Sermon delivered at the 18th Annual Christian Service in Memory of the Holocaust, St Peter\u27s (Erindale) Anglican Church, Mississauga, Ont, April 26, 1998

Nelson, Glen

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In Memory of the Holocaust: We Have Come a Long Way

Wilfrid Laurier University

ConsensusVolume 25Issue 1 Contextual Perspectives in Pastoral Care andCounsellingArticle 95-1-1999In Memory of the Holocaust: We Have Come aLong WayGlen NelsonFollow this and additional works at: http://scholars.wlu.ca/consensusThis Sermons is brought to you for free and open access by Scholars Commons @ Laurier. It has been accepted for inclusion in Consensus by anauthorized editor of Scholars Commons @ Laurier. For more information, please contact scholarscommons@wlu.ca.Recommended CitationNelson, Glen (1999) "In Memory of the Holocaust: We Have Come a Long Way," Consensus: Vol. 25 : Iss. 1 , Article 9.Available at: http://scholars.wlu.ca/consensus/vol25/iss1/9In Memory of the Holocaust: WeHave Come a Long Way'Glen H. NelsonPastor, St. 7\nsgar Lutheran Church,Toronto, OntarioWe have come a long way.IIn fact we have come such a long way that it is difficult to imag-iine the events of a half-century ago. They are like a nightmare ofI bizarre tortures from which we have thankfully awakened. That iswhy the living witness of survivors and their progeny is such a pre-cious gift which present and future generations must cherish so thatIno one can cultivate the illusion that it was Just a dream.For we have come a long way—from international indifference to the annihilation of Jews andthe now infamous Canadian dismissal, “None is Too Many” — to aUniversal Declaration of Human Rights;from pious Good Friday meditations about Jews who killedJesus and the eternal curse they must bear as a consequence — toofficial Church statements of regret for theological scapegoating andfor ecclesiastical passivity during the crucial years of the Holocaust;! from signs banning dogs and Jews — to a society in whichI discrimination of any kind is promptly exposed and publicly rebuked.1jAnd of course, the State of Israel is a reality as substantial todayI as it seemed a hopeless fantasy 50 years ago.We have come a long way. And even as we celebrate these pub-100 Consensuslie nnilestones, significant as they are, we should each look back tomeasure the distance we have travelled personally. And we can say,perhaps, /have come a long way.The midwestern ethnic enclave which was my home had almostno Jews. The closest a Jew ever came to my family was the class-mate of an older sister who was declared by my parents to be offlimits to her, for reasons 1 did not understand at the time. As a child,my introduction to things Jewish was limited to barbarisms of collo-quial speech: for example—a phrase that is now difficult to voicealoud—“jewing down” the price of an item at the store; another, thename for the local scrap buyer operating from a horse-drawn wagon,the “sheeny”. Jewishness was that sketchy and that distorted.My education in the fifties, only brief years after the end of thewar and the discovery of the death camps, did not once deal with theHolocaust—nor with Jews nor with Judaism. It was as if Jews ex-isted only in the past as the somewhat menacing figures in the Gos-pels. My theological training, impossible as it now seems, includedlittle about Judaism other than a self-serving assumption that Judaismwas mindlessly legalistic—a convenient foil for Christians. So wespoke about Pharisees and ‘Judaizers” as representatives of a con-temptible religion of outward show and no inner substance. Therewas never a hint that our Christian tradition had a long history of anti-Judaism; and there was only a brief nervous defense of the reveredReformer, Martin Luther, acknowledging his raging obscene attackon Jews when, it was said, he was an old, sick and disillusioned man.We never did read Luther’s actual words. 1 do not remember askingto read them. 1 dug them out of the University library recently; ironi-cally, 1 found an English translation of them in a rank propagandapiece against Germans published in England during the war.In 1995 my Church officially acknowledged, rejected and apolo-gized for Luther’s invective against Jews. And for years it has incor-porated a far more wholesome study of Judaism into its theologicaltraining of pastors and its educational materials for members.Collectively, we have come a long way—our institutions havechanged. And, personally, we have come a long way—our aware-ness and understanding are not, thank God, what they were.And yet...and yet...In Memory of the Holocaust 101For many, the Holocaust is no longer seen as a profound guideto truth that would otherwise have escaped us, a sign that says wemust stop and learn something here. Rather the Holocaust has cometo feel like a barrier to truth, like a millstone hanging around ournecks, holding us back and inhibiting honest discussion.In a book published in 1992, N.T. Wright, a conservative EnglishNew Testament scholar, wrote of this inhibiting effect of the Holo-caust:Western Christian scholarship is in the middle of a long-drawn-outprocess of repentance for having cherished false views aboutJudaism. Scholars and preachers tumble over one another to saythat they were misguided, that they misjudged the Pharisees, thatJesus and his first followers had no quarrel with the Jews...How longit will be before things settle down again, it is difficult to say.Wright himself believes that this unfortunate but understandabledrag on Christian scholarship is something scholars must eventuallyget over: “But we will do ourselves a grave disservice if we think thatsimple reaction will do any lasting good. The historical task cannotbe accomplished by the back-projection of modern guilt feeling....”