 Last week while in Washington D.C. for vacation, my spouse and I went to the Holocaust Museum. I wasn’t sure what to expect, really, I mean, how does one begin to tell the story of such horrors? I soon found out that the answer to that question was: Gradually…just as it happened.
I remember learning about the Holocaust in school. It was always presented as a horrific occurrence. It was always presented as genocide and a failure of epic proportions. It was always presented, though, as something done by one man and his loyal generals. I wouldn’t understand until years later that nothing could be further from the truth. The truth is that such a massive atrocity could not have been carried out by just one person or even just a handful of them. And indeed it wasn’t. The Holocaust took time–even before the official start of WWII. It took time and many hands on deck–hands that would do the rounding up. Hands that would see that the mass deportations and the marches were carried out. Hands that would do the beating, the maiming, the killing. Hands that so effortlessly were raised in Sieg Heil salutes. Hands that would do nothing but stand idly by while it all unfolded. The horrors of the Holocaust may have been from the mind of one man–or a handful of them–but make no mistake, it couldn’t have happened without millions of hands along the way. Outside of the Museum and at various places within the museum itself, there is a sign like the one in the picture above: “The next time you see injustice. The next time you hear about genocide. The next time you witness hatred. THINK ABOUT WHAT YOU SAW.” In addition to this sign, another generally accompanied it: “What you do matters.” It’s easy to think that what we do or don’t do has few or no consequences worth mentioning. That the stop sign we blew through while we were scrolling for a new podcast episode on our phones didn’t really matter. That the election we decided to sit out on principle or out of protest had no consequences. That the meme we re-posted certainly couldn’t do anything lasting, that the time we minded our own business when someone was treated poorly by another at the grocery store didn’t matter in the grand scheme of things, or the laughter we shared at another’s expense was simply harmless. And perhaps, if we lived in a vacuum, none of it would amount to a hill of beans. And yet, over time, from enough people in enough places, such actions and inactions sow deep seeds of division and hate, and can do irreparable damage not just to one or two people, but millions. We Christians often talk about Pilate and how he could have stopped Jesus’ execution along the way, and yet, we often fail to mention or acknowledge all of the people in all of the places that could have stopped Jesus’ execution before it even got to Pilate in the first place. Sure, there was the crowd who advocated for Barabbas’ release and Jesus’ imprisonment and execution, but there were also handfuls of Pharisees who tried to trip Jesus up along the way, and some Sadducees who sowed deep seeds of division along the way as well. There were countless communities in which Jesus could perform no miracles, where he could offer no teaching, and where he and his disciples could find no hospitality–what of them? What of the people who had ostracized those whom Jesus healed? Did they ever truly understand the power they had to create a different world right in their own backyard? Do we? I’m not sharing this to bum anyone out, I’m actually sharing it to offer a morsel of hope in sometimes frightening and uncertain times. Because the truth that was reiterated for me in Washington D.C. last week is that we humans have a GREAT capacity for hate and injustice and horror. AND the only capacity we have that is greater than ALL of that, is our capacity to love. And I don’t mean love like a Hallmark movie, I mean love that makes simple, little choices every day for the common good. Love that takes a stand in the grocery store when someone is being treated badly. Love that not only sees a meme that laughs at another’s expense and just keeps scrolling, but a love that calls up the friend who posted the meme to talk about why it’s hurtful. In short, a love that DOES SOMETHING. I think this is the hard, messy, world-changing love that we are called to as followers of the Way. A love that is constantly scanning the landscape right in front of us, just looking for something to do–someone to love–not love them into our way of thinking or believing, but rather, loving them into wholeness and, in so doing, loving ourselves into wholeness too. I’ll definitely keep thinking about what I saw in the Holocaust Museum, and I’ll keep working to make sure we never see such things in our world again. Join me, won’t you? Our capacity for hate is great, our capacity for love is GREATER, Pr. Melissa  I had to double check the calendar. Had we somehow all scrunched into the Delorean and used our plutonium-powered flux capacitor to head back to the year 2020? Great Scott! It sure seemed like it.
