From Herod to the Holocaust:
Reflection
Lanny Peters
&
January 12, 2003
I
am quite often surprised and amazed at how a worship service comes into being.
I take it as one sign of the Holy Spirit at work, which often blows where it
chooses; we do not know where it comes from or where it might take us, to
borrow a metaphor from Jesus. This service began with a conversation with Karen
Shipp about the Coventry Carol that the choir just sang. As Karen and I talked,
we agreed that this anthem did not fit well in the “Lessons and Carols”
service. It would be out of sequence on that Sunday before Christmas, when we
still awaited the birth of the Christ Child.
Last Sunday, we awaited the arrival of the Magi, come to worship the
newborn child. The scripture last week ended with the wise men choosing to
disobey Herod and not go back to his palace to tell him what they had
discovered. They left for their own country by another road. But the story was
not finished. We wish it were, that we could break up Christmas with joyous
music and dancing and all would be right with the world.
We would like to forget about what happened next. For that first Christmas that Matthew describes was broken up by the cries of mothers and babies as innocent infants were slaughtered. So Karen and I scheduled the Coventry Carol for the Sunday after Epiphany and trusted the Spirit to blow where it would.
Friday I called Buddy Gill in Asheville having remembered some of the words he had spoken about this song several years ago. Noting that Jesus had begun his life as a refugee, we focused that day on ministry to refugees. Buddy immediately e-mailed me his reflection from that day, which he had called, “The Lullaby That Couldn't Be Sung.”
In part, he said, “The Coventry Carol is one of
the most familiar and beautiful of the Christmas songs. But I have always been bothered by the
enormous tension in the song. For one
thing, it sets the unthinkably cruel violence of that day against the simple,
gentle warmth of a mother's lullaby.
The song comes from the script of a medieval
Christmas play taken from town to town each year by an organization of
tradesmen. It was a lively dramatic presentation meant to stir the
emotions. During the confrontation
between the mothers and the soldiers Herod has sent to kill their children, the
script features a wild scene of a mother fighting the soldiers with a pot ladle
-- "I shall lay on him as though I were mad; With this same womanly
gear!" Some of the soldiers have to be threatened with treason if they
don't follow orders to kill the babies.
This song comes at a point in the play where
three women, carrying their children, rush on stage together. You know the
soldiers are just offstage. They huddle
together to try to figure out what to do next. They all sing the lullaby
("Lullay, lula") before, verse by verse, each one speaks.
"Lullay, lula" is an ordinary lullaby
that the mothers desperately need to croon to calm their children in this
frightening moment. But the lullaby
will give them away and lead the soldiers straight to their babies; they dare
not sing it. "Woe is me"
expresses the anguish of a mother resisting the impulse to soothe her
frightened child with a lullaby. This sweet carol is really about the lullaby
the desperate mothers of Bethlehem did not dare to sing.”
So the idea of the service began with what we
might do with this beautiful and horrible song. With the beginning of Advent, I
put the song out of mind. But then a group of us went to hear the recently
appointed Director of the National Holocaust Museum and afterwards spent some
time in the Atlanta Jewish Heritage Museum. Among the photos there, one that
particularly disturbed me was a photo of a group of Jewish children taken just
before the Nazis murdered them.
When the photographer lined them up for the
photo, most of them looked disoriented and full of fear. Yet a number of them
forced a smile, as children are want to do when their picture is taken. It is a
picture of innocence in the face of incredible evil.
This week I was back at the museum, talking with
Carla Singer, a fellow pilgrim on the Interfaith Pilgrimage to Turkey who spoke
here in this pulpit in November. One of the things we talked about was how to
talk to our children about all this. As a long-time preschool teacher, she
pointed out that it is best not to try to deal with this with preschoolers, as
they are developmentally not ready. But it would be good if parents talk to
their children who are in the service today to see what questions or concerns
they might have. The museum has special programs for children that I want us to
take advantage of as a way to follow up.
Carla and I talked about other things as well:
the importance of memory and the different ways our traditions deal with
forgiveness. After that, I found myself thinking about something Graham and
Mimi Walker had told me about: a panel discussion on the Donahue Show several
months ago. I called Mimi and she
immediately e-mailed me the transcript. (I love planning worship with groups of
lay people; now the Internet is allowing me to write sermons with groups!)
