All Are Welcome
All are welcome. That was the door no one thought to guard.
Sabine Krüger is past fifty-five, divorced, and — for the first time in her life — wanted. At a warm parish hall in Neukölln, a congregation that has made welcome its faith has given her a hook for her coat and a place at the long table. She grew up in a country that watched her and never once met her eye. She knows what a closed door costs.
Then a calm new order settles over a world speaking her church's own language — dignity, welcome, no one left outside — and the congregation weeps to hear its own prayers answered from the sky. Sabine weeps with them. That Sunday, when the church rises to its feet, one man at the back stays seated.
In a church with a liturgy for everything but no, how do you tell the open door of love from the one the whole world is being invited through?
