Fr. Kolbe's Cell
Are we the living dead?
Are we just going through the motions of our life in Christ, flipping the channel in our mind, tuning out just a little, running the to-do list over in our head during the sermon? After all…if we’ve been going to church for a while…we’ve heard it all before. Has our passion for God cooled down, gotten quiet or even gone underground?
Let’s face it, I don’t see too many people jumping for joy over Jesus’ teaching to ‘’deny ourselves, take up our cross and follow him.’’
Frankly, that sounds like a lot of work.
Eric Scott, pastor of the San Pedro UMC in San Pedro, California writes, ‘’Your cross, as one of my colleagues likes to say, isn’t your annoying brother-in-law. Your cross isn’t even a chronic health condition. The cross is something we choose. We have the option of picking it up or not. The irony is that the cross is not something anyone would want to pick up. It is, on the surface, distasteful. Yet at the same time, it is a way of life that puts the self’s primary desires and motivations aside. Somehow, by doing that , we actually experience more true life than if that had been our goal to begin with.’’
We are reminded of this truth when we explore the life of Maximilian Kolbe Kolbe, a Polish priest, didn’t know where his life would take him when he entered the priesthood. At first he traveled extensively for some years, establishing friaries in Asia and India before returning to Warsaw to establish one there. After Germany invaded Poland in 1939, Kolbe and his fellow friars organized it as a shelter for 3,000 Polish refugees, 2,000 of them Jews. The friars shared all they had with the refugees. Eventually this work ended with the friars’ arrest in 1941.
Kolbe was sent in May of that year to Auschwitz. There he was known for his acts of kindness and generosity. Since there was often not enough food to go around, he stood aside to let others in the bunker get the weak cup of coffee, weak soup and piece of bread that was food for a day. He seldom rested at night but went from bunk to bunk to offer what comfort he could. He waited for others to be treated by the doctor before he stepped forward. He led prayers and offered confessions and turned the other cheek when abused by the guards. Both his fellow prisoners and some of his captors later attested to his selflessness.
Kolbe hadn’t been there many months when someone from his bunker escaped. The rule at Auschwitz was that for every escapee, 10 would be killed. This group of men, already disheartened and starving; were called into the yard where 10 of them were chosen to be placed in Block 13 and starved to death. One of the ten, Fracizek Gajowncek cried out that he was a father, a husband, that he would now never see his family again.
Father Kolbe stepped forward and offered his life for Gajowncek. He simply said, ‘’Let me die in his place.’’ It is the first and last time in the history of Auschwitz that anyone volunteered to die for someone else.
During 3 weeks of starvation and dehydration, Kolbe led the others in prayers and hymns. He kept them focused on the eternal, helped them set their minds on things above. He never cursed his oppressors, but prayed for them and urged the others to do so. In the end, it took an injection of carbolic acid to end his life. It was discovered later that the ‘’escapee’’ had drowned in the camp’s latrine.
Author, blogger and speaker Ann Voscamp, recently posted a two part essay on her web page called ‘’How to Really Live.’’ She talked about telling her children the story of Maximilian Kolbe, and how she had memorized part of a letter he wrote to his mother a week before these events began to unfold. Dear Mama, begins the letter. ‘’ I am in the camp of Auschwitz. Everything is well in my regard. Be tranquil about me and about my health, because the good God is everywhere and provides for everything with love.’ Voscamp says, ‘’ I had memorized that line of the letter. Because if a man in the midst of one the most hideous scenarios known in the history of the world could write a line like that — not from a bad day at the office or a hard day with the kids, but from the death stench of Auschwitz — how can anyone deny this ultimate, iron-clad testimony: A Good God is everywhere — and provides for everything with love.
She goes on to say: How can I believe anything different when the house is loud and mothering wears and obligations pile and I’m buried and a friend tells me the doctors have given her 60-90 days to live and even breathing can cause this pain in your chest?
