A place at the Table?

In my article last week, I mentioned that I was reading a book by Simon Wiesenthal, entitled The Sunflower.  His book consists of two parts.  The first is a long story he relates about a troubling experience he had while in a concentration camp during World War II.  Of course, all such experiences surely had to have been "troubling," which is an adjective that falls exponentially short to describe things I cannot begin to understand but that we dare not ever forget.  However, Wiesenthal shares his experience of having been out of the camp one day on a work detail when a hospital nurse called him into the room of a patient that seemed obviously close to death. After bringing him into the room, she nodded toward the patient, and then abruptly left, closing the door on her way out.  He went over and sat in the chair next to the bed.

The patient's face was bandaged, and he had other serious injuries, but he could speak.  He began to do just that, and what came out over the next several hours was a confession.  The man knew he was dying, and he spoke of so many terrible atrocities that he and his SS comrades had committed against Jews.  After an excruciatingly painful litany of his crimes, he concluded his talk with Wiesenthal by saying this:

"I know that what I have told you is terrible.  In the long nights while I have been waiting for death, time and time again I have longed to talk about it to a Jew and beg forgiveness from him.  Only I didn't know whether there were any Jews left... I know that what I am asking is almost too much for you, but without your answer I cannot die in peace."

Wiesenthal then writes:

"Two men who had never known each other had been brought together for a few hours by Fate.  One asks the other for help. But the other was himself helpless and able to do nothing for him... I stood up and looked in his direction... At last I made up my mind and, without a word, I left the room."

The rest of the first part of the book is Wiesenthal's wrestling - both while in the camp and for the remainder of his life - with his refusal to offer words of forgiveness or consolation to the dying SS officer.  The second part of the book contains thoughts of 32 scholars, Jews and Christians alike, who were asked to offer their reflections on the ethical dilemma posed by Wiesenthal.  It is a fascinating, albeit troubling, book.  It cuts to the core of issues of forgiveness, confession, grace, repentance, reconciliation, evil, God.

One author's response, however, struck me in such a way that I am going to be spending some time reflecting and prayerfully meditating on it.  Christopher Hollis was a professor, an intelligence officer in the RAF during World War II, and later a Roman Catholic bishop in England. He ends his brief thoughts about this dilemma by sharing this story:

"According to an old medieval legend, the Apostles assembled together in heaven to recelebrate the Last Supper.  There was one place vacant, until through the door Judas came in, and Christ rose and kissed him and said, 'we have waited for thee.'"

I don't know what I might have done in Simon Wiesenthal's position in that hospital room.  I can't judge the merits or the shortcomings of his response to the SS officer.  And I'm in awed silence myself at Hollis' two-sentence story.  What I know is that forgiveness is not always easy for me... although it's always been easier for me to grant forgiveness to others than to accept forgiveness for myself.  What I know is that I want to more readily offer grace to those who stand in need of it, and that I want more and more to be willing to accept the grace that Christ offers to me again and again.  I long to be able to imagine myself in the story being willing to enter the room that was pictured, to welcome the Lord's kiss, and to dare to believe that the empty chair at the Table was being held for me.