A profound sadness visits me each time I hear a reference to the Holocaust, the systematic killing of six million Jewish people during World War II. I wonder what can be said or done to commemorate that event today? We read books and study history. But is there something more that we, as Christians, should be doing?
Elie Wiesel survived the Auschwitz death camp and has written and spoken about his experiences. He states that silence and indifference have been the primary reactions over the last 60 years. Survivors silently tried to carry on with their lives. Returning soldiers did not want to speak about what they saw, or they found that people did not want to hear of the horror they had witnessed. Even today, many people and nations do not wish to remember. Only 138 out of 191 member nations of the United Nations agreed to allow a commemoration of the Auschwitz liberation in the United Nations General Assembly. Even fewer attended.
Few people have a frame of reference for something as horrific as genocide or ethnic cleansing. Therefore any act of remembering is a giant stretch. How can we relate to such events? Genocide and ethnic cleansing are now horrific realities in many people's collective consciousness including the killing fields of Cambodia, the Armenian Genocide of 1915, the Rwanda slaughter of 1994 and the ethnic cleansing carried out in Bosnia and Herzegovina. But even being aware of these past atrocities does not alert the world to action about the genocide presently happening in Darfur, Sudan.
For Christians, remembrance is not just a mental activity, it is a call to action. Beyond a profound sadness, beyond worldly entertainment, Jesus Christ draws Christians forward to an engagement to work for peace and goodwill. Lent, the traditional period of reflection encourages Christians to examine their own beliefs and to explore whether we are complicit in any action. The question posed by the spiritual, Were You There When They Crucified My Lord? should draw us to respond with repentance that, yes, we were there, complicit in all of the proceedings.
As Christians our remembrance of human history is to keep before us the inhumanity that all humankind vests on one another. We take seriously the fact that sin is in the world and that human beings have yet to learn how to live together and accept differences. The cross of Christ is the redemptive symbol for what God did to draw us forward to acknowledge the evil we do as humans and bring us to a place where we desire to help one another.
Lent draws us into the desert for a period of reflection and remembrance. Holy Week encourages us to walk and to watch with Jesus Christ. Through these acts of Christian remembrance we acknowledge all of the horrors that we have inflicted upon others, individually and corporately. But we also commit ourselves to greater involvement in God's world to bring about understanding, acceptance and love. These actions involve an uphill journey. But we know that at the top of the hill there is a cross that answers and refutes humanity's violence in its most extreme and offers the way to life.
As with other Canadian charitable organizations The Presbyterian Church in Canada through Presbyterian World Service and Development, received outstanding support for our Tsunami Disaster Appeal. As of Feb. 15, over $925,000 has been donated.
PWS&D is coordinating our response within Canada with other denominations (in order to ensure maximum matching of CIDA funding) and then overseas through the Action by Churches Together (ACT) network to ensure that we are focused and acting in unity with the many agencies who are responding.
There is no scale to weigh human suffering. It is crass to base response to any disaster on the number of deaths. Christian teaching urges us to remember that the poor, the dispossessed and those less fortunate will always be with us. The thrust of Christian witness and outreach has therefore always sought to identify with those in need. The vast majority of those who perished were poor people living in humble dwellings in out of the way places.
It is obvious that Canadian Presbyterians continue to hold a strong theology in mission, responding to people as they attempt to improve their societies or when catastrophic disasters befall them. Once again, we are thankful that God is using our church in such an effective way.