If Maximilian Kolbe could stand in Auschwitz and write “Be tranquil — because the good God is everywhere and provides for everything with love” — is there ever really anything that should make one lose tranquility? It could be like a song for all the doubters and anxious: The good God is everywhere and provides for everything with love.’’
Jesus said: ‘’If you’re seeking to keep your life, you’ll lose it. If you lose your life for my sake, you’ll find it.’’
The Messiah was born human, born to the same pain and heartache, disappointment and frustration that we have. Yet in the midst of that human condition, Jesus shows us how to really live, points to what’s really important, God’s Kingdom come… on Earth as it is in Heaven. Maximilian Kolbe brought God’s Kingdom to Earth, to the horror of Auschwitz by stepping in to save the life of a man he didn’t know. And he didn’t stop there. The camp and guards could hear the singing, the prayers. What did such courage and sacrifice leave behind in the hearts of those others.
We pray the Lord’s Prayer every week, and if you’re like me, you may imagine God’s Kingdom coming in some future, gold-tinted time…maybe the way that Peter and the rest of his countrymen dreamed up a Messiah that would crush their enemies and set them free. Shawn Claiborne explains it this way in his Esquire essay ‘’What if Jesus Meant all that Stuff’’: ‘’ Don't get me wrong, I still believe in the afterlife, but too often all the church has done is promise the world that there is life after death and use it as a ticket to ignore the hells around us. I am convinced that the Christian Gospel has as much to do with this life as the next, and that the message of that Gospel is not just about going up when we die but about bringing God's Kingdom down. It was Jesus who taught us to pray that God's will be done "on earth as it is in heaven." On earth.’’
Maximilian Kolbe did not ignore the hell around him. He shattered the darkness with his act of love.
The Messiah who God had in mind was not the one the Jewish people had dreamed up when they were a disenfranchised, scattered people, enslaved. Jesus wasn’t there to lead the kind of revolution the oppressed always dream of…full of justice and not mercy… He was coming to fulfill the Torah…to show people how to really live as a citizen of the Kingdom of God, and more, how to bring God’s Kingdom to Earth.
Right here. Right now.
Jesus isn’t about what’s popular, doesn’t care if he’s leading in the polls or any ‘’we are the champions’’ kind of thinking. In fact he tells people NOT to talk about his miraculous works. He’s about serving…about giving his life as a ransom for many. He often does the exact opposite of what’s expected. When Peter urged him avoid Jerusalem to save his life, Jesus tells him he’s missed the point.
In God’s Kingdom, it’s not finders keepers…it’s losers keepers
Saving yourself doesn’t bring the Kingdom of God right here, right now. And that’s what this damaged, angry world needs; people willing to love, to sacrifice, to work for the good of all people, because we are ALL God’s children. God wants people who are all in.
Jesus was all in.
Peter was all in too, but Peter was going by the old yardstick. Peter, worried about his friend, worried about his own place (have I made the right choice?), handing out the conventional wisdom, ‘’God forbid this should EVER happen to you, Lord.’’ Peter, showcase of humanity…bold and wrong-headed.
Jesus’ rebuke of Peter is not a rebuke of the person, but of his mindset. Like Peter you and I can lose sight of what is really important for what seems to be. Instead of passionate love for God that is plain to all who meet us, we offer lip service…instead of actual service.
Jesus doesn’t call us to say we love him; he calls us to live out his love in us.
Every day.
Pastor Scott, writes, ‘’ I think what Jesus [thinks] is that our base instincts about what makes a good life are not to be trusted. There is a higher kind of living—a higher calling—based upon living for others after the manner of Jesus. Jesus’ manner of living meant taking up a cross of self-sacrifice for the sake of others. We follow Jesus by imitating his type of life.’’
Shawn Claiborne sees it the same way; ‘the entire story of Jesus is about a God who did not just want to stay "out there" but who moves into the neighborhood, a neighborhood where folks said, "Nothing good could come." It is this Jesus who was accused of being a glutton and drunkard and rabble-rouser for hanging out with all of society's rejects, and who died on the imperial cross of Rome reserved for bandits and failed messiahs. This is why the triumph over the cross was a triumph over everything ugly we do to ourselves and to others. It is the final promise that love wins.’’
