Feed my sheep: notes for holcaust remembrance sunday...

NOTE:  My worship notes for Sunday, April 14, 2013 our observance of Holocaust Remembrance Day.

Introduction

This is a complicated day for Christians – the marking of Holocaust Remembrance Day – for it asks us to never forget some things we have never fully remembered:  Like the role our faith has played in the creation and growth of anti-Semitism – or the belief that Christianity has superseded Judaism as a legitimate and living religion – or that such an atrocity could never take place on American soil.  It is disturbing to remember such things not only because they are so ugly and offensive, but also because we have never fully acknowledged them even as we seek to forget.

Like many Americans said during the Civil Rights movement, “I didn’t start slavery and I didn’t have anything to do with race hatred.  So let’s just quit all this quota and reparation business and let me get on with my life.”  You see, we are a utilitarian people – it is our blessing and our curse – and we like to get our problems solved and then move on to the next challenge.  We don’t have much patience for looking backwards to reflect on our history; unless, of course, it involves nostalgia.  We love nostalgia – singing the old songs, remembering the good times, seeing the old photographs – and it has become big business in America. 

·      Just think of how Public Broadcasting manipulates our heartstrings two or three times a year for big bucks during pledge drives:  how many times must we endure yet one more showing of the “Best of Doo Wop” or Peter Noone of Herman’s Hermits taking us on a sentimental journey through the golden years of 1960s pop songs? 

·       Nostalgia is fun, but it is also a distraction – an exercise in social amnesia – that both encourages and nourishes a selective memory without any complications.

And as Reinhold Niebuhr has documented time and again, American history is filled with complications – and paradox – to say nothing of excruciating tragedies alongside profound blessings.  In his masterwork from 1952, The Irony of American History, he writes that every day we dream “of bringing the whole of human history under the control of our will.”  We ache to live into the American Dream and pursue life, liberty and happiness for all.  We yearn to make real peace and justice in our time.  And, at the very same time, we forget that the “recalcitrant forces in our historical drama have a power and persistence beyond our reckoning.”

That’s a lofty way of saying that our optimism, nostalgia and penchant for solving problems keep us from recognizing the power of sin in the human experience:  we want to believe that we can always fix things yet this conviction often blinds us to the efficacy of evil in ourselves, in our institutions, in our world.  No wonder Niebuhr went on to give us the Serenity Prayer.  Personally and politically it says in short hand what he took a life time to define:  God, give us grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed, the courage to change the things which should be changed, and the wisdom to distinguish the one from the other.

Holocaust Remembrance Day asks us to consider the power of sin within us as individuals – for this is one way to humbly recognize the consequences of evil in our public realm – and to wrestle with our role in the devastating sacrilege that took place then and now.  Because even 70 years after the Warsaw Uprising, it is still a thorny proposition to look inside our faith and see how we have contributed to his horror.

Insights

To my mind, there are three broad areas for our consideration as 21^st century Christians who seek to own our historic role in the Holocaust and repent in ways that bring glory to God.  They are:  first, how our Scriptures and tradition have contributed to anti-Semitism; second, how we have lied about the exclusively German aspects of the Shoah; and third how we continue to misrepresent Judaism as an essentially dead religion rather than a living and life-giving faith even in our own age.

Last week, for example, after worship I was asked, “Why did the Scripture reading say

that the disciples of Christ were hiding behind locked doors for fear of the Jews?”  That’s what the text in the “Doubting Thomas” story says, right?  So, I offered a mini-reply as is only possible in the receiving line after worship saying:  “The gospel of John was written during a time when there was a battle going on between the Jewish followers of Jesus and more traditional Jews.  It was an intra-Jewish conflict between those who gathered in what became the church and those who emphasized the synagogue.  So, in its time it was a family argument between Jews not a battle between Christians and Jews.”

What I wasn’t able to articulate in that one minute clarification, however, was that when this intra-Jewish argument was removed from its context, when it was no longer Jew arguing with Jew, it took on an ugly and destructive quality that still lives today.  Because, you see, unless you understand that John’s gospel is partially a polemic between two Jewish schools of thought, what else are you to make of such verses as John 8: 37-77?

