Saturday, December 05, 2015
Sermon
for the Second Sunday of Advent
Year C ~ December 6, 2015
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Holy Trinity & St. Anskar
The Lord knows the way of the righteous,
But the way of the ungodly
shall perish.
+In the Name of God,
the Holy and Undivided Trinity
Advent is
the time of the apparent victory of darkness – the victory is only apparent because the Light shines in it
and darkness cannot overcome it. That is the rôle of the prophets. The
messengers of God, as the Collect calls them. The calendar at this time of the
year is crow-ded with them.
We used to say that the gifts of prophecy ended after the
Incarnation. The Messiah had come and God’s promise was fulfilled. After John
the Baptist, the Holy Forerunner of God, we needed no further delivery of that
promise from God’s messengers. In that sense, there are no new prophets. But
that is only half right, and it is no longer our position. The Episcopal Church
officially calls Martin Luther King, Jr a prophet.
God’s messengers continue to appear, to wake us and to defy the
forces of darkness that appear to be winning. We now usually call them martyrs and confessors – martyrs if their defiance costs them their lives, as
in the case of Dr. King and the Bl. Oscar Romero, confessors if it did not, as
in the case of the Servant of God, Dorothy Day, whom we commemorate this week,
and a new one whom we ought to.
Master Sgt. Roddie Edmonds of Knoxville, Tenn., was a
noncommissioned officer who participated in the landing of U.S. forces in
Europe. He was captured in the Battle of the Bulge, according to Israel's
Holocaust memorial center, Yad Vashem.
Edmonds was held at a Nazi POW camp, where he was the highest-ranking American
soldier. When the Germans demanded that all the Jewish POWs in the camp identify
themselves, Edmonds ordered all the U.S. soldiers to step
forward — about a thousand of them. When the German camp commander saw all the
inmates reporting, he said, "They cannot all be Jews!" according to an
eyewitness.
"We are all
Jews," Edmonds replied. The Nazi officer became enraged. "He turned
blood-red, pulled his Luger out, and said, 'I'll give you one more chance. Have
the Jewish men step forward or I will shoot you on the spot.' " The Righteous
Edmonds replied “According to the Geneva Convention, we only have to give our
name, rank and serial number. If you shoot me, you will have to shoot all of
us, and after the war you will be tried for war crimes.” The Commandant turned
around and left the scene.
One of the Jewish POWs, NCO Paul Stern, told Yad Vashem, "Although 70 years have
passed, I can still hear the words he said to the German camp commander."
We are all Jews.
Roddie Edmonds is now called Righteous
Among the Nations, the most exalted human recognition short of
Beatification, in my opinion. As it happens, Yad Vashem made its announcement last week on the 25th anniversary
of the martyrdom of the Four Northamerican Church women in El Salvador,
December 2. The holocaust memorial happens
to be very near the place where Zechariah
addressed his son as the Forerunner of the Light to enlighten the Gentiles. The
main building is surrounded by a tree-lined path called Derech Tzade-kim, the Road of the Just. Now it has a new tree –
perhaps one of the last – in honor of the American soldier, a Southerner in a
segregated army, who said “We are all Jews.”
The Lord knows the way of the righteous,
and the way of the ungodly shall perish.
