SERMONS

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Sean Gilbert – Good Friday, 22/4/11
Christ Church

"Singing Redemption"

As most would know, in this community throughout Lent, the war-time journal of Etty Hillesum has been the object of much discussion, quotation, conversation and indeed, admiration! It’s the story of one person’s desired spiritual growth, seemingly against all the odds; the birthing of a soulful and hate-rejecting faith in the midst of a man-made hell, culminating in her transportation with other members of her family from a Dutch prison-farm to the horror – holocaust - of Auschwitz.

John Pfitzner has written a stirring poem about Etty’s final piece of writing; one he is happy for me to share with you and one I will then seek to make a connection with, so far as this day and this very familiar, yet still-shocking symbol of the cross is concerned. The poem is entitled “Leaving. Etty Hillesum 1914–43.”

Crammed in the cattle car,
being transported to Poland,
a single bucket for their piss and shit,
her family members in another wagon,

she scribbles a postcard,
reaches for the gap in the planks
and throws it from the moving train,
taking this chance to get word out.

And found by farmers and posted,
it’s delivered in Amsterdam,
where friends read, ‘We left the camp
singing, Father and Mother

firmly and calmly, Mischa, too’ –
proving the failure, among
faces filled with fear and fatigue,
of the cold program

to divest them of their humanity;
and these, her last written words,
wind-borne, almost lost,
continue still today to breathe,

while the demagogue’s speeches,
seemingly invincible then
and thrilling millions,
today are ash.

Redemption, as best understood, is always about dignifying the human condition, under any human condition. And while ‘cold programs’ of hatred, prejudice and humiliation still continue in our world, thank God for those who will not submit to the tyrant, whoever that may be, who will not return soul destroying hatred or the proverbial ‘fire with fire.’ They are genuinely worth paying attention to, these absorbers of hatred, thus peace bearers; these lights in an otherwise dark and shrouded sky.

Symbolically today, standing in our midst, is not so much a tool of execution, but a body broken, a life poured out in the undying belief, that love, not hatred or fear, or domination of another, is the only path worth pursuing. All else is but sheer vanity, leaving no creative legacy, no real trace of humanity at all. “Ash”, as John rightly describes it.

Etty and her family on the other hand, left Westerbork singing. Consider that for a moment. Jesus, in Matthew’s account of his passion, remains dignified and silent before his torturers and belittlers. Either way, there exists a substance, a sure and deep well to draw on that more than counters the humiliations; a determination born of simple grace, to retain one’s humanity and not sacrifice it to the little kings of this life.

At heart in Etty and in Jesus exists a rare and drawing vulnerability that is redemptive love; openness to life and the common reality, if not needs of others. And it is a vulnerability that we too are invited to develop and more fully embody as faith bearers. Weakness is what the world may call it, strength; the birthing of compassion and joyful song is what the Christian Gospel calls it.

And so today, for perhaps the last time in this liturgical form, we will shortly be invited to acknowledge places of vulnerability within ourselves; soulful places in need of healing, expression and understanding which perhaps, counter intuitively, are always the fertile seed beds for renewed, generous, self giving and melodious lives….

Let us be still before the great mystery before lead you in prayer…