It's been a rich week and this last day did not disappoint. We went to the Arab village of Abu Ghosh for lunch and then on to a monastic community of French Benedictines. When I walked through the gate I remembered the place from my last visit - a community where you feel immediately welcomed. There we spoke with Brother Olivier. To get a small sense of what we experienced, you can read a wonderful article about him and the community here.
Olivier is a Benedictine, but his ministry reminds of me of another monk in another century, Francis of Assisi, who went to the Holy Land and met with a sultan. Olivier told us several times about what it is like to be a Christian, in an Arab Village, in the Jewish State of Israel. "It's complicated," he said. But his whole person exudes joy. He is a bridge builder in a world bent making more walls and he exudes hope in a part of the world where it is easy to despair. What can one little monk from Normandy do in one little monastery in one little Arab village to make the world a better place? No more nor less than we are all able to do, with God's help.
Before visiting with Olivier, we'd been to Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center. That is a hard experience to find words for. While I've been to the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. and I've been to Dachau and I've been to Ann Frank's House, I don't think one is ever "prepared." I have written here over the years about Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the Community at Le Chambon who resisted the Nazis. I admire and in some small measure try to emulate their clarity and their courage in the face of evil.
I was once more reminded at Yad Vashem that in the early years of Hitler's rise to power, when he still could have been resisted, that far too many people were silent and in their silence became complicit. Whether they were afraid, or could not understand, or were not "political" or said that religion isn't about politics is hard to know. Probably some mix of all of the above. But what is clear is that far too often, the Church stood idly by. The pope stood idly by. Pastors and lay people went to church, sang the hymns, but didn't act. In short, Bonhoeffer and the people of Le Chambon were the exceptions who proved the rule: the Church failed to speak up, and to show love of neighbor when it was most desperately needed.
We live in a small, small world. While my day was unfolding today, I read a sermon on the bus that was preached last weekend at Harvard's Memorial Church by the Chaplain, Jonathan Walton. You can read it here.
How do we act in the face of evil and injustice? We do what we can to act like Brother Olivier by building bridges instead of walls. We do what we can, including the small ways that our pilgrim band has shared something special together, as Christians and Jews, as people all created in the image of the living God. And then we pray that it is enough.
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