I’m sure you’re wondering what happened to Gajowncek - the man Father Kolbe saved? According to Louis Bulow’s article on Kolbe, ‘’He died on March 13, 1995, at Brzeg in Poland at 95 years old - 53 years after Kolbe had saved him. But he was never to forget the ragged monk. After his release from Auschwitz, Gajowniczek made his way back to his hometown, with the dream of seeing his family again. He found his wife but his two sons had been killed during the war. Every year on August 14 he went back to Auschwitz. He spent the next five decades paying homage to Father Kolbe, honoring the man who died on his behalf.’’
It is said that Fracizek Gajowncek kept a stone in his garden, with the name of Maximilian Kolbe on it. He said ‘’Because of Maximilian Kolbe, every breath that I take, everything that I do, every single moment, is to me — -like a gift.’”
Someone died for us. Someone stepped in and saved our lives. Too often we take that for granted. Remember the disciples who met, but did not recognize Christ on the road to Emmaus? After he left them, they say ‘’we should have known it was Jesus. Didn’t his words burn in our hearts?’’ When we have been rescued from certain death, how can we respond with the same old tired, responses, like teenagers who know you’re right, but have to argue with you anyway? How can we miss the gift?
Ann Voscamp says ‘’How can our bones not burn with thanks, with love, with the message of Who saved us? How can anything after His rescuing — be anything but appalling gift? It’s time to be tired of being the living dead.’’
‘’A single act of love makes the soul return to life,’’ said Maximilian Kolbe
God says in the book of Ezekiel, ‘’ I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.’’
Today, may God write his name on your heart, and may every breath be a gift. May you be tranquil — because you know the good God is everywhere and provides for everything with love. May you see life as a good gift from God and may God’s Kingdom come, right here, right now, in us.
Amen.
Are we just going through the motions of our life in Christ, flipping the channel in our mind, tuning out just a little, running the to-do list over in our head during the sermon? After all…if we’ve been going to church for a while…we’ve heard it all before. Has our passion for God cooled down, gotten quiet or even gone underground?
Let’s face it, I don’t see too many people jumping for joy over Jesus’ teaching to ‘’deny ourselves, take up our cross and follow him.’’
Frankly, that sounds like a lot of work.
Eric Scott, pastor of the San Pedro UMC in San Pedro, California writes, ‘’Your cross, as one of my colleagues likes to say, isn’t your annoying brother-in-law. Your cross isn’t even a chronic health condition. The cross is something we choose. We have the option of picking it up or not. The irony is that the cross is not something anyone would want to pick up. It is, on the surface, distasteful. Yet at the same time, it is a way of life that puts the self’s primary desires and motivations aside. Somehow, by doing that , we actually experience more true life than if that had been our goal to begin with.’’
We are reminded of this truth when we explore the life of Maximilian Kolbe Kolbe, a Polish priest, didn’t know where his life would take him when he entered the priesthood. At first he traveled extensively for some years, establishing friaries in Asia and India before returning to Warsaw to establish one there. After Germany invaded Poland in 1939, Kolbe and his fellow friars organized it as a shelter for 3,000 Polish refugees, 2,000 of them Jews. The friars shared all they had with the refugees. Eventually this work ended with the friars’ arrest in 1941.
Kolbe was sent in May of that year to Auschwitz. There he was known for his acts of kindness and generosity. Since there was often not enough food to go around, he stood aside to let others in the bunker get the weak cup of coffee, weak soup and piece of bread that was food for a day. He seldom rested at night but went from bunk to bunk to offer what comfort he could. He waited for others to be treated by the doctor before he stepped forward. He led prayers and offered confessions and turned the other cheek when abused by the guards. Both his fellow prisoners and some of his captors later attested to his selflessness.
