Text: Acts 16:11-15, 40
Speaker: Joel Miller
It’s the year 1528, almost 500 years ago. A woman in her early 40s is visiting a group of prisoners in her home area –Tyrol in Austria. A movement that would soon be called Anabaptism has sprung up, spreading across the region. In defiance of official church and legal orders, adult believers are getting re-baptized and forming small study and worship groups. At a time when church and state are intertwined, infant baptism functions like a birth certificate. It registers a person as part of the domain, a future taxpayer and eligible soldier – an official member of Christendom.
That unifying order of Christendom had been massively disrupted by the Black Plague in the 14th century. It wiped out a third to a half of the population of Europe. The peasants who survived suddenly found themselves on the favorable side of low supply and high demand for their labor. The invention of the printing press in the 15th century enabled ideas to spread faster and farther than ever. New ideas, like Martin Luther’s critique of the Pope which led to the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century. And very old ideas, like those in the New Testament – a voluntary church who followed the teachings of Jesus. And even older ideas from the scriptures like fair wages for laborers, and the conviction that the earth belongs to God, and not the king or the lords.
Peasant revolts, an explosion of print, a refusal to swear loyalty oaths to territorial rulers…the early Anabaptists were intertwined with all these forces. It was not a welcome development in Catholic or Protestant territories.
Those prisoners in 1528 Tyrol, Austria, 106 in total, are all Anabaptists. The visitor is taking a big risk. She, herself, is under suspicion of being an Anabaptist, and has in fact been sheltering them. For the last year she has been offering her castle – Yes, an early Anabaptist woman with her own castle – offering her castle as a meeting place for Bible study and prayer, and a sanctuary for those seeking protection. Castle church. A year from now, her name, Helena von Freyberg, will be mentioned by an Anabaptist on trial, and a warrant will be issued for her arrest.
On the first Sunday in November I like to do this – highlight the story of an Anabaptist forbearer. It coincides with the traditional observance of All Saints and All Souls days, November 1st and 2nd. Anabaptists aren’t really into saints, but we are into storytelling and looking for models of the Jesus way.
If you’re new-ish here and are wondering why this strange word Anabaptist keeps coming up when you thought you were in a Mennonite church – also a strange word – long story short – the Anabaptists were a diverse movement ranging from peasant justice seekers to apocalyptic prophets, from quiet spiritualists to violent revolutionaries. Mennonites are named after an early Dutch Anabaptist leader, Menno Simons. Menno pointed his congregations toward following the peaceful ways of Jesus and the sisterhood and brotherhood of the early church. Menno-nites have been pointing there ever since, with varying degrees of actually living it out.
Helena von Freyberg lived at the same time as Menno. They were like-minded, but they lived in different regions and, as far as we know, never met. For her story I am drawing from this heavily researched book Profiles of Anabaptist Women: Sixteenth Century Reforming Pioneers.
Helena was Austrian. She was one of the rare early Anabaptists from the nobility. Her father’s father had migrated to the Tyrol region as the rulers of Bavaria expanded their territory. He built a castle there under their protection. Helena’s father had been a crown administrator and chief justice. He owned mining and grazing rights in the region. Helena married a nobleman and had four sons who all became knights. When Helena’s widowed stepmother sold her rights to the family castle to pay off a debt, Helena and her husband bought her out, and it was Helena who moved in.
Five years after that move into the castle, March 7, 1528, her name appears for the first time in court records. She and her whole household, except her husband, were reported to have been baptized as Anabaptists. If true, local officials had the right to confiscate her property and possessions, including that castle. It was true, although it would take almost two years for the officials to gather enough proof. What was also true was that Helena’s castle had become a hub of Anabaptist activity. There she welcomed traveling preachers and those gathered to hear them. She hosted house meetings, “castle church.” She gave shelter and financial support to those trying to avoid the fate of the 66 Anabaptists in the region who had already been executed. And, when a large group of Anabaptists were arrested, she visited them in prison, despite knowing that the authorities knew what they knew about her.
If one were looking for a biblical character who most resembls Helena, my vote would be for Lydia. We meet her in the middle of the book of Acts. The Apostle Paul and Silas are on a missionary tour and they land in the port city of Philippi, a Roman colony. That’s where they meet up with Lydia. She’s a business owner dealing in a luxury product, purple cloth. When she hears Paul and Silas speak about Jesus, she decides to be baptized into the movement along with her whole household. Then, she invites Paul and Silas to come stay at her home, which they do. But during their time in Phillipi, Paul and Silas are accused of disturbing the peace. They get thrown in prison. As they’re being let out, they are commanded to leave the city. But before leaving, they go back to Lydia and her house, which has already become a little church for the Jesus-followers in Philippi. As a bonus connection to Helena, Lydia is the first recorded Christian convert on European soil.
