Somewhere in the space between villains and martyrs are ordinary people like us, neither completely holy nor completely wicked. Teasing out where someone lies on that continuum can be tricky. Sometimes wonderful and horrible things are done by the exact same person. The #MeToo movement has been a sickening and exhausting reminder of this complexity, though we’ve always known that it is sometimes hard to stick people in the hero box or in the villain box and expect them to stay there. The Rev. Dr. King was a courageous faith leader and an adulterer, and one of the greatest American theologians of the last century, from the non-violent Mennonite tradition, was revealed as a serial predator, using his prestige and power in ways that amounted to coercion and sexual harassment. Can his theological thinking be separated from his misconduct?
Figuring out good guys and bad guys can be especially difficult when a whole nation is swept into madness, the banality of evil, questions of complicity.
Let us consider the story of two brothers from Bavaria, born at the turn of the last century. Their father worked in a shoe factory, and when the younger of the two, Adolph, returned from serving in the Great War, he started making athletic shoes in the family kitchen. Several years later, older brother Rudolph got involved, and they named their growing company Gebrüder Dassler Schuhfabrik, the Dassler Brothers Shoe Factory. Both men joined the Nazi party in the 1930’s, though Rudi is believed to have been the more ardent supporter. Adi Dassler would serve in the military again, a year at the start of the Second World War, before returning home to produce boots for the Wehrmacht, the German Army, at Dassler Brothers.
Rudi, despite being the more passionate Nazi, did not actually serve until late in the war, and even then, despite his nationalist patriotism, he had to be drafted. He was arrested by the Gestapo for being Absent Without Leave in 1945, liberated from the Gestapo by Allied forces, then re-detained by the Allies as a Prisoner of War. They suspected he was a member of the notorious Schutzstaffel, the SS, information some believed was provided by his very own brother.
Finally released, Rudi returned to the company, but the two brothers and their wives never could quite get along after the war. In 1948, Rudolph would finally leave to start his own athletic shoe company. With only one brother left at Dassler Brothers, the name didn’t make any sense, so Adi renamed the company using his own nickname and the first letters of their last name, and Adidas was born. Across the river, Rudolph first named his company Ruda before changing the name to Puma. And there they sit today, the original factories of these two great corporate competitors, each fighting for their share in the $16 billion athletic shoe market dominated by Nike
The rift between Adi and Rudi Dassler is not quite Cain and Abel, though nearing Jacob and Esau, the two brothers in the story behind today’s story, for today’s prophet speaks to the story of Judah, the southern Hebrew kingdom named for one of Jacob’s sons, and the story of Edom, a nation descended from Esau, which sat just to the south of Judah. Jacob, father of Twelve Tribes, the one who wrestled with the divine and earned the title Israel, was a thief, who stole his brother Esau’s rightful blessing. The tension between Jacob and Esau is well documented in scripture. Genesis 32 gives us this:
The messengers returned to Jacob, saying, “We came to your brother Esau, and he is coming to meet you, and four hundred men are with him.†Then Jacob was greatly afraid and distressed; and he divided the people that were with him, and the flocks and herds and camels, into two companies, thinking, “If Esau comes to the one company and destroys it, then the company that is left will escape.â€
The brothers don’t exactly reconcile so much as coexist. Since Esau is also a grandson of Abraham, the Edomites are kins people, covered in the everlasting covenant between God and descendants of Abraham who are to be as numerous as the stars, though they Edomites do not relocate to Egypt with Jacob and his family, do not end up in bondage. In fact, the real beginning of the historic enmity between these two nations probably begins during the Exodus, for Edom seals the border and refuses aid to the fleeing Hebrews, the descendants of Jacob. They refuse to take in the refugees.
Just like Adi and Rudi, kinship and conflict, sibling rivalry, went hand in hand when it came to the Hebrews and Edom. The Edomites fought against the sons of Jacob repeatedly, during the reign of the warlord Saul, against King David, against the Southern Kingdom after Judah and Israel split. Over three centuries after today’s reading, during the Maccabean rebellion, the Edomites would align themselves with the Judahites, converting to the Hebrew faith, which is all great, except then an Edomite, Herod, would lead a Roman-supported coup d’etat against the Maccabean king and seize power. While he is credited with tremendous building projects, including the expansion of the Second Temple, the elder Herod was also portrayed as the tyrant who ordered the slaughter of the innocents when Jesus was born, was a cruel collaborator, was not, when it mattered the most, a loyal Jew.
Today’s reading, from the shortest Hebrew Testament text, describes events centuries before Herod the Great, halfway between David and Jesus, and shortly after the destruction of Jerusalem at the hands of Babylon in 587 BCE. The same events are described in the Book of the Prophet Jeremiah. Obadiah, which simply translates as “Servant of the Lord,†rails against an Edom that stood by as their kin in Judah were defeated. Worse still, not only were they guilty bystanders and onlookers as this evil was taking place, as the Babylonians brought destruction and death, but as the prophet and other texts make clear, the Edomites egged on the conquerors, and then took advantage of the situation to seize territory along Judah’s southern border. Once again, as at the Exodus, the Edomites refused hospitality to Judahite refugees, and the law of hospitality is at the heart of ancient Near Eastern culture.
