A biography I have just read, called Remember Me, is about a Polish Jew, Martin Small – he had actually
an unpronounceable Polish name. Martin
Small first writes about his early life, with the most moving and evocative
description of Jewish village life in Poland I have ever read… Fiddler On The Roof becomes entirely
credible… the customs, the superstitions, the incomparable humour, the rituals
and celebrations. But as a young man Martin
Small was caught up in the Nazi invasion of Poland and Russia, which swept away
all that priceless culture. All of his
family were wiped out, cruelly and remorselessly. Martin then fought with the partisans, but
eventually wound up in the hell of Mauthausen, in Austria. On the day Mauthausen was liberated by the
Americans, Martin Small was scarcely alive.
He was actually unconscious. A
soldier carried him to the medics – and Martin spent the rest of his long life
in love and gratitude. He fought in
Israel’s 1948 war of independence against Egypt and the other Arab states…
Now in his 90s, looking back on all this as an elderly
practising Jew he writes, My theology is
simple. I don’t understand God, and God doesn’t understand me. It is so Jewish, so Yiddish… This man who has
seen everything, suffered unspeakably, lived a long lifetime, raised a family, loyally
attends the synagogue, teaches there, says Kaddish for all who died… this man
says, I don’t understand God, and God
doesn’t understand me. And yet in
another breath he would recite from memory in Hebrew:
(…read Psalm 139: 1-18…)
Experience, he says, has taught him that God is known and
loved best with a decent reticence and humility, and a certain black humour. The Psalmist was not in Mauthausen – God
was. I have just spent a week in Samoa,
where by contrast they understand God very well and quite loudly. Churches are everywhere and are large and multi-coloured. The biggest and flashest house in the village
is probably the pastor’s. Every public
bus informs you in gaudy lettering that Samoa is founded and ruled by God. Well, plenty of nations have lived by that
assumption, with very mixed results… On
Sundays the food is terrible because the kitchen staff are all at church. It is a confident, safe, simplistic and superstitious
religion, being practised by big, loud, good people.
It was a new thought for me, however, that I may be as much
a mystery to God, as God is to me. That
seems quite exciting in some ways. God
is puzzled, just as I am. If it is so,
it means that only an ongoing relationship of listening and loving, and
discarding idols and idolatry is going to get anywhere. Doctrines and creeds won’t do it. Years of loyal and costly service, although
useful of course, won’t do it. If we can
talk about God wanting things, then perhaps God wants simply my loving “yes”,
my heartfelt unequivocal consent.
Perhaps faith has very little to do with making the world safe for me,
or keeping me and my loved ones away from trouble or pain. Perhaps it is rather all about gratitude and
love, and doing what I can, if and when I can, to set things the right way up
for other people.
In our practice of silence and stillness we learn serious
reserve in God’s presence. We learn to
hold our tongues and open our hearts. We
are led to relinquish idols, while we remember that it is Jesus who is the icon
of the invisible God, as St Paul puts it.
We learn to love and accept mystery, as our worldly fears start to
become less fearsome.
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