"Chosen" Easter 6B (May 13, 2012)

1 John 5:1-6

Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God, and everyone who loves the parent loves the child. By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and obey God’s commandments. For the love of God is this, that we obey God’s commandments. And God’s commandments are not burdensome, for whatever is born of God conquers the world. And this is the victory that conquers the world, our faith. Who is it that conquers the world but the one who believes that Jesus is the Child of God?  This is the one who came by water and blood, Jesus Christ, not with the water only but with the water and the blood. And the Spirit is the one that testifies, for the Spirit is the truth.

John 15:9-17

Jesus said, “As God has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept the Creator’s commandments and abide in God’s love. I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete. “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.  You are my friends if you do what I command you. I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from the Creator. You did not choose me but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last, so that the Creator will give you whatever you ask in my name. I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another.”

***

Most holy Friend, Three-person’d God, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, teach us the way of love from you. Bring us together in spirit and action, bearing one another’s burdens and sharing each others gifts, and establishing here on earth colonies of heaven. In the name of Christ, our Brother and Saviour.

“This is my commandment,” Jesus says. Not, “it would be nice,” or “Could you maybe try.” No, he says, “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.” That is a tall order when we think about it on its own. How can we possibly love others as Jesus loved us—because when Jesus speaks to the disciples, he is speaking to us too. How can we ever love anyone like that? And yet there are those who will do that, who have done that. We often hear this in connection with Remembrance Day, or with the D-Day observations—the soldiers, sailors and airmen who were willing to lay down their lives for their country, for their fellow Canadians, Americans, French, Italians, Dutch.  A photo you may have seen reflects that touchingly in the image of a modern-day businessman, his briefcase at his feet, one land laid gently on the wall of memory at the Vietnam Veteran’s memorial in Washington DC. He is dressed in a suit, but his arm, seen in the reflection, wears fatigues, and within the wall, a reflection and yet not a reflection, his fellow soldiers, his buddies, touch his hand. He remembers those who sacrificed with him—he survived, they did not. And he remembers.

There are other images—today is a day I really wish we had Powerpoint available!—that express this. Law enforcement, fire fighters and other public safety workers share in this ethic. A very moving image from the many from that terrible day, September 11, 2001, is that of Father Mychal Judge, Chaplain to the NY Fire Department, being carried out of the wreckage of the World Trade Centre before the buildings collapsed. He went into the damaged buildings to offer solace and comfort to the firefighters and civilians who were trapped, in spite of the danger. He risked, and ultimately lost, his life in order to serve others. Incidentally, Fr. Mychal was gay—a witness to the falsity of those hateful and false stereotypes of gay men. He laid down his life for his sisters and brothers.  He loved them as he knew himself to be loved by God.

Even as Jesus laid down his life for us, we are to lay ours down for others. It may not be—probably won’t be—as dramatic or horrific as the events of 9/11, or in an armed conflict.  Sometimes it is patience in dealing with someone difficult, or overcoming fear to speak truth—even as our voices shake. It might be our unconditional support for someone who has no one else who encourages them. Maybe it’s a listening ear. Sometimes it’s parenting, whether we are the biological parent or not. Or it might be just the right word at the right time, even when we don’t feel like being supportive.

Notice what is joined with “love one another,“  and with being Jesus’ friends. Jesus says, “For you did not choose me, but I chose you.” This is not our decision to make—Jesus chooses us, calls us, to be in his circle of friends, his chosen family who are to love one another as he loved them. Jesus is focused on us—he’s not listening to the voices of others who say we are too young or too old, or too foolish, or the wrong gender or sexuality or economic status, or lacking in education or over-educated. Jesus’ focus is on us, as we are, as we are made—and Jesus calls us, chooses us to be part of his family, his beloved community. Every one of us was chosen for a reason; others may not be able to see it, but Jesus had a purpose in choosing you.

There’s a song from Sesame Street, called “Sing.” The line from that song that always comes to my mind where I read this passage goes, “Don’t worry that it’s not good enough for anyone else to hear—just sing, sing your song!” Jesus chose each of us for the song we each have—the song that we are to sing, the love that we are to give. We aren’t chosen based on what someone else can or can’t do. Jesus didn’t say, “I choose Tom for his musical gift, but I’ll choose Kate in spite of her lack of musical gifts.” Each of us chosen by Jesus based on who we are—not what we aren’t, not on what someone else is, and not on what “some people” think we should be. We are chosen, not because we are better or worse than some standard of perfection, but because we are who we are.

