Perhaps the most devastating charge leveled against Christians is that we have no joy. That Christians have no joy was the criticism the philosopher Nietzsche made against Christians. Yet we gather to celebrate Easter precisely because Jesus is Joy and Life and Light in the midst of a world too much preoccupied by darkness and death. We continue to hear of suicide bombers and deaths in Iraq. I write this on the anniversary of the tragic event at Columbine High School and close to the anniversary of the similar murder/suicide at Virginia Tech only two years ago. We have the ongoing crisis of ordinary folk throughout our country and the world struggling with the anxiety of losing jobs, homes and retirement resources. In these times we must to gather to affirm light and life.
Sixty-some years ago, in an age that was perhaps even darker and more death-dominated than our own, World War II was coming to a close and the real horror of the Holocaust was being exposed. One can hardly imagine the terror, confusion and misery. Yet in the midst of this “culture of death” there were those who stood as signs of life and light and joy. Among them are three women. Note well, for it was women in the Gospel accounts who were the first bearers of the Good News of Christ’s rising.
Ann Frank is well known, a young Jewish girl made immortal by her diary. She wrote:
It’s really a wonder that I haven’t dropped all my ideals,
because they seem so absurd and impossible to carry out.
Yet I keep them because, in spite of everything, I still believe
that people are really good at heart. I simply can’t build up
my hopes on a foundation consisting of confusion, misery, and
death…I can feel the suffering of millions and yet, if I look into
the heavens, I think that it will all come right, that this cruelty too
will end and that peace and tranquility will return again.
Another young Dutch woman, Etty Hillesum, kept a diary at roughly the same time. She also was a Jew. Some twelve years older than Ann Frank, Etty was
Transformed from a bright, but somewhat immature and frivolous person into a profoundly centered and compassionate woman, deeply in touch with God and with life. Even as the reality of death in the concentration camp closes in on her, she is able “to find life beautiful and to feel free”. Etty ends her diary with the words, “We should be willing to act as a balm for all wounds.” In the midst of death these young Jewish women are deeply in touch with life and goodness.
There is one more woman, a twice-divorced Russian émigré who became a nun in the Orthodox Church in Paris. Mother Maria Skobtsova, Mother Maria of Paris sheltered Jews during the Nazi occupation and helped them escape. The story is told that she was asked what she’d do if the SS showed up and asked her if she was sheltering Jews. Maria said that she would say “yes” and then take the Nazis to the chapel and show them the icons of Christ, the Mother of God and the Apostles…”These are Jews!” Well, the Nazis did come and she, her son, Yuri, and her chaplain, Fr Dimitri were all arrested and sent to the camps. Mother Maria continued her ministry there and was much loved. She died in the gas chambers on Holy Saturday in 1945. It is rumored that she substituted herself for a young Jewish woman.
The Resurrection of Christ is a continuing affirmation of life and goodness in the midst of death an evil. Easter is not simply the memory of past event. It is not words on a page, a story retold year after year. Resurrection aches to take flesh in each of our lives - not as words spoken but a reality loved. It is not merely an empty tomb but the changed lives of the disciples.
Three women, Jews and Christians - among many other believers, bore witness to life and light and joy in the darkness of the Holocaust some 65 years ago. In our world today, equally challenged by those who would serve a culture of death, we have the courage to proclaim light, life and joy in Jesus Christ.
But make no mistake about it. That light, that life, and that joy cannot be confined to our churches or even our homes. We bring the Good News to our work places, our schools, to the Congress and to the courts, to the banks and to Wall Street, to the sides of folks who fear the loss of jobs and homes. To wherever the darkness threatens, “we must be willing to act as balm for all wounds” in the name and in the joy of Jesus Christ.
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