The program began with Donahue asking Dr. Al Mohler, Jr., President of Southern Baptist Seminary in Louisville, what Southern Baptists, some 16 million strong, thought about whether Jews can go to heaven.
His reply was this: “Southern Baptists, with other Christians, believe that all persons can go to heaven who come to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. And there is no discrimination on the basis of ethnic or racial or national issues, related to who will go to heaven, according to the Scriptures. It’s those who are in Christ. The defining issue is faith in Christ.”
DONAHUE: “So a good Jew is not going to heaven.”
MOHLER: “Well, all persons are sinners in need of a savior. Jesus Christ is the sole mediator. And the gospel, we are told by the Apostle Paul, comes first to the Jews and then to the gentiles. And salvation is found in his name, and in his name alone, through faith in Christ.”
DONAHUE: “So if a Nazi killed a Jew, a good Jew, a practicing Jew, the Jew goes to hell, but the Nazi still has a chance to get to heaven. That would be the consequence of your position.”
MOHLER: “Well, the gospel is not just for the worst of us. The gospel is for all of us. And the scripture tells us the hard truth, that all have sinned. And that Nazi guard is going to be punished for his sin, and it will be judged as sin. His only hope would be the grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord. And the profound truth of the gospel is that the salvation that can come to any person who comes to faith in Christ can come to that Jew who was killed and to that guard who does the killing. That’s the radical nature of the gospel.”
Mohler’s answer to Donahue’s question was yes, if a Nazi killed a Jew, a good Jew, a practicing Jew, the Jew goes to hell, but the Nazi still has a chance to get to heaven.
Among the other panelists was Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, author of “Judaism for Everyone,” who was the first to respond. “You know, Reverend Mohler, [yours] is such a vast organization. You have so many wonderful members. [But your position] just breeds anti-Semitism.
I am sorry. You cannot possibly look a person in the eye and say, if you don’t come to Jesus, if you don’t change your faith, you’re not going to heaven. [Your stance] reeks of prejudice, and also stirs the soul to evil behavior, in my opinion.”
MOHLER: “Well, if the church had just come up with this in the 20th century as a novel idea, perhaps it should be subjected to such a critique. But this is the gospel that has been received from the Lord Jesus Christ himself, who said he came, first of all, for the people and children of Israel, and then also for the gentiles. And he himself declared that he is the way, the truth and the light, and no man comes to the Father but through him. He spoke as a man born of the Jewish race, but who was also the Son of God.”
As this discussion went on, Rabbi Boteach was so disturbed at one point that he very emotionally said, “Do you know that Jews have been turned into lamp shades and bars of soap and ashes? We’ve been stuffed into ghettos. We’ve been burned at the stake because of your repulsive, nauseating views. When are you going to finally allow your humanity to shine forth through your Christianity?”
The
troubling thing about all this is that Mohler does represent the historical
stance of the church for twenty centuries and the majority of Christians today.
It was only in August of last year that the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops
issued a statement that Jews did not have to be saved to get into heaven.
But
this does not go nearly far enough. I believe that we must differentiate
ourselves absolutely and completely from any form of Christianity that
sees itself as the only way, the only truth, and the only
light. To do so is a challenge because it requires that we struggle with what
makes our Christian faith unique and with how to hold on to it without being
exclusive or arrogant. It means wrestling with those scriptures in our tradition
that support seeing Jews or other non-Christians as inferior beings. As we saw
in the Holocaust, once a people is seen as inferior, those who see them as
inferior are on the road to seeing them as dispensable.
This
all seems so complex to me that there are times when it seems simpler to give
it up and become a Unitarian Universalist. But what continues to give me hope
is Jesus, the Jew upon whom my faith was built and his vision of the kingdom of
God. Distorted as it has been over the centuries, his message of reconciliation
and love still shines through as the way of relating to all people.
Another
thing that gives me hope is having a community like Oakhurst. I am far from
alone in trying to find the way. That is why I wanted to share this time with a
person who has been involved in living these questions much longer than I have.
