May 24, 2009
Psalm 25: 1-7
1 Corinthians 11: 23-26
John 14: 23-31
Luke 12: 4-7
"Scoured By History"
I love history. For most of my life I have been fascinated by history. I love history, but I do not read it in order to avoid mistakes or to learn what not to do in the future. It seems to me that an honest look at history proves we do not learn or change our ways based on history. Actually, it seems to me we humans tend to repeat our mistakes over and over again.
I have come to believe I love history because it scours my soul. It offers a way for me to cleanse myself, to wipe the internal slate clean if you will. In the face of history there is the opportunity for redemption.
"Scour" is a word we do not use much any more. We are not into scrubbing and expending elbow grease on anything. We want easy cleaning, easy wiping and shiny surfaces with little effort. At home we have a spray can of "Scrubbing Bubbles" that promises to do all the work. "Scour" is too hard a word for us.
To me the word conjures up a picture of my Mom leaning over the kitchen sink souring away the marks and scratches left in the enamel by the heavy pots and pans. Somehow, with lots of work and a Brillo pad, Mom would scour the sink clean. That's what I mean by scour. History scours the soul just like my Mom scoured our old kitchen sink.
Take Abraham Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address.
Abraham Lincoln
Second Inaugural Address
March 4, 1865
"Fellow-Countrymen:
At this second appearing to take the oath of the Presidential office there is less occasion for an extended address than there was at the first. Then a statement somewhat in detail of a course to be pursued seemed fitting and proper. Now, at the expiration of four years, during which public declarations have been constantly called forth on every point and phase of the great contest which still absorbs the attention and engrosses the energies of the nation, little that is new could be presented. The progress of our arms, upon which all else chiefly depends, is as well known to the public as to myself, and it is, I trust, reasonably satisfactory and encouraging to all. With high hope for the future, no prediction in regard to it is ventured.
On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded it, all sought to avert it. While the inaugural address was being delivered from this place, devoted altogether to saving the Union without war, urgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy it without war--seeking to dissolve the Union and divide effects by negotiation. Both parties deprecated war, but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish, and the war came.
One-eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union even by war, while the Government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it. Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with or even before the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. "Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh." If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether."
With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations." |
No one wanted the war and yet, "the war came." Lincoln and the listener are faced with one of life's great mysteries: We can say we do not want something to happen, we can hope it does not happen, we can plan on it not happening, but we often seem helpless to stop even what we say we do not want. "And the war came."
And the war brought death and destruction as no other war did. And again, Lincoln faced a terrible truth. Both sides prayed to the same God, read the same Bible and each believed God was on their side. Of course, that could not be so but as with so many causes, so many wars, each side believed God favored them, believed they were doing God's will.
In searching for answers as to how the war came, how both sides could claim God as their own, Lincoln came to a terrible understanding. He, who was routinely criticized as non-religious for not going to church, reached down into the very heart of God. He found this: Though he was victorious, though his side was the winner, there was no winner in God's eyes.
North and South alike were to pay a terrible price for the scourge of slavery. Both had profited and now both were to pay until every drop of blood drawn by the lash was repaid by blood drawn by the sword. Nothing else made sense to Lincoln.
At the end Lincoln did not gloat in victory, he did not push his enemies face in the dirt, he did not call for punishment. He asked for grace, for charity, for life lived with malice towards none and God's hand to bind up the nation's wounds. There was nothing else to do.
Lincoln's God terrifies me. Lincoln's sense of judgment is too profound for me to face. But it does scour my soul. It forces me to humility and mercy and acceptance of truth.
The only peace possible must be the peace that only God can offer: not one imposed or planned or organized by humans but one offered by God in His mercy and His judgment. All I can do is ask God to remember me in mercy, not for what I actually am, not for my role in humanity's madness, but in mercy.
Then there is Marion Samuel. I would be amazed if anyone here remembers Marion Samuel. She lived 11 years from 1931 to 1943. She was born in Germany to Jewish parents.
The whole point of Marion Samuel is that she is unknown. A foundation in France offered the "Marion Samuel" prize to a historian who did the most to preserve the memory of children slaughtered by the Nazi's in World War II. Her name was randomly picked because hers was just a name on a list of thousands of children deported to the camps about whom nothing was known.
