The 20th century has been dubbed the "Age of Genocide" by some historians because in that century alone more than 60 million people fell victim to state-sponsored killing, with ethnic cleansings and purges in countries such as Germany, Ukraine, Cambodia, East Timor, Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia. Of course this was not a new phenomenon. The slaughter of Native Americans has been one of the most massive and longest lasting genocides in history.

It’s important for us to acknowledge that most of these genocides were led by Christian and other religious groups. In many cases it has been the fusion of Christian beliefs with ethnic and national identities that has contributed to the killing. 

The Christian church should know better. After all every Christmas we are reminded that our faith began in the context of genocide which Jesus only marginally survived. However rather than learning from that beginning, the Christian church response was deafening silence, compliance and resignation to mass murder during the Holocaust and genocide in Rwanda and Bosnia.

In Rwanda the Hutus killed more than 500,000 Tutsis. Some of the worst massacres occurred in churches and mission compounds and it’s quite likely that some clergy even participated in the killing.

James Waller is professor of psychology at Whitworth College in Washington and is a scholar in the field of Holocaust and genocide studies. He wrote a book called “Becoming Evil: How Ordinary People Can Commit Genocide and Mass Killing.”

Waller argues that in each of the 20th century genocides that involved Christian ideology the church provided a theological justification for an "us versus them" mentality. Having created that separation Christians tend to abandon their moral obligation to help persecuted people.

Although the church typically has made official declarations of contrition in the wake of genocide, Waller said these lacked any real self-analysis or acceptance of culpability. The church seems to assume that a self-critique doesn't matter because genocide "won't happen again."

As evidence that Christian intervention can make a difference, Waller points to an event in the early stages of the Holocaust. Before Hitler began killing Jews, he gassed hundreds of Germans who had physical or mental disabilities. The church spoke out against Hitler's actions, and the killings stopped. Later, however, when Hitler began killing Jews, the church was silent.

"To what degree can Christian institutions redeem themselves--and the world--by being involved in post-genocidal reconciliation?" Waller asked. Above all, he said, Christian communities should think about what the church did wrong and what it can do differently next time, because "there will be a next time."

Well, we are in the midst of one of those next times right now in Sudan. How will the church respond this time? Or more to the point this morning, how does our theology stand up under inspection in the light of genocide?

Best selling author and born again Christian Anne Lamott said it well,  "You can safely assume that you've created God in your own image, when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do."

As inheritors of the Hebrew God, we have some tough thinking to do. If we read the Hebrew Scriptures literally we find evidence for a Jihad well before the Koran was even written.

Deuteronomy and Joshua record one of at least four genocides in the Old Testament at the command of God. After wandering in the desert for four decades, God ordered the Hebrews to invade the "promised land" and totally exterminate "the Hittites, and the Amorites, the Canaanites, and the Perizzites, the Hivites and the Jebusites"  leaving "alive nothing that breathes." They were to murder the elderly, women, infants and newborn. The writings of Joshua tell chapter by chapter of the demise of each city and its people.

Exodus 32 records God ordering 'each man to strap a sword to his side. Go back and forth through the camp from one end to the other, he says, each killing his brother and friend and neighbor.' The Levites did as Moses commanded and that day about three thousand of the people died."

Notice that I said, “If we read the Scriptures literally.” If we don’t read the scriptures literally then why do so many Christians still cling to a literal belief in a God who is “out there somewhere” calling the shots of history’s happenings.

Something has got to give!

Some of you might remember the 1960s Bob Dylan song called “God on our Side.”

These are some of the words.

Oh the First World War, boys
It closed out its fate
The reason for fighting
I never got straight
But I learned to accept it
Accept it with pride
For you don't count the dead
When God's on your side.

When the Second World War
Came to an end
We forgave the Germans
And then we were friends
Though they murdered six million
In the ovens they fried
The Germans now too
Have God on their side.

I've learned to hate Russians
All through my whole life
If another war starts
It's them we must fight
To hate them and fear them
To run and to hide
And accept it all bravely
With God on my side.

But now we got weapons
Of the chemical dust
If fire them we're forced to
Then fire them we must
One push of the button
And a shot the world wide
And you never ask questions
When God's on your side.

