66204...

"I'm a saint's heart in a sinner's skin. I feel them in their wrestling. I know the Spirit and the Devil's touch. I just never know which one's gonna win." -"Saint's Heart in a Sinner's Skin," Sean McConnell

"Be strong and courageous and do the work. Don't be afraid or discouraged, for the Lord God, my god, is with you. God will not fail you nor forsake you until all of the work for the temple of the Lord is complete." -1 Chronicles 28:20

A few months ago I was in the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem. I've written about how powerful the experience was. I've never been to the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., but I can't imagine it being any more life-changing or perception-altering than walking through the halls of Yad Vashem.

The final room of the museum was a circular room with a walkway through the middle of it. The room had a simple name: the Hall of Names. Along the walls of the room, 20 feet below the walkway and 20 feet above on all sides, were folders filled with files. These files were filled with the names of Holocaust victims, people whose lives and deaths had been reduced to mere numbers and statistics.

The premise of the room was fairly straight-forward. No one is merely a statistic. No one is simply a "what." We are all a "who."

All of this inspired me to do a little researching when I got home a few days later. I went to the official Auschwitz prisoner database and I searched a simple, one-word entry: "Martin."

In seconds, I was face-to-face with files on hundreds of prisoners who shared my name. In one camp.

I'm not sure why, but one entry caught my eye. His name was Martin Braun, although he was also listed in certain prisoner block listings as Martin Israel. He was born in 1895 in Remetea, Romania. He died in Auschwitz.

In Auschwitz, he wasn't Martin, of course. There, in prison, with tens of thousands of other prisoners and victims, he was simply 66204. He was merely a number, one of an immeasurable list of those whose dignity and humanity was stripped and abandoned.

In the days since I searched through that database, I've started writing 66204 on my wrist. It reminds me that at any time, I could the least of these. It reminds me that we are never a what. It reminds me that we are God's cherished creation.

But I was also starkly struck by the possibility that while I could've been a victim, I likewise could've been one of those on the other side of camp. It didn't take long to discover that Hitler's private secretary was also a man named Martin. Imagine that, hundreds of victims at one camp that share my name, and likely hundreds of perpetrators of unimaginable evil as well.

We all hold the capacity within us to do unspeakable violence. We all also hold the capacity to do immeasurable good, to remind people of their belovedness and irreplaceableness. It is a humbling realization to look through history to see the ways that people have been both victims and evildoers.

Just above the 66204 on my wrist, I write two words in Hebrew: hazak we'emas. Translated in English, these words a fairly straight-forward: "be strong and courageous." They are found numerous times in scripture. I've been writing them much longer than I've been writing Mr. Braun's prison number.

But taken together, they've on an entirely different meaning. They've become something of a mission statement to my life: be strong and courageous for those who have no name.

You see, I've started to think that when we aren't actively practicing love and reconciliation and justice and shalom, the kinds of things Jesus invites us to, we're tempted to drift towards their opposite. When we aren't living life seeking to see our neighbors as sister and brother, it is tempting to see them as enemies or worse.

And this doesn't just mean our friends or the people who are nice to us. It means everyone. A few years ago, I tried a little experiment. I sat outside the Fort Worth Central Library for a couple of hours on a cold January day. I didn't choose the location by accident. It's a spot where lots of individuals without homes spend their time. So, for a few hours, I wanted to see what that felt like.

It was horrible. People weren't mean. They didn't snicker or say hurtful things. They just avoided me. They passed on the other side of the sidewalk. Only 5% even looked my way. More often than not, passers by did everything in their power to avoid contact. For just a moment, I wasn't a person. I was a nuisance. I was an eyesore. I was a "thing" to be avoided.

There are plenty of people in my orbit that I treat that way. It hurts me to acknowledge that. There are people I'd rather just avoid or skip by. People who pain me and I just want to beat. People who annoy me and I see only as a hinderance. People whose presence I'd rather just skip. People like 66204, Mr. Martin Braun.

But that's not the scandal of grace. The audacity of God is that we are all family, made in the same image, breathing the same air, and loved with the same reckless abandon. And I've found without any reservation that when I dive into that story, when I move towards seeing God's reflection in my neighbors, my experience of life is a thousand times richer. All of our experiences of life are a thousand times richer. When we see our neighbors by name, with smiles and gifts, we are making the world into kind of world God intended.

So may we fight the urge to see each other as adversaries and enemies. May we fight the urge to think ourselves better than our brothers and our sisters. May we recognize in ourselves the capacity for pain and grace, and may we always choose grace. And above all, may we always be strong and courageous for those who have no name.

forever unfinished...