our places of worship around the globe, the fruits of that Great Commission given to the Apostles two thousand years ago: to proclaim the Gospel of Christ to people of all nations. As each new generation has risen to respond to that charge, the circle has widened.

It is now our turn to carry forth that message, strengthened by God’s quickening grace through our common worship, our breaking of bread, and our fellowship in the Body of Christ.

May we follow in the footsteps of those first disciples, and like Brother Roger and the brothers at Taizé, be bold in carrying the promise of the Risen Christ to the world.

For more information about the many ministries of Taizé,
visit their website at www.taize.fr
or speak to the Rector or Minister of Music