October 13, 2024 – Twenty-first Sunday after Pentecost
II Kings 25.1-11
Mark 13.14-23
Never Again
Twenty-first Sunday after Pentecost
I read it on the internet, so it must be true, right? Did you know the most recent pair of hurricanes that devastated the southeast, Helene and Milton, were not the product of climate change, as most people believe. No, the root cause is much more sinister than this. Somehow, a small cabal of Jews has figured out how to manipulate the weather; and in the aftermath of the hurricanes’ damage, they have secretly sabotaged recovery efforts in order to take control of whatever abandoned property they can acquire. And if you don’t believe me, then consider this: some of the principal figures in our nation’s hurricane response are Jewish. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, Asheville, North Carolina Mayor Esther Manheimer, and FEMA director of Public Affairs Jaclyn Rothenberg are all Jewish and are working in concert in response and recovery efforts, hiding in plain sight, as it were, to further their clandestine aims. I read it on the internet, so it must be true!
Even in the heat of an election season that seems to be getting more frantic by the minute, this is an outrageous assertion, fake news to the nth degree. Sadly, such antisemitic tropes are more virulent than ever, and worse, far worse, is the number of people who believe them.
About a month ago I wrote you about an art show currently on display at Congregation Beth Shalom here in town. The show is called “All This Has Come Upon Us: Art for Terezin.” Terezin was a Nazi concentration camp about thirty miles north of Prague in the Czech Republic, and the art show at the temple was originally exhibited at the Terezin Ghetto Museum. Artist Mark Podwal, who died just a few weeks ago, created a series of 42 archival pigment prints which chronicle the history of antisemitism from Pharaoh’s enslavement of the Israelites in Egypt to the birth of the state of Israel. It is a powerful exhibition. It is on display until December 20, and I strongly recommend it to you. You may visit it at any time, you only need to call first to tell them you’d like to see it.
None of us needs to be reminded of the dangerous and repulsive effects of the cancer of antisemitism. But its historical length and breadth, its long and tentacular influence, cannot be forgotten, minimized nor glossed over. It is a history, as we know well, that finds multiple instances in the Bible, and Podwal’s art includes multiple examples.
Besides the one we know best, Israel’s enslavement by Pharaoh and subsequent liberation by Moses, there are other equally powerful but lesser known biblical stories, including the ones we heard this morning.
We do not often visit the Old Testament book of II Kings, but the story that is told in chapter 25 is pivotal in Israel’s long history. The name Nebuchadnezzar, sometimes also known as Nebuchadrezzar, is one we’ve probably heard before. He was a Babylonian king who laid siege to the city of Jerusalem on two separate occasions. In the year 597 BCE, the Kingdom of Judah was caught in a power struggle between Egypt and Babylon. Nebuchadnezzar seized the upper hand, invaded the capital, Jerusalem, appointed a puppet ruler and deported more than 10,000 Jews to Babylon.
An Old Testament professor of mine once explained how this worked, and the explanation has stayed with me ever since. In ancient times, two nations at war did not have to conquer and occupy an enemy’s entire territory in order to be successful in battle: the prize was the capital city. If you took the capital, you owned the nation. His memorable example, as we sat in our small classroom in Barrington, Rhode Island, was that if Rhode Island went to war with Connecticut next week, all they would need to do to be successful would be to take the city of Hartford, and all Connecticut would be theirs. In fact a good friend of mine, as beguiled by the notion as I was, wrote a short story about the idea – he titled it “The Hartford Conquest,” and it was a wonderfully whimsical encapsulation of the ancient theory of war. By taking Jerusalem, Nebuchadnezzar possessed the entire Kingdom of Judah.
But this was not enough. To add insult to injury, Nebuchadnezzar returned ten years later, in the pivotal year of 587, completely destroyed Jerusalem, demolished the Temple of Solomon, which to the Hebrew people represented the very presence of God, killed more than 4000 people, and exiled and scattered the rest of the population to Babylon, an event known as the Babylonian Exile. Depending on whose history you read, the exile lasted from 48 to 70 years, until Cyrus, King of Persia, conquered Babylon and permitted the Jews to return home. It is a story affirmed by both religious and secular historians, and it is part of the long history of violence against the Jews.
