On Yad Vashem, Christmas, and the Scandal of the Incarnation

Christmas ornament hanging on Greek Patriachate Road
Old City Jerusalem

Entering the parking lot of Yad Vashem (the Israeli Holocaust Memorial) for a visit today, the parking attendant said, “Americans! You love Trump? We love Trump! He is great for us. He is great for Israel.”

The tour leaders and I flashed non-committal smiles and paid the 40 NIS to park the bus.

This was my first visit to Yad Vashem, although I’ve lived here for more than two years now. In the same way that I lived in Chicagoland for 9 years and never did make it to the top of the Sears (Willis) Tower, so there are many things I haven’t seen in Jerusalem that the average tourist marks off in the first 24 hours. Hoping to do better in 2017.

When I got off the bus, the driver said to me (perhaps out of habit) – “Have fun!” Um, not really. A Holocaust museum is in no way fun. And while I may have quibbles with our particular guide’s interpretations of some historical events, I think it is a very effective (and heartbreaking) museum. The point is well made. Never again, indeed.

My goal in visiting today was to experience the museum as it was—to feel all the feelings, apart from how they may (or may not) relate to what is happening in Israel/Palestine or the US today. And for the most part, that’s what happened.

But I was surprised at how viscerally I was affected, especially by the beginning of the museum’s narrative. 

After seeing videos of thriving European Jewish life before the war, we were met with the history of how Hitler and the Nazis came to power. Over and over, we saw how the Nazis preyed upon the German people’s sense of wanting to be “powerful again”. How they needed someone in the world to blame for their hardships after the first war. How they so readily accepted the idea that some humans were actually “sub-human” and therefore not even worthy of discrimination, but actually deserved extermination. How media was used to popularize these ideas (not via Facebook, but through posters, and sermons, and household items, and even children’s board games).

In Warsaw, when the horrific Jewish ghetto was established, a wall was built around it. “Guess who built it?” asked our tour guide. The Jews, of course. “And guess who paid for it?” she asked again. One of the students on our tour, a Mexican-American, slumped against the wall of the museum and looked stricken.

“Why didn’t the US or other allies just bomb Auschwitz?” asked our guide. An entire wall is filled with an aerial view of the Auschwitz compound, proving the Americans both knew about it and could fly over it. No one offered an answer, so our guide offered her own: “Indifference.” Aleppo, anyone?

When we were near the end of the museum tour, our guide stopped mid-sentence and pointed out a man who had just entered the room in his wheelchair. “He’s an Auschwitz survivor,” she whispered. “Last time I saw him, he was still able to walk.” We all waited in silence while he passed. He was, at that moment, the entire museum, incarnate. A memorial, in the flesh.

This Christmas, I don’t want to hear about Clinton’s emails, or how Bernie could have won. I don’t want to hear “give Trump a chance.” This is not about partisanship. I want to hear what we are doing to fight against our common human addiction to putting our neighbors behind walls, denying their rights because it secures ours, and killing them (or allowing them to be killed) because it serves our political purposes.

 I want to hear how we avoid bowing to the Herods of the world, who are only concerned with preserving power and privilege, and who will destroy any who oppose them.

I want to hear what Christmas and the incarnation of Jesus (God daring to become human and walk around in bodies like ours) means the other 364 days a year. Faced with the reality of the Holocaust, how does the incarnate Body of Christ respond? Dietrich Bonhoeffer has something to say about that.

Faced with the reality of Aleppo, where is Christ’s Body? We seem to think sharing articles and virtual prayers will be enough. We are so concerned with Christ being left out of Christmas, and yet we are more than happy to leave the cross out of Christianity. 

One week from tomorrow, I will cross a military checkpoint and a massive wall to reach Bethlehem, and to celebrate how (as someone quipped in last night’s Bible Study): “God did us a solid and was born among us.” And where is Christ’s Body in response to what is happening in the land of his birth today? Are we content to keep the story of Jesus behind a wall?

To put it a different way: Is Christmas about remembering how, for 33 short years in all of human history, God walked among us? Or do we believe that because of Christmas, God walks among us still, making every body sacred, every body holy, and every body worthy of respect, safety, and freedom? 

You enter Yad Vashem by descending, as if into a grave. You exit by going up, towards the light. As we prepare to celebrate the birth of Jesus, the one we call the Morning Star, the light who shines in the darkness, I hope and pray that my fellow Christians will not only celebrate Christmas, but will commit to practicing Incarnation. The Holocaust is a horror. Racism and prejudice are powerful addictions. War is hell. Fifty years of occupation is shameful! 

Our indifference to it all is the ultimate human sin--And Christmas is the scandal with the power to transform it.

May the peace of God which passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.

And may the scandal of the Incarnation unsettle us all in 2017.

"And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth." - John 1:14