A colleague says that when he was a young boy he would scour a stream's edge hunting for frogs. The fun was all in the catching. Once he had a frog in hand, it generally lost its appeal, so he would grant its freedom to search for another frog willing to give a good chase.
He friend Timmy had other ideas. When Timmy caught frogs he liked to squeeze them sideways forcing their mouths open so he could pour gravel down their throats. Laughing with a strange, throaty laughter, he filled them to the point their bodies bulged and then threw them back into the stream.
He went frogging with Timmy exactly one time. Though he was too young to be articulate, Timmy's actions brought him to a full awareness of the expansive range of choices we humans have concerning our behavior. He remembers the incident with vivid clarity because it was one of his first conscious moral awakenings.
He didn't know much of anything about Timmy's home life. He didn't wonder about his parents, how they treated each other or how they treated him. He was too young to ponder issues of psychology, early childhood development or the current sociological context. Timmy was just a neighborhood kid from down the street. But Timmy's actions made something click deep inside of him. It was some basic knowing, a coming to consciousness which had to do with the moral equation of right and wrong.
The man who tells this story says that as the years have gone by, he has gleaned at least two important insights from this childhood incident. The first is that he has met his fair share of adult Timmy's who have found far bigger prey than frogs. But the second insight which has come to him is more potent and condemning. It is the realization that while he was not Timmy, a certain variation of Timmy lives inside of him, a part that is capable of a certain cruelty, a certain disdain for the well-being of others, a certain focus upon his own wants and desires at the expense of others. In other words, he has become aware of his capacity for personal moral failure.
Little boys and girls grow up to be young men and women. The stakes grow larger along with body size and physical maturity. The lessons come harder the older we become and they often come with far greater consequences.(1)
A couple of years ago, a book came out that created quite a stir. It's entitled Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust (New York: Knoph, 1996, by Daniel Goldhagen). It is a professor's study of the ways in which ordinary Germans, nurtured on centuries of anti-Jewish hatred, cooperated in the genocide we call the Holocaust. Professor Goldhagen's thesis is that German anti-Semitism was the primary reason for the killing of six million Jews.
One of the reasons the debate over the book has been so intense is because the author contends that there was something unique about Germans which led them willingly to engage in one of history's chief horrors. Germans murdered Jews, not because of typical human frailty, or because the German economy was in such bad shape, but simply because they were German.
We know that there was some opposition to the Nazis, like theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer and his friends, but the resistance was very limited. We know that there were some voices raised in protest, but they were few. More routine were events like the celebration which honored the commandant of the Lipowa Camp, who was given a grand party on the occasion of his murder of his fifty thousandth Jew. In 1941, there was a similar celebration among the doctors and nurses at the Hadamar Institution to celebrate their ten thousandth euthanasia victim.
Anti-Semitism was a way of life which not only had deep roots in the German culture, but sadly, in the Christian Church in Germany as well. It was not at all unusual for a Christian pastor to condemn Jews and to justify his denunciation by quoting Martin Luther who was openly anti-Semitic.
A few years ago, William Willimon, the Dean of the Duke Chapel preached at a Baptist church in Germany. And a few days after preaching he came across one of the church's newsletters from 1938. The newsletter carried a brief article from the pastor in which he asked, "Does Salvation Come From the Jews?" His answer was a firm "No." He stated that the Jews had forfeited their status before God and were now justly cursed.
It took only one or two evil men to sign the order to send a million victims to Auschwitz. But it took thousands of ordinary train engineers and mechanics and cooks and guards to put them there. It was not simply the deranged Hitler and the SS who followed his orders, it was countless ordinary people who either willingly cooperated with the evil or turned their heads and looked the other way.(2)
This truth was evident to Camilla and me when we visited the concentration camp in Dachau a few years ago. It is not located out in the country away from where people live, it is located in the town next to people's homes. It was impossible for the townspeople not to have known was taking place.
Goldhagen's book reminds us that ordinary Germans citizens played a prominent role in the holocaust, yet his book may do us a disservice. By insisting that there was something unique about the Germans which prompted them to participate in such evil, we are tempted to feel a bit of self-satisfaction that we are not like them. But when I read our own history about our attempts to wipe out the Native Americans or what we did to the Africans whom we made our slaves, I do not believe that the Germans are somehow uniquely demonic.
Jesus told a parable about how easy it is for people to become blind to their own sins by pointing to the sins of others. He made it clear how easy it is for us to become corrupt through our own self-righteousness. He says that two men went into the temple to pray. One of the men was a very good man, a law-abiding citizen who was exceedingly conscientious in following religious law. He prayed daily, he rested on the Sabbath, he fasted twice a week, he gave a tenth of his income to the temple. How many of us here this morning, could say that we are as committed as that man?
The other man who entered the temple was a tax collector - a Jew who took money from his fellow Jews and then handed it over to their oppressors, the Romans. He was the kind of person that your mother always warned you not to hang around with.
Yet in this story that Jesus tells, he is the one who is held up as the stellar example to follow, while the first man is roundly condemned. The reason is simple. The tax collector knows that he fails to live the life God wants him to live. The Pharisee fails to acknowledge the flaws in his character.
The Pharisee projects the image of a morally upright, virtuous person. He appears to be the kind of person that people naturally admire. But when he comes before God, he is so convinced of his own goodness that he cannot see the shortcomings in his own character. All he professes to see is how much better a person he is than the thieves, rogues, adulterers, and tax collectors. Most of us possess an internal desire to compare ourselves favorably with other people. We say, "I'm not so bad. I don't abuse anyone. I don't try to pull dishonest business deals. I don't steal or kill or commit adultery. I live a better life than the average citizen. I'm not absorbed by self-gratification. I give to others. I'm a pretty good person."
All of these things may be absolutely true about you. And if they are, you are probably contributing to making the world a better place. These are things that God wants us to do. But this morning's passage is a warning not to allow the positive attributes of our character to blind us to our shortcomings. Not to allow our strengths to blind us to our weaknesses. Not to allow our accomplishments to blind us to our failings.
One of the unique things about the Christian faith is the belief that it is only when we confront our worst, that we can be our best.
God is looking for honesty, and the season of Lent is a time of truth telling. It is a time for us to look honestly at ourselves and to acknowledge to God that there are some weak spots in our character, and we need God's help.
If your secret prayer is "Thank God, I'm not like those other people," then I suggest you forgo taking the elements of the Lord's Supper today. Because the Bread of Life and the Cup of Salvation are for those who know themselves to be less than perfect. The elements are for those who are in need of God's forgiveness.
It is only when we face the truth about ourselves - including the dark and ugly truth - that we can be healed by the mercy of God.
NOTES
1. From a sermon by Steve Bauman entitled "A Whole Lot of Poor Judgment," preached on The Protestant Hour on March 1, 1998.
2. William Willimon tells of his experience and Goldhagen's book in his sermon, "That He Might Bring Us to God," preached in the Duke Chapel on February 16, 1997.
© 1999 Gregory Knox Jones, all rights reserved
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