Witness In The Eye Of The Hurricane

Sermon by James W. Crawford

October 5, 1997, Worldwide Communion Sunday

Philippians 2:5-11

Philip Hallie is a Jew who taught philosophy at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut. Hallie grew up, as he describes it, amid an invading army of cockroaches in one of Chicago's toughest neighborhoods. As a boy he saw John Dillinger shot, killed and carted away on his block.  Time and again neighborhood bullies bloodied his nose, taunting him for his Jewishness. It was dog eat dog, victimizer and victim, and as he matured he came increasingly to believe that force and arbitrary power ruled the world. His experience in the European trenches of World War II confirmed it.

Later in life Philip Hallie became a student of the Holocaust. His studies of the cruelty and evil of the Nazi Era in Europe drove him to a tormented  cynicism and despair. His childhood and wartime experience, his plunging into the horror of the Holocaust, led him to view human nature and the human condition as an ongoing story of pitiless and abusive power crushing and drowning whatever good might spring up here and there in the world.

And then, late one night, angry, despondent, disheartened by his experience and his Holocaust studies, Philip Hallie picked from his bookshelf a little monograph entitled, "Chambon-Sur-Lignon." He read it hungrily, captivated, spellbound. It described a little Huguenot Village in Central France, a pastor, his wife, his assistant, indeed a whole village that becomes the safest place in Europe for Jewish refugees. Hallie describes a tingling feeling on his cheeks; when he goes to touch them he discovers his cheeks awash with tears. This is his first major encounter in his Holocaust studies with anyone--much less a whole village--standing up to the Nazi--and in this most parochial case--the Vichy Regime in France. (Indeed, wasn't it interesting this week, the Catholic Bishops in France offering an apology to the Chief Rabbi and his entourage for the silence, indifference, and the fear of the Catholic Church to stand up for the Jews in that troublesome era.) In any case, Hallie begins to look further into the life of Le Chambon, its local congregation, its Sermon-on-the-Mount ethic, its incredible witness to courage, to truth, and to pacifism during the devastation of Europe and the genocidal assault on the Jews.

Hallie begins to change the direction of his studies. Instead of focusing on what he perceives to be the perennial subversion and frequent triumph of evil in human life, he finds himself looking for and discovering surprising equivalents to that woman in Le Chambon, who, in the dead of winter, 1942, opened her front door to a feeble knock, discovered another woman, spindly, shivering, covered with snow--out of the blue--begging for food, warmth, hospitality. This trembling woman was the first of 5000 Jewish refugees saved by the town of Le Chambon from the furies exploding out of the evil depths of nationalism, racism and tribalism.

As he pursues his new focus, Hallie finds any number of what he considers absolutely unique efforts to care for strangers, to provide hospitality at great risk, under sacrificial circumstances. He searches for a metaphor to describe what he discovered in Le Chambon and also in subsequent revelations of men and women working amid violent and horrendous circumstances to succor and save, to help and heal. And he finds it. The metaphor he seeks comes to him amid Hurricane Gloria--remember in the summer of 1979?--Hurricane Gloria ravaging the Atlantic Coast. Hallie finds himself caught in the hurricane. The door to his house shatters, a chestnut tree in his yard  tears out of the ground. The rain floods his basement. He and his family watch this vicious storm, shrinking from its fury, huddling against its chaos. Then, almost as suddenly as the hurricane hits, Hallie finds himself under a pale blue sky, the birds singing, the leaves on the fallen tree no longer fluttering. "We were," he writes, "in the eye of the hurricane. The four of us kept holding each other's hands for a little while, but now there was a surprising gentleness in our feelings. Our feelings of terror had become feelings of tenderness toward one another and toward the world outside our kitchen."

And Hallie continues,

Then and there I realized that the peace I had found in Le Chambon was like this. Peace sometimes stands like the eye of a hurricane in the very middle of power. The indifferent, destructive power of nature and of fellow human beings is always near; it surrounds the blue beauty of our tenderness and it is always threatening to invade it, the way the winds of a hurricane surround its eye. Amid the killing and the letting kill that are always happening on this planet, amid the deliberate cruelty, the hating, the eating and the dying of creatures in the air, on the land and in the waters, amid all of this there can be room for peace and warmth.

And then Hallie reflects:

In the midst of our struggle for survival that always ends in our death, we creatures on earth have made room for thoughts and deeds of love. Some creatures have made more room than others. The people of Le Chambon in their kitchen-resistance to murder made room at great risk and with great sacrifice not only for about five thousand refugee children, but for a love that encompassed all (hu)mankind. The ethically pure Chambonais, who did not hate and did not kill in order to help life thrive,pushed back the walls of the eye of the hurricane until the murderous winds seemed so far away as to be unreal. There was one murderous Gestapo raid on Le Chambon, but for most of the four years of the war in France there were peace and safety in Le Chambon, while torture, murder and betrayal were happening all over the rest of the continent of Europe.

As we enter this second week of our thinking about stewardship, it is this kind of life I want to celebrate for Christ's sake: the partner in Christ, who amid the hurricane surrounding us all, continues with courage, selflessness, aplomb--sometimes even an egregious recklessness--the person who  continues to push back the walls of the hurricane surrounding us. It is an illustration of what the stewardship of our lives for God's sake is all about.

And I tell you with awe and admiration that people within this congregation, on a day by day basis, continue to inspire and humble me with incredible capacity to serve as the eye at the center of the hurricane. This will embarrass her, I know, but it is one reason we chose Catherine Dauber to speak as our Partner in Christ this morning. At almost 90 years old, her participation in a wide range of civic, private, personal service and action activities over the years, holding the walls of the hurricane at bay--venturing to push the walls back--staggers me and others of us by her energy, humor and unrelenting hope. And, yes, thank God for the number of you doing unnamed and silent kindnesses for one another, for people you do not know,  people you will never meet, people in need. You may get nothing more than a cheap shot epithet, "Bleeding Heart." But my soul! how this world needs "bleeding hearts" to push back the walls of the hurricane: caring for AIDS patients, building houses, providing jobs, giving money, tutoring kids,  finding jobs, feeding the hungry, riding your bikes and walking for a score of health and justice causes, seeking to prevent addiction, assisting in hospitals, serving on the boards of organizations offering counseling services, battling racism, ameliorating economic injustice.

And yes, thank you! thank you! from the bottom of my heart for the time and energy and money you spend in this house, with imagination, guts and incredible patience, making every effort to sustain this place and this people, as a counter-force pressing back those relentless walls of the world's hurricane. Bless your hearts!

As we come, then, to this holy table this morning, let me remind you that we discover here what it may mean for each of us--and perhaps for our church--to live, if you will, as witnesses in the eye of a hurricane. Just as our sharing this common meal, our eating and drinking together, show our solidarity and ties to one another in Christ, the action of breaking the bread and pouring the wine illustrates the kind of life we have been describing.

Love can be dangerous amid the hurricane world. Love can break and bleed us. And thus, as we break, as we pour, I invite you, as Paul does, to have among yourselves the mind of Christ; for Christ's sake and in Christ's manner, have your life ready to be broken and poured for the healing and reconciliation of a frequently soulless world--or, as the men and women of that little village of Le Chambon illustrate: have among yourselves the mind of Christ that we may serve as witnesses pushing, pressing, praying and holding fast against the furious walls of the hurricane--yes, as the eye of the storm, witnesses to grace, to peace, to service and to joy.