A Statement on Holocaust Memorial Day, 2018

Today, April 12, is Holocaust Memorial Day. It is a day when our Jewish friends and neighbors recall and lament the horrific genocide committed in Europe during the Second World War.

I believe it should be a time for Christian reflection also.

First, the Jewish people are our brothers and sisters. We share a common humanity. That alone should lead us to lament with them on this solemn occasion.  Whenever people suffer, our hearts should grow heavy, and our voices rise in compassionate cries.

Second, as Christians we owe the Jewish community a debt of gratitude. It was the Jews who transmitted the faith in the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob through the difficult centuries to the rest of the world. The one whose teachings we base our own faith upon, Jesus of Nazareth, lived and taught as a member of the Jewish faith.

Third, as painful as it is for us to acknowledge, the Holocaust needs to be for Christians an occasion of repentance. The hatred and violence of that time did not spring out of nowhere. Nor was it committed only by dedicated Nazis. The sad truth is that Christians had been planting the seeds of anti-semitism for centuries. Anti-Jewish sentiment was based on lies, suspicions, and prejudices fostered in Christian churches and homes. We had been turning our backs on some of the most clear ethical teachings in Scripture for generations. “Love your neighbor as yourself.” “Do unto others as you would have them do to you.” We simply refused to embody these basic commandments. It cost countless Jews their lives, and it left Christians with a burden of shame and guilt for our hostility toward our neighbors.

During the Holocaust, millions of people attended worship on Sunday mornings. On Monday, they returned to their jobs. They built the guns, planes and tanks used to wage war on the world. They went to chemical factories to make the gas used in the camps. They were the engineers, brakemen, and mechanics on the trains that moved the captives to their fate. They went to offices to manage the paperwork or phone lines that made the killing possible. They published the propaganda of the tyrannical regime. They paid their taxes and obeyed the call to support the Reich. Those who suspected something was terribly wrong were mostly silent and passive. Is it possible that we have learned from those awful times?

I believe that if a Christian community has a faith that is worthy of it’s Lord, we must not replicate the egregiously unchristian patterns of the past. Again the swastikas are appearing as spray paint on synagogue walls and cemetery headstones. Again, we hear voices calling for “racial purity.” Again we see signs of hostility toward our Jewish neighbors. Again the fruit of generations of hatred and suspicion are growing in our midst. Words like Minorities, Illegals, Aliens, Foreigners, and Islamists are being tossed about as if they did not represent the same dangerous and faithless attitudes of the past. But now we have seen where this can lead. Now we have no excuse for silence or passivity.

May Christians use the events of the past to inform our call in the present moment. Let us never be the source of hatred or harm to anyone. Let us never accept a society in which murderous rage can go unchecked and unchallenged. Let us always stand with and for anyone who is victimized by violence. Let us speak and act in ways that protect, defend and honor all our neighbors, without distinction.

We have been complicit in unspeakable crimes. Let us never allow ourselves to do so again. Not here, not now, and not ever. May God strengthen us for this task, both for our neighbors’ sake, and for our own.

Peace,

Pastor Scott Cady