Redeeming a Nation (Timeless Teaching)

by Philip Quenby

  Though married to a German and for some years resident in the Third Reich, this was Bielenberg’s first personal experience of the Nazis’ racial policies. It was by no means her last. In wartime a young couple came to call, nervously seeking shelter. They also were Jews, and were on the run. With her husband away, the young housewife sought advice from a trusted friend and neighbour, whom she knew to be against the New Order. The man warned vehemently against her taking in Jews: the family were already in danger enough by reason of her husband’s opposition to the regime, and liable to discovery if they drew attention to themselves. She agonised, but found she could not refuse. “Very well,” she said, “but only for two nights.” At the end of that time she woke to find the couple gone, their bedding neatly stowed. She discovered later that they were arrested trying to board a train and sent to Auschwitz concentration camp. Bitterly she recalled: “That was when I knew that Hitler had turned me into a murderer.”

  Action replay.

  Like Christabel Bielenberg, the beautiful young Jewess Esther and her uncle Mordecai had to live with evil. The book of Esther recounts their trials and eventual triumph. To this day, each year during the feast of Purim[117] Jews celebrate this story and their deliverance “during the time of Xerxes.” (Esther 1:1). On one level, the book is a straightforward struggle by two outsiders, Haman and Mordecai, to gain influence with Xerxes. At a deeper level it is part of an ongoing battle between good and evil, the former represented by followers of the one true God and the latter by the Amalekites. This tribe fought the Israelites during their journey from Egypt to the Promised Land (see Exodus 17:8-16 and Deuteronomy 25:17-19) and are described as people who “had no fear of God.” (Deuteronomy 25:18).

  The protagonists are explicitly linked with this earlier conflict. Haman is “son of Hammedatha, the Agagite” (Esther 3:1) – a descendant of Agag, the Amalekite king whom King Saul of Israel failed to kill: see 1 Samuel 15:9. Mordecai is “son of Jair, the son of Shimei, the son of Kish” (Esther 2:5) – a descendant of Kish, the father of King Saul: see 1 Samuel 9:1-2. Through Esther and Mordecai, God’s promise that he “will completely blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven” (Exodus 17:14) is fulfilled. Timing also reflects previous events in redemption history. Haman begins plotting “to destroy all Mordecai’s people, the Jews, throughout the whole kingdom of Xerxes” (Esther 3:6) in the very month in which Jews celebrate their Passover deliverance from Egypt.

  Plots and plans.

  At first, evil seems to prosper: “Xerxes honoured Haman son of Hammedatha the Agagite, elevating him and giving him a seat of honour higher than that of all the other nobles. All the royal officials at the king’s gate knelt down and paid honour to Haman, for the king had commanded this concerning him.” (Esther 3:1-2). Having got its foot in the door, evil does what it always does. It grows, spreads, corrupts, infects and undermines before finally overreaching itself. We should study and learn from this, since the methods that evil uses are the same in every age and in every place:

  • Human beings demand the homage that belongs to God: Mordecai is required to “kneel down or pay him [Haman] honour.” (Esther 3:2).

  • The coercive power of the state is brought to bear in matters that are properly the concern of individual conscience: “Then the royal officials at the king’s gate asked Mordecai, ‘Why do you disobey the king’s command?’” (Esther 3:3).

  • Attempts are made to override all moral scruple: “Day after day they spoke to him but he refused to comply.” (Esther 3:4).

  • Hatred is in men’s hearts and grudges are borne: “Therefore they told Haman about it to see whether Mordecai’s behaviour would be tolerated, for he had told them he was a Jew.” (Esther 3:4). The implication is that the royal officials thought Mordecai’s behaviour would not be tolerated, presumably because Haman’s dislike of Jews was well known.

  • Reaction to any transgression is disproportionate: “Haman looked for a way to destroy all Mordecai’s people, the Jews, throughout the whole kingdom of Xerxes.” (Esther 3:6).

  • Free rein is given to evil elements of all kinds: “they [Haman’s accomplices, probably the astrologers who assist him later in the story: see Esther 5:10 and 14, 6:12-13] cast the pur (that is, the lot) in the presence of Haman” (Esther 3:7).

  • Individuals or groups are singled out and made victims because they are in some way distinctive: “Then Haman said to King Xerxes, ‘There is a certain people dispersed and scattered among the peoples in all the provinces of your kingdom whose customs are different from those of all other peoples” (Esther 3:8).

  • The weak are particularly vulnerable: the Jews are easy victims because they are “dispersed and scattered” (Esther 3:8).

  • Self-interest and fear of those who are different are manipulated: “a certain people ... do not obey the king’s laws; it is not in the king’s best interest to tolerate them.” (Esther 3:8).

  • Bribery is used: “If it pleases the king, let a decree be issued to destroy them, and I will put ten thousand talents of silver into the royal treasury for the men who carry out this business.” (Esther 3:9).

  • Power is devolved to those who are not fit to exercise it and those in authority abrogate responsibility: “So the king took off his signet ring from his finger and gave it to Haman son of Hammedatha, the Agagite, the enemy of the Jews.” (Esther 3:10).