Kolbe hadn’t been there many months when someone from his bunker escaped. The rule at Auschwitz was that for every escapee, 10 would be killed. This group of men, already disheartened and starving; were called into the yard where 10 of them were chosen to be placed in Block 13 and starved to death. One of the ten, Fracizek Gajowncek cried out that he was a father, a husband, that he would now never see his family again.
Father Kolbe stepped forward and offered his life for Gajowncek. He simply said, ‘’Let me die in his place.’’ It is the first and last time in the history of Auschwitz that anyone volunteered to die for someone else.
During 3 weeks of starvation and dehydration, Kolbe led the others in prayers and hymns. He kept them focused on the eternal, helped them set their minds on things above. He never cursed his oppressors, but prayed for them and urged the others to do so. In the end, it took an injection of carbolic acid to end his life. It was discovered later that the ‘’escapee’’ had drowned in the camp’s latrine.
Author, blogger and speaker Ann Voscamp, recently posted a two part essay on her web page called ‘’How to Really Live.’’ She talked about telling her children the story of Maximilian Kolbe, and how she had memorized part of a letter he wrote to his mother a week before these events began to unfold. Dear Mama, begins the letter. ‘’ I am in the camp of Auschwitz. Everything is well in my regard. Be tranquil about me and about my health, because the good God is everywhere and provides for everything with love.’ Voscamp says, ‘’ I had memorized that line of the letter. Because if a man in the midst of one the most hideous scenarios known in the history of the world could write a line like that — not from a bad day at the office or a hard day with the kids, but from the death stench of Auschwitz — how can anyone deny this ultimate, iron-clad testimony: A Good God is everywhere — and provides for everything with love.
She goes on to say: How can I believe anything different when the house is loud and mothering wears and obligations pile and I’m buried and a friend tells me the doctors have given her 60-90 days to live and even breathing can cause this pain in your chest?
If Maximilian Kolbe could stand in Auschwitz and write “Be tranquil — because the good God is everywhere and provides for everything with love” — is there ever really anything that should make one lose tranquility? It could be like a song for all the doubters and anxious: The good God is everywhere and provides for everything with love.’’
Jesus said: ‘’If you’re seeking to keep your life, you’ll lose it. If you lose your life for my sake, you’ll find it.’’
The Messiah was born human, born to the same pain and heartache, disappointment and frustration that we have. Yet in the midst of that human condition, Jesus shows us how to really live, points to what’s really important, God’s Kingdom come… on Earth as it is in Heaven. Maximilian Kolbe brought God’s Kingdom to Earth, to the horror of Auschwitz by stepping in to save the life of a man he didn’t know. And he didn’t stop there. The camp and guards could hear the singing, the prayers. What did such courage and sacrifice leave behind in the hearts of those others.
We pray the Lord’s Prayer every week, and if you’re like me, you may imagine God’s Kingdom coming in some future, gold-tinted time…maybe the way that Peter and the rest of his countrymen dreamed up a Messiah that would crush their enemies and set them free. Shawn Claiborne explains it this way in his Esquire essay ‘’What if Jesus Meant all that Stuff’’: ‘’ Don't get me wrong, I still believe in the afterlife, but too often all the church has done is promise the world that there is life after death and use it as a ticket to ignore the hells around us. I am convinced that the Christian Gospel has as much to do with this life as the next, and that the message of that Gospel is not just about going up when we die but about bringing God's Kingdom down. It was Jesus who taught us to pray that God's will be done "on earth as it is in heaven." On earth.’’
Maximilian Kolbe did not ignore the hell around him. He shattered the darkness with his act of love.
The Messiah who God had in mind was not the one the Jewish people had dreamed up when they were a disenfranchised, scattered people, enslaved. Jesus wasn’t there to lead the kind of revolution the oppressed always dream of…full of justice and not mercy… He was coming to fulfill the Torah…to show people how to really live as a citizen of the Kingdom of God, and more, how to bring God’s Kingdom to Earth.
