My daughter Anna and I were fortunate to see an advanced screening of “The Book Thief” earlier this week.  I would highly recommend it.  We laughed, we cried, and I forgot to bring tissues!  The movie is set in a German neighborhood in the midst of Hitler’s reign of terror during WWII and follows one family struggling to live day-to-day through the madness.  In one scene, Hans (papa) tries to defend the character of a jewish neighbor as he is being drug away by the Gestapo.  He tells them that he is a good man and he has known him his whole life.  Hans is forced to tell the Gestapo his name and is thrown to the ground, unable to stop them. Afterward he says to his wife as she is cleaning his wounds, “What did I do?  What did I do?.”  What she said in response cut to the heart of the issue.  “What you did was remind them of their humanity.” The German people had lost sight of their humanity through Hitler’s influence.  They bought into the lies that the Jews (and anyone not of the Aryan race) were to blame for their country’s woes. They forgot that these people not long before were trusted friends and neighbors.  The Germans who realized that all this was very wrong, were too afraid to speak up for fear of the same fate as the Jews.  The country as a whole was pulled into the insanity.  A few brave souls stood out like the German theologian, Dietrich Bonhoeffer. He could have stayed in America, out of harms way, but instead chose to return to Germany to help the Resistance effort.  He was part of a failed attempt to assassinate Hitler.  He died in a concentration camp 2 weeks before the end of the war.  His classic book, “The Cost of Discipleship” has a large readership yet today.  Did he imagine that the cost of discipleship would be his life when he wrote it?

Jesus was constantly reminding people of their humanity in many of his parables.  When asked by  a lawyer what he was to do to gain eternal life, Jesus asked him what was written in the law.  He answered that he should love the Lord, his God was all his soul, heart, mind and strength and love his neighbor as himself.  Jesus confirmed that he was correct and told him to do this and he would live. But the man then asked Jesus, “Who is my neighbor?”  Jesus never really answered his question but told him the story of the good Samaritan who helped a man injured by the side of the road after two other people considered “good” by their observance of the rules, passed him by.  Jesus turned the tables on the questioner by presenting a Samaritan who was despised by Jews as the hero in the story.  He then asked, “Who in the story was a neighbor to the injured man?”  The teacher of the law had to answer, “The one who showed him mercy.”  Jesus never said who our neighbor is but said that we should be a neighbor to anyone in need.  In other words, we should not judge who should be considered our neighbor because we are to be the neighbor. He told the lawyer, “Go and do likewise.”

It’s easy to pick and choose who we consider to be our neighbors.  Usually they are people who think and look just like us.  But if we had eyes to see like Jesus sees, we couldn’t help but see the humanity in everyone.  To do this we have to step out of the familiar to meet these neighbors who are different from ourselves where they are.  Most of us will never be asked to risk our lives to help a neighbor but would we step up to the task if such a situation arose? The people in Germany and the surrounding countries who did risk their lives hiding Jews were no different from you and me.  The family in “The Book Thief” was an ordinary family but they chose to hide a young Jewish man in their basement for 2 years. Their eyes could see the humanity of this brother and they could not turn their backs on him. In the Gospel of John, Jesus spoke of this kind of sacrifice, “…love one another as I have loved you.  No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”  Jesus did this for us. Now the challenge is, with His strength, to go and do likewise.