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.

Thoughts across a backyard fence

There is a wonderful couple who live in the house behind us.  Even over the short period of the past nine months that we've lived in our home, they've become friends.  In the past two weeks, Shirley has shared two things with me, inviting me to read them.  One was an article in the magazine, The Hidden Child.  This semi-annual journal publishes stories about some of the Jewish children during the Holocaust, and the families who hid them from the Nazis.  The article she asked me to read was entitled, "Do We Always Have to Forgive," written by Rabbi Leo Michel Abrami, who was himself a "hidden child" in Normandy, and is now teaching at the Jewish Studies Institute in Phoenix, AZ.  In his article he shared a bit of a story related from the experiences of Simon Wiesenthal.  This was the tie, naturally, to the book that Shirley also invited me to read, which was Wiesenthal's work, The Sunflower.  Both works led me to ponder further my own thoughts about sin, forgiveness, repentance, and reconciliation.  Both works affirmed the traditional Jewish teaching on forgiveness, which, briefly, is this: "...the Talmudic Sages held that God absolves all of our sins against Him, but not the offenses committed against our fellow human beings, until we have sought reconciliation with them and made peace with them.  (Why?)  It is because only those who have been wronged can forgive."  I affirm the Sages' wisdom and beliefs about forgiveness.

However, I believe there is something more... at least one other element to the whole, complex issue of forgiveness.  I believe that when someone has wronged me, I need to offer them forgiveness so that I can move past the hurt and anger I feel, and then move on.  If I hold on to unforgiveness, it usually does not affect the person who wronged me, and therefore only affects me.

From my perspective, when I forgive someone it does not mean that I've forgotten, nor does it mean that I think everything is now okay.  For me, forgiveness is one part of the process of reconciliation, but reconciliation can take place only if the one who committed the wrong asks for forgiveness and demonstrates some degree of repentance.  In other words, reconciliation is a two-way street; both parties have a role to play in sincerity if reconciliation is to be even a possibility. However, forgiveness is one-way; I offer it as a way of opening the door to the other person, but also as a way for me to let go of feelings that otherwise could become all-consuming.

Let me offer an example.  A congregation I served had a treasurer who stole a little over $120,000 from the church.  He was a 4th-generation member of the church, and most of his family and friends were very active in the church.  I was asked by a couples' group in the church to talk with them about their hurt and anger and sense of betrayal by this man who had been a valued member of that group for some 40 years.  In the process of our conversation, I talked about what I see as the difference between reconciliation and forgiveness.  As a Christian, I do believe that I have a responsibility to forgive someone who comes to me and asks for my forgiveness for some wrong they have done to me.  As a Christian group, we had a responsibility to forgive that man if he came and asked, demonstrating a sense of culpability, contriteness, and repentance.  However, I told them that whether or not he ever came to us in that way (he never did, by the way), we had to get to the point where we could forgive him in our hearts, because otherwise the hurt and anger would eat away at us.  We had to forgive him, whether or not he asked, because we needed to be able to be healed and to move on.

It is not an easy thing, this whole business of sin, repentance, confession, forgiveness, reconciliation.  But isn't this part of the heart of that most familiar of prayers, the Prayer that Jesus taught us?  Weekly (maybe even daily!) we pray that God will "forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us."  May God help us to embody that Prayer

Reflections on Fred Phelps... and Lent

You may have heard the news.  It seems that Fred Phelps may be close to death.  In case you can't quite place the significance of the person, Phelps founded the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas.  This small, but extremely vocal and controversial church, is best known for their picketing of things like funerals of military persons.  Their signs condemn, in unspeakable language, gay and lesbian individuals in particular, as well as America itself in general.  They believe that the deaths of our service men and women are a sign of God's judgment on our nation because we "condone" homosexuality.  Their signs are some of the most vitriolic, hate-filled things I have ever seen, and their actions have been hurtful beyond measure - to families, to the general witness of the Church, to Christianity in this nation.  People outside of the Church look at them and think all of us Christians must be crazy, hateful people who serve a vengeful, hateful God... just as people look at groups like the Taliban and assume that all Muslims are violent extremists who want to kill anyone not like them.

To say that I have mixed feelings about the news of Phelps' impending death would be an understatement.  One of his sons, who left the "church" long ago, has said that Phelps was excommunicated from his own congregation last fall.  If that's the case, then Fred must be facing his mortality incredibly alone - isolated from the sect he founded, and alienated from many members of his own family.

I do not want to say that I hate Fred Phelps, everything he has stood for, and all his teachings and actions that have caused such incalculable pain in so many people.  However, it's Lent... and during Lent I remember that I'm called to be honest before God and myself about my sins.  And so I confess to you, my sisters and brothers, that "hate" may not be a completely inaccurate description of what I have felt.