For at least sixteen years, Rick Voyles has been involved in interfaith work,
primarily as a Holocaust educator. His contributions have been recognized in
many ways. On January 30, Rick will be part of an evening of dialogue with Jews
and Germans on the 70th anniversary of Adolf Hitler’s becoming
Chancellor of Germany. This semester, Rick has been invited by the renowned
Jewish Holocaust scholar, Deborah Lipstadt, to teach a course at Emory called:
“Holocaust: Resistance and Response.”
Remember: Zohar
Rick Voyles
I use to know the
Hebrew word for Remember, but I forgot.
I get asked a lot,
“How did you get into Holocaust Studies?”
I find the question difficult to answer for myself. Maybe I identify with the victims (in some
kind of family trauma way). Maybe, I
identify with the perpetrators. Maybe it’s
the fear of the bystander within me. Or, maybe, it’s the hope of the rescuer
that draws me into this field. It is difficult
for me to answer.
The Holocaust is not
about Jews. Jews were one of the major
victims of Nazi policy and practice.
The Holocaust is about us. It is
about the prodigy child of Western Culture, with a population 93% Christian
being the setting for systematic murder.
Western culture needs to pause and consider. Christianity needs to pause and consider. To forget comes with too high a price.
In the summer of
2001, I was fortunate enough to be on a Holocaust study trip in Poland. On this trip a leading scholar in
Jewish/Christian dialogue spoke on what he saw as the next issue Jews and
Christian must explore together to continue the dialogue. The issue was “Remembering.”
Jews and Christians
understand Remembering in very different ways.
For Christians,
there is often a “Forgive and Forget” mentality, so that the evidence for
forgiveness is forgetting. Or you hear:
“Get over it,” “let it go,” “forget it and move on.” Remembering is an anchor that can hold you back and eat you up
inside.
In Judaism,
remembering is part of the corporate, community identity. You are never to forget. You can forgive, but you can never
forget. Even now these words ring
foreign to my ears. It is with
difficulty that I conceptually grasp the idea.
I have little idea how to do it.
I have a hard enough time practicing to forget so that my forgiving can
be credible. To make an attempt at
forgiving and remembering feels truly cross-cultural to me.
So the dialogue of
difference has been selected around the topic of remembering. For Jewish practice remembering is
life. For Christian practice forgetting
is life. For oral cultures remembering
is everything. For written cultures,
remembering is not necessary.
We were an oral
society before we were a written society.
Written is recent. I remember
how I was first introduced to this idea. It was the movie “ROOTS.” If I remember correctly, it starts with the
village historian reciting the names of the community members. Every member in good standing’s name was
spoken.
Often in oral
communities the greatest punishment was to have your name removed from the
community list. Never to be recited
again. Never to be remembered.
In Holocaust Studies
there is one mandate: Never Again. No
matter whom the next victims might be, Never Again. Remembering the Holocaust is essential to fulfilling this
mandate.
In 1995 I joined a
teacher group to Poland and Israel to visit Holocaust related sites and study
Holocaust history and issues. When
discussing Lanny’s invitation to present something this morning, I remembered
an experience I had in Israel, so I dug up my journal of the trip to revisit
the experience. There are two stories I
would like to share with you.
The first story is
from my visit to the Majdanek death camp.
“Shoes! So many
shoes. One barrack was
astonishing. Two barracks was more than
the mind could take. The third
barrack…. There are no words. Just feeling. And even the words for the feelings can’t fully be grasped. They
are feelings beyond words – outside the realm of categories. And it was with some relief I entered the
fourth barrack to see an exhibit of some kind.
I could not even tell you what it was.
I know it wasn’t shoes.”
“We were able to
move about alone at Majdanek. The camp
is original – no reconstruction. The
crematoriums still have ashes and bone in them.”
“It was sad to be
there – I wanted to take so much in. I
kept looking at things through the eyes of a presenter. How could I take this back with me? How can I bring this to others so they could
know, could understand, could remember!?”
