The Righteous Gentiles

The Righteous Gentiles of World War II

“Lord of the Exodus, who delivers your people with a strong hand and a mighty arm: Strengthen your Church with the examples of the righteous Gentiles of World War II to defy oppression for the rescue of the innocent; through Jesus Christ..” Collect of the day: The Righteous Gentiles, July 16, Holy Women, Holy Men, Celebrating the Saints, Church Publishing 2019.

Lutz in bombed garden of British legation

Holy Women, Holy Men is a trial expanded calendar of commemorations of saints authorized by the 2009 General Convention of the Episcopal Church that includes many modern people of faith and apostolic action. The people remembered on July 16  are the thousands of Christians and people of faith who saved Jews from the Holocaust. One of them was Carl Lutz, an Evangelical Christian who was a Swiss Vice-Council in Budapest  who negotiated with the Nazis for the deportation of more than 60,000 Jews to Palestine, probably saving more lives than any other.

Lutz had gained permission to issue emigration papers for 8000 Jews to Palestine. He interpreted  it as for 8000 families, saving thousands more.  There is a 2014 American film that tells of  Lutz’s work with Pinchas Rosenbaum in Budapest during German occupation of Hungry called Walking with the Enemy. Lutz also established seventy-six safe houses in Budapest where Jews were hidden including the now famous Glass House, all of which the diplomat declared as Swiss territory. There is also a documentary about Lutz called The Forgotten Hero.

I honestly believe we each are given many moments to make a difference in the lives of others. The moments may not be as dangerous or risky as Lutz’s on the international scene, but in our own environment they may still carry risks. It is good for us to see how people who came before us were creative in making changes and finding loopholes where there seemed to be no way out as they worked around systems that were awful beyond words. I can only believe this was the work of the Holy Spirit in the worst of times. I know that same Holy Spirit is working in us today.

Carl Lutz, International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation www.raoulwallenberg.net

Joanna joannaseibert.com

Thurman: Love

Love from my heart

“I want to be more loving in my heart! It is often easy to see it with my mind, and give assent to the thought of being loving. But I want to be more loving in my heart! So I must ease the tension in my heart that ejects the sharp barb, the stinging word. I want to be more loving in my heart so that, through both unconscious awareness and through deliberate intent, I shall be a kind, gracious human being. I want to be more loving in my heart!” Howard Thurman, For the Inward Journey, Daily Quote, Inwardoutward.org, July 13, 2018, Church of the Saviour.

Howard Thurman was an African American theologian and educator who greatly influenced Martin Luther King Jr. in the theology of racial nonviolence in our last century. I read into this quote that Dr. Thurman is actually praying to connect to love, to the Christ, the divine, within himself. I also hear the difficulty he may be having “ejecting the sharp barb.” We can be comforted in knowing that this great proponent of nonviolence knows it is not an easy task. He is praying that when we connect to this love, the divine within, that we will love others, “be a kind and gracious human being”  consciously as well as an unconsciously.

 Dr. Thurman is reminding us that when we are living in connection with the Holy Spirit, the Divine within us, we will know the fruit of the Spirit, “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.” (Galatians 5:22-23). We know we are connected to the Divine within us when we feel and know these feelings and act accordingly, but how do we get there? This is the calling of every spiritual practice, meditation, prayer,  reading, corporate worship,  fasting, and so many others, to put ourselves in position to connect to God within.

Perhaps if Paul were writing today he might have told his scribe to use the word “nonviolence” as one of the fruit of the Spirit even though it is already so loudly speaking out in all the other fruit of the Spirit.

Joanna joannaseibert.com  

Esther Harding: Change

Change

“But we cannot change anyone else; we can change only ourselves and then usually only when the elements that are in need of reform have become conscious through their reflection in someone else.”

-M. Esther Harding, The I and the Not-I, Daily Quote, July 16, 2018, InwardOutward, Church of the Saviour

Esther Harding describes this concept of how we change so concisely. We most often only recognize the parts of ourselves that need changing reflected in others.  We say, “This is awful. I certainly do not want to be like that.” Then by some unknown factor, perhaps God’s Grace, we realize, that character defect, that sin, that failing is also in us. I often find myself not wanting to be around that person. That is sometimes a clue that they are carrying that part of us we do not recognize but  are repulsed by it.

The opposite of this is of course true. People we most admire  carry a gift we do not recognize in ourselves as well.

I also know from 12 step work how people change. They reach what is called a bottom. They become so overwhelmed with their life, so “sick and tired” of how miserable their life is that they will do anything to change.

So, what does all this have to do with our life in the Spirit? My experience is that it is indeed the Spirit, the Christ, the God within us that leads us to change, that whispers in our ear that those defects in others may be in us, that there is a better life planned for us. Those is 12 step call it a “moment of clarity.” I believe that moment of clarity is God speaking to us and for many reasons we are now in a position to listen. We are able to listen with “the ear of our heart.”

Joanna  joannaseibert