But during Lent I also am called to remember that I not only need to ask for forgiveness for my own sins, but also to extend forgiveness to all who have wronged me and others.  It's easy to say that I forgive somebody in the abstract.  But Jesus did not love us in the abstract.  Jesus did not love his enemies in the abstract.  Jesus did not suffer in the abstract.  Jesus was not betrayed in the abstract.  Jesus did not hang on the cross and die in the abstract.  To love my enemies, and to speak words of forgiveness (whether they ask for it or not), means that I need to pray for Fred Phelps, because, as much as I detest him and everything he stands for, he is my brother in Christ.  He is a beloved child of God.  He is a sinner in need of God's love and grace... just as I am.

When I ask God to "forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us," that doesn't just refer to somebody who took my parking place or who had a cartful of groceries at Wegman's in the line for "12 items or less."  It means Fred Phelps.  It meant Osama bin Laden.  It means ___ (fill in the blank for the person whom you most detest).

So, whatever he is facing at this very moment, may God have mercy on Fred Phelps and surround him with grace.  May he begin to experience even now the love that he found so hard to extend to others.  May God be with him and fill him with the healing light of Jesus.

And may God so be with us all, and with everyone.

God's response to our greatest needs?

This was shared with me by a person who attends the weekly Bible Study I lead at our local, high-rise retirement home.  I thought it was worth passing along...

If our greatest need had been information,
God would have sent us an educator.

If our greatest need had been technology,
God would have sent us a scientist.

If our greatest need had been money,
God would have sent us an economist.

If our greatest need had been pleasure,
God would have sent us an entertainer.

But our greatest need was forgiveness,
So God sent us a Savior.


This rings true for me.  How about you?

A third way?

I was listening to NPR yesterday during the noon hour, which is when our local station (KIOS-FM, Omaha, NE) broadcast the program, City Arts and Lectures.  I didn't listen to the entire program yesterday, but what I heard intrigued me.

The two people on the show were Malcolm Gladwell and Adam Gopnik.  I'd not heard of either of them before, but they apparently are good friends and also do a lot of conversation-type programs together.  During the course of this particular conversation of theirs, Mr. Gladwell was talking about a new idea on which he was working.  He is Jewish,as is Mr. Gopnik, and they were talking about people who historically have been oppressed over the centuries.  He said that groups generally respond to oppression in one of two ways - they either get stronger, or they get smarter and more devious.  In other words, when people are oppressed they tend to decide that they will put all their efforts into becoming so strong that no one ever will be able to oppress them again, or else they put all their efforts into becoming so smart that they will be able to outwit their oppressors every time.  His examples were Israel and African-Americans.  Israel decided to build a military so strong that neither the likes of Hitler nor radical Arabs would take them down again.  African-Americans decided to outsmart their slave owners by developing an underground system of learning, songs, art, and traditions that allowed them to free their minds and spirits, even though their bodies were still enslaved.  Now, although I'm intrigued by his proposition, I don't completely accept his analyses here.  But that's for another conversation, perhaps.

What did intrigue me, though, is what he next said.  He shared that he's been reflecting on this for a while, and he's found himself going back to his experiences in Ontario, Canada where he was a Jewish boy raised in a predominantly Mennonite community.  He vividly remembers seeing a 10-year-old boy who was riding his bike and went out into the street between two cars.  He was struck by a car going down that street, driven by a teenage boy.  The child was critically injured, and ultimately died the next day.  What Gladwell so movingly remembers is seeing the mother of the young boy, who was a Mennonite, coming on to the scene, seeing what had happened.  She immediately ran over to the police car, where the teenager was in handcuffs in the backseat, and pleaded with the officer, "Take care of that boy!  Please take care of that boy!"  Naturally assuming that the distraught woman was asking about her son, the officer said that her boy was in the ambulance, and would be taken to the hospital where everything possible would be done for him. The woman shook her head and then said, "No, take care of the boy in your back seat.  He's got such a heavy burden to carry now.  Make sure he's treated well."  Gladwell had a hard time relating that story, saying he tears up every time he remembers it.

What Gladwell has been reflecting on from this is that there perhaps is a third way that people respond to oppression.  He said that, like both Jews and Africans, Mennonites historically have been an oppressed people.  However, instead of responding to oppression by either striving to become stronger or smarter, Mennonites have chosen to forgive and to move on in their lives.  Instead of saying to their oppressors, "I'm going to be strong so I can beat you," or "I'm going to become smart and outwit you," Mennonites have chosen to say, "I'm going to forgive you, and then go on with my life."

We Christians routinely, regularly, sometimes daily ask God:  "forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us."  For us, Gladwell's "third way" of responding to oppression - or responding to anyone who has hurt us or wronged us or mistreated those we love - should always begin with forgiveness.  To be sure, our "moving on" with our lives should often involve other responses as well, but it seems that Jesus taught us that we should begin - must begin - with forgiveness, with compassion, with love.

For us, this "third way" ought to be our first way.