What a tremendous gift—Jesus loves us, chooses us to be part of his family of love and mutual support, just because we are who we are! That, my friends, is love.

What do we do with this love, this being chosen by God?

Remember the movie “Saving Private Ryan?” A group of soldiers are detailed, shortly after D-Day, to find Private Ryan—all of the private’s brothers have been killed in the war, and as he is the last survivor, the policy is to discharge him—but first they have to find him. The first 30 minutes, which depict the landing on D-Day, are truly harrowing, but once past that, it is a powerful statement of not only duty, but sacrifice for someone these men don’t even know. They struggle through the front lines of war, losing many of their companions along the way, until finally they find the private in the midst of a battle for a bridge. The captain who is leading them (played by Tom Hanks), mortally wounded, tells Private Ryan, “Just make it worth it. You have the rest of your life now—make it worth it.” In a modern cemetery in Belgium, Private Ryan, now an old man, returns to the captain’s grave, and asks him, “Did I do it well enough? Did I make it worth it?”

That’s our task too. To make it worth it. Jesus loved us, chose us, laid down his life for us. Do we make our lives worth it? Do we care for others, showing them love and patience? Do we lift up the weak, comfort the sorrowing and hurting, celebrate with the joyful, and share love in our community? Or do we fritter our lives away on self-indulgence through material things like possessions, food, or sex, in anger held for so many years, in pain and grief that we do not allow ourselves to release, in blaming ourselves for what others have done to us?

My sisters and brothers, we who are called to be a community know that we have been chosen, in this one wonderful life we have, love one another—period. Not only the people we like, the ones who like us; not just the people who are like us, the people we understand—but also the people who make us angry or uncomfortable or frightened. We are not called to make them like us so that we are more comfortable; we are chosen to love them as they are, as God made them, just as we are to be loved as God made us.

Take your gifts, those wonderful parts of you God gave you, and love your sisters and brothers in Christ’s community. Jesus laid down his life for those he loved, for his community of choice, for you and me.

Make your life worth it.

In the name of the Ever-living, Ever-loving God, amen.

RevGal's Friday Five

It has been too long since I did this, and I am looking for ways to procrastinate anyway...not deliberately, you understand, just not turning away from opportunities.

So here are the random five from yesterday (see I even procrastinated on that!)

1.  What is the first thing that comes to your mind (right now) that you want to share about yourself.
I procrastinate. No, seriously, I am finally in a good place after at least three years of sadness and a dark place. I want that to translate into more writing.

2.  What is your favorite piece of jewelry or accessory? Why?
I used to have a wonderful rainbow-y watercolor effect silk scarf that I wore at least twice a week. It went with just about anything, from white to black to grey and everything in-between. Unfortunately, when I was unpacking after my most recent move, I pulled it out of a box, not realising it was caught on a belt buckle and tore an irreparable hole in it.

3.  If you could have a starring role in a T.V. show/movie/series, which one would it be, and what would your character be like?
Well, it would probably change the way the series are written, but I would love to be in either one of the Law and Order franchises (preferably with Mariska Hargitay...) or Star Trek the Next Generation, as an ethics/spirituality adviser to the rest of the cast, sort of like BD Wong's psychologist character. I think it would bring an interesting dimension to some of the plots. And apparently I can act fairly well--I was part of a murder mystery dinner recently and people were taken aback when I showed up at the door "in character" and stayed that way most of the evening. Apparently they thought this was the real me sans collar--snarky and bitter and cutting to my "parents." I'm not sure if I should be alarmed or not.

4.  What is one thing you will eat this weekend? Coffee. Eat--have you seen how strong I like my coffee? Profiteroles--I am taking them to a potluck tonight and so they are the only item I know will be there. I am hoping for butter chicken (one of the sometime-attendees makes fabulous butter chicken), but there's always a lot of good food-salads, desserts, taco pie last month... I'm taking a fruit plate for Sunday coffee hour, so I will be eating that as well.


5.  How do you waste time? (If you do, that is...)
Haha...writing on my blog when I should be working on my sermon and doing laundry. More usually, it's websurfing, browsing YouTube or GoodReads, or playing with my new cat friend, Bobcat.

