Words'nTone

One day when we came back from work, we saw three gallows rearing up in the assembly place, three black crows. Roll call. SS all around us, machine guns trained: the traditional ceremony. Three victims in chains— and one of them, the little servant, the sad-eyed angel.
     The SS seemed more preoccupied, more disturbed than usual. To hang a young boy in front of thousands of spectators was no light matter. The head of the camp read the verdict. All eyes were on the child. He was lividly pale, almost calm, biting his lips. The gallows threw its shadow over him.
     This time the Lagerkapo refused to act as executioner. Three SS replaced him.
     The three victims mounted together onto the chairs.
     The three necks were placed at the same moment within the nooses.
     “Long live liberty!” cried the two adults.
      But the child was silent.
     “Where is God? Where is He?” someone behind me asked.
     At a sign from the head of the camp, the three chairs tipped over.
     Total silence throughout the camp. On the horizon, the sun was setting.
     “Bare your heads!” yelled the head of the camp. His voice was raucous. We were weeping.
     “Cover your heads!”
Then the march past began. The two adults were no longer alive. Their tongues hung swollen, blue-tinged. But the third rope was still moving; being so light, the child was still alive…
     For more than half an hour he stayed there, struggling between life and death, dying in slow agony under our eyes. And we had to look him full in the face. He was still alive when I passed in front of him. His tongue was red, his eyes were not yet glazed.
     Behind me, I heard the same man asking:
     “Where is God now?”
     And I heard a voice within me answer him:
     “Where is He? Here He is—He is hanging here on this gallows…”

[Excerpt from Night by Elie Wiesel in Jon Pahl’s book Shopping Malls and Other Sacred Spaces: Putting God in Place (2003), p 36.]

Pahl excerpts this piece from Wiesel’s book, Night, a powerful narrative of living through the Holocaust. What struck me was how the narrative (this little story) moved my own thoughts about God is showing up and what is typically thought of on that subject. Of course, as good evangelicals (and, yes, I am still one) we know God can’t be seen (at least according to texts like John 1:18). So, we piously eschew the idea of seeing God “in person” anywhere. But that’s not what is being asked when we say, “Where if anywhere, is God?” (as Pahl puts it). Of course, this is a metaphorical question or idea. So when we ask the question Where is God? we are really not asking something about God, but something about ourselves. The short account from Night made me think: where we see God is where we show our emotions, give our time, and place our commitments. If we see God in a cardboard box, over a street sewer vent keeping warm from the night’s cold, we do something about homelessness. If we see God hanging out on the street corner, spray-painting graffiti on a store façade, we fight for programs to change lives. If we see God hunched over on a hidden park bench smoking a crack pipe, we develop soup kitchens and halfway houses and drug rehab-centers. If we see God, baby in toe standing in line for free bread and clothing, we develop self-sufficiency programs to break the cycle of poverty. Maybe we’d have more Christian community action if Christians would stop limiting where we see or can see God.  Where do you see God hanging?

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