Sermon: Holocaust and obedience

Today is Holocaust Memorial Day, the anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi concentration camp at Auschwitz. The day has been observed only since 2001, but its purpose, rather like Remembrance Day, is to value all those who were killed and those who risked their lives to protect or rescue victims, and to try to make sure that such an atrocity never happens again. We give it a permanent place in our collective memory, try to understand its causes and keep ourselves alert and sensitised - lest we forget. In 1933, when the Nazis came to power in Germany, the Jewish population of Europe stood over nine million: by the war's end close to six million had been murdered. Other targets included gypsies and disabled people, as well as Russian and Polish nationals in huge numbers. There can be few of us who have not been confronted in some way, through visits, books, films, or other encounter, with the enormity and sheer human despair of it. It is scarcely possible to believe or to imagine, but we have to believe that people like us were involved. So, without repeating the rituals of what we do on Remembrance Day, we do remember them.

But have we learnt? Here the story is mixed. On one hand, we have only to say the words Bosnia, Rwanda, Darfur to recognise that, in global terms, the learning has been limited. And even if, in Britain, we now come down heavily on the National Front, how do Europeans, who have lived through our own holocaust, respond to similar events happening in other parts of the world? And before we become too complacent, on a smaller scale but within our own country, we have been hearing this last week of the trial of three teenagers who beat to death a young man with learning difficulties. The potential for human persecution remains constantly live.

On the other hand, in Europe we have experienced an explosion of human rights legislation outlawing discrimination on grounds of gender, race, sexual orientation, disability, age and religion. You often hear people react against it, as red tape, as political correctness, as bureaucracy gone mad, or they invoke the greatest insult you can cram into one word - ‘Europe'. We do, indeed, get ourselves into terrible tangles by trying to legislate for what should be normal human behaviour, but you could see all this as part of our collective learning from the Holocaust. We can complain about the mechanics of it, but at its best, the motivation in all this, is to build in the processes and values which might prevent Holocaust.

One of those killed by the Nazis was Dietrich Bonhoeffer. A brilliant young theologian he condemned Nazi persecution of the Jews, and urged his fellow Lutherans to reject as idolatry the Nazi claim that the state deserved allegiance above that owed to God. American friends got him out of Germany for his own safety, but soon he felt he had to return. He wrote to his friend, "I shall have no right to participate in the reconstruction of Christian life in Germany after the war if I do not share the trials of this time with my people." Returning to Germany involved personal danger and controversy. Though he respected pacifism and non-violence in principle he felt himself compelled to join a plot to end the oppression by killing Hitler. The rights and wrongs of that have been widely debated, and which of us would like to change places with him, but Bonhoeffer was able to write from prison, "I am thankful and glad to go the way in which I am being led. My past life is abundantly full of God's mercy, and, above all sin, stands the forgiving love of the Crucified." That, I take it, means that when you have to choose between two evils, you know sin is involved somewhere inescapably, and all you can do is to rely on God's mercy and to try to follow where God is leading you.

This following of God's call is the link with today's gospel. Simon Peter and his brother are fishing: Jesus says, "Follow me, I'll make you fish for people!" and "Immediately they left their nets and followed him". Likewise, James and John immediately get up and go.  We are not told anything about their psychology, what made them do it, just the bare fact of their obedient response. Bonhoeffer, in his well-known book significantly called the Cost of Discipleship says this, "The first step places the disciple in the situation where faith is possible. If he refuses to follow and stays behind, he does not learn how to believe." It is that statement which has been challenging me as I have thought about today's reading. Where are those points in life where we hear the call of Christ and can follow or not? Do we all have them? And is this call about a conversion experience or living a moral life? And is there a difference? On Friday we celebrated the conversion of St Paul. He certainly had a call. A complete turnabout, from persecuter to proclaimer. But that same day I was talking with some of the young people visiting us from Lesotho, a country which is 98% Christian. There, most people are Christians from birth: for them, as they become adults, they take responsibility for their inherited faith mainly, I was told, by choosing right and turning away from wrong. Not one decisive call, but a whole pattern of them as they go about their daily lives just as Peter and Andrew were doing. Is that not closer to the experience of most of us?

