St. Paul’s Church in
Bergen & Church of the Incarnation, Jersey City NJ
June 17, 2018
Year B, Proper 6: The
Fourth Sunday after Pentecost
1 Samuel 15:34-16:13
Psalm 20
2 Corinthians 5:6-17
Mark 4:26-34
Seeds of Hate Or Seeds of Love?
If
we’re Facebook friends, you know that pretty much every weekday I post a
Scripture verse or a quote from a great Christian, past or present.
I
don’t remember when or why I started doing this, but I’ve been at it for a long
time now, and enough people have told me it’s meaningful and helpful for them
that I’m reluctant to stop – plus, this seemingly small act early morning searching
through Scripture and reflecting on the words of holy women and men has evolved
into an important part of my own spiritual practice.
Sometimes
the Scripture or saint of the day don’t quite offer what I’m looking for, so my
next stop on the search for inspiration is a website that lists the names of
prominent people who have died on that particular day.
Maybe
you think that’s a little weird or morbid, but I find it really interesting!
Anyway,
that’s what I was doing this past Tuesday morning – scrolling through the names
of the dead - when I saw a name that will probably be completely unfamiliar to
all of you but that I know well:
Michael
von Faulhaber, a Roman Catholic cardinal, who died on June 12, 1952.
Faulhaber
was the Archbishop of Munich, Germany, for a very long time, from 1917 until
his death, and he also happens to have been a distant relative of mine – my great-grandmother’s
cousin. (If you google him, I think you’ll see a resemblance to my father.)
I’ve
been interested in Faulhaber because of this family connection, and also
because he found himself leading the church during what the psalmist calls a
day of trouble – a very real day of trouble during the rise and fall of Hitler
and the Nazis.
As
I’ve mentioned here before, the sad truth is that there were relatively few German
Christians – and relatively few German Christian leaders - who heroically
resisted the Nazis.
Instead, most
Christians, both Catholic and Protestant, either enthusiastically followed
Hitler and his inhuman agenda or chose to keep a low profile to save their skin,
and to save their churches.
I’ve often
wondered what I would do in such circumstances.
For
his part, Cardinal Faulhaber steered a middle course.
As
a patriotic German, he appreciated Hitler’s call to restore Germany’s greatness
and seems to have even managed to convince himself that Hitler, this profoundly
immoral man, was in fact a faithful Christian.
Faulhaber
was well aware of what was happening to the Jews. At first there were seemingly
small acts limiting their freedom, then destroying their businesses and
livelihoods, and eventually ripping them from their homes and sending millions
to misery and death – but, at least at the start, Faulhaber’s attitude seems to
have been that the Jews were strong enough to take care of themselves – that it
wasn’t his problem.
The
Church was his problem, and he was able to see the Nazi threat to the
Church. His main goal, no surprise, was protecting the institution and its
people.
One
of the threats he saw was the call among some Nazis to deny the Jewishness of
Jesus and his first followers – there were even demands that the Church delete
the Old Testament from the Bible.
If
Faulhaber is remembered at all today it’s for a series of relatively bold sermons
he gave during Advent in 1933, insisting that the Hebrew Scriptures formed the
foundation of the Christian faith – and that the Church would die without those
Jewish roots.
He
should get some credit for that, at least, but unfortunately, during the day of
trouble, Faulhaber wasn’t able to translate his concern for the holy book of an
ancient people into care for the Jewish brothers and sisters suffering so
terribly in his own time and place.
In
today’s Gospel lesson, we heard Jesus tell two parables about seeds, and as I
hear them today, I hear Jesus teach us about their enormous power – the
enormous power and potential of small things.
God
seems to have been interested in the power of the small for a very long time – long
ago choosing a small and insignificant people as God’s own – and, as we heard
today, choosing David, choosing a youngest son, choosing the one so
insignificant that his family left him out in the field tending the sheep when
the prophet Samuel came to anoint Israel’s king – surely God wouldn’t choose
the youngest and least experienced, the smallest, to lead God’s people!
The
power and potential of small things.
Unfortunately,
the power and potential of small things cuts both ways, doesn’t it?