^The Holocaust, in other words, is the cause of an unfortunate, ifinescapable, interruption in the ongoing scholarly quest for Christianself-understanding. We cannot, in good taste, ask all the questionswe would like to ask, pursue some lines of investigation, express theconsequences of some of our research in a forthright way. For now,it is the Christian task to keep a respectful silence, and wait for amore appropriate time.As one who has lived on the edges of academic theology for thepast ten years, 1 have often observed this submerged reticence andglimpsed the unexpressed frustration and resentment hiding there.It is as if it were being said, “We must tread lightly here; we mustscreen our thoughts and choose our words carefully. And certainsleeping dogs we must be careful not to rouse.” A few years ago ata meeting of Christian clergy, when this Christian Service in Memoryof the Holocaust was announced to the group, one of my peers letthis resentment surface: ‘Tm sick of hearing about the Holocaust,year after year after year after year; when are we going to hear theend of it!”102 ConsensusI speak here to nay fellow Christians. 1 remind you that this is aChristian Service in Memory of the Holocaust. We do not hold thisservice just for the sake of Jews. We do it also for our own sake. Wedo not remember the Holocaust out of some generous impulse toshare with our Jewish neighbors the pain of their terrible memory.The memory is also ours. If this were not so, there would be everyreason for the common complaint: Why just the Holocaust? Whatabout Cambodia, Somalia, the victims of Josef Stalin, aboriginalpeoples around the globe?We Christians remember the Holocaust, must remember theHolocaust, because it is an event in our history. And it is not just asingle, isolated event. It is the culminating event in a long history ofdenigration, persecution, displacement, denial of rights of Jews byChristians, not just by the Hitlers of Christendom, but by those wecall saints—^Ambrose and Chrysostom, those we claim as inspiredleaders—^Martin Luther, those who shaped the theology and practiceof the Christian Church.We remember the Holocaust, must remember the Holocaust,because we need to learn what it is in our tradition that is the sourceof that terrible history. And we need to do this for our own sake.Those who feel the Holocaust has become a millstone aroundour necks—holding us back, inhibiting what we can say, keeping us|from the pursuit of the truth—have not yet grasped this fact: theHolocaust is as much a pivotal event in Christian history as it is inJewish history. It is not just sympathy that is required here, but in-sight. It is not just tender feelings about Jewish sensibilities thatmake us think twice before we speak, but honest perplexity aboutthe mysterious poison latent in our own tradition.This millstone can become a milestone, a marker of progress. Inorder for that to happen, our internal conversation about our own Ireligious heritage must take place in the presence—actual or im- j;plicit—of the other. This means to study, to preach, to teach, to ! !worship, to pray as if the other were in the same room. When 1 study Ithe Gospel of John, 1 need to have Jewish ears there to hear alongwith me the 71 times that John refers to Jews, most of them hostile.1 need that Jewish presence so that 1 feel the sting of this litany andcannot avoid dealing with it. When 1 worship, 1 need to be aware that ;the borrowing of Jewish circumlocutions for the divine name in the 'In Memory of the Holocaust 103Gloria of our liturgy can sound more like polemic than praise: “forThou alone art the Holy One, Thou alone art the Lord, Thou aloneart the Most High, Jesus Christ with the Holy Spirit in the glory ofGod the Father.” We need to preach, teach, worship as if the otherwere in the same room.Back in 1981,at the first Christian Service in Memory of the Holo-caust in the Toronto area. Sister Maureena Fritz of the Sisters of Sionproposed four “lines of action”: 1. Insert a day of remembrance ofthe Holocaust in the Church’s liturgical calendar; 2. Open a chair ofJewish studies in each Faculty of Theology; 3. Publish a New Testa-ment with footnotes explaining texts that could be interpreted in anantisemitic way; 4. Officially recognize the State of Israel.All four still make sense. 1 would emphasize the second: Estab-lish a chair of Jewish studies, filled by a Jewish scholar, in each Fac-ulty of Theology. To convert those stubborn millstones that remaininto milestones, we need to study, to teach, to preach, to worship, topray as if the other were in the same room. For as a matter of fact,we arexn the same room. We share space in a small world. What wehave spoken hitherto among our own kind, we must now speak outloud to each other, so that we can learn what we need to about our-selves and travel together even further along the road to mutual trust.Notes^ Sermon preached at the Eighteenth Annual Christian Service in Memoryof the Holocaust at St. Peter’s (Erindale) Anglican Church, Mississauga,Ontario, 26 April 1998.^ N.T. Wright, The New Testament and the People ofGod (Minneapolis:Fortress Press, 1992) 148.

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In Memory of the Holocaust: We Have Come a Long Way

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