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<\/figure>\n<\/div>\nWe have reached the 4th and final Sunday of Advent, the Love Sunday, where love joins with hope, peace, and joy to prepare our hearts for the Work of God in the World known at Christmas. This year in Advent I\u2019ve been on a sermon series from the book \u201cPreaching in Hitler\u2019s Shadow: Sermons of Resistance from the Third Reich\u201d and this is the final sermon in this series. Unlike last week when I spent Joy Sunday sharing a sermon of a martyr, this week\u2019s text fits the theme of love. (Phew! Although I did scrap my initial plan and pick a better fitting sermon from the book to make it work.)<\/p>\n
This week I am working with a sermon by Rev. Julius von Jan and my sense is that his entire sermon is a message of love. It is a sermon written with love for his people and his nation (although not what his nation was up to at the time). It is a sermon profound in its love for all of God\u2019s people, and explicit in naming Jews as God\u2019s people. It is a sermon that is also the work of a prophet in loving by calling out injustice and it was received like the work of a prophet.<\/p>\n
Rev. Julius von Jan been a solider and then a prisoner of war in WWI. He was part of the Confessing Church which was the resistance Christian movement in Germany during the Third Reich. The book\u2019s editor says of him, \u201cAs a confessing pastor he considered it his Christian duty to alert his congregation to the deep conflicts between Nazism and Christianity and to advise them of the Nazi outrages and abuses. But even more than pointing out where the state was interfering with Christian practice and adopting a pagan worldview, he never tolerated the Nazi persecution of the Jews. He was also quick to stand up publicly for pastors who had been persecuted by the state or arrested.\u201d1<\/a> Luckily he had a supportive congregation. He was a clergyman who refused to take oath to Hitler. And, regarding this sermon, \u201cWhen the Nazi pogrom against the Jews occurred in November of 1938, von Jan was adamant that these sinful and disgraceful events had to be exposed for what they were. Silence was no option. He knew full well that speaking out in his sermon would endanger him and his family.\u201d2<\/a><\/p>\n And, it did. \u201cFollowing this sermon, Julius von Jan was \u201cseverely beaten by a group of some five hundred Nazi thugs, and dragged to the city hall where he was tried and then thrown into jail. A few days later the SA plastered his parsonage with the sign Judenknecht<\/i> (Jew Servant.)\u201d3<\/a> For a year afterward he dealt with arrests, interrogations, being exiled from his parish\u2026 and was finally tried and \u201cfound guilty of \u2018misusing the pulpit\u2019 and \u2018treachery\u2019 by a Nazi judge in a \u2018special court\u2019 and sentenced to sixteen months imprisonment. These courts were not subject to civil laws and were known for quick and severe sentencing.\u201d4<\/a> Released in May 1940 until 1943 when \u201che was drafted into an artillery until for political prisoners, and served on the Russian front.\u201d5<\/a><\/p>\n Are you ready to hear what he had to say that made them THAT mad?? He preached on the passage that we just read from Jeremiah, and while he focused on the opening piece that in his version read \u201cO Land, Land, Land: Hear the Word of God,\u201d I think it is worth noticing what that word of God actually was. This is verse 3, \u201cThus says the Lord: Act with justice and righteousness, and deliver from the hand of the oppressor anyone who has been robbed. And do no wrong or violence to the alien, the orphan, and the widow, nor shed innocent blood in this place.\u201d For von Jan, preaching on Germany\u2019s \u201cNational Day of Atonement\u201d this Jeremiah text called the people to justice and to atone for their lack of Justice.<\/p>\n In helping his congregation understand the context he reminds them that Jeremiah is a Jewish prophet to the Jews and he \u201cis standing among a people (Volk)<\/i> to whom the Lord has revealed himself throughout a long history as father and redeemer, as guide (f<\/i>\u00fc<\/i>hrer) <\/i>and helper filled with power and grace and glory.\u201d6<\/a> Note use of Nazi words used with Christian meaning, to support Jews! He reminds them that Jeremiah has