My new roommate, Bobcat

"What is to Prevent Me? Nothing." Easter 5 B (May 6, 2012)

Acts 8:26-40

Then an angel of God said to Philip, “Get up and go toward the south to the road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.” (This is a wilderness road.) So Philip got up and went. Now there was an Ethiopian eunuch, a court official of the Candace, queen of the Ethiopians, in charge of her entire treasury. He had come to Jerusalem to worship and was returning home; seated in his chariot, he was reading the prophet Isaiah. Then the Spirit said to Philip, “Go over to this chariot and join it.” So Philip ran up to it and heard him reading the prophet Isaiah. He asked, “Do you understand what you are reading?” The eunuch replied, “How can I, unless someone guides me?” And he invited Philip to get in and sit beside him. Now the passage of the scripture that he was reading was this: “Like a sheep he was led to the slaughter, and like a lamb silent before its shearer, so he does not open his mouth. In his humiliation justice was denied him. Who can describe his generation? For his life is taken away from the earth.” The eunuch asked Philip, “About whom, may I ask you, does the prophet say this, about himself or about someone else?” Then Philip began to speak, and starting with this scripture, he proclaimed to him the good news about Jesus. As they were going along the road, they came to some water; and the eunuch said, “Look, here is water! What is to prevent me from being baptized?” He commanded the chariot to stop, and both of them, Philip and the eunuch, went down into the water, and Philip baptized him. When they came up out of the water, the Spirit of God snatched Philip away; the eunuch saw him no more, and went on his way rejoicing. But Philip found himself at Azotus, and as he was passing through the region, he proclaimed the good news to all the towns until he came to Caesarea. 

John 15:1-8

”I am the true vine, and God is the vinegrower, who removes every branch in me that bears no fruit. Every branch that bears fruit God prunes to make it bear more fruit. You have already been cleansed by the word that I have spoken to you. Abide in me as I abide in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing. Whoever does not abide in me is thrown away like a branch and withers; such branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned. If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask for whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. God is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit and become my disciples.”

***

Will you pray with me? Eternal God, bless us with wisdom and understanding; remind us that nothing prevents us from knowing your love except our own fears and doubts. Give us grace to recognise our roots in you, the vine of truth. May we drink deep of the cup of your love, in this hour and in every hour to come . Amen.

It is ironic that this reading from Acts is the prescribed lectionary reading for today. The US United Methodist Church, the largest Protestant denomination in the US, and the denomination in which I grew up, was trained, and hoped to be ordained, but was forced to leave—last week at their General Conference of churches from around the world voted to retain language in their Book of Discipline which states that “the practice of homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching and doctrine.” This breaks my heart. There is so much good in this denomination, so many friends and cherished colleagues and teachers and mentors; and yet the denomination is mired in the past. It must also be pointed out that most of the votes to retain that language came from non-US clergy, the majority of them from the continent of Africa—the struggle again homophobia continues there, against daunting odds. And there’s another irony, that the reading today is about an Ethiopian eunuch.

Indeed--here in the book of Acts in the New Testament of the Bible we share with the United Methodists—with all Christians—is a eunuch, a Gentile—that is, non-Jewish—eunuch at that, asking to be baptised by the Apostle Philip. This is pretty astonishing for several reasons. First of all, in the Hebrew Bible, the Original Testament, in the book of Deuteronomy, there is an emphasis on perfection—only animals without blemishes are to be sacrificed, and only men without bodily blemishes are to serve God or to enter the inmost part of the Temple. Therefore, eunuchs—males who have no testicles—are considered ineligible to be part of Temple worship. In a society that emphasized the pre-eminence of masculinity and paternity and the importance of descendents, a male who did not or could not reproduce was seen as flawed. So this eunuch—who, by the way, had probably been operated on as a child, in order that he might better serve royalty, because he would not have the temptation to promote his children—specifically sons—but would do what was best for the ruler. So he was seen as flawed by traditional Jews. And then he was Ethiopian—therefore, not descended from one of the tribes of Israel, therefore not seen as truly Jewish, no matter how much or how well he read the law and the prophets. A double outsider, then.

But—an educated and probably wealthy outsider. He could read—which was rare for anyone at that time—and by the way, it wasn’t until the Middle Ages that people began reading silently to themselves, that’s why Philip can hear him reading. And he had a chariot and driver, and the leisure time to make a long journey from Ethiopia to Jerusalem.