My “Back to the Future” moment came as news stations were reporting toilet paper shortages at places like Costco. Sure enough, I went out to the Costco app to check out the situation for myself, and found that I was not able to order toilet paper for delivery as we usually do. This seemed weird to me, as just days prior I had managed to easily and seamlessly place an order for this very same product for my parents. So, like we do in this year of our Lord 2024, I went to Google to figure out what was going on. As I’m sure many of you are aware, a labor strike (now over) at a major US port had been going on long enough that consumers were beginning to get nervous. So nervous, in fact, that some old habits we saw far too much of during the height of the COVID-19 Pandemic began to reappear. Chief among them were panic buying and hoarding. One post I saw online spoke to the situation uniquely: “All Clear. Port Strike Over. Time to retreat to your TP fortress and reflect on what you’ve done.” I chuckled at the statement–internally agreeing–then took a moment to ponder why it is that we act this way. I think we panic buy and we hoard resources out of fear. And I think that fear often comes from a place of genuine and deep discomfort with uncertainty. And while it doesn’t often make the news, I think there are many ways that our discomfort with uncertainty shows up in our lives that go well beyond bathroom tissue. In the face of uncertain times, a scarcity mentality is often quick to emerge. Something happens–a relationship ends, a loved one dies, a job is lost, the car breaks down–something happens that rips the rug out from under us and causes us a great deal of pain and discomfort. We’re uncertain about what our lives are going to look like going forward. We aren’t sure that we’ll have what it takes to make it through. We doubt that we’ll be able to figure out how to fix the car, how to land a new job, how to move forward in the face of debilitating grief, or even how we’ll love again. In the uncertainty, we often find ourselves coming to a place of believing in our bones that there simply isn’t enough–not enough time, not enough money, not enough skill, not enough love available to us. And so we hoard–in some way, shape, or form. Thinking that if we can gather up and hold onto “enough” of whatever it is we feel is scarce at the moment, our world will somehow be set right on its axis once more. We hoard our presence, believing that separation is somehow our safest bet. We hoard our problems, electing to “rob Peter to pay Paul,” and circulating debt between credit cards, believing that it’s far too risky and vulnerable to ask for help from another. We hoard the energy that we bring to our work, deciding that we’ll never again put all of our efforts into what we do for a living so that we’re never disappointed if it ends. And we hoard our friendship and even our love–coming to the conclusion that if no one knows us, then no one cares about us, and no one can break our hearts by dying or by leaving us in some other way. I think what we often find is that hoarding does work–at least for a moment. In the end, however, it is less effective. Almost always we will run out of whatever it is we are storing up for ourselves. The only way to truly have enough is to do the very opposite of what our knee-jerk reaction tells us to do: We must lean into community and relationship even harder than before. I have to wonder if this is what John the Baptist was getting at when he said, “Anyone who has two shirts should share with the one who has none, and anyone who has food should do the same.” Like, maybe John understood that the person with two shirts might eventually be someone who runs out of their own food and will need support from someone with extra food, so it’s a good idea for the person with two shirts to share their extra shirt because it will, in the end, benefit the community and–potentially–them self. Could it really be that our way out of scarcity is to share that which we have an abundance of ourselves, so that others are free to share that which they have in abundance? I just can’t shake the notion that John started with simple, concrete items like extra shirts and extra food so that we’d grasp the concept enough to bring it into other areas of our lives. Like, if we can share extra shirts that we have with others, then we might be able to share less concrete things too. We might be able to better share our presence–knowing that someone else has no one present for them in a particular way. That person might have a connection to a job opening that they can share with someone who lost their job and is looking. The person looking for work might have so much love to give and time to give it more freely, that they be a sobering and steadying presence for another who is grieving or who is shutting down following a break-up. And the cycle goes on–each person doubling down not on scarcity, but on abundance–as they share what they have and receive what they lack. So the next time life brings you to a place where you want to hoard–toilet paper or love or something else–I pray that you might consider a different way of reacting. Perhaps a way much like the Way John the Baptist pointed toward out in the wilderness–the Way that asks us to respond to uncertain times by leaning hard into community and sharing what we do have to share, so that others might be freed to share what they have too. I’m willing to try fighting my knee-jerk reactions if you are. Pr. Melissa  This past weekend I had the opportunity to travel to Omaha, NE for the Joint Annual Meeting (JAM) of the Iowa, Nebraska, and South Dakota Tri-Conference. It was a weekend filled with connection, worship, business meetings for each conference, and workshops to equip churches, laity, and clergy. It also held an opportunity to hear a keynote address from the General Minister and President of the national United Church of Christ, the Rev. Dr. Karen Georgia A. Thompson.