Family rivalries, geopolitical gain, the violation of a core value of those ancient cultures, all of these are pretty easy to document. But we’d be wrong and pretty far out of the biblical stream if we focused on the sins of commission, the seizure of land, the mob cheering as the Judahites were crushed. The greatest sin of the Edomites was a sin of omission. They did not act when their neighbors and kins-people were in need. They didn’t want to get involved. Fair enough, they didn’t want to provoke Babylon, but did they have to turn away those fleeing the destruction?
This is the uncomfortable beating heart of the Judeo-Christian trajectory: you are not just guilty for what you have done. You are also sometimes guilty for what you have not done. We pray that God will forgive us for what we have done, and for what we have failed to do.
It is true that the Hebrew scripture goes on quite a bit about fidelity, no other God before me, etc. Correct and faithful worship matters, maybe… But Amos tells us that correct and faithful worship is less important than how you treat others, is less important than how you treat the powerless. Micah will say it. Leviticus says it. And Jesus goes even further, commanding us to look inward at our own sin, and outward to see his face in the face of the poor, the leper, the despised. His parables drive home this lesson again and again, not just generosity, literal and spiritual, but also courage and selflessness.
Those who walked by the wounded man in the ditch did what was legal. The Samaritan did what was right. And what is legal and what is right are not always the same, despite today’s misuse of Romans 13, a text that was misused by slaveowners as well, that was cited by the Reichskirche in the 1930’s.
And this, this is that heart, the one theme that carries through the entirety of the the Hebrew and Christian canons: God’s choice of the powerless. It is not justice as some abstract set of laws, a blindfolded woman with a scale. It is active, the everflowing stream of Amos that is rolling down. Justice moves and is powerful. Paul reminds us, our Christian theology of grace reminds us, we are all in serious trouble if we each get exactly what we really each deserve. Only a sociopath doesn’t get that. God who is the source of all is for us, and demands that we be for others, because God is love, is generous to us.
On the day that you stood aside as the Babylonians destroyed Jerusalem, you too were like one of them. This is the word of the prophet. You turned away the refugees fleeing violence and so I will turn you away. This is the word of the prophet.
I don’t know what that religion is that is about self and salvation of self and a personal faith and good manners and social standing and is so obsessed with what goes on in the bedroom and could care less about the powerless, but whatever that faith is, it is not Judaism and it is not Christianity, for you cannot extract the call to love in action from either tradition. It is in the Torah and in the prophets and in every single thing that rabbi from Nazareth does and says.
It is not enough to not do harm, though you should not do harm, should purge your portfolio of payday lenders and profiteers and collaborators. It is not enough to avoid doing evil. Those who passed by the victim in the ditch are just as guilty as those who robbed and beat the man and left him there to die.
Sometimes I worry that the bar is set too high, that God asks too much. There is so much hurt and injustice in this world and I am just one small person. What in the world can I do about Gaza or children in cages? I cannot solve all the problems of the world, nor can our nation. Sometimes I just want to turn it all off, not look at the news. I can’t tell you how often, of late, I get about a minute into NPR news before I turn to that interactive device in my kitchen and say “Alexa, stop. Just please stop†I wonder if an Artificial Intelligence can detect spiritual weariness.
I am weary and the Assyrians are storming Jerusalem. I am weary, and my sister or brother is at the door, a child in their arms. They are afraid. One day, I may be in that ditch. One day, I may be the stranger at the door. Remember, Leviticus tells us, you yourselves were once strangers in a strange land.
I am not a villain. I am not a saint. And I am tired. But today, today I can do one small thing. And tomorrow, I can do one more small thing.
Today, you can do one small thing. And many of you will, and do.
You stack cans and unload food and sort clothes and listen to hard-luck stories and fill out vouchers and plan concerts and fashion shows. It may be fun at times, social yes, work you do with friends, but that does not negate the fact that it is sacred work. When you get up when you’d rather stay in bed, when you go out into the muck and cold when you would rather sit home with a book, when you drive a friend to the doctor or a stranger to Tradewinds, you are choosing to leave the road and crawl down into the ditch on a rescue mission.
You sign petitions and educate and make politicians talk about healthcare and have uncomfortable conversations with your neighbors about rainbow flags and wooden crosses. You carry signs on the bridge and get flipped off, and this too is the ditch, a ditch you have entered, where a grieving mother sits beside a coffin.
When you get out of bed and come to church knowing that your pastor is going to talk about hard stuff and name hope but also challenge you to go down into the ditch yet again, well that is a ditch of sorts too.
But life isn’t all ditches. Read the parable again. Once things are stable, the Samaritan gives the innkeeper two denarii and heads off to do other things. Presumably he has business to attend to, a family that may need his attention. He does what he can at the moment, organizes what he can, and promises to come back. But he promises to come back.
We each do this sacred work in our own way, this work of sacrificial love, for it is what God demands of us. It is what Jesus demonstrated for us. It doesn’t count if it doesn’t cost a little, if it isn’t a little scary, if it isn’t a little bit of a burden. Pick up your cross and follow me, Jesus says. Love is a cross.
And you do. You pick up your cross. And we do. And we must do.
This is our faith. Forgive that you might be forgiven. Lose your life that you might save your life. Love, for you are loved.
Love.
When did we see your city burning, Jesus? When did we see your child crying, alone? When were you denied healthcare? When did you hide under desks with terrified children?
When, Jesus?
You are not a saint. Like me, you are a sinner, saved and called, weary and hopefully a little hopeful, eyes open to the brokenness and beauty of this world.
Tie up those sneakers, Adidas or Pumas or whatever brand floats your boat, and let’s get going.
Amen.