He’s reading the book of Isaiah, a passage from one of the Songs of the Suffering Servant, as those sections of Isaiah are known, which Christians have always applied to Jesus. But I think here the eunuch could have seen this as applying to himself as well—something had been done to him which prevented him from worshipping God as he felt called to do. He had just come from Jerusalem, from the temple, where it must have come home to him in a very immediate way that he was not welcome there as a worshipper—a foreign eunuch.

And then Philip comes along and strikes up a conversation, a literary, scriptural conversation. And in that conversation, Philip shares with him the Good News about Jesus, who did not bar anyone from coming to him—social outcasts, the poor, the sick, the wealthy, children…anyone who sought Jesus was welcomed.

I can almost see it. The eunuch, who had felt he was not wanted by this faith community to which he was drawn, suddenly sees there might be a place for him after all. But he’s been hurt before, and so he asks tentatively, “What is to prevent me from being baptised?”

And Philip says, “Nothing at all.”

And together they go into the water.

Let’s look at Philip for a moment. He’s clearly a good evangelist—he knows how to meet someone where they are, how to speak to their need, to show them the way out of frustration and despair—or simply out of that sense of being left out, unwanted, unknown. Philip sees the Ethiopian man as he is—not as a foreigner, not as a eunuch, not as an outsider—but as another human being, on a quest for truth and a new life. And Philip gives him that hope, that new life. He sets no restrictions on him—no classes to take, no special experience of the Holy Spirit, no need for follow-up. The man asks, Philip gives. How gracious, in the original meaning of the word—gift-giving, generous—Philip is!

Philip took it seriously, that command of Jesus to proclaim the gospel to all nations. He spoke to the eunuch “where he was;” he recognised that this man knew something of God already, and so Philip started from where the other man was, and shared the Good News.  It changed him—it had to made a difference to Philip, too, that the man from Ethiopia understood what Philip was teaching him and wanted to commit his life to Christ, in spite of the fact that he was not Jewish, was seen as an outsider. It is in sharing our faith, our trust in God, that our faith is strengthened—in sharing God’s love, our sense of that love is expanded and made more powerful. Philip was changed as much as the man he baptised. For both of them, the experience marked a change in their lives of faith.

Philip has received love and grace from the vine of which he is a branch, and he passes it on to the one he meets. Like Philip, we Christians aren’t the vines—we are the branches. We are rooted in Christ, our vine.

This week we are all about transgressing boundaries—of insider and outsider, of law and spirit, of grace, of hope, even of gender. Like a vine that has grown over and outside of a garden wall, refusing to be contained, spreading riotously through its branches, bearing its fruit inside and outside those boundaries, so is Christ and Christ’s love. Refusing to be limited by death, Christ rose; refusing to be limited by space or time, Christ’s followers have spread over all the earth, passing on the message of love and forgiveness for all, for freedom from death, for Christ’s companionship and grace through suffering and loneliness. Refusing to be bound by a limited understanding of God’s grace, Philip baptises and brings into God’s house the Ethiopian eunuch.

When we talk about God’s boundless love, this, my friends is what we mean. Rooted in the vine of God’s care for all creation, we, the branches, spread over all the earth, beyond all bounds, to share the Good News of God’s love for all that God created and called good. We are changed as we understand how fully God loves all people, all creatures. It widens our hearts. Christianity is not a solitary religion; it is lived and believed as part of a community. We believe, we do. We.

When we begin drawing circles about who God loves—not this person, not that person, not that group—we limit God, we deny God’s love for all that God created. Over the centuries, the Christian church has realised this—the circles have been made wider and more open. At first, the church was a sect within Judaism; then it became its own faith tradition, but open mainly to free men; then to all humans to be members, but still, only legitimate adult males could be leaders and they had to be unmarried. Then the church changed again—opening the circle—and married men and those whose parents were not married could lead. Then women became ordained leaders, and men of all races and ethnicities. Now we stand at the threshold of the last widening of that circle—inclusion of sexual and gender minorities. You know, the church could have saved a lot of time and anguish and pain if they had simply looked at this first recorded example of evangelism—to a person who was part of a gender minority, which did not hinder him from baptism, or leadership in the Ethiopian church. 

This opening, widening, branching, does not mean we lose sight of whose we are. We remain connected, attached, to Christ. The Greek word used in this reading, meno, from which we get our English word “remain,” translates as “stay,

live, dwell; last, endure, continue."  We remain part of Christ when we share that good news—we bear fruit as the branches do, but we cannot do it without the vital sap of the branch running through us.

