Aware

"They came first for the Communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time no one was left to speak up."

-Martin Niemoller, Lutheran pastor during Nazi Regime



Niemoller was tainted. He had been a U-boat captain in WW I prior to becoming a pastor. And he supported Hitler prior to his taking power. Indeed, initially the Nazi press held him up as a model... for his service in WW I. But Niemoller broke very early with the Nazis. In 1933, he organized the Pastor’s Emergency League to protect Lutheran pastors from the police. In 1934, he was one of the leading organizers at the Barmen Synod, which produced the theological basis for the Confessing Church, which despite its persecution became an enduring symbol of German resistance to Hitler. After the war, Niemoller emerged from prison to preach the words that began this post, that all of us know... He was instrumental in producing the “Stuttgart Confession of Guilt”, in which the German Protestant churches formally accepted guilt for their complicity in allowing the suffering which Hitler’s reign caused to occur. In 1961, he was elected as one of the six presidents of the World Council of Churches, the ecumenical body of the Protestant faiths.


This story brought conviction to my life as I have looked back through the years and seen the times where I have passed those who were in need. "It was not my fight." "These are not my people." "It is not my place to say or do anything." These were some of the excuses I used. I was selective in helping people. If they were a "Christian" that agreed with my views, I would gladly lend a hand. But if they weren't, I turned a critical cheek to them.
I grew up believing that Church was a building, that it was a place you went and experienced God. This mindset led me to be so ineffective in reaching the lost, because I spent time "preaching to the choir", hanging out in "Church", and not going out into the world as Christ called me to do. I failed to see everyone, especially nonbelievers as God's people, whom He loved dearly.

I realized that church was not a building, it wasn't a place, it was us, God's redeemed who gathered in unity. I did some research and found that the word church (ekklesia), in the New Testament, referred to an assembly of people, not a place. In every one of its 114 appearances, it referred to an assembly. God's people, not the architecture, constitute the sacredness of a space. The church in Acts realized this, they gathered in unity, they realized that they were the temples which God resided in, they realized that the Church was meant to go into the world, to minister to everyone, and they made God known through love in action, through compassion that made a difference, feeding the hungry, helping the needy, caring for the sick, providing for those who had nothing, they ministered and served to all, those that were redeemed, and especially those that did not consider themselves Christians or those who followed the Judaic-Christian way. Once we realize that we are the Church, we are the body, we can make a true difference in this world. Wherever we go, we can make sacred places that are cursed, by gathering in unity, serving and ministering, not standing on soap boxes and preaching an agenda, but being the hands and feet of God.