Social Justice Candle - September 15, 2013
50 years ago today, on a Sunday, within this hour (10:22 a.m.), the 16th Avenue Baptist Church of Birmingham, Alabama experienced, firsthand, the power of hate as its Sunday morning activities were brought to a violent halt with the explosion of a box of dynamite hidden under a staircase. Twenty-six children were walking into the basement assembly room to prepare for the sermon entitled "The Love That Forgives", when the bomb exploded, killing Addie Mae Collins (age 14), Denise McNair (age 11), Carole Robertson (age 14), and Cynthia Wesley (age 14). As a 14 year-old-boy, I had no sense at the time that the mere act of being was a reason to be killed in this violent way. That could have been me or someone I knew from school.
A rabbi was preparing a sermon for November 9th, which would mark the 25th anniversary of the Krystallnacht pogroms against the Jewish people of the expanded Nation of Germany. On hearing of the Birmingham Church bombing, it occurred to him that almost exactly twenty-five years earlier, the power of hate was pulled together in the way that would lead to the holocaust. And it occurred that these people, suffering persecution in Birmingham, are the same as the people who would suffer from the pogroms and all the terror that would follow them. And the story came to his mind:
"First, they came for the protestors, and I was not a protester, so I did nothing as the protesters were taken away. Then they came for the communists and socialists, and I was not a communist or socialist, so I did nothing as the communists and socialists were taken away. Then they came for the gypsies, and I was not a gypsy, so I did nothing as the gypsies were taken away. Then they came for the Jews, and that is who I was, and I could not be surprised that the good people would do nothing as the Jews were taken away. But as I was being taken, in my heart I screamed, 'Never Again!' And now, in a new country, they are coming for the Negro. And the voice in my heart tells me that I cannot let this be another of those times."
We are gathered in a church - a place of remembrance. Let us remember that hate kills the innocent. We are gathered in a place of commitment. Let us commit to the simple message: "Never again!"
