By The Rev. Dr. Andrew Stirling
November 11, 2012
Text: Psalm 46
What are we to do when the earth gives way, not giving way like Sandy gave way to those who were in New York and New Jersey the last two weeks, and felt that the earth was being moved from their feet, not from those in Kalkan, Turkey, when an earthquake hit and destroyed buildings and lives. But what do we do when the earth gives way, when the nations roar, and kingdoms fall, and there is tumult, where there is inhumanity from person to person, when nations and ideologies collide, when it seems like the earth is giving way, what do we do?
The psalmist concluded that there were two things that were needed when the earth gives way: faith and courage. As our passage from Psalm 46 says, “God is our refuge and our strength, our very present help in trouble, therefore, we will not fear.” Faith and courage go hand-in-hand.
We are here this day of remembrance. By nature, it is a day to take us back in time, to remember the collective history of our nation and the world through all the wars that have been faught. It is a time for us to see if faith and courage make a difference, if the annals of time will speak to us of the virtues that are upheld by scriptures. And to assist us in coming to this, I want to look at two moments in time, two eras in fact, that speak of faith and courage.
The first of these is what I would call, “faith in the face of overwhelming fear”. I want to go back to Germany, to March 1933. There was within the nation a great fear that things were changing. The National Socialists had a plan for the nation, and it was one that had been building for some time, collectively embraced, though not universally so. It was one that had one segment of society terrified and frightened, even years before, its writers and poets and novelists had given a warning that there would be this impending movement to persecute the Jews.
One of the writers, Jacob Wasserman, wrote of the despair that he felt as a Jew, trying to serve and to get the attention of his nation to be accepted as one of them like anybody else. In a moving poem, and a rather frightening one, he wrote:
It is futile to go out to them and to offer them your hand. They say, “Who does he think he is with his Jewish impunity.” It is futile to be faithful to them either as fellow fighters or fellow citizens of Germany. They say, "He is the Proteus, he can do it all." It is futile to help them to remove the chains of slavery from their limbs. They say, “He will certainly have profited from this somehow.” It is futile to neutralize the poison, they will brew it anew. It is futile to live for them and to die for them for they say “He is a Jew.”
By March 1933, Jacob Wasserman's fears had come true. On March 11th, in the City of Breslau, the SA storm troopers marched into a courtroom and there they removed the lawyers, the judges, the magistrates and the prosecutors who were Jewish. They wanted them to have no role to play in the judicial system. On March 19th, The Peoples' Observer, a well known mouthpiece for the Nazis, called for journalists, for politicians, for professors and for doctors who were Jewish to be removed from their positions no matter how eminent they may be in the university, no matter how wonderful they may be as medical and psychological healers. They were Jews and they were to be removed.
There was international outrage. Canada sent a delegation saying it was outraged. In response to the outrage of the world, on March 28th, Adolf Hitler decided to initiate a general boycott of all Jewish goods. He said, a reference that would be repeated many times by Goebbels and others, “Germans, protect yourselves! Don't buy from the Jews!” Realizing that this was having a profound effect, not only on the future of the German people and on Jewry, a pastor from Germany, Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote to his friend Erwin Sutz in Swizerland on April 14th, 1933. In his letter, Bonhoeffer said, “The Church is much concerned with the Jewish question. It has caused even the most sensible to lose their heads and to forget their Bibles.”
A few days later, introduced into law was what was known as the “Aryan clause”, designed to make sure that every German prove their Aryan heritage. They were called to go back even four generations to baptismal certificates within the Christian Church to prove that they were Aryans, the idea being that non-Aryans would be excluded from the marketplace, the universities, the courts, the hospitals, and positions of power. Ministers were asked, Christian ministers, to sign baptismal certificates that proved that certain people were not Jewish.
Bonhoeffer, Niemoller and other Christians said, “Nein! We are not going to do this!” They knew what this would imply and the destruction it would bring. It was interference in the Christian faith, but it was more than that: it was the segregation of a people for persecution and for death. Dietrich Bonhoeffer said, “The wheel of the state is rolling, and it is going to crush people under the wheel; now it is time to put a spoke in the wheel and stop it from moving.” He knew that all of this was a pretext for something much darker and more deadly. He knew it would lead to something disastrous, but even he didn't know it would be the Holocaust.
Move forward to the spring of 1945, the final liberation of those who had been in captivity in Germany. There was a young boy. He was eight years old. He had spent most of his life in Buchenwald, in the city of Weimar. He is only eight, but as a Jewish boy, he had grown up in the camp. His parents had both died: slaughtered. He was alone. This eight-year-old boy would later sit down with popes and princes, with kings and prime ministers, with Nelson Mandela and the Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu. Eventually, he would become the Chief Rabbi of the Orthodox in Jerusalem.