With the love of Christ in our hearts, our veins, we reach out to anyone who needs to hear our good news of love and redemption and resurrection, we break barriers and boundaries down—whether of tradition, custom, fear, or ignorance—in order to spread our branches of God’s love around the world and beyond.

Sharing God’s love stretches us, makes us grow, until in time to come, we will break down all the barriers that oppose us. God’s love changes us every time we share it, every time we see again the power of God’s love to make all things new, to bring new life to that which was thought to be dead, inert, useless, or even evil.  For Christ is the vine, full of the sap of God’s love; we are the branches, bearing the fruit of that love in the testimony of our lives to those who do not believe that God can love them.

Go, and bear much fruit in the name of our true vine, Jesus the Christ.

Remembering; Easter 3B (April 22, 2012)

1 John 3:1-4, 7
See what love God has given us, that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are. The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know God. Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when God is revealed, we will be like God, for we will see God as God is. Little children, let no one deceive you. Everyone who does what is right is righteous, just as God is righteous.

Luke 24:36b-48
Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you.” They were startled and terrified, and thought that they were seeing a ghost. He said to them, “Why are you frightened, and why do doubts arise in your hearts? Look at my hands and my feet; see that it is I myself. Touch me and see; for a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.” And when he had said this, he showed them his hands and his feet. While in their joy they were disbelieving and still wondering, he said to them, “Have you anything here to eat?” They gave him a piece of broiled fish, and he took it and ate in their presence. Then he said to them, “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you—that everything written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms must be fulfilled.” Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures, and he said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things. And see, I am sending upon you what my Father promised; so stay here in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high.” 

***

Will you pray with me? God of all times and places, we remember your child Jesus today—and all your children who were killed because of who they were. Open our hearts and spirits to recognise their presence in us and among us, that we may be your true children, showing Jesus’ face, Jesus’ love, and Jesus’ presence to the world. In all your names, amen.

  

The Shoah—the Holocaust. Most of you are aware of the program of the Nazis in World War II, their plan to exterminate—their term—all Jews from the lands occupied by the German nation. Not only Jews, of course—but also gay men, Jehovah’s Witnesses, clergy, socialists, sex workers, lesbians, intellectuals, Roma (or gypsies), and the disabled—whether physically disabled, developmentally delayed, or mentally ill. Those who could not work—whether because of disability or age—were called “useless eaters” by the Nazi regime and marked for death. Others were singled out because they were considered a threat to the “perfect Aryan nation” Adolf Hitler wanted to create. Thus, those who did not fit into the Nazi vision of the “master race,” were to be eliminated—because they were antisocial, such as gay men and lesbians, because they would not bear children; or the clergy, because they taught people that there is more to life than what we see; or they offered an alternative vision of society, such as the socialists. But the largest part of the Nazi hatred was aimed at the Jewish people—because they were viewed as an alien nation within the German nation. The Nazis used the traditional Christian anti-Semitism, of course—that the Jews had killed Christ—but they also pointed out that Christianity—which was also seen as a foreign importation, something alien to the German-Aryan race—was derived from Judaism, which they called a gutter religion.  They continued on this genocidal path even when it was against their best interests, when it used resources (soldiers, trains, etc.) that they needed to continue to fight the Allis.

It is a dreadful history. There are many books that have been written about that time, both by historians and by the survivors—and one or two by people who did not survive. The Diary of Ann Frank, Night, The Hiding Place—many of you have read these. It has been central to my theology, to my formulation of an understanding of who God is and what God does and does not do. I have had Jewish friends all my life, and have read about and studied the Shoah since I read the Diary of Ann Frank in high school. In seminary, when we were required to take an immersion trip to study another culture, I chose to visit Poland and study Christian theology in the light of the Shoah. It led to my taking courses in Jewish theology and an independent study in Christian anti-Semitism. It is safe to say that these events that took place well before I was born had a profound impact on my personal life and theology.

