Around this time three years ago, I read a remarkable book called
Eichmann in Jerusalem, Hannah Arendt's inquiry into the nature of evil. I read it in the wake of the events of 9/11, and events since then have brought it to mind again and again since then.
The subject of the book, Adolf Eichmann, was an unexceptional civil servant, who happened to be in charge of organizing the transportation of Jews to the Nazi death camps. Israeli agents kidnapped him in Argentina in 1960, and brought him to Jerusalem to stand trial for war crimes. What comes across clearly and chillingly in this book is just how ordinary and inoffensive the defendant was. It is the story of a man who became an accomplice to mass murder, not through the force of his will, but through the force of acquiescence and denial. It is the story of what Arendt calls "the banality of evil."
Eichmann began his career resettling German Jews abroad. Smuggling Jews to Palestine, Eichmann told himself that he was helping to realize Zionist aspirations. But as the anti-Jewish policies of Hitler became more and more draconian, this self-delusion became harder to maintain. The turning point for Eichmann's conscience came at a conference in January 1942, at which the parameters of the Final Solution were, at last, fully and explicitly revealed to him and to others in the upper echelon of the civil service. "At that moment," he told the court, "I sensed a kind of Pontius Pilate feeling, for I felt free of all guilt." Being confronted with the complete support of the leadership, and of the civil service itself for Hitler's plan, well, who was he to judge? Who was he, in his words, "to have my own thoughts in the matter"?
Arendt shows us that the seeds of evil are sown in the hearts of ordinary people, like Adolf Eichmann. They sprout unnoticed, and when they are noticed, are often not weeded out, but merely given another name. The Holocaust did not begin at the killing centres in Eastern Europe - rather, it ended there. It began with laws depriving Jews of political rights. When the laws failed to solve the "problem," forced emigration was introduced. Then "concentration" of the Jewish population was tried. Only in the end, the solution became one of mass killing. The failure to stop it appears, in many respects, to have resulted from an unspoken conspiracy of obedience. A German army physician who witnessed the killing of Jews in Sevastopol wrote that those who offered their lives in resistance would face a silent, anonymous death. Such a one "would have sacrificed his life in vain" - a sacrifice, not morally meaningless perhaps, but practically useless.
In the Passion narrative we heard today, we are privy to an exchange between the Roman governor and Jesus. Pilate puts the charge made against Jesus bluntly to him, "Are you the king of the Jews?" What follows is a colloquy between the two men in which Jesus' claims no doubt come across to Pilate as being somewhat obscure, perhaps even coy. At the end of the brief interview, Jesus asserts "Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice." And Pilate famously replies, "What is truth?"
Pilate's question has been interpreted in various ways - as worldly scepticism, philosophical pondering, or even genuine interest in what Jesus might have to teach him. Most likely is the view of Raymond Brown, who believes that the evangelist is using the question to show that Pilate is turning away from the truth. Jesus has allayed his fears of a potential political threat, but Pilate will not accept Jesus' challenge to recognize the truth. Rather, he turns immediately away from him and renders his verdict: not guilty. And so, while the governor will not accept the charges of the Jewish leaders, "neither will he listen to the voice of Jesus. He does not recognize the truth."
What is truth? At Eichmann's trial, one witness discussed a man named Anton Schmidt, a German sergeant in charge of a patrol in Poland. While there, he ran into members of the Jewish underground, and he helped them, supplying forged papers and trucks, with no expectation of favours or bribes. This went on for five months, when Schmidt was arrested and executed. During the brief time it took to tell this story, a hush settled over the courtroom "as though the crowd had spontaneously decided to observe the usual two minutes of silence in honour of the man named Anton Schmidt." Amidst all this darkness, a shaft of light had burst in, and Arendt thought to herself, "how utterly different everything would be today...if only more such stories could have been told."
The example of Schmidt and others shows the deception in the thinking that positive action against evil is a practically useless sacrifice. It is true that totalitarian governments try to erase all traces of deeds, good and evil. Yet all those efforts to erase the evidence, to erase people - and, yes, to erase peoples - are doomed to failure. The story will be told. As Arendt puts it, "while under conditions of terror most people will comply...some, like Anton Schmidt, will not." Just as while the Final Solution could have happened anywhere, it did not happen everywhere, even in areas under German military control, like Denmark, which defied the Nazi edicts. It is not practically useless to make this planet fit for human habitation.
If we could erase what we know of Jesus, and travel back to Jerusalem that fateful Passover week, what would we see? We'd see a populist leader, a Galilean wonder-worker on trial for his life. We'd hear that he had an opportunity to escape, or at least bargain for a lesser sentence, but instead that he had placed himself in a position where his execution was assured. Like the army physician in Sebastopol, we may have paused to ask ourselves why this man would have thrown his life away, why he would have made a sacrifice so practically useless, even if, perhaps, morally virtuous. Yet we do know that the effect of that sacrifice was to free humanity from the burden of evil, to know the truth, and to allow that truth to set us free.
Every day we are called to speak the truth to the powers of this world, and to do more - to live it. Indifference to evil manifested in the suffering of others, however one cloaks it, is the perpetuation of evil. It is turning from the truth. It is the Pontius Pilate syndrome which leads to the ongoing crucifixion of our Lord, who suffers for the suffering of the voiceless and the powerless; and on behalf of those who inflict it.
"I sensed," said Eichmann, "a kind of Pontius Pilate feeling, for I felt free of all guilt." Where are the Pilates of our time? Where are those whose response to evil is to meet it with retribution, with the infliction of more suffering, more violence, more death? Where are those whose sense of comfort and equilibrium is distressed beyond measure by the reality of the environmental and human catastrophes of the Third World, and so must be numbed through another injection of new comforts to be enjoyed, new movies to see, places to go, things to do? Where are those who stood by when they crucified our Lord?
"He was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities...by a perversion of justice he was taken away...he was...stricken for the transgression of my people." It is a hard thing, this banality of evil. It would be so much easier if it were locked in the steel box of events like the Holocaust, with its cast of monstrous, devilish murderers and innocent sheep silent before their shearers. But instead we have countless silences and missed opportunities, rationalizations, denials, projections of responsibility onto others. "All we like sheep have gone astray; we have all turned to our own way, and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all."
I'm not advocating that we beat our breasts in guilt. Now, that's practically useless! I'm only asking that we consider how the officials we elect and the media whose products we purchase respond to problems and create problems. We all know now that the "Jewish problem" was a fiction: the problem was in the perception of Jewish people by some non-Jews in Germany and elsewhere. Problems are so rarely in one's state of being, as they are in one's circumstances. Yet, even today, Muslims are portrayed as a problem, as opposed to the circumstances of radicalization; or the poor are a problem, as opposed to the circumstances of their poverty.
Guilt is an indulgence we can ill afford. Harder is repentance; and the restitution that flows from genuine contrition. Yet only when we repent of participating in an unspoken conspiracy of silence and obedience to injustice will we begin to taste the sweetness of freedom. And only when we take up tools to build the kingdom of God will we go beyond tasting freedom to fully living it.
Today, as we meditate on the meaning of the cross, I invite you to look into the mirror of your soul and gaze deeply. I ask you to meditate on those events in Jerusalem, the claims that were made, the choices taken, the events determined. Think of the paths of life or death taken by ordinary people, and remember. Remember that there are stories we tell ourselves and tell about ourselves. And then there is the real story, the unvarnished truth, the factual record, the evidence read into the court transcript. We have heard that real story as it relates to our Lord Jesus Christ. What is the real story within yourself, about yourself, and about your place in our Lord's Passion? Amen.