But the winner of the 2003 prize decided to learn who she was. He dug deeply into old records. He learned where she was born, where she went to school until Jews were no longer allowed to go to schools. He learned where she and her parents lived and that she was sent to her death on Transport #33 leaving Berlin on March 3 and arriving at Auschwitz on March 4.
The historian learned that the total value of Marion's life was precisely calculated. Taking the value of the goods confiscated from the Samuel's apartment, and deducting 6.5 Reich pennies per mile rail transportation cost, the regime lost of 27.63 Reichsmarks. Marion's chair, listed in the inventory of goods confiscated as a "child's chair", was valued as "worthless." Marion was killed on March 4, 1943
The historian learned that in May, 1938, as 7 year old Marion waited for her mother to come home from her forced labor job, a Christian friend came by and recalled the following:
"I saw Marion waiting outside her house. Because she had not been in school for a few days, I asked about her absence, and she replied that she had been sick. She was waiting for her mother. … Suddenly Marion began to cry, and said that she was frightened. I was surprised, and then she said, 'People go into a tunnel in a mountain and along the way there is a great hole and they all fall in and disappear.'" (Into The Tunnel, pp. 81-82)
What am I to do with Marion Samuel? On this Memorial Day weekend when we are to remember the dead, how does Marion Samuel fit in? How do I reconcile a God of love with Marion Samuel? Or with the claim that humanity is created in the image and likeness of God? Or with the hand and mind that computed how much Marion's brief existence cost the Third Reich?
Marion Samuel scours my soul. She scours away at pride and self-satisfaction and self-righteousness. She makes me see that I am part of a vast gathering of people of all ages who are capable of doing what was done to Marion; capable of computing the loss her life and death caused the state.
Marion Samuel makes me pray so hard that God does remember and love and value even the worthless sparrows, even every hair on our head and especially the hair on Marion's head. Marion Samuel forces me to demand that her cry to be remembered, just as the cry of that other innocent Jew named Jesus, is honored by God. If God does not remember Marion Samuel, we all are lost; forgotten and lost.
History can also walk into your home and scour your soul. In our case, history's name was Vanna. Vanna is our Cambodian Foster son who now lives in Colorado, with his wife and three children and who works two full time jobs. He came to us from the refugee camps in Thailand as a young teenager.
Vanna was a little boy when the Khmer Rouge killed his father and brother and he was taken from his mother and forced to work in the fields. Over the next few years he was shot twice, worked almost to death, imprisoned, escaped and finally put on a list to come to the United States. He is now a U.S. citizen.
People who know Vanna and us often told us how lucky he was to be with us, to be in the United States. It is nice to be told nice things, but Vanna's history tells another story.
Vanna is here because of what the United States did to Cambodia. He lost his parents and most of his siblings and the life he was born to enjoy because we bombed Cambodia in order to kill North Vietnamese troops who we believed were hiding there. Cambodia had done nothing to the US. It was not in the war. It could never hurt us. But we bombed Cambodia from 1965 to 1973.
More destructive tonnage was dropped on Cambodia than was used by all the combatants combined in World War II. Estimates of civilian deaths range from 600,000 to 1,000,000 from the bombing. And it was the bombing - our bombing - that destroyed the country that allowed Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge to take power and begin their own massacre which included Vanna's family and the life he should be living.
Vanna scours my soul every time I see him, every time I speak with him on the phone, every time I speak with his children who call me "Grandpa". Vanna makes me admit that I was alive when his country was being pulverized, that I could have done something, tried something. But I did nothing.
Vanna takes away my unwarranted sense of importance and power and makes me seek a cleaner soul. Vanna makes me want, desperately want, to believe that if I but surrender, God and Christ will take me in, will remember me in mercy.
This is Memorial Day weekend and I admit to being conflicted. I know enough names, friends and acquaintances, who have died in war to keep me busy remembering. I know others whose lives have been spared but ruined by war to keep me busy.
But what about the others? Those I do not know. Those who are nameless to me? Those who left no record, no trace, no history? I believe that as followers of the innocent, humiliated, and crucified One who asked to be remembered, we are to remember all. But I know I cannot do that.
So I turn to God, and I ask God to please remember all; every worthless sparrow, every hair on every head, every refugee, every child, every family, every soldier, and to remember each one with mercy and forgiveness and love. And I ask God to scour my soul and to make it a place for Him to abide in peace. I am forced, at times such as these, to turn to God. Where else can I go? Were else can we go?
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