In a many dark hour
I've been thinkin' about this
That Jesus Christ
Was betrayed by a kiss
But I can't think for you
You'll have to decide
Whether Judas Iscariot
Had God on his side.

The ultimate question for us this morning is whether we believe that God is on our side, and if so what God is it that we are speaking about?

The author and satirist Quentin Crisp was giving a speech to a group in Northern Ireland. He explained to the audience that he was an atheist. A woman in the audience stood up and said, "Yes, but is it the God of the Catholics or the God of the Protestants in whom you don't believe?"

The question is on my mind almost every time I hear someone use the word ‘God’. Which God are you referring to, the object God or some subject called God, the God who is one, or a God who is all and in all? The God who acts upon us, or a God who is in our actions.

Bring those questions with you now to the tragedy of the Holocaust.

How did the Holocaust challenge and change our theology?

Is it responsible to continue the mythology about a God who has a special purpose for one nation or another in the light of the Holocaust?

In my opinion if we continue to believe in a God something like the Hebrew God of interventions and wars, then we betray the honor of all those lost in that mass murder. We dishonor the victims, as we leave open the possibility of another mass murder where God is once again on the side of the perpetrator. Belief in this God may be self serving, it may be convenient. It may even be profitable. However it is also irresponsible in the light of the damage done in the name of that God.

The ‘death of God’ movement of the 1960s was the first to systematize a theology where God did not exist in the heavens and interact with the world from afar. Instead Bishop John Robinson and others began picking up Paul Tillich’s phrase ‘ground of being’ to describe the metaphysical reality of God in our world and our lives. Bishop Spong has been the most articulate spokesperson for this form of non theism in our generation.

The ‘death of God’ theologians claimed the writings of Dietrich Bonhoeffer to state their case. Bonhoeffer washanged by the Nazi government in 1945 for activities in opposition to the German state. Bonhoeffer coined the phrase ‘religionless Christianity’. He wrote this in a letter from Prison, “on the one hand we have the deism of Descartes, who holds that the world is a mechanism, running by itself with no interference from God; and on the other hand the pantheism of Spinoza, who says that God is nature. In the last resort, Kant is a deist, and Fichte and Hegel are pantheists. Everywhere the thinking is directed towards the autonomy of man and the world.” Bonhoeffer seemed to think it was a natural progression for people to begin living as if there were no God.

Stop and think about it. A man who out of his Christian convictions was in prison and facing death was coming to the view that we need God less as we evolve. It is not an argument against the existence of God but a statement of optimism about human potential to live with goodness as they enact the qualities of the good God.  It is not about a God that does not exist, but rather understanding in a different and new way that we do not need God as much as we did.  We have all that we need in our rational abilities, our natural processes and in our collective consciousness.

It has to be said that even Bonhoeffer was limited by his own prejudices. He did a great work in resisting evil in the form of the Nazi Government. He put out the boldest of challenges to churches to resist evil. However he still seemed to hold to the view that Jewish people were destined to eventually see the light and accept Jesus as the Messiah. He seemed to hold to the view that Christianity had superseded Judaism in history and in the eyes of God.  Bonhoeffer was still a theist, or maybe becoming a deist and this led to his belief in God’s salvation plan with a national bias. However keep in mind that he died at age 39. We can only wonder where his great mind and passion would have led him if he had another 30 years to ponder these matters.

The great breakthrough in Bonhoeffer’s theology was the bottom up approach. Other great survivors of the Holocaust echoed this same approach. It urged people to stop asking where God is in the suffering and tragedy and instead encouraged the question, ‘Where is the church in suffering and tragedy’ or even closer to home, ‘where are we in human suffering and tragedy?’

This is where our service today aims to direct us- not ‘out there’ as if in search of some mythical God. Rather it aims to direct our attention horizontally.

Let me tell you that putting together this week’s service was a traumatic experience. Sifting through personal stories of death and survival and coming to terms with the horror of genocide was almost too much to bear. I hope that some of this desperation comes through in the liturgy. It’s a reality which we cannot avoid. I also had some moments of great inspiration as I read and listened to stories of forgiveness and love overcoming fear. So I also hope that you take out of the service today at least glimpses of hope in the midst of the despair.

