Sweeping across Germany, the Allied forces, in the closing days of the Second World War, search the farms and houses of the countryside looking for snipers. It is a dangerous job, and every precaution is taken. They search everywhere, no matter how unlikely a place may be to contain a sniper.
This particular house is one of those. It is abandoned–in fact, it’s not much more than a heap of rubble. Surely there can be no sniper hiding here. But the soldiers search anyway. They go through what was the living room, kitchen, and so on. No sign of a sniper. Then one of them notices what looks like the entrance to the bowels of the earth; a square hole surrounded by crumbled bricks and leading into sheer blackness. Some of the searchers get flashlights and prepare to enter the black hole. When the light penetrates the darkness, they can see that this was, in another time, the basement of the house. Being in the dark, they are very cautious lest an enemy soldier be hiding there.
After a while, they find no one and are about to leave when one of the searchers sees something on one of the basement’s crumbling walls. Walking over they see a Star of David scratched onto the wall. Underneath it, in rough lettering is a message: “I believe in the sun–even when it does not shine;
I believe in love–even when it is not shown;
I believe in God–even when he does not speak.”
A victim of the Holocaust had died in that dark place. And that person spoke to the living of faith; a faith that somehow was maintained even as all seemed lost; as they were sinking in a sea of hatred, violence, and war.
The passage from Romans which we heard this morning has, in the past, been considered to be a digression in the letter as a whole. This part of it was thought to be incidental to what comes before it and follows it. But scholars now have another view. In chapter nine Paul addresses what is called the “problem” of Israel. The problem is stated in this way: if God has acted in Christ to save all who have faith, both Jewish and Gentile, without partiality, and if converts to Christianity are children of Abraham and heirs of God, then what has become of God’s people–the Jewish people, and what has become of God’s promises to them?
In the chapters that follow today’s passage, Paul struggles to hold together his deeply held convictions. He is sure that God has acted in Christ to save both Jewish and Gentile people and that Israel’s gifts and calling are irrevocable. Paul cannot believe that God will abandon his people. We are shown a God who acts to save and defend all people. It is a God that delights in his creation and wishes to not let one person slip away. This God will do the miraculous to help his people–all people.
The gospel passage from Matthew is one that illustrates this point. Matthew connects Jesus’ withdrawal to “a lonely place” directly with the news of the martyrdom of John the Baptist. Presumably Jesus wanted to grieve in private for the death of the great prophet. This story of the feeding of the five thousand is rich in symbolism. It repeats, in a manner of speaking, the experience of Israel in the Sinai desert, fed by God with the manna from heaven. It is interesting that later Jewish tradition added to this story the note that the Israelites also had fish as a relish in the desert. In a sense Jesus is the new Moses who brings redemption from slavery and want.
When the darkness of want, deprivation, hardship, persecution threatens God acts to save. Surrounded by war, by violence, by persecution and threat of death, that Holocaust victim in that cellar in Germany found God responding to them in some way. How, we don’t know and cannot ever know.
But in that dark cellar they found God with them in their persecution. When they began to sink under the tidal wave of the Holocaust, God was there.
I hope that none of us, or any people for that matter, will have to face such a situation again. But when faced with situations in which we find faith and hope in God most difficult; whenever we come to a place of challenge we will be able to say, as some of the victims of the Holocaust did:
“I believe in the sun–even when it does not shine;
I believe in love–even when it is not shown;
I believe in God–even when he does not speak.”
Amen.
Terrance Bell
TEXTS: Isaiah 55:1-5 Romans 9:1-5 Matthew 14:13-21