  • Pride undermines judgment: “‘Keep the money,’ the king said to Haman, ‘and do with the people as you please.’” (Esther 3:11).

  • Things are done in haste without proper investigation and without due process of law: Haman and his accomplices cast lots “in the first month, the month of Nisan” (Esther 3:7) and he then has to engineer an interview with Xerxes, but even so “on the thirteenth day of the first month the royal secretaries were summoned.” (Esther 3:12).

  • Legitimate power and authority is subverted and misused: “Haman’s orders ... were written in the name of King Xerxes himself and sealed with his own ring.” (Esther 3:12).

  • Promise of gain and personal enrichment are held out: when the Jews are killed there will be “plunder” (Esther 3:13).

  • Laws are promulgated that have no regard to morality: “A copy of the text of the edict was to be issued as law in every province and made known to the people of every nationality so that they would be ready for that day.” (Esther 3:14).

  • Victims are given no opportunity to defend themselves: “Spurred on by the king’s command, the couriers went out, and the edict was issued in the citadel of Susa.” (Esther 3:15).

  • A compact is made between evil and those in authority: “The king and Haman sat down to drink” (Esther 3:15).

  The reactions of evil are irrational, uncontrolled and characterised by extremes of emotionally negative behaviour. Haman is “enraged” (Esther 3:5) and “having learned who Mordecai’s people were, he scorned ... killing only Mordecai” (Esther 3:6). The delight of evil is “to destroy, kill and annihilate ... and to plunder” (Esther 3:13). “Haman’s orders to the king’s satraps, the governors of the various provinces and the nobles of the various peoples” (Esther 3:12) are an early version of the Germans’ notorious Vernichtungsbefehl (annihilation order). Evil is pitiless and merciless. Those to be killed include “young and old, women and little children” (Esther 3:13).

  Staying true.

  Mordecai and Esther show us how to deal with evil. Their response is secured by three anchors:

  • They are true to what they believe in, despite all dangers and threats: “Mordecai would not kneel down or pay [Haman] honour.” (Esther 3:2) and “he [Mordecai] refused to comply.” (Esther 3:4).

  • They do not despair: They do not give up even though the order to kill all Jews has actually been promulgated: “the edict was issued in the citadel of Susa” (Esther 3:15).

  • They do not react violently, but instead make use of the influence that is available to them: Esther bravely petitions the king to “grant me my life
... and spare my people” (Esther 7:3). The request is granted and Haman is hung “on the gallows he had prepared for Mordecai.” (Esther 7:10). Chapters 8-10 record the king’s subsequent edict on behalf of the Jews, the triumph of the Jews and the honour heaped on Mordecai.

  These things come down to constancy: constancy of belief, constancy of hope and constancy of action. Esther and Mordecai do not slacken in the homage they give to the Lord, nor give in to temptation to divert that homage elsewhere. Through constancy to God and his ways Esther and Mordecai survive, prevail and prosper. Through them their people are also blessed. In Nazi Germany, and in particular in its concentration camps, some see the ultimate absence of God: proof of the fact that he does not exist or, if he does, that he is indifferent. The message of Esther, however, is very different. It is not only the princess and her uncle who are constant, but God, too.

  Intriguingly, the book of Esther is the only one in the Bible that does not specifically refer to the Almighty. Neither does it mention worship, prayer or sacrifice. Fasting is the single explicit religious observance. Yet this does not mean that the Lord is forgotten or absent. His sovereign rule is assumed throughout. The every thought and action of the book’s hero and heroine, Mordecai and Esther, is based on the assumption that God exists, hears prayer, works justice and protects his people. The fact that the Jews are in the end lifted up and Haman, who sought to do them ill, suffers the fate that he had prepared for others vindicates this viewpoint.

  Conclusion.

  We each live with evil every day. Thankfully, we do not live under a regime where evil has taken over all the levers of power in the way that it did under Haman and under the Nazis. Yet we must nevertheless be alert to its tendency to undermine and work through legitimate channels. It is present in the small things of life no less than in the large. We must have no tolerance for it, in whatever grand or petty ways it may be manifest around us. We must root out our own tendencies to the attitudes and behaviour that allow it to thrive. Above all, we should not fool ourselves: the same strategies and effects that existed when Xerxes allowed free rein to Haman or Adolf Hitler bestrode the world stage are alive in our land, too.

  God deserves our homage. If it is not given to him, it will be given elsewhere and when that which is due to our Creator is given elsewhere it is necessarily deployed on the side of evil. We cannot and must not be indifferent to the first signs of evil at work, for if it is unchecked it will surely grow. Christabel Bielenberg had no reason to castigate herself. She and her family did more than most to confront evil at a time when and in a place where it was rampant. Suspected of involvement in the plot to kill Hitler of 20 July 1944, her husband was arrested and sent to Ravensbrück concentration camp. To save him she voluntarily agreed to undergo interrogation by the Gestapo and, as a direct result, he was released. Many years later she wrote in her autobiography of the “simple Christian upbringing [that] had provided me with a sturdy conviction as to the ultimate triumph of good over evil.” This faith enabled her to remain constant through great hardship. We must be constant, too. If our “faith small as a mustard seed” (Matthew 17:20) does not lead us to bestir ourselves, it is a poor tale. If we cannot find it in us to raise our voices now, when the threats against us are so minor in comparison with what she and countless others have lived through and continue to endure, our inconstancy will merit whatever then befalls.