If there is a point to celebrating Lent in a modern day church, this would be it. To go deep into suffering, anything from personal loss right through to genocide, and to find glimpses of hope when you stand at the brink of being overwhelmed by darkness.

The glimpses of hope arrive for us when another human being stands in our shoes and walks a step or two, or even a mile or two.

The glimpses of hope arrive when we keep the spirit of victims alive by remembering them.

Last month, on January 27, the sixtieth anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz was held on Holocaust Memorial Day. At this moving commemoration, grandchildren of the 600 Holocaust survivors who were there read the names of some 3,000 men and women, all relatives of those survivors or family members who perished in the Holocaust. It was a symbolic way to counter the facelessness that the Nazis so desired for the Jewish People. And, as if to articulate this still further, the commemoration ended with words written on a postcard by a 22 year-old Jewish electrician, David Berger, as he faced death, trapped in the Wilna Ghetto in Poland, late in 1941. He had addressed the postcard to his girlfriend, Else, and it said simply this: "I should like someone to remember that there once lived a person named David Berger."

Glimpses of hope.

Mary Rothschild is the daughter of an Auschwitz survivor and now a human rights activist. She has devoted her life to studying the psychological and social effects of war on survivors and on the generations that follow. She has interviewed hundreds of Holocaust survivors, published numerous articles on the psychological and biochemical effects of trauma, explored various avenues for healing, and has spoken widely about these issues. Ms. Rothschild is a trained facilitator for One by One, a nonprofit organization dedicated to healing the wounds of genocide and war through engaged dialogue between victims/survivors, perpetrators, bystanders, resisters, and their descendants.

I listened to a profound interview with Mary during the week. She described a series of miracles that led her on this path of activism. Her first miracle occurred in a Jewish German dialogue, and she realized for the first time that they were not their to forgive the unforgivable, simply to address it. Her second miracle was to be in Germany and hear the words ‘I’m sorry’ for the first time. Her third miracle was to hear the pain of the descendants of the German perpetrators and as she was side by side with them to feel compassion for their suffering.

Glimpses of hope.

A glimpse of hope is seen when one person, one church stands up for justice, or when our international community takes a stand against genocide

A glimpse of hope is seen when our ideology, our language shifts to reflect the equality of all human beings, all races and all religions and a glimpse of hope arrives every time we unmask propaganda and imperial language for what it is.

The glimpse of hope is seen every time we banish any notion of ‘other’ from our psyche.

This is not about atheism. Its about experiencing God in the stuff of life; both in the darkness and in the glimpses of light and hope.

God who is within all human beings is a spark for love and goodness. God who is within is a spark for human creativity.

God who is between is love shared and communities of activism. God who is between is the interconnected stories we share.

God who is beyond our current understanding stretches our belief in what is possible. God is like our reach which exceeds our grasp. God is more than the sum of all the parts.

Theology has never been the same since the Holocaust. The literalism and dogma have been undone, and what has opened up instead is the possibility of love beyond our imagination. Theology is more now than it ever was. Now it includes our everyday human experience and interaction. Now it includes our activism and advocacy. Now it includes you.

This morning I want to offer you the ultimate encouragement – you can be part of the failure of any future attempted genocide.  You can resist genocide in your every day life by living for goodness. Goodness will overcomes fear. It always does. I can guarantee that.

There will be victims along the way. Fear always has its victims. However fear won’t win. It can’t stand up to the power of people like you and me living with such an awareness of our human companionship that our togetherness will always outnumber the isolation of fear. Fear by nature travels solo. It’s too paranoid to work in community. Fear always brings about its own demise eventually. Power and personalities make sure of that. Communities of love will win. Communities of Jewish people the world around prove this point every day. In so doing they honor victims and confound bigotry.

I come to the end, and like Bonhoeffer know that this is really a beginning.

“From the remains of the victims, like grains of wheat, a new life must rise up. Auschwitz must become a place that reminds the world of the dignity of man and that makes each of us responsible for world peace. As then men and women and children arrived here from all over Europe to die, so now from here the proclamation of human dignity must be taken to the whole world. As then many people were at the service of death, so now we are all called to stand for peace, forgiveness, solidarity.” (unknown author)