Right here. Right now.
Jesus isn’t about what’s popular, doesn’t care if he’s leading in the polls or any ‘’we are the champions’’ kind of thinking. In fact he tells people NOT to talk about his miraculous works. He’s about serving…about giving his life as a ransom for many. He often does the exact opposite of what’s expected. When Peter urged him avoid Jerusalem to save his life, Jesus tells him he’s missed the point.
In God’s Kingdom, it’s not finders keepers…it’s losers keepers
Saving yourself doesn’t bring the Kingdom of God right here, right now. And that’s what this damaged, angry world needs; people willing to love, to sacrifice, to work for the good of all people, because we are ALL God’s children. God wants people who are all in.
Jesus was all in.
Peter was all in too, but Peter was going by the old yardstick. Peter, worried about his friend, worried about his own place (have I made the right choice?), handing out the conventional wisdom, ‘’God forbid this should EVER happen to you, Lord.’’ Peter, showcase of humanity…bold and wrong-headed.
Jesus’ rebuke of Peter is not a rebuke of the person, but of his mindset. Like Peter you and I can lose sight of what is really important for what seems to be. Instead of passionate love for God that is plain to all who meet us, we offer lip service…instead of actual service.
Jesus doesn’t call us to say we love him; he calls us to live out his love in us.
Every day.
Pastor Scott, writes, ‘’ I think what Jesus [thinks] is that our base instincts about what makes a good life are not to be trusted. There is a higher kind of living—a higher calling—based upon living for others after the manner of Jesus. Jesus’ manner of living meant taking up a cross of self-sacrifice for the sake of others. We follow Jesus by imitating his type of life.’’
Shawn Claiborne sees it the same way; ‘the entire story of Jesus is about a God who did not just want to stay "out there" but who moves into the neighborhood, a neighborhood where folks said, "Nothing good could come." It is this Jesus who was accused of being a glutton and drunkard and rabble-rouser for hanging out with all of society's rejects, and who died on the imperial cross of Rome reserved for bandits and failed messiahs. This is why the triumph over the cross was a triumph over everything ugly we do to ourselves and to others. It is the final promise that love wins.’’
I’m sure you’re wondering what happened to Gajowncek - the man Father Kolbe saved? According to Louis Bulow’s article on Kolbe, ‘’He died on March 13, 1995, at Brzeg in Poland at 95 years old - 53 years after Kolbe had saved him. But he was never to forget the ragged monk. After his release from Auschwitz, Gajowniczek made his way back to his hometown, with the dream of seeing his family again. He found his wife but his two sons had been killed during the war. Every year on August 14 he went back to Auschwitz. He spent the next five decades paying homage to Father Kolbe, honoring the man who died on his behalf.’’
It is said that Fracizek Gajowncek kept a stone in his garden, with the name of Maximilian Kolbe on it. He said ‘’Because of Maximilian Kolbe, every breath that I take, everything that I do, every single moment, is to me — -like a gift.’”
Someone died for us. Someone stepped in and saved our lives. Too often we take that for granted. Remember the disciples who met, but did not recognize Christ on the road to Emmaus? After he left them, they say ‘’we should have known it was Jesus. Didn’t his words burn in our hearts?’’ When we have been rescued from certain death, how can we respond with the same old tired, responses, like teenagers who know you’re right, but have to argue with you anyway? How can we miss the gift?
Ann Voscamp says ‘’How can our bones not burn with thanks, with love, with the message of Who saved us? How can anything after His rescuing — be anything but appalling gift? It’s time to be tired of being the living dead.’’
‘’A single act of love makes the soul return to life,’’ said Maximilian Kolbe
God says in the book of Ezekiel, ‘’ I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.’’
Today, may God write his name on your heart, and may every breath be a gift. May you be tranquil — because you know the good God is everywhere and provides for everything with love. May you see life as a good gift from God and may God’s Kingdom come, right here, right now, in us.
Amen.
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