Palm Sunday

I went for the first time fifteen years ago.   I’ve been back a few times since then.     And each time, it’s heavy.   Going to the Holocaust Museum weighs the heart down.   It’s a heavy place to experience.   The atrocities, the violence, the horror one group could inflict on another – it’s a vision of inhumanity, a vision that comes from darkness.   Is it hate?   Hate, yes.   But not in way we’re familiar with.   This hate wasn’t emotional.   It’s more troubling, more sinister than that.   This hate was based on intellect.    The Nazi leaders didn’t necessarily “feel” hatred towards the ones they were killing.   They were just doing what they thought was the right thing, what was best for their country, their Fatherland.    

The time in that museum; the pictures, the shoes, the clothes, the children – who are now elderly, telling their stories – the evidence of horror, calculated, methodical, non-emotional horror.…  well, it weighs one down.    

It’s often called the Holocaust.    A holocaust, in Hebrew tradition, is a burnt offering to God.   This holocaust is an offering, not to the Creator God of the Jews, but the twisted god of psychopathology… the pathology of an insane leader who convinced a whole nation to worship at the altar of death.   So, some Jews don’t usually call this a Holocaust.  To them that’s offensive!    They call it Shoah – the Hebrew word for “catastrophe”.   

After having lived through this, the world promised… “Never Again”!    Never again, we said.  Never again would the world allow such a travesty against humanity, against human beings, against people!     And yet, it has happened again.    It happened in Cambodia in the ‘70’s, when the Khemer Rouge brutalized the ones that didn’t go along with their new society.    It happened again in the war between the Serbs and Croats after Yugoslavia broke apart in the 90’s.   It happened in Rwanda in 1994.    It happened in the Sudan not 10 years ago.    It’s happening right now in the Middle East – one group trying to exterminate another, trying to erase them from the earth.   

It is happening now.    And it will again.    We hope, we pray, that it won’t though.    Why do we keep believing it won’t?   Why do we keep believing this kind of violence – senseless brutalizing violence – one group trying to exterminate another, will ever someday stop?   

Violence like this does exists.  It has existed as long as humanity has had a dark place in its heart.   It has existed as long as humanity has allowed that darkness to overwhelm the light in that very same heart.   

What would a man have thought if he’d seen Jesus come through the gates of Jerusalem 20 centuries ago?    That man, living under the brutal oppression of the Romans – what would he have thought?    The Romans were no strangers to violence and brutality… even genocide!    Maybe that man yearned for his freedom?    Maybe he hated Romans for the deaths of so many of his people… the constant fear – fear of death.   Keeping people scared for their lives works!   It keeps people servile and prostrated, it makes people accept, albeit grudgingly, the boot on their necks.  

On that warm spring morning, 2000 years ago, what would that man have said to his son as Jesus – his Hebrew name Yeshua – came through the city gates?    “Here he comes, son.   See that man?   He’ll save us!    He’ll lead us… he’ll free us!    He’s from the line of King David!    What a king he was, son!     And remember Moses… who freed his people from slavery in Egypt?   That man you see coming… he’s our new Moses!   He’ll lead us to freedom!  He’s our Moses and our David!”  

Oh, my boy… he’ll lead us to freedom.    To us, this is a nice story.   It’s something we say every year at this time.    And yet how many of us have lived under oppression?    How many of us have experienced genocide?   How many of us have been marked for death simply for what we believed, or for our tribal affiliation, or for being in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong people?    How many of us have been in positions where we couldn’t do anything about the violence inflicted on us or our people?     

That man back then knew – the father of the little boy.      He and his people were oppressed.    They were violently and brutally subjugated.    And 40 years after that man told his son that the one they saw coming into the city would free them, 40 years later, the Israelites would try to break free from the bonds of this oppression – they would try and exercise their rights as human beings; the rights to a life free of brutality.    And they would fail.     The Romans would crush this attempt to throw-off their chains, and would move to destroy the Israelite people, the Romans would try and eradicate the Israelites from the earth.        

And this man, Yeshua, who came through those city gates just before the Passover 2000 years ago – the same night that Moses led his people to freedom… this man, riding a donkey but with so many of his people’s hopes and dreams riding on his success… militarily…  politically….   religiously…  this man – he did come to change things…. To bring a new way.    And he died for it.       

We know how this ended for the Israelites.    We know the darkness of the human heart will hold sway on the peoples of the world again… and again…

That father in Jerusalem, two millennia ago – that father also knew of the darkness of the human heart.  He also knew the history of his people – the history of suffering and subjugation and threats of annihilation at the hands of others; first the Assyrians, then the Babylonians, and now the Romans.    How could he know that his ancestors would feel the very same fear generations later, again and again through the centuries afterward, and most recently at the hands of the Nazis.  And yet… extermination, and the threat of it, would continue to plague not just the Jewish people, but the human species.   He wouldn’t have known the particulars – who would be trying to exterminate whom – but I’m sure he would have no trouble believing peoples would continue to subjugate and kill other peoples from the earth.   

But in that moment, as the father saw the healer and preacher and leader, come through those city gates, in that time of Passover… in that moment… he believed all things were possible.   He believed the rightness of right, and the goodness of good would prevail.    He believed that it was possible that his God would intervene, that his God would plunge His hands into the stream of time to free them… as God did in the time of Moses.  

We’ve seen it more than once, and each time we say “never again”.   We say it in spite of the evidence to the contrary.   We say human rights should prevail in a world moving further and further away from justice…  and rightness.  We continue to say “never again”.   And we continue to pray for justice and peace…  in a world that struggles for control of resources and opportunity and power.   And we know this struggle among the powers will continue after our time is over… just as that father knew.    And yet… and yet… we also know it is within our power – the power held within each generation – to find reconciliation and peace, and justice – true justice.   We know because we are reminded of it – not just in people gathered in religious communities, but certainly there in those places!    And we’ve seen it in the pages of history as well!    There have been places, kingdoms, countries, peoples, that have sought this kind of New World.   And they didn’t last forever.   But we also know… we KNOW… that evil… and darkness… and oppression… will not last forever either.    So we keep praying, and we keep saying – Never Again!   And we repeat stories like this, of a humble servant of the Lord coming into the very middle of Power….  and challenging it with a deep knowing that there is another way… a way of true justice and peace and respect.     

We must continue to tell these stories again… and again… and again… so we don’t forget that there is another way, a more just way.   We tell these stories again so we don’t lose ourselves in the belief that violence and genocide are “just how humans are”… because the very same heart that expresses the annihilation of others, can also express the wholeness we all seek.  

A former teacher of mine – a good man, who died a few years back– told me never to be ashamed of idealism!     Hold on to the ideal of a good and just life, of a New Life!   Hold on to it even as it makes its way into the very pit of power and darkness…  astride a donkey.  And can indeed change the world…. If we let it!