The Meaning of Adversity
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I once met a man who came back from the dead!
It happened when I was studying for the diaconate. One of the courses I took was a seminar in Judeo-Christian relations. A Christian clergyman would give a brief talk on a theological or moral topic, and then a rabbi would discuss the same subject from his perspective.
One night the invited rabbi departed from the plan. I don't recall his name. Maybe his name is not important in relation to his message. This is it, in his own words, as nearly as I remember them:
I would like to tell you a story. It is true story, because it is about me.I was born in 1930 in Germany to a very orthodox Jewish family. We kept all the holy days, my mother kept a kosher kitchen, and we didn't have much to do with gentiles. Germany was not a good place to be a Jew in the '30s and '40s, and in time my family was arrested and sent to Buchenwald, where my father and mother were killed. In Buchenwald I completely lost my faith, for I could not believe that there could be a God who would let such a thing happen, especially to His People.
The allies liberated Buchenwald before the Nazis came for me, and I was passed from one charitable agency to another until eventually I was adopted by a very kind and loving Christian family. They tried very hard to make me feel wanted, but they spoke no German and I spoke no English, They were Christians and I was a Jew, and there was no way for them to know how deeply my experiences had affected me. I had lost everything that had meant anything to me, and so I decided to end what remained of my life.
I want you to know that I was already dead. The question was not if I would commit suicide, it was when and how. And one day, as I was thinking about this, as teenagers often do I reached over and turned on the radio, which just happened to be tuned to a live broadcast of David ben Gurion's first address to the Knesset, proclaiming the creation of the State of Israel.
In an instant, in an interval of zero time, all my faith came rushing back to me, and I realized three things:
The first was that I was to become a rabbi.
The second was that all the things that happened to me were a part of God's design for me; that they had to happen for me to be the rabbi that God wanted me to be.
The third was a message I was given, which I will presently share with you.
We have all heard, "Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me, O Lord," from the 23rd Psalm. Well, I walked in that valley, and I feared that evil, for I did not see God in Buchenwald.
For nineteen hundred years, the Jews had lived in Diaspora, separated from their homeland. It took an event so monstrous, so hideous in its conception and execution, that no sane person could doubt that the Jews had had enough! Just as what happened to me was necessary for me to be the man I have become, so the holocaust was necessary for the creation of the State of Israel. In both cases, God's will was being accomplished. In a sense, Hitler was doing God's work, for only through his intervention, as it came about, could the Jews finally have regained their ancestral home.
You see, God was in Buchenwald; I just didn't see him.
As I said, I was dead. But I was sent back from the dead with a message for you, and the message is this:
Whatever happens to you, God is there. Whatever evils you must endure, whatever trials or troubles, He is with you, and He is watching over you, and He loves you, and whatever happens to you is a part of His holy purpose, in which we are all honored and privileged to participate.
Today I am an American citizen, and this is my home. But I am also a Jew, and that makes Israel my home as well. We talk about the tree of liberty being watered by the blood of patriots, and that is true, for this country was built by men who willingly shed their blood for its sake. This alone makes this nation holy.
But the State of Israel is built on the broken and tortured bodies of six million innocent men, women and children. How much more holy is that land?
So today I am a citizen of two countries. Israel is my home, but I will never go there. For like Moses, I doubted, and I am not worthy to set foot on that holy ground.
One final note...
A few years ago a Jewish friend of mine was talking to me about our various beliefs. He seemed to find rising from the dead a rather quaint idea, and asked if that was a common Christian belief. I said that coming back from the dead is one of the central beliefs of Christianity.
It was only some time later, while I was thinking about our conversation, that the words of this man, "I was sent back from the dead," occurred to me., and I realized that, one time long ago...
I once met a man who came back from the dead!