Michele read a curious portion of Mark’s gospel for us this morning. The entire 13th chapter of Mark is often called “the little apocalypse,” for its vision of danger and destruction. Jesus said,
“When you see the desolating sacrilege set up where it ought not to be (let the reader understand), then those in Judea must flee to the mountains… For in those days there will be suffering, such as has not been from the beginning of the creation that God created until now, and no, will never be… False messiahs and false prophets will appear and produce signs and omens, to lead astray, if possible, the elect. [What I have said to you, I say to everyone:] Be alert.”
But there is so much wrapped up into this one chapter that it is not clear is whether Jesus is speaking about the past, the present or the future.
The clue – to me anyway – is in the parenthesis. “When you see the desolating sacrilege set up where it ought not to be (let the reader understand), then those in Judea must flee to the mountains.” Since when did Jesus speak parenthetically? Did he know that some day we would be reading his words? The phrase “let the reader understand” is a later editorial addition that points to the desolating sacrilege, but what is it? At another important and antisemitic moment in Israel’s history, in the year 167 BCE, Greek ruler Antiochus IV Epiphanes desecrated the Jerusalem temple by offering a pagan sacrifice: he slaughtered and immolated pigs on the altar of the Almighty, an animal not just unclean to the Jews, but an anathema to them. It was meant as an insult not just to the Jews, but to the God of the Jews as well. Jesus’ words are meant to warn that the temple is soon to suffer an even greater desolating sacrilege: in 70 CE, less than forty years after Jesus spoke these words, the rebuilt temple of Solomon was completely destroyed. The destructon is presaged in Paul’s letters, affirmed in the gospel stories, and again, attested to by both religious and secular historians. In that year, three days before Passover, the Roman Emperor Titus and his armies occupied the city of Jerusalem, destroyed the temple three months later, and razed the city by fire. It is considered a turning point in both Jewish and Christian history, representing yet another purge of the Jews. In Mark 13, Jesus connected the desecration of the temple by Antiochus Epiphanies to its coming destruction by Titus.
The Babylonian Exile, the Abomination of the altar and the destruction of the Jerusalem temple are among those 42 instances of antisemitism Podwal’s art at the local temple depicts, and they are powerful. He also reminds the viewer of the year 1492, which to the rest of us speaks to this long weekend of the voyage of Columbus, but the year also marked the expulsion of the Jews from Spain, on the order of the same King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella who blessed Columbus’ voyage. And six years ago Debbie and I had the opportunity to visit another instance of historical aggression against the Jews when we toured the very first Jewish ghetto in Venice. In 1516 Venetian Jews were round up and relocated to an enclosed area in the city where a foundry once stood – the Italian word giatto, or geto, means “foundry.” The Jewish population’s movement was severely restricted, the gates were locked at night, and it became a de facto prison. The art display also includes representations of Nazi Germany and the Holocaust, including Kristallnacht, the Yellow Star, Arbeit Macht Frei, and Terezin itself.
In the past seven days our Jewish siblings have solemnly remembered both the sacred and the profane. Yesterday was Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day or Atonement and one of the holiest of the High Holy Days. It also marked the end of a week’s solemn observance of Hamas’ brutal invasion and kidnapping and murder against the Jews last October 7, when more than 1200 men, women and children were slaughtered, the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, and more than 250 people taken hostage. Violence against Jews belongs not just to the pages of history, but to the front page of today’s news. As a congregation you and I have stood side by side and shoulder to shoulder with our kin at Congregation Beth Shalom, and as individuals we have also served as staunch allies. Our voices, our support and our presence are critical; indeed were it not for a certain first century Jew we would not even be here this morning in the presence of the God who calls us into committed communities of faith. A good friend of mine used to call election years “the silly season” when people make preposterous claims and unkeepable promises. But there is nothing silly about scapegoating an entire faith and people for political purposes, or for any reason whatever. As both religious and secular history continue to remind us, there have been too many times when Christian voices have failed to speak up in honor and defense of our Jewish brothers and sisters. Now cannot be one of those times. If you’d like a small taste of Podwal’s display at Congregation Beth Shalom, there is a reproduction in miniature posted on our Community Bulletin Board downstairs; take a look at it during Coffee Hour this morning. But to see it in person just a mile up the road is a powerful experience and serves as a reminder of what is at stake.
And so let our prayer, our hope, our determination and our dream, be that two word phrase which in other times should be a no-brainer, but sadly need in these times to be uttered repeatedly: Never Again. Never Again. Never Again.