Yesterday I began my Seminary class with this question, “What happened on this date in history?” Over the years November 9-10 has seen some very important events.
One student answered, “the birthday of Martin Chemnitz,” but other than that, silence. I went to the board and wrote “Kristallnacht.” “Do you know it?” Only three students raised their hands. “Google it,” I said. They all did and read this: “Kristallnacht or the Night of Broken Glass…was a pogrom against Jews carried out by the Nazi Party’s Sturmabteilung paramilitary forces on 9-10 November 1938. The German authorities looked on without intervening. The name Kristallnacht comes from the shards of broken glass that littered the streets after the windows of Jewish-owned stores, buildings and synagogues were smashed.” After reading more, I asked, “Where was God?”
“What else happened on this date?” Nowadays students google answers, so I got a correct answer. On November 9, 1989, East Germany declared the Berlin Wall would open the next day. Immediately the wall was climbed by joyous east and west Berliners. We then talked about lives lost and disrupted by the wall communist dictator Erick Honecker had put up in 1961. “Where was God?”
One other historical event from these days, Martin Luther was born on November 10, 1483, in Eisleben, Germany and baptized the next day in Saints Peter and Paul Church. He was given the name “Martin,” because November 11th is the Day of St. Martin of Tours, the patron saint of soldiers, a fourth century cavalryman who cut his military cloak to give half to a beggar. Now back to the haunting question, where was God? Martin of Tours knew, Martin Chemnitz knew, and Martin Luther said it most clearly: God is present in suffering.
“God’s love does not find, but creates, that which is pleasing to it. Human love comes into being through that which is please to it. This is the love of the cross, born of the cross, which turns in the direction where it does not find good, which it may enjoy, but where it may confer good upon the evil and needy person” (Heidelberg Disputation). This is called the “theology of the cross,” which is more than “Jesus died for our sins.” It should be what Christian life is about, God’s love through us turning to “where it may confer good upon the evil and needy person.”
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