Week of October 9, 2000
Pastor Dan

On Yom Kippur, the Hebrew day of repentance, I am still sobered by my September 9 visit to Dachau, the first Nazi concentration camp. Set up on the grounds of a former munitions factory, Dachau concentration camp came into being on March 22, 1933. Political opponents, Jews, Catholic and Protestant clergymen, and so-called "undesirable elements" were to be isolated, tortured, and killed in this spot, which is a present-day suburb of Munich. As you walk the grounds of the camp today, there are no cheerful concession stands, not even a water fountain. All the foundations of the original barracks are lined up in perfect rectangles. As you walk across the roll call square, you get a creepy sense of the masses who were forced to stand in extreme weather for hours. Most haunting is the visit to the Bunker (camp prison) where numerous people were tortured, hanged, and made guinea pigs for Nazi medical experiments. I saw the exact cell where the Lutheran pastor, Martin Niemoller, was kept until the liberation of the camp. I truly wondered what I would have done in Niemoller's shoes. Then, I wondered: where was the Church's courage, the Church's obedience to take up the cross? My visit to Dachau concluded as I sat for 20 minutes inside the Protestant Memorial Church of Reconciliation not too far from the crematorium. Amid sober reflection and tears, I composed this prayer:

O Father of justice and mercy,
O Christ of solidarity and suffering,
O Spirit of truth and life,
 
Deliver us from cheap grace that dismisses the depth of your sacrificial love. Deliver us from cheap faith that flees when obedience to your will is necessary. Deliver us from cheap hope that rushes to the empty tomb without surveying the "wondrous cross." Deliver us from cheap love that shuts its eyes and ears to the needs and cries of the neighbor.
 
Receive our prayer, O Lord, and bind your Church to present faithfulness despite its past unfaithfulness. Amen.

Contributed by Pastor Dan
Published Monday October 9, 2000
Week 46 of Liturgical Year B