Proper 10 Year C 2010

Carl Knapp, Deacon

Seven days ago was the 4^th of July and Thursday will be Bastille Day. These two days commemorate the drive of the human spirit toward freedom, or as the French express it: Liberty, Fraternity, Equality.

While we remember and celebrate these ideals derived from the Judeo-Christian heritage, we also remember the cost of maintaining those ideals: those seemingly endless rows of stone monuments at Normandy and Belleau Woods; at Arlington and Gettesburg, and yes, in graves surrounding this church. The cost is high and many have been called upon to pay that price with all they had – their lives.

Knowingly or unknowingly these sacrifices were made in the Spirit of the second half of the Great Commandment. Thou shall love thy neighbor as thyself. In today’s Gospel reading we hear again the story of the Good Samaritan – He who showed mercy. The story develops the concept of who is my neighbor. The priest and the Levite were obligated by Mosaic law to help – to show mercy. Yet they did not. The Samaritans were hated by the Jews as a mongrel race –claiming to be followers of Yehwah, but not of the Chosen People. It was an accursed Samaritan who showed mercy. He could have also walked by, but he stopped and he helped.

I have wondered what was in his mind that day. Why did he stop to help? Why does anyone stop to help? What did he think on the rest of that trip? Did he consider the consequences of his actions? We will never know.

But I would share with you the story of another Good Samaritan. In the Second World War Denmark was invaded very early and it quietly submitted to the occupation. When, at soccer games, the Germans would announce that the size of the crowd violated the permissible number, everyone, including the players, would leave. The rules were soon changed. On the day that all Jews had to begin to wear the yellow Star of David, the King of Denmark appeared walking the streets of Copenhagen wearing a yellow Star of David. Within a few hours many of the people of this small nation were also wearing that star. In mercy they changed what was meant to be a sign of hatred, fear, derision to a symbol of fraternity and caring. Thou shall love thy neighbor as thyself. The King of Denmark knew who were his neighbors. The Danish leadership learned of an upcoming Gestapo operation that would result in all of the Jews being gathered up and shipped to concentration camps. Quietly they organized a massive operation of their own. In one night the medical staffs, the police, the fishermen and volunteers escorted the Jews of the entire country to the coastal areas. There waiting fishing boats were filled and sailed to Sweden. The young children were drugged so that they would not cry out. In that one night almost all of the Jews of Denmark escaped to safety in Sweden. Thou shall love thy neighbor as thyself. The people of Denmark knew who was their neighbor and they showed mercy.

Among those fishermen was a young man named Kim, who, with his shipmates, continued to be called upon to take people out of the country. Late in 1944, his little boat was captured while on such a work of mercy and he was imprisoned, tortured, tried, and executed. He was not yet 22. From the letters he was allowed to write to his fiance and his Mother we can gain some insight into his thinking as he prepared to die.

Kim wrote: “…Suddenly, just as in raising one’s eyes, I saw my old thought in a completely new light…-…the teaching of Jesus should not be something that we follow just because we have been taught to do so and permit ourselves to be influenced by this. We should live not by the letter of his precepts, but rather in conformity with them, complying with a deeply felt inspiration that should come not as an influence from without, but from the heart, from the innermost depths of the soul, as is the case with every inspiration.”

In a letter written the day after he had been tortured by the Gestapo, he wrote:’…since then I have been thinking about the strange thing that actually has happened to me. Immediately afterwards I experienced an indescribable feeling of relief, an exultant intoxication of victory, a joy so irrational that I was as though paralyzed. It was as if the soul had liberated it self completely from the body, as if soul and body were gamboling like two detached beings, the one in a completely unfettered super natural ecstasy, the other severely earthbound, writhing in a passionless convulsion. Suddenly I realized how incredibly strong I am. When the soul returned once more to the body, it was as if the jubilation of the whole world had been gathered together here…- …Immediately afterwards it dawned upon me that I have now a new understanding of Jesus. The time of waiting – that is the ordeal. I will warrant that the suffering endured in have a few nails driven through one’s hands, in being crucified, is something purely mechanical that lifts the soul into an ecstasy comparable with nothing else. But the waiting in the garden – that hour drips red with blood. One other strange thing, I felt absolutely no hatred. Something happened to my body; it was only the body of a boy and it reacted as such. But my soul was occupied with something completely different. - … since then I have often thought of Jesus. I can well understand the measureless love he felt for all men, and especially for those who took part in driving mails into his hands.”

The final letter written the day he was to die.

Dear Mother: “Today, together with Jorgen, Nils and Ludwig, I was arraigned before a military tribunal. We were condemned to death. I know that you are a courageous woman, and that you will bear this, but, hear me, it is not enough to bear it, you must also understand it. I am an insignificant thing, and my person will soon be forgotten, but the thought, the life, the inspiration that filled me will live on. You will meet them everywhere – in the trees at springtime, in people who cross your path, in a loving little smile. You will encounter that something which perhaps had value in me, you will cherish it, and you will not forget me. And so I shall have a chance to grow. I shall be living with all of you whose hearts I once filled. And you will all live on, knowing that I have preceded you, and not, as perhaps you thought at first, dropped out behind you…’

“…follow me, my dear Mother, on my path and do not stop before the end, but linger with some of the matters belonging to the last space of time allotted to me…” “I traveled a road that I have never regretted. I have never evaded the dictates of my heart, and now things seem to fall into place. I am not old, I should not be dying, yet it seems so natural to me, so simple. It is only the abrupt manner of that frightens us at first. The time is short, I cannot properly explain it, but my soul is perfectly at rest…”

“…all of you must remember this – that your dream must not be to return to the time before the war, but that all of you, young and old, should create conditions that are not arbitrary but that will bring to realization a genuinely human ideal, something that every person will see and feel to be an ideal for all of us. That is the great gift for which our country thirsts…”

Kim and his fellow fishermen were executed by firing squad on the Wednesday after Easter, April 4^th, 1945. Thirty-four days before the Nazi surrender.

We, each of us, have many opportunities to meet Good Samaritans and to be Good Samaritans.

The 4^th of July and Bastille Day are remembered as focal points for the development of ideals that grow forth from the Judeo-Christian heritage. Ideals put into action by Kim a young fisherman, and by all of the others, who have accepted the challenge of the question, “Who is my neighbor?”

And having answered that question as Christ answered it, they have fulfilled the commandment – “Thou shall love thy neighbor as thyself.”

Let us not forget their love;

Their lives;

Their sacrifice.