Sunday, April 3, 2022
/The Fifth Sunday of Lent
Isaiah 43: 16-21; Psalm 126; Philippians 3:4b-14; John 12:1-8
The Rev. James M.L. Grace
In the Name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. AMEN.
Two Sundays ago, I walked outside my home early on a Sunday morning to get into my car and drive to work. On my driveway, I noticed a plastic ziplock bag. Picking the bag up, I found several rocks and a piece of paper. I took out the paper, unfolded it, and was shocked by what I saw – in my hands I was holding a propaganda poster for a white supremacist organization. On the poster I read words of threat and of hate toward people of Jewish faith.
I have three things I want to say about this incident - the first two involve my response, and the final is a word about our Good Friday service next week.
My initial response to discovering this poster on my driveway Sunday before church was problematic – I was filled with self-righteous rage and anger. On my way to conduct services here on Sunday morning, I said more than a few four-letter words directed to whomever littered our street with these posters. Not the best mindset with which to enter worship. It wasn’t pretty.
After some time passed, I remembered that confronting hate with my own hatred would not solve anything. At the same time, I could not find it anywhere in my heart to forgive my enemy – as Jesus instructs that we do. I was at an impasse – I knew that I was supposed to forgive, but I could not find it anywhere in my heart. I prayed, and I believe I received an answer. The answer was this: to see whomever he or she was that distributed these flyers throughout our neighborhood as God might see them. How do I do that? The answer was this – to imagine the person distributing flyers of bile and hate throughout my neighborhood – as an infant, a baby. A baby who had not yet learned hate, a baby of God wonderfully made who had not yet learned such flawed thinking that pollutes so much of our world today. Thinking of the perpetrator as a baby, created in God’s image just like me, sinful like me, has opened a pathway for me to begin praying for this person or group, whomever they are. I am reminded once more that the only way to confront hate purposefully, is through love.
My second initial response to this circumstance was also problematic. Once I got in my car that Sunday morning, I stopped at the nearby CVS and threw the flyer in the garbage can, because that is what the flyer was to me, garbage, which belonged in a landfill. I thought about calling the constable, but I chose not to, because I was preoccupied with Sunday morning’s work. Such is the subtlety and banality of evil. We let it slip in, we don’t react to it because it seems too inconvenient, we are too busy. That was my response, initially. Until a conversation with my wife prompted me to a change my mind. She told me I needed to call it in, that I could not be silent about this. She was right. As she often is. I called it in, and was told that many people had called in as well, thank God. I have decided to use this sad moment to create some light, and have made a donation to the National Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., in St. Andrew’s name.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German Lutheran pastor who was imprisoned by the Nazis for his attempt to take Hitler’s life during World War II, and who was martyred days before the Third Reich fell said this: “Silence in the face of evil is evil itself: . . . Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.”
I close with a word about Good Friday. While Good Friday, which commemorates Christ’s crucifixion, is a powerful day, it can also be a trigger point, as some use it to espouse a dangerous theology which promotes the view that Christianity is superior to Judaism. It is not. This idea of Christian superiority is to blame – in part – for the pogroms in Russia and the Ukraine, and the holocaust. Jesus was not Christian. Jesus was Jewish. Jesus was not crucified by Jews, but by Romans. Judaism is the very tree from which the branch of Christianity grows. If we deny this, if we as professing Christians support positions which elevate Christianity as superior to Judaism, we are sawing off the very branch from the tree upon which we are sitting.
On Good Friday this year, St. Andrew’s will offer a new Good Friday liturgy which seeks to amend problematic language regarding Judaism and Jewish people. This liturgy comes from the Seminary of the Southwest, and comes with Bishop Doyle’s support. It is a beautiful service. I cannot wait for us to participate in it together. AMEN.