A
tiny seed can produce food for many – a tiny seed can produce what Jesus calls
“the greatest of all shrubs,” providing a shady home for the birds of the air.
But,
just like a how few rogue cells can produce powerful life-threatening cancer,
bad seeds can produce great destruction.
That’s
why Jesus is always so concerned with what’s going on inside our hearts.
That’s why Jesus still
shocks us by saying that what’s going on inside our hearts is just as important
as what we actually do – something as small as just a feeling can produce great
goodness or terrible destruction.
So
Jesus offers the still shocking teaching that we’ll be judged for the anger in
our hearts just as sure as we’ll be judged for murdering someone – that we’ll
be judged harshly for even just saying to another person, “You fool.”
Jesus
offers the still shocking teaching that if we look at another person with lust,
it’s as if we’ve committed adultery.
Jesus
offers the still shocking teaching to remove whatever small piece – a hand or
an eye – to remove whatever small piece of us causes us to sin.
Jesus
teaches that what’s going on in our hearts is just as important as what we
actually do.
The
power and potential of small things.
As
I’ve thought about Cardinal Faulhaber and his day of trouble, I’ve thought
about how the Nazi menace started with such small seeds of hate.
At
first, the Nazi Party was a fringe group, seen as unimportant, led by a man who
was seen by most serious people as a joke, someone who could be easily
controlled by wiser statesmen, who could use this ridiculous man to hold on to
their own power and carry out their agenda.
And,
then other small seeds of hate were planted.
The
transformation of aimless young people into Nazi thugs.
The
rallies with their mindless chants of hatred.
The
passage of laws limiting the freedom of Jews, and others like gays and the
disabled and even Jehovah’s Witnesses, all those who were seen as undesirable, those
seen as the cause of the nation’s troubles.
And,
sooner than one would have imagined, one of the most civilized lands on earth,
the country that produced magnificent literature and sublime music, that
country and those people launched a massive project to round up and kill
millions of people and instigated the most destructive war the world had ever
seen.
It
all started so small, with such small seeds, that perhaps we can understand how
Faulhaber and so many others, concerned with their daily business, could have
missed it, and eventually found themselves morally compromised and even
fighting for their own survival in the day of trouble.
And
now, you and I find ourselves living in our own day of trouble.
And,
it’s not too hard to see the small seeds that have grown quickly into noxious
weeds that threaten so much today.
After
September 11, our country was briefly, beautifully, united but also so very
terrified – that was the whole point of the attacks, after all – and our
government quickly began taking unprecedented actions, planting many small
seeds that have brought us to this point:
Among
other things, our government created the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement
– better known as ICE – an organization with a cool name but often brutal tactics
– ICE, whose officers frequently defend their actions, including as we all know
now separating children from their parents, defend their actions with the
chilling and all too familiar claim that that they are just following orders.
Our government planted
many small seeds by launching endless wars in faraway places, and torturing captives
at Guantanamo Bay and at secret sites all around the world.
Our government
became even more secretive, limiting the freedom of the press.
All
these small but powerful seeds – all these small seeds that most of us missed,
or if we paid attention we accepted them because we were led by people we
rightly or wrongly believed were decent, humble, honest, and well-intentioned,
never considering what might happen if we ever found ourselves led by people
with obviously less noble traits.
And
so now, in the day of trouble, we seem to be getting very friendly with “Hitler” and turning our back on “Churchill.”
Now,
in the day of trouble, truth itself is under daily assault.
Now,
in the day of trouble, children are being forcibly taken from their parents and
warehoused – and the Attorney General of the United States quotes Romans 13:1
to defend that policy, using the same out-of-context verse about obeying the
government that was much beloved by Christians who justified slavery and, yes,
Christians who supported the Nazis.
Just
like Cardinal Faulhaber and so many others in the past, now, in the day of
trouble, you and I, we Christians, face some big choices, some big questions:
What
kind of powerful seeds do we allow to be planted and to grow in our hearts?
And,
what kind of powerful seeds do we plant in the world?
Seeds
of hate?
Or,
seeds of love?
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