  53. Sticking it out

  Romans 12:1-16.

  Key word: sacrifice.

  Words of courage and defiance echo down the years and still have power to make the spine tingle:

  “I say to the House as I said to ministers who have joined this government, I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat. We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind. We have before us many, many months of struggle and suffering.

  “We shall go on to the end ... We shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be. We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.”

  These quotations are probably familiar to most Englishmen. Both come from speeches that Winston Churchill made to the House of Commons, just over three weeks apart. The first was given on 13 May 1940, being part of Churchill’s first address to the House of Commons after his appointment as Prime Minister. The second was made on 4 June 1940, the day that the Dunkirk evacuation ended. Twenty-one days later, France capitulated and Britain stood alone against the Axis powers, facing imminent invasion. It is difficult to hear Churchill’s words, even today, without something stirring in the blood and thrilling at all that is contained in the proud boast: we shall never surrender. It plays to our concept of what our nation stands for, of what it means to be free rather than a slave, to be a man rather than something less than human.

  The wartime years and their aftermath certainly brought sacrifice aplenty. There was no shortage of blood, toil, tears and sweat. When it was over and the dust had settled, it came to be seen that although Britain was on the winning side, she was greatly diminished: vanished was her maritime and commercial supremacy, liquidated were her overseas investments and gone to all intents and purposes was her freedom of action, for the nation was deeply in debt. In due course her Empire and her former position of pre-eminence in the world were fled, too. Her great cities were cratered by bomb sites. Millions were homeless or living in jerry-built prefabs. Great sacrifices for freedom had denuded her strength. Whilst the United States enjoyed unprecedented prosperity, the people of these islands lived cramped and crabbed lives. Conditions for the majority were spartan. National service continued. Industry was kept turning at full pelt with increasingly worn and antiquated equipment. Rationing was not finally abolished on all items until the early 1960s. Yet through all the years of austerity, almost nobody doubted that the sacrifice was worth it.

  Worship.

  St Paul writes about a sacrifice worth making. It is a sacrifice that we are called to make voluntarily, not forced by circumstances: “Therefore I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God – this is your spiritual act of worship.” (Romans 12:1). Here are concepts that were revolutionary by the standards of the pagan religions of the Roman Empire:

  • Sacrifice is to be offered “in view of God’s mercy” (Romans 12:1). In other words, it is to be given out of gratitude and love in response to what God has already done and continues to do for us, not as an attempt to bribe or propitiate an angry and unpredictable deity.

  • Sacrifice does not consist in goods or slaughtered animals, but instead comprises “[our] bodies” (Romans 12:1). This is a human sacrifice like no other. It involves not death, but its opposite: we are to be “living sacrifices” (Romans 12:1), available to serve God each and every day.

  • We are to offer ourselves as people who are “holy and pleasing to God” (Romans 12:1). The words emphasise that what God is most interested in is our inner disposition, not the outward forms of worship that we employ or the magnificence of the material possessions that we lay on an altar.

  • Through offering ourselves in this way we perform a “spiritual act of worship” (Romans 12:1). This is something of which we need to remind ourselves continually: to worship God in spirit and truth is not a matter of ritual. Neither does it rely on prescribed incantations, nor even on the presence of things of beauty. All these may be an aid to our worship, but they are not its heart. Only the free giving of ourselves, without let or hindrance, can be that.

  Worshipping the Almighty in the way that St Paul describes is not something that can be confined to an hour or so in church once a week. It is something that must permeate and inform our every moment. It involves the sacrifice of our daily lives, so that we are alive to and actively seek opportunities throughout each day to do something for our Lord. What we are able to do may be so small that we think it of no worth. At such times, we need to remind
ourselves how Jesus reacted to the giving of the widow’s mite: “this poor widow has put in more than all the others. All these people gave their gifts out of their wealth; but she out of her poverty put in all she had to live on.” (Luke 21:3-4). We should never look down on anything done for God when it is proportionate to what we are able to give and when the motive behind the giving is a right one.

  Surrender.

  Surrender is a necessary part of the kind of worship that is most pleasing to our heavenly Father. This should not be confused with abandon. To surrender ourselves in the way that the Lord wants does not necessarily mean that we have to give way to wild displays of emotion. It does not mean giving up or giving in, for it is not about capitulation in the face of an enemy. It instead involves surrender in its oldest and deepest sense: a giving of the self (from the French se rendre). It can be hard for us to let go in this way. It flies in the face of every proud shout of ‘no surrender’ that human beings have ever uttered. It leads us to imagine that we will somehow be taken prisoner and lose our individuality, that we will be swamped or taken over by God. The experience of everyone who has allowed themselves to surrender in this way, however, is that this is not how God works. Indeed, through surrender to God our personality is if anything heightened, for we are thereby freed to become the people we were always intended to be.