“I was torn between
moving quickly through the camp, seeing everything, recording everything,
trying to take it all in, absorb it, make it a part of me to take back with me
and going slow enough to carry the weight of my emotions with me, to not leave
them behind me. But I could not move
quickly through the shoes. I walked
slowly to the far wall of the first barrack taking in the smells, touching some
of the shoes. I wanted this to be a
part of me – I had no idea I would see them two more times.”
“In the third
barrack, I walked a dock through a sea of shoes. As I passed under the first ceiling beam, I realized the depths
below me. My head passed but a few
inches beneath the cross beam. Below me
was a sea of shoes 3 feet deep. The
dock was about 50 yards in length. I
ceremonially walked to its end and back.
Rachel plays in the 3 foot end of the pool.”
“I found myself not
wanting to leave. Afraid I had not
taken enough in to bring the story back.
Afraid it would all slip away and I would be left with nothing except
mumblings when remembering was at stake.”
“I do not want my
words to carry the responsibility of remembering. It would be far better for
the experience of the shoes to speak for themselves. My words, compared to the experience of being here, of seeing,
this place is no contest. There is no
way my words, my memory, can convey what this silent landscape can
communicate.”
“Yet, the people I
talk to, the people I teach, may never have anything more than my words. My words will have to be enough, for the
alternative may be nothing at all. I
know I will speak; I cannot remain silent.
I know my words will be heard. I
know my words will inevitably pale.”
The second story is
my journal entry after my hearing the Chief Rabbi in Israel share his story of
surviving the liquidation of the ghetto he was in. “When he was 5 ½ the Nazis
came for his family. It is the time of
the roundup. All the Jews must report
to the center of the Ghetto for deportation to the camp. None will be left. The ghetto is to be
emptied.”
“Many have chosen
hiding places. His mother and he would
hide. His father would not. His father was the Chief Rabbi of the town
and the town folk insisted that the rabbi hide. Many offered a place for him, his wife, and their 5 ½ year old
son. The rabbi refuses every
offer. He cannot hide. He cannot hide because the Nazis know him.”
“They will see that
he is missing and they will search for him.
In their searching, they may find others who otherwise would have not
been found. In their searching they may
find his son. Instead of hiding, he
will go to the center of town with the Torah scroll under his arm. He will be first; they will see that he is
there.”
“This is redemption:
not suffering in the way Christian theology likes to portray it, not in his
choice to die that others might live.
He does not choose to die.
He chooses not to escape, not to hide – a choice which redeems
others.”
“This redemption is
not brought about by his willingness to suffer. We speak too much of suffering.
The Rabbi’s choice was a choice of life, not a choice of personal
suffering. He is not choosing his fate;
he is choosing the fate of others. He
is choosing their fate to be life. This
appears to be a subtle shift, a play with perspective. I think it is more than play.”
1.5 million Jewish
children were murdered by the Nazis. In
some cases, entire towns, every member murdered and burned. In some of the smaller towns we have no
record of who these people are. Their
names are lost forever.
“The five year boy,
the rabbi’s son, lived and grew up to become the Chief Rabbi of Israel. I am sure his father would be proud. But
after his story, I could not return to the hotel with the others. I broke away. I had to be alone. I
found myself under a full moon in Jerusalem at a construction site near the
hotel. That night, I spoke to the
moon.”
“Where I stood below
the full moon was a large pile of very big stones (construction stones about
the size of my desk). Standing there, I
was reminded of the verse about Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem. The verse states that the stones would speak
of him, if need be, if human voice was not heard.”
“It is one thing to be
murdered, it is another thing to have your name forgotten, snuffed out,
silenced along with your voice.”
“I asked the moon to
remember the names of the children who were murdered, the names no one
remembers. The moon was there, it heard
their names, and it knows who they are.”
“Standing there
between moon and rock, I prayed. I
asked that the moon might recall the children’s names and that the stones might
speak them, so where human voice cannot be heard, the children’s names could be
forever remembered.”
“I sense a need for
Shalom for the dead, as well as for the living. There can be no peace as long as the names of the murdered
children are forgotten. I pray for help from the stones and the moon, for
Shalom.”
REMEMBER: ZOHAR