While trying to find a livestream link for Sewanee’s University Choir at St. Paul’s Cathedral in London this week, I came up short. They didn’t livestream the service, unlike York Minster, which did so on Sunday. (For those who are interested, I’ll post a link to that service below. Eva has been part of the choir on their cathedral tour in England, and the choir sounds fabulous!) It wasn’t a complete failure, though. I was delighted and surprised to find that Rowan Williams, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, had offered a lecture at St. Paul’s a couple of weeks ago. His lecture is entitled "Truth, Faith, and Politics in a Post-Truth World: Exploring Bonhoeffer Today."
I’ve been a Bonhoeffer fan for a very long time. We’ve studied him a couple of times at Christ Church. I am also a fan of Rowan Williams, who is one of the wisest and most intelligent Archbishops in the modern era. So, while I worked to find the source of a leak in Eva’s car (a clogged A/C condenser line, by the way), I listened to the lecture. It’s a great lecture, and if you’re unfamiliar with Bonhoeffer, Williams’ synopsis of his life and theology is very helpful. One of the key themes that Williams distills in his lecture, and one of the aspects that makes Bonhoeffer’s work enduring, is his assertion that faith in Jesus entails standing with and standing for the vulnerable.
Bonhoeffer’s jumping-off point was specifically concerning the Jews, who he watched face mounting persecution in the lead-up to the worst of the Nazi regime’s atrocities that we now know as The Holocaust. In the mid-1930s, as the worst of the treatment was beginning, Williams recounted Bonhoeffer’s assertion that “nobody had a right to sing plainsong who didn’t lift up their voice in defense of the Jews.” (Anglicans still sing plainsong, but he didn’t mean us, did he?) The wider lens that Bonhoeffer offers the Church is that we are always called to stand with and for those who are suffering. That’s what Christians do, regardless of the dynamics of their suffering. Christians are called to seek solidarity and relationship with all who suffer.
Bonhoeffer was clear that communion with God is found when we are in solidarity with the suffering and the vulnerable. “Taking responsibility for the other and the stranger is a means of knowing God,” is how Williams describes it, adding, “The truth of faith lies in the encounter with Christ who is found in the suffering neighbor.” It’s a fabulous lecture that works its way gently around to the need we all have to recognize this truth in the face of power structures that substitute other views as primary instead. This is the post-truth world we live in, as we witness a series of movements that invite us to ignore or overlook a fundamental truth of the Church as we’ve come to understand it.
The questions and answers at the end of the lecture are as good as the lecture itself. In one question, Williams is asked what he thinks Bonhoeffer would say about the situation in Gaza, and his answer is among the better responses to that tragedy I’ve encountered. Williams suggests that Bonhoeffer would absolutely see this as a time to stand with and stand for all involved – there’s just so much suffering in Gaza, in particular. And he reminded the audience that Bonhoeffer would very much want us to remember why Israel exists and needs to exist in the first place – naming that “we” all played a role in that. But the most impactful insight he shared is that what we’re seeing go on between Israel and those living in Gaza is that we have two groups who have decided that there is no one to stand with or for them, or at least the perception that they have been or will be abandoned.
Williams suggests that this leads to a “nothing to lose” mentality, although I think it’s also an “everything to lose” mentality. Williams’ point is that what we are seeing is so heartbreaking because we have historically failed to stand for and with those who needed it. When the powerful don’t pay mind to the powerless, bad things can happen without a doubt. And when you have nothing – or everything – to lose, you do whatever it takes to survive.
The last couple of weeks have contained heartbreaking headlines about the murder of Jewish persons in Washington DC and this week’s firebomb attack of Jewish persons in Colorado, where there were injuries but fortunately no deaths. Both attacks have been motivated by anti-Jewish sentiment in relation to the violence in Gaza. In both cases, the indiscriminate attacks on Jewish persons because of anger with Israel plants them in the realm of antisemitic terrorism. As I’ve written about before, the tensions in the Middle East, particularly in the Holy Land, are complicated. Because of that, it has been harder for some to keep offering their support for Jews, and yet it is needed now more than ever. That isn’t the same thing as supporting the policies and actions of Israel, just to be clear. Regardless of what we may think of what is happening in Gaza, that shouldn’t telegraph to all Jewish persons in the same way that the act of Palestinian terrorists shouldn’t telegraph to all those living in Gaza.
In closing his remarks on the Gaza-Bonhoeffer question, Williams adds that whatever solution we are praying for “must say to both communities, you are not as vulnerable as you fear because we are committed [to standing with and for you]” Unfortunately, that’s a hard place to be, yet it is a holy place to be as well. We can’t fix what is happening in Gaza, but we have Palestinians and Jews in our community who need us to stand for and with them – at the same time, as hard as that may be. Everyone is scared right now. If you know someone in these communities, they need to know you love them and are committed to them as human beings, regardless of policies and opinions. Our friends at Temple Beth Tefilloh have their next public worship on June 13. I’ll be in Sewanee, but if I weren’t, I would join them. Perhaps some of you reading this might like to join them on my behalf?
And just to be clear, Bohoeffer’s work applies to all suffering people. It applies to all vulnerable people. We are to stand with and stand for anyone who fits those labels. That includes the elderly, prisoners, refugees and immigrants, the mentally disabled, children, LGBTQ+ persons, and those facing persecution of any kind – we know who the vulnerable and the weak in our society are. We don’t get to choose what groups we allow to be mistreated or have their rights taken away. Not if we understand the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
The reason we hold on to Bonhoeffer so tightly is because his story is so poignant, and his theology is so full of truth, including the dangers of forgetting the foundation of our faith and its invitation – its command – to love our neighbors and to stand with and for our vulnerable and our weak neighbors. Despite some recent public theology suggesting that Jesus didn’t mean everyone was our neighbor, we know that scripture and the Church’s traditions are clear: all of God’s children are our neighbors. We don’t need to be hyperbolic about history repeating itself so long as we’re honest about our failures to live into our faith and work to remedy those failures. So, we can agree that history won’t repeat the atrocities of the 20th Century ever again unless we let it repeat, right?
LINKS:
York Minster Evensong: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uwl6D8QFT1s&list=PLpuXEsgzQReN7Ae2PZ7uI3jaxZnHh6RVC&index=5&t=2136s
St. Paul’s, London Rowan Williams Lecture:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKQbo4V4c20
