Fifty-some years ago my mother and her
beloved younger sister, had a falling out. Her sister became engaged to be
married and the man she was marrying was Jewish. And – not without careful and
prayerful consideration – she decided that she would convert to Judaism, so
their children could be raised Jewish. And my mother thought this was completely
and unequivocally wrong.
My mother was a lifelong member of the
Lutheran church; she raised me and my sisters in the Lutheran church. I
discovered later, in my own relationship to my mother, that for her being
Lutheran was an inherited part of her identity. To turn your back on it was practically
sacrilegious. I know it hurt her deeply to see her sister turn away from this
faith tradition, but I also know her response to it was guided by prejudice.
There is a strain of antisemitism that has run through Lutheranism since its
beginning.
The unfortunate truth is that Martin Luther,
the father of the Protestant Reformation, and the Lutheran Church in
particular, held some appallingly bigoted views toward the Jews. “Set fire to
their synagogues,” he advised, and “toss out these lazy rogues by the seat of
their pants.” I hate to think how Luther, a German, would have behaved had he
been alive during the Third Reich – I am afraid he would have joined the Nazis.
This year when we celebrate the 500-year
anniversary of the Reformation, which began when Luther nailed his 95 Theses on
the church door, we would like to forget about this side of the man. This is a
part of our history we don’t speak about and many don’t even know about. Yet,
we need to acknowledge it, and that this kind of bigotry is very, very hard to
snuff out. We know that it has never gone away. It has smoldered for centuries,
occasionally being fanned into flames – as it has been this year in our nation.
Neo-Nazi White Supremacist groups have proudly stepped out into the open, as
they did recently in Charlottesville, to demand what they think are their
rights.
A horrific amount of violence has been
perpetrated because of bigotry like this. Luther was certainly not the only one
to blame. The truth we need to acknowledge is that there is a sordid history of
cruel bigotry in Christianity. The crusades, in which many thousands of Jews
and Muslims were killed by Christian soldiers. The Inquisition, in which
thousands more were tortured and killed. The strains of bigotry that drove
these institutions has never completely died.
Today, when we see Nazis, KKK, and all their
fellow white supremacy groups promoting their cause, we see their Christian
roots.
The point I wish to make is that the church
bears much responsibility for racist institutions that exist. The church bears
responsibility for its historic role in racist violence. And, if we denounce
that history today, which I believe we do, then we bear responsibility for
standing against it. We must acknowledge the evil that is committed, too often
in the name of white Christianity, and we must loudly and clearly condemn it.
From where I’m standing now, it is hard to
imagine how a serious student of scripture could read Paul’s letter to the
Romans and find cause to hate the Jews. Yet I know that it has been put to that
use by many pastors from many pulpits. Granted, Paul’s arguments are difficult
to follow, but not because he was trying to obfuscate or mislead. The
difficulty is certainly due to the fact that he was winding his way through
what was, for him, some extremely complex and challenging terrain.
If Paul’s world was divided into the
Christians and the Jews then he had a stake in both these tribes. From his
birth, through his training and his vocation, Paul was a Jew, a member of the
tribe of Benjamin. But when he encountered Jesus on the road to Damascus, he
became a Christian – an apostle for Christ. From that point on, he began to
forge a path through this uncharted territory, seeking to understand what new
thing God was doing in the world. We see his struggle in the words of this
epistle.
In this section we read from today, Paul is
clear on one thing: that God has not rejected God’s people; that God’s gifts
and calling are irrevocable. And he theorizes that it was, perhaps, necessary
for the Jews to reject Jesus so that there would be an opportunity for the
Gentiles to receive the gospel. This does not, by any means, suggest that there
is a finite amount of room, a limited number of tickets, to heaven. The Jews
did not have to vacate so the Gentiles could enter the fold. What Paul’s
argument suggests is that when we look back at the events that unfolded we see
that the resistance Paul encountered in the synagogues happened alongside the
tremendous success he found among the Gentiles. Is it possible, Paul wonders,
that there is a connection? Or I might put it this way: would the young church
have been so accepting of the Gentiles if the Jews had not rejected them?
Perhaps things had to shift in this way, for
the sake of the salvation of the world, Paul thinks. But if so, this is only
temporary, he argues. God has not forsaken the Jews. God does not renege on
God’s promises.
Ultimately, Paul admits, it is a mystery. It
is well beyond our gifts and capabilities to comprehend God’s plans for the
world God created. We simply trust in God’s word and God’s inherent goodness,
seeking to be always faithful in our words and actions. Which brings us back to
the events in Charlottesville. How do faithful people respond to this white
supremacy movement?
I have heard many people suggest that it is
best to ignore it; that acknowledging it only makes it worse. This is not a new
argument.
When I was a high school student in the
suburbs of Chicago during the 70’s, Nazis fought a court battle to march in
Skokie, only a few miles away from where I lived. Skokie was the home of many
holocaust survivors; there was no doubt that the Nazis chose Skokie for that
very reason. The residents fought hard against it, although, I can remember,
there were some in the surrounding communities who argued against fighting it.
These voices said that the best thing to do would be to deprive these Nazis of
the attention they craved. Just ignore them. Let them have their silly march
and pretend nothing is happening. Nothing bad will happen if you just ignore
them.
Those who had seen the effects of Nazi
ideology up close and personally simply could not do that. Because they bore
witness, and history bears witness, to what can happen when the world chooses
to just ignore them.
We simply cannot remain indifferent. When
evil is exposed to the light of day, as it was in Charlottesville last weekend,
we cannot turn away and say just ignore those fools. It is wrong to make
excuses for them when they commit acts of violence, suggesting that they might
have been provoked by their opponents. We cannot fail to condemn their ideology
and actions. Please let me be very clear
about this: I don’t say to condemn them as evil people, but to condemn the evil
ideologies and systems that they have chosen to affiliate with. We must not
fail to do so; we must take them seriously, because it is quite likely that the
next Dylann Roof is among their ranks. And, in case you don’t remember, Dylann
Roof was the young man who walked into Emmanuel AME Church in Charleston, South
Carolina, joined a group of nine members in prayer, and then shot and killed
each one of them.
Our land is riddled with the scars of these
acts of hate. But we are not without hope. God’s mercy rains down. I believe
the Apostle Paul, in his trials and tribulations, came to understand that God’s
love covers everything; God’s love is greater than we can imagine. He came to
see that, while we are, all of us, broken human beings, God will use us for
God’s divine purposes. God will use us broken creatures to bring about
wholeness. And so it is our calling to name and condemn evil wherever we see it,
and we may see it in surprising places.
For the world is not divide into good people
and evil people; as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn wrote, “the dividing line between
good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being.” Once again,
understanding our own brokenness is the first step. We are at our best when we
acknowledge our own fault lines, our own brokenness, our own need for
forgiveness. As Paul wrote, “God has imprisoned all in disobedience so that he
may be merciful to all.”
In the end, it is good to remember the words
of the prophet Micah, who spelled it out nice and simple: this is what the Lord
requires of you: to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with your God.
Let us never be afraid to stand up for what is right, and let us strive to do
it with kindness and humility.
photo credit: from USA Today (
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