One of the issues that I found myself pondering as I visited the Warsaw ghetto, the last remaining synagogue in Warsaw, the camps at Treblinka and Auschwitz, and other sites, was how I would have behaved, in that time and place. I want to  think I would have done something—protested, worked in the underground, hidden people, helped them escape, something. But would I have? That is the doubt that is ever present in my mind. Speaking truth to power is a frightening thing; it can get you killed. Would I have had the courage of a Father Kolbe, who voluntarily took the place of a Jew who was to be executed? Father Kolbe was starved to death at Auschwitz. Or the heart and wisdom of Corrie ten Boom, the young Dutch woman whose family hid hundreds of Jewish refugees, passing them through a network of escape. Or even the courage of so many rural families in Poland, Germany, and Eastern Europe, who smuggled food to people hiding out in the forests and farm outbuildings?

I have to stand here and tell you I do not know if I would have had that courage. I do not know if I could have taken that risk, offered my life, in effect. I want very much to think I would—and yet I know the power of fear, fear of death, fear of ostracism, fear of failing. 

And then there is this—I might not have had a choice. If I had lived in Germany or German-occupied lands, I might very well have been one of the millions with a triangle whom we have lost. I probably would not have been clergy, given the fact that few churches in Europe ordained women in the 1930s, but on the other hand, I might have been a nun—and they were counted as clergy. Or perhaps I would have been included with the women who loved women, and were marked with the black triangle. Or maybe the purple triangle of the pacifists and Jehovah’s Witnesses. Probably every one of us here would have been classified into one or more of those groups, those set apart by the triangle.

On the actual day of Yom HaShoah this year, many people changed their Facebook profile picture to that of someone killed by the Nazis—a family member perhaps, a resistance fighter, a face they found on the internet that haunted them. For a day, all those dead, those executed simply for who they were, populated Facebook. They were remembered. As long as we remember them, we can embody them—and therefore they do not die.

In the same way, as we remember Jesus, we embody Christ. Jesus Christ is present in our hands, outstretched to help others, loving others, and in this meal called communion that we share with each other.  We do not forget him; and he lives in our love, our forgiveness of others, our generosity of heart. Other people know Christ through us, our actions—or lack thereof—our lives. As we share Christ, not only in words, but in the open hands of grace, we remember him, he is with us, and he lives.

The ones we remember are always with us. Whether a person died on a hillside near Jerusalem two thousand years ago, seventy years ago in a German gas chamber, or a year ago—as long as we remember them, as long as we embody them in action, in thought, and in love, they live.

We remember. We remember. We remember. Amen.

Yom HaShoah Prayer 2012

Today we remember the brutal murder of millions by the Nazis in what has been called the Holocaust, or Shoah, which means calamity. The best known and most systematically hunted down and killed were the Jewish people of Europe—from Poland to Italy, from Holland to Romania and Russia. Others were also rounded up—starved and worked to death, or executed in the gas chambers—Jehovah’s Witnesses, clergy of all religions, Poles, gay men, lesbians, Socialists, physically or mentally disabled persons, union organizers…anyone who threatened the power of the Nazis and their fantasy of world domination. A popular slogan of remembrance, engraved on the memorials of many of the concentration camps, reads, “Never again.” And yet genocide and mass killings continue—in Cambodia, in Darfur, in Eastern Europe. It is a goal, not yet achieved as long as any nation is able to destroy a class, a tribe, a group without fear of retribution. We remember today the lost of the Shoah of 1939-1945.

(as a different person reads each line, they light the candle of that colour)

In memory of the Jewish people who wore the yellow triangle;

In memory of the clergy of all religions, who wore the red triangle;

In memory of the gay men, who wore the pink triangle;

In memory of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, pacifists, and Baha’i members, who wore the purple triangle;

In memory of the lesbians, sex workers, addicts, and others considered a threat to society, who wore a black triangle;

In memory of immigrants, who wore a blue triangle;

In memory of the Roma, or Gypsies, who wore a brown triangle;

In memory of the physically or mentally disabled people, who wore no triangle because they did not survive to be interned in the camps. (white)

We acknowledge the times we have kept silent when we should have spoken; and we remember those who resisted and those who rescued.

In honour of the resisters and rescuers. (rainbow)

(Moment of silence)

We light these candles as a memorial and a witness that we will remember and not forget; that we will work for peace, justice, freedom and life for all God’s children. God in your mercy, give us courage and strength to resist evil in all its forms, even the most attractive and innocent-appearing. Give us grace to protest evil and promote goodness, to protect and heal and comfort all in need. May all that we say and do be for good and not for evil, that one day we may truly say, “Never again.” Amen.