 "I know that you are descendants of Abraham; yet you seek to kill me, because my word finds no place in you. I speak of what I have seen with my Father, and you do what you have heard from your father. They answered him, "Abraham is our father." Jesus said to them, "If you were Abraham's children, you would do what Abraham did. ... You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father's desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and has nothing to do with the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks according to his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies. But, because I tell the truth, you do not believe me. Which of you convicts me of sin? If I tell the truth, why do you not believe me? He who is of God hears the words of God; the reason why you do not hear them is you are not of God." 

Are you still with me?  Do you understand the foundation of this first concern?  One scholar put it like this:  It is clear beyond doubt that once the Fourth Gospel is removed from its historical context of a first century intra-Jewish factional dispute - and the constraints of that context, it was all too easily read as an anti-Jewish polemic and became a tool of anti-Semitism. But it is highly questionable whether the Fourth Evangelist himself can fairly be indicted for either anti-Judaism or anti-Semitism.   Let me ask you this:

·      Have you ever been in a fight with your family?  We often say the worst things to those we are related to, yes?  When I think back to some of the things I said about my mom and dad – or my sisters – or what they once said and thought about me… Lord, have mercy. 

·      The same thing was taking place in the gospel of John:  insults and arguments that were meant for the family, however, took on a new life outside of this context – and ugly and mean-spirited words became evil and destructive.

There are other concerns beyond the a-historical words of St. John, but you get my point:  in time, when we were no longer part of the Jewish family, our faith tradition came to blame the Jews for the death of Jesus.  This is known as blood libel:  Christ’s blood was on their hands – because they are of the devil – and must be despised for eternity.  That message is at the heart of Oberammergau, the Passion Play that has been performed since the plague of 1633.  It has infected the liturgy and music of both Maundy Thursday and Good Friday since at least 861 when the Improperia became part of the standard order of worship.  And it has driven political and social decisions about Jews for over 2,000 years.

·       Did you know, for example, that when Jews first settled in Pittsfield they couldn’t buy land in our town?  It was against the law – a law that our Congregational forbearers instituted – and if a Jew couldn’t buy land in Pittsfield, then there was no place to bury their dead.  And for a faithful Jew the dead must be buried within three days. 

·       Temple Anshe Amunim was founded four years after the Civil War ended – 1869 – and one of the first things they did was build a cemetery in 1871.  Until that time, the faithful dead had to be transported to Springfield.

The first challenge is to embrace, own and wrestle with how our own Scriptures and traditions teach and reinforce anti-Semitism.  Last year, for example, on Good Friday we rewrote the ancient prayers to consciously excise the slander and defamation of our Jewish kin.  There is a lifetime of work to be done in this realm – and so we shall continue.

The second challenge Holocaust Remembrance Day asks us to explore as Christians is how after WWII many of us demonized German culture as the source of all Nazi evil.  Forgetting our own legacy of genocide against the native peoples of this land – to say nothing of our own internment camps or American apartheid that took the form of slavery, Jim Crow and lynching - we came to believe that because the Jewish holocaust didn’t happen here, it HAD to happen there.  That is, we froze history in time – blamed the Germans – and exonerated ourselves. 

But a  Zygmunt Bauman, a Polish Jew and sociologist, writes In Modernity and the Holocaust, we should be more circumspect because:

…the exercise in focusing on the Germaness of the crime as on that aspect in which the explanation of the crime must lie is simultaneously an exercise in exonerating everyone else, and particularly everything else. The implication that the perpetrators of the Holocaust were a wound or a malady of our civilization – rather than its horrifying, yet legitimate product results not only in the moral comfort of self-exculpation, but also in the dire threat of moral and political disarmament. It all happened 'out there' – in another time, another country. The more 'they' are to blame, the more the rest of 'us' are safe, and the less we have to do to defend this safety. Once the allocation of guilt is implied to be equivalent to the location of causes, the innocence and sanity of the way of life of which we are so proud need not be cast in doubt.