If you Google Karen Georgia (that is her full first name), you will find out quickly that–amongst other things–she is a poet and published author. During her keynote address she shared these pieces of herself in 5 movements–each one beginning with her poem. I cannot tell you the title or the content of her poems–I wasn’t taking notes except mentally. But what I can tell you is that our General Minister and President cannot only write meaningful poetry, she can also deliver a poem in ways that move a soul. What I do remember is something Rev. Dr. Thompson said during the Q & A portion of the keynote. When asked what is one thing she would say to the churches of the UCC at this time in history, Karen Georgia answered with a story about traveling with a group overseas, and the way in which she saw transformation for one individual she was traveling with happen before her very eyes. Karen Georgia concluded her story by saying that transformation is real, and many times it requires us to do only one thing: “get out of our bubble.” Those words continue to rattle around my synapses. For myriad reasons, many of us cannot simply decide to travel overseas, and even if we could, there’s no guarantee that we would allow ourselves to get outside of our bubbles once we arrive. Sure, the landscape may be different, but generally, the bubble each of us works so hard to create would likely be the same–our ideas, our commitments, our viewpoints, our experiences–all holding us in these delicate orbs of our own making. Which leads me to believe that if we want to get out of our bubble, we’re going to need to do more than just change our scenery. Because the truth is, no matter where we go, there we are. We bring our bubbles with us–yes, even through TSA security checkpoints–and we tend to view even the newest of landscapes with our same old eyes, through the membranes of our same old bubbles, through the lenses of our same old ideas, commitments, viewpoints, and experiences. To get out of our bubbles will require more than just a new address–no matter how brief–it will require the removal of the bubble itself. The thing about bubbles is that they only stretch so far before they burst–their walls and boundaries failing completely–their remnants falling to the floor. In fact, from inside our bubbles one need only to outstretch their arms in order to stretch the membranes so far beyond their limits that the bubble ruptures and is no more. No matter the place, no matter the time–this remains true: The walls of our self-containment cannot contain us forever…but we must stretch out our arms. This looks different for each of us. Sometimes this looks like traveling to a new country and really allowing ourselves to be absorbed by the people and the culture of this new place. Other times it looks like a willingness to eat food that is NOTHING like we would normally eat. Sometimes it’s taking the opportunity to read and study about something we know very little about. Still other times, it looks like listening to all perspectives before rendering a verdict, actually forming a relationship with someone in a community served by a ministry or mission we’re a part of, or staying in on a Friday night when it seems like “everybody” is out. We stretch out our arms, opening ourselves to all that might be in any given situation with any given person or group of people, and in that stretching and opening–our bubbles burst–they have to. And when they burst, transformation happens. So this week, friends, I wonder if we might listen to the wisdom of Rev. Dr. Karen Georgia Thompson and get out of the bubble–whatever the bubble is for each of us? Maybe we can all sign on to do one thing that opens us up–that helps us stretch beyond what we’ve always done and what we’ve always eaten, who we’ve always talked to, and what we’ve always believed. And maybe, just maybe, a few of us might even stretch ourselves enough to burst that thin film that has stood for far too long between us and change–between us and transformation. Transformed people transform people. And people who have been transformed transform the world. Getting out of the bubble with you, Pr. Melissa |
Pastor Melissa enjoying time on her hammock.
Rev. Melissa Sternhagen
Rev. Melissa Sternhagen was called as the pastor of St. Paul Congregational UCC in June of 2020. Prior to her call to St. Paul, Pr. Melissa worked as a hospice chaplain in the Ames, IA area, following pastorates at rural churches in Central Iowa and Southern Illinois. Pr. Melissa is a second-career pastor with a background in agribusiness and production & supply operations. She received her M.Div. from Eden Theological Seminary in St. Louis, MO, and holds a MA Ed. in Adult Education and Training, and a BA in Organizational Communications. Archives
December 2024
Categories |
RSS Feed