A wealthy woman – in Europe. A baptized convert to a Jesus-inspired movement. Owner of a home that becomes a gathering place for a house church. Solidarity with prisoners. Lydia and Helena. We don’t know any more about Lydia beyond this one story in Acts 16. We do know more about Helena.
When an Anabaptist on trial mentions the name Helena von Freyberg as an Anabaptist leader in Tyrol, it’s the final proof the authorities need for her arrest.
Helena fled. When the authorities pursued her, she left the region entirely to escape their jurisdiction. Helena was like Lydia, and the exiled Paul and Silas.
For the remaining 15 years of her life, Helena lived in two cities in South Germany. She initially settled in Constance where she purchased a home in which she hosted a house church and sheltered Anabaptists. She got away with this for about two years until the city council voted to confiscate her property and expel her from the city.
From there she moved to Augsburg where she purchased a home in which she hosted a house church and sheltered Anabaptists.
There was a brief stint after she settled in Augsburg where she returned to her home in Tyrol. Influential friends had petitioned for this. The deal was that Helena would publicly reject her Anabaptist faith. This would enable her to live out her days with her family. The authorities wanted as big an audience as possible. They knew a figure of her stature would have a big influence on the commoners.
The fact that Helena did go back seems to indicate she was considering this option. But she petitioned to recant in private. This is absolutely not what the officials wanted, but somehow Helena convinced them. In front of a government official, behind closed doors, Helena proclaimed the error of her Anabaptist ways, promising not to repeat them.
She then left Tyrol, and never returned. She went back to her house in Augsburg and resumed the error of her ways. Unlike many exiled Anabaptists, she kept in touch with her family. Her husband and sons sent regular financial support. When she was kicked out of Augsburg, her sons wrote a letter to the city council and convinced them to let her back. She was imprisoned there for multiple short stints, but as far as historians know, lived out her days in Augsburg.
Many of the early Anabaptists of the 16th century were people of little social standing who ended up dying a gruesome martyr’s death. I chose Helena von Freyberg for today because here is someone with some power – wealth and connections – someone who lived. And in living, she was able to offer what she had – her homes, her castle, her faith – to those who were seeking shelter and Christian community. She navigated a road with a ditch on each side – detached privilege on one side, spiritual detachment from earthly life on the other side. She stayed on the road out of those ditches. She took risks, but she also had plans, and friends in high places. She was courageous in many ways, but she made compromises. She built loving community everywhere she went, but it involved exile from her home community, her adult children, her grandfather’s castle.
For those of us 21st century Anabaptists with some power – wealth and connections, a home – Helena’s life, like Lydia in Acts, poses good and challenging questions. If the earth and everything in it is the Lord’s, how might what we temporarily possess be used in the service of building beloved community? If laborers deserve fair wages, if Jesus came to set the prisoners free, if church is a voluntary association of those committed to the courageously peaceful way of Jesus, what is asked of us?
We know from Helena herself that the answer is not always clear. The only words of hers left to history are a letter of confession she wrote toward the end of her life to her fellow believer in Augsburg. The ability to read and write at all would have set her apart from the majority of the population. As a powerful leader within the church, a letter of confession marked her willingness to be humbled and instructed by this community that believed their equal status before God superseded any inherited social status.
The letter names no specific sinful acts she had committed. Instead, she confesses that she is a person of “great impatience;” that she has offered “many unfruitful, irresponsible words and behavior(s).” She cites the Sermon on the Mount that she had often tried to remove the small speck in someone else’s eye and ignored the beam in her own. She reveals her inner turmoil about her relationship civil authority, seeming to wrestle with her decision to protect her own freedom by telling a lie. She likens herself to the lost son in the parable of the prodigal son. Just as that son received forgiveness from his father, she asks forgiveness from God and reconciliation with the church.
In other words, even though we are highlighting her story on All Saints Day, Helena was not a saint in her own eyes. She seemed to be keenly aware of her own shortcomings. Perhaps a contemporary phrase we might use for one part of her turmoil would be survivor’s guilt – all those martyrs she had known. And perhaps she knew better than anyone that she fell far short of the kind of person she aspired to be as a follower of Jesus.
For this, she asked for grace.
And we ask for grace. From one another, and from God. We who have more than our share of God’s abundant resources. We who can appeal to our citizenship or White skin for protections others don’t have. We who are impatient and skilled at finding fault in others but not ourselves.
We join our spiritual ancestor and sister Helena von Freyberg in confessing our continual need for grace. We offer grace to one another. We offer grace to ourselves. We live and breathe and have our being within the grace of God. And like Helena, like Lydia, we open our hearts, and we open our homes to the work of God.