Homily for the Feast of
the Holy Cross 11 September 2016
The Rev’d John R. Clarke, Rector
The Rev’d John R. Clarke, Rector
“When
we eat this bread and drink this cup, we remember your death, Lord Jesus.”
They may trigger regret.
They seldom fail to garner attention. They may even snag a date or torpedo a
job interview. But it is the design and mechanics ─ the essential forget-me-not nature ─ of tattoos that makes them prone to permanence.
Result? Despite even the
sagging ravages of age, tattoos succeed where memory fails.
That’s why tattoos are
now “in” with a growing number of younger family members of Holocaust survivors,
particularly survivors of Auschwitz. Their tattoo of choice? Not the garish or
menacing inking of the biker set. Instead, numbers. Six digits.
For example, after a
trip to Poland, 20s-something Israeli Eli Sagir had tattooed on her left
forearm 157622. The tattoo’s meaning? And why her left forearm?
That is the same tattoo ─ the number 157622 ─
her grandfather has permanently inked on his left forearm. Not by choice or
vanity, but courtesy of the Nazi slave-labor machine at Auschwitz, the machine that
no longer considered him and others like him persons, but numbers. As Primo
Levi states in his memoir, Survival in Auschwitz, the Nazis used
numeric tattoos to advance the “demolition of [the person].”
But why the same tattoo ─ her grandfather’s tattoo ─ for Eli Sagir? “I did it to remind my generation,” she says.
“I want to tell them my grandfather’s story and the Holocaust story.” The
tattoo accomplishes that by generating questions and sparking conversations. It
is, after all, not your everyday tattoo.
In other words, Eli’s
skins says, “Never forget” because the numeric tattoo is a marker, a warning
beacon: a permanent and visible memorial to her grandfather’s suffering and the
suffering of so many other Jews and minorities at a time when hate went, for
too long a season, unchecked.
In that same spirit of
memory and memorial, ours is a dual observance today.
Today we mark the
fifteenth anniversary of 9/11 … that clear September day profaned when Al Qaeda
terrorists flew two passenger- and fuel-laden planes into the twin World Trade
Center Towers in Manhattan … another into the Pentagon … and a fourth (Flight
93), prevented from reaching its Washington, D.C. target by heroic passengers,
who struggled with the hijackers and caused the plane to crash in a field near
Shanksville, Pennsylvania.
Then, too, we observe
the Feast of the Holy Cross, recalling that day in 335 CE, when what was acclaimed to be the True Cross,
discovered roughly 20 years earlier by the Empress Helena, was placed in the
just-completed Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem.
Now, are we dealing with
the True (the really, really, accept-no-substitutes, true) Cross Jesus
died on a little over three centuries before that celebration in the Church of
the Holy Sepulchre?
Frankly, I’m skeptical.
At best, neutral. We can’t prove that it was the True Cross. Can’t prove
that it wasn’t. It’s just not verifiable, although quite vivid stories ─ some would say, tall
tales ─
of its miraculous, life-restoring properties
were used at the time to bolster notions of its authenticity.
To take a more jaded
route: I think, in its day, calling the cross we’re dealing with here the “True
Cross” may have been driven more by religious enthusiasm, wishful thinking, and
pilgrim (read: tourist) economics, than by corroborable evidence.
But all the excitement,
the pageantry, and general hoopla around this “True Cross”? I think it speaks
to the issue Eli Sagir’s tattoo raises: How do you prevent memory loss
generations far-removed from the original, pivotal event?
Or, how do you create
“ballast against the drift toward amnesia” in the wake of history-altering events
like the Holocaust or Pearl Harbor, the JFK assassination in Dallas, Martin
Luther King’s martyrdom, or 9/11?
That’s a concern of art-restitution
lawyer Corinne Herschovitz. Her mission is to return Nazi-looted art to their
original owners and institutions. Advocating “ballast against the drift toward
amnesia,” Herschovitz invokes what French historians call lieux de mémoire
(“places
of memory”). “As we lose eyewitnesses,”
she explains, “we turn to recorded first-hand accounts and locations to bear
witness to the horrors of the past.”
And yet, if you’re a fourth-century
Christian, aware that a yawning gulf exists between lived memory and time-warped
memory, how do you create the “ballast” of what really happened on Good Friday?
You search for the
missing “place of memory,” the True Cross. The True Cross that has the ability
to transport you, like a wormhole through time, to the original event to ensure
that what Jesus did on the cross ─ and what was done to
Jesus ─ would be as fresh today as the day the cross
was lifted high on Calvary.
Leading us to consider: Most,
if not all, of
us who witnessed the attacks 15 years ago today
believe that 9/11 matters. No one alive today ─
even those who have no personal memories of 9/11 ─ can escape its globe-rattling ripples. How, then, do
we ─ not just as US citizens, but as followers of Jesus
Christ ─
“never forget” 9/11 … we who believe that God
could be discovered ─ present, suffering, urging on, holding on ─ not only in Jesus’
suffering and death but also in the smoldering carnage
of 9/11?
The answer looks a lot
like the plea Willie Loman’s wife Linda makes in Arthur Miller’s “Death of a
Salesman.” Recap: Time and technology have overtaken Willie’s career. His son
Biff rejects him as a loser. But Linda rises to Willie’s defense: “Your father
is a human being, and a
terrible thing is happening to him. So attention must be paid. He’s not to be
allowed to fall into his grave like an old dog. Attention, attention must
be finally paid.”
We tell, then, our attention-grabbing
stories. And we consecrate our hallowed places of memory, like Ground Zero in
Manhattan … because attention must be paid. Real people ─ our neighbors ─
fell to earth that day, thousands pulverized in rubble. Real heroes were made
and many died that day. Real families, loved ones, and colleagues were left to
mourn. Legions of the injured still suffer. Dreams of security died that day.
Trust in our leaders to tell us the truth to justify war was lost, starting
that day.
And there is this
inescapable fact: We ─ here ─ have chosen to be people interwoven into Jesus’
story … the story that climaxes in the disaster of his cross. And we have consecrated
this community as a place of memory … because memory’s impulse infuses our DNA when
we say at each Eucharist, sometimes using different words: “When we eat this
bread and drink this cup, we remember your death, Lord Jesus.”
Bottomline: I don’t think
there’s equivalence between what Eli Sagir’s grandfather experienced at
Auschwitz and our experiences as witnesses to the events of 9/11. But perhaps,
if ─ by sharing our stories … by consecrating our
places of memory … by sharing space ─ here ─ with God, present also on 9/11 … and by
remembering, as we will do today, Jesus’ death on the cross in its first-hand,
sobering void ─ perhaps we will succeed in creating for
those who come after us “ballast against the drift toward amnesia.”
Perhaps, then, we will
assume ─ in some measure, some day ─ the grandfather’s posture when he was first shown Eli’s
facsimile of his own Auschwitz tattoo. He bent over and kissed the familiar numbers
… 1-5-7-6-2-2 … in one defiant gesture: “Never, never forget.”
Amen.