Reflection for 3rd Sunday after Epiphany
“For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.” (1 Cor 1:17-18.
On the 23 May 1945, Colonel Gonin penned a special order of the day.
It was a thank you letter to all the ranks of the particular medical corps who had tirelessly worked with the American troops for the last 3 months in Germany.
The letter went on to describe their further ‘thankless and unspectacular task of clearing Belsen Concentration Camp’.
Over 11,000 sick were freed from the camp – most of them suffering from the ‘most virulent diseases known to man’. In the first 10 days working in the camp, the medical corps had distributed 4,000 meals twice daily from whatever they could scrounge. Collecting medical equipment from all over Germany they had supplied drugs for 15,000 patients a day. Without hesitation they acted as undertakers collecting over 2,000 corpses from the wards and moving them to the mortuary. Some of the workers caught Typhus.
Some time later, the Colonel noted in his diary that a case of lipstick had been misdelivered to the camp, despite the camp still being so very desperate for necessities. Rather than send it back, they distributed it to women remaining in the camp.
Which the colonel noted was ‘genius’ as the freed women clung to them, even in their misery. He tells of a woman who, laying dead, still clutched a lipstick in her hand.
“At last someone had done something to make them individuals again, they were someone, no longer merely the number tattooed on the arm.”
Why did these women cling to this ‘foolish’ piece of make-up? For these human beings who had gone through hell, maybe the lipstick reminded them of happier, normal times? Maybe it was a powerful symbol and concrete sign that life might be worth living for, that there might be a future as they held that tube of make-up?
I don’t presume to know; this tale is so disturbing and sorrowful; it cuts to the heart and defies easy answers. But it may show how important and life-giving symbols can be – even in the darkest of times.
In the Roman empire, crucifixion was the most shameful of deaths. To follow and praise one who was crucified was mostly likely a completely foolish and lunatic act. But for Paul, apostle of Christ, it is the most powerful, concrete sign of the power of God to nullify death. In Christ’s life, death and resurrection was the proof that in the empire of God, no matter what happens to us, we are seen, welcomed and loved.
May we be blessed with just a smidgeon of the power of God that the cross points to!
Blessings
Ceri
