Last Thursday at our workshop for church office administrators, Martin Luther showed up. It wasn’t the man himself, for he’s been dead for centuries—1546, to be precise. A green likeness of the man, who made great changes to the way people think about faith, seemed to appear from out of nowhere (though he was carried in by some attendees), stood upon a chair in chapel and presided over the rest of our short worship and communion. We giggled at this green image, just as Bishop Michael started the service. Martin had travelled a great distance to be with us. Even the bishop seemed a little surprised.

Martin Luther in our meeting room

Then from the group of church admin people, a man named Christian stood up and announced that Martin Luther had come along with them. The man who announced Martin’s presence and his reason for being there is actually the pastor of that congregation.

Christian announced that a particular number of these small statues had been made in various colours and that the red and blue ones had been sold out, and so they had gotten green. Their current practice is to take Martin to as many functions as possible, thus he appeared that day for worship and the early part of our workshop day, before being whisked off to  be interviewed for live television with another staff member of the synod. And before he left us for other illustrious company, I had a photo shoot with the green Martin. Probably the one and only ever photo shoot with Martin Luther.