Of course, the call of the disciples is part of that breaking in of the Kingdom of heaven which is arriving in Jesus. For these fishermen, it had been different until this moment. Peter and Andrew, James and John could remain in obscurity, pursuing their lives and work quietly, observing the law and waiting for the coming of the Messiah. ‘But now he has come, and his call is heard. Faith can no longer mean sitting still and waiting whilst you live your own life - they must rise and follow him.' The Kingdom makes its challenge: are you a subject or not? It is this willingness to move, to take on radical, practical change, which is so important in Bonhoeffer's understanding. It is what took him back to Germany and what made him try to bring a halt to oppression. It was not a once-for-all thing, but a state of radical responsiveness. To be obedient to the call of the King is what it is to be a subject. But this compelling sense of call also takes us back to the Old Testament prophets like Elisha, who was out ploughing when the prophet Elijah cast his prophetic mantle upon him, or Amos who was sent by God from following the flock to prophesy to his people. And at least one commentator suggests that this connects with what happened in late Judaism when a pagan converted to Israel's God and became a Jew. Being converted meant a break with ones property, home and family. So the challenge and the crisis was perhaps more recognizable within New Testament culture than it is in ours.

But did Peter and Andrew already have faith that enabled them to respond to the call, or did they, as Bonhoeffer suggests, discover their faith by responding? In his discussion of this Bonhoeffer argues that obedience and faith go together, they are interdependent, but. "Faith is only real when there is obedience, never without it. Faith becomes faith in the act of obedience."  So the graphic account of the call of these fishermen stands for us as an exemplary image: this is a picture of what faith means. The King calls, and you go. But what if Jesus never comes along your bit of the beach and you don't ever hear a call? I know people who would say ‘yes, that's me. I never hear a call. How would I know it wasn't just my own thoughts?' It is a good question widely asked. But there is more than one way in which the King calls for allegiance. In today's gospel Jesus does two other things besides calling the fishermen. He teaches in the synagogues and proclaims "Repent for the kingdom of heaven has come near", and he heals every disease and sickness amongst the people. If you have brought your hurts to him and been healed, do you just walk away? Isn't there a call in there somewhere? You have been asked for your allegiance. If you have heard the message of a new regime about to come into power, are you a collaborator with it or are you part of the resistance? You have been asked for your allegiance. And today's reading goes on into the sermon on the mount. It is scarcely possible to listen with any degree of faith to the sermon on the mount and not to hear the call to follow, in some aspect of our living. In the experience of many Christians there may be very few occasions in a lifetime when Jesus stops in front of you and gives you a note with your name on it saying ‘Hey, you, yes I mean you - follow me!', but there are many, too many occasions where we know very well what we ought to do if we were being obedient, and we don't do it.

The young man from Lesotho was impressed by all our huge church buildings but could not understand why so few English people attend them. He shook his head, "I can't understand what's wrong... (...with you English", he might have added, but he was too polite). Of course, we are right to be cautious about imagining that God is telling us to do this or that. We all know the horror stories of religious delusion. But delusion-anxiety can really inhibit your faith. That's why we are placed within supportive Christian communities, why we have clergy who are called to the care of souls, why there are creeds and books and courses (yes, and even sermons). It is especially why we have bishops, and this is what our Bishop Tom says about today's gospel: "Sometimes his call comes slowly, starting like a faint murmur and growing until we can no longer ignore it. Sometimes he calls people as suddenly and dramatically as he called Peter and Andrew, James and John. When that happens to you, by whatever means and at whatever pace, you will know; Jesus has a way of getting through, and whatever we are engaged with -whatever nets we are mending or fish we are catching - somehow we will be sufficiently aware of his presence and call to know what it is we're being asked to do."

This is the road all disciples travel with the Lord who calls. It is not just the self-indulgent fancy of religious people. We are apt to use the term ‘discipleship' rather loosely these days, but the call of Peter and Andrew sharpens up something of what it means. When the King calls, you go. The Nazis showed us the kind of kingdom we do not want to belong to: Bonhoeffer showed us how to belong to the Kingdom of God. "Faith becomes faith in the act of obedience".