That is to say, we let ourselves and our sin off the hook and refuse to take our part when we sing, “Were you there when they crucified my Lord?”  It is dishonest, beloved, to believe that it was someone else who led Jesus to the Cross.  It is a lie to conclude that it was just the Nazi Germans who caused the Holocaust.  How does St. Paul put it?  “All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” 

All of us – Jews and Christians – Americans and Germans – Romans, Nazis, Republicans and Democrats:  part of looking at the Holocaust again and again is not to wallow in the tragedy but to simply remember that we were ALL have sinned and fallen short of the grace. We were all there when they crucified our Lord.  Sadly there is a universality to evil and none of us are exempt.  One of the safeguards we have been given is remembering the consequences of sin and evil – looking at them honestly and with deep humility – and owning them.  This is the second challenge of this commemoration of Holocaust Remembrance Day.

And the third involves a change in how our Christian tradition relates to both the Old Testament and the totality Judaism.  In my time, I was taught that it was essential to learn about the Old Testament because this is where I would discover the roots of Christ Jesus.  As Harvey Cox wrote in his brilliant exploration of the Jewish holidays, Common Prayers, many of us learned to know something about Judaism because “our religion is rooted in the faith of ancient Israel.”  And while that is true:

What it overlooks is that there have been nearly two thousand years of Jewish history since Christianity came to birth.  Little by little, the “roots” metaphor has come to consign the way of Judaism to the past.  It makes Judaism invisible like the roots of a tree are hidden underground while the leaves blossom and the fruit ripen.  What this does is inadvertently contribute to the mistaken idea that Christianity has somehow superseded Judaism.

Let us be clear:  our tradition – Protestant, Roman Catholic and Orthodox – does NOT teach that Judaism is of the past and overcome by Christianity.  The covenant God made with the people of Israel is from everlasting to everlasting.  It is not over and done with now that Christ has been raised from the dead.  It does not disqualify the Jewish people from participating in God’s grace.  And it does not affirm the “fallacious platitude that the Jewish God is one of legalism and vengeance while the Christian God is one of grace and love.” (Cox)  The way of Israel is a living faith – unique and beautiful – filled with grace and truth.  And we spring from this source, we do not supplant it. 

·       What does the Lord require?  To do justice, to love kindness and to walk humbly with your God? (Micah 6:8) 

·       Because the Lord is my shepherd, whom shall I fear?  I fear NO evil, for even when I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, thy rod and thy staff they comfort me. (Psalm 23)

·      What is the promise of the Lord?  The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. It will not be like the covenant that I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt. But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people… for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more. (Jeremiah 31: 31-33)

Conclusion

In a word, Holocaust Remembrance Day creates for us as Christians what Jesus did for Peter in today’s gospel story.  Peter has betrayed the Lord and experienced the consequences of his sin and guilt.  In fact, he is so trapped and wounded by his guilt that he has fled the ministry and returned to his old life.

And what does Christ do to redeem all of this?  Three things – very intentionally and with loving care – three things happen:

·        First, Jesus returns to Peter and nourishes him:  they eat a fish breakfast on the beach and in the breaking of bread and fish, Peter’s eyes are opened. 

·       Second, Jesus asks Peter to remember – and even relive – his betrayal:  Peter, do you love me?  Three times Jesus asks his friend, three times to parallel Peter’s betrayal, do you love me?  Peter would not have failed to make this connect and we must not do any less.  Jesus asks Peter to remember – to confess – to own his sin.

·      And third, Peter is forgiven and charged with a new ministry:  bringing forgiveness and hope to others who have also wounded their loved ones in sin.  When you were young you went were you wanted to go… but now you must be led into those places you do not want to go… and bring them the gospel.

One of the martyrs of Nazi Germany, Pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer, once preached to his German church that they could not seek the comfort and beauty of their Gregorian chants unless they were also willing to stand in solidarity with the cries of the Jewish neighbors.  I don’t think that challenge has changed. 

Rather, I suspect it has been enlarged.  Because now, in addition to our solidarity with our Jewish kinfolk, we are asked to hear the cries of all the oppressed:  Peter, do you love me?  Then feed my sheep…