I Believe

 May 15, 2020

I Believe

“I believe in the sun, even when it’s not shining.

 I believe in love even when I don’t feel it.

 I believe in God even when He is silent.”

Scrawled into a wall at Auschwitz Concentration Camp

 

 

This is such a haunting thought. To know that these words of poetry, words of personal truth, words of hope- may have come from a person who was facing certain death at the hands of the murderous Nazi regime.

 

More frightening was that the regime was made of people, people with faces and families, people with fears and dreams, people who may have had a personal faith. Yet, in the face of kill or be killed a choice was made to comply to an insane mandate.

 

Complying, it is the act of agreeing to act on another’s command or request. What do we comply to on a daily basis? Do we comply with reservation? I know there are times when we feel there is no other way, than to comply.

 

However, Jesus came to us to shock us into noticing that complying can have wretched consequences. And, his manner of telling us was to live a life of service only to be condemned to death. This is the whole idea of Jesus dying “for” us. He did so as a potent reminder that we do have a choice in our life.

 

I wonder when the German people reached a point of no return in complying with the peer pressure built up over months and years of subtle racist cues? Whenever the moment, it suddenly became something beyond complying, to complicity- something altogether different.

 

The words above were put to music and are presented in this Sunday’s worship service. It’s a beautiful setting of words that were written to express a defiance towards a power greater than the writer, who was caught up in a society’s lack of accountability.

 

How might we more dutifully pay attention to Jesus’ desire for us to look at ourselves more deeply? We can all get caught up in movements that serve our ego and our self-interest only to make another person or persons miserable, or worse yet clinging to existence. How do we as a nation of differing experiences meet together for the greater good? I hope we can do so by placing Jesus ahead of all other considerations, and to follow him in his goal for peace.

 

I believe in the sun, in love, and God.

 

Rev. Ken