In time, this boy would become the Head of Yad Vashem, the memorial for the Holocaust in Jerusalem. The name of this little boy was Yisrael Meir Lau, and he has written a book, Out of the Depths. This young Jewish boy, who had lost everything but had survived Buchenwald, remembered fondly the day that the allies came in and set him free. All this little boy had known was Buchenwald. He had no place to go. He had no family. He had no home. A soldier went in, and he brought together, as General Patton had asked, the citizens of Weimar to come and see for themselves what had been happening in one of the suburbs of their own community.
They were told to go to Buchenwald. Then the soldier picked up this young boy, as Lau remembers, grabbing him by his ankles and swinging him over his shoulders and put him high above everyone else in the crowd. In German, the American soldier said the following: “Do you see this little boy? This is who you have been fighting for the past six years. It is because of him you started a world war. He is the enemy of National Socialism, the Nazi's archenemy: a little Polish boy. You murdered his father and his mother, and you almost murdered him as well. You followed the Fuhrer for this? You followed him in blind faith for this?”
Meir Lau says this was a choice between two faiths: faith in those who destroy life or faith in God who saves it. He entitled his book Out of the Depths from the Psalms:
Out of the depths have I cried unto to thee, Lord. Lord, hear my voice and let thine ears be attentive to the voice of my prayers, for Lord, if you should remember iniquities, who shall stand? But with thee is forgiveness that thou may be feared. My soul doth wait. It waits on your word.
Meir Lau has said that it was the Psalms that gave him strength - “God is our refuge and our strength, a very present help in trouble, therefore we will not fear” - the power of faith when confronted with darkness and fear!
It was the summer of 1940, and we have a picture now of courage in the face of adversity. The scene changes to Malta. Mussolini has just declared war with the Axis powers against the Allies. He has declared that the Island of Malta is to be destroyed. He said, “Malta will take but a few days and it will be gone. Have no worries! Malta will not survive.” After all, all Malta had was five thousand in its garrison: four planes, one did not work - and the three of them that did, were called “faith,” “hope” and “charity!” They had a thirty mile coast line to protect, but almost nothing with which to protect it!
Malta was of immense strategic importance, located as it was at the confluence of continents. It was critical! Mussolini knew that if he took Malta he could have many, many more victories. So he bombed Malta. Two hundred-and-seventy thousand citizens often had to huddle in the limestone caves while the bombing continued relentlessly, powerfully. Ships that had come into harbour were bombed and strafed. The Illustrious, one of the great ships seemed to be a victim of the bombing. It seemed like all would be lost. How would they ever be able to survive?
They had a Governor who was a general and his name was William Dobbie. He was one of those people who had such a great and overwhelming faith that he would not allow the power of darkness and tyranny to overcome the island he was responsible for. Dobbie made some military mistakes. All great leaders make mistakes. But he said the following in trying to raise the spirits of those in Malta: “It may be that hard times lie ahead for us, but however hard they may be, I know that the courage and determination of all ranks will not falter, and that with God's help we will maintain the security of this fortress. I call on all officers and other ranks humbly to seek God's help, and thus in reliance on Him, to do their duty unflinchingly.”
His was of such a faith that even in the midst of the most insurmountable conflict and opposition, he held Bible studies! Even in his letters that went back to the War Office, he would quote the scriptures. In one very famous letter, when it seemed that all was dark and any ships that were going in and out of Malta were in grave danger, he quotes Psalm 46: “God is our refuge and our help, a very present help in danger, therefore we will not fear.”
Over the next two years, with the aid of many, including Canadians, some of whom were members of our congregation, and with the aid and support of the navy, the fortification of Malta still took place. By May 1942, 275 Axis planes had been shot down, 600 damaged, Fifth Columnists were removed, and Malta was safe. King George VI, in that very year awarded the whole Island of Malta the highest civil honour, the George Cross.
When asked in 1942 what he saw was the mission of that nation as he was now leaving it in the hands of someone else, Dobbie said, “We were not only fighting for our existence and for the preservation of our institutions, we were fighting for the fundamental principle without which life, whether individual or national, will not be worth living. There can be no vestige of doubt that our cause was righteous and that it must be in accordance with God's will.” At the end of the war, Dobbie went on a tour. He came to Canada and met with the Governor General, The Earl of Athlone, and he spoke of the power of courage, and how courage comes from faith. You see, for people like Meir Lau, a young boy on the shoulders of a soldier in Buchenwald, or for a leader of men and women on an island, faith and courage become everything.
It is not that the psalmist believed that faith and courage were all there would be. The psalmist believed that there would be a better day, and in a similar apocalyptic view as the Book of Revelation, that the city of God would come and dwell in the city of Humankind, that wars would cease, that spears would be broken, that bows would be bent, the vision of peace would prevail, and that faith and courage would no longer be needed because God is all-in-all, the day in which the Cross of Christ would replace the George's Cross, the spirit of forgiveness would transcend the inhumanity and darkness of humanity, that peace would prevail. All the time believing that between now and that time, the time when God will reign over all the nations, what is needed from us is courage and faith, faith and courage.
Those who gave their lives courageously must be remembered by the faithful. Remember the psalmist's words: “God is our refuge and our strength, a very present help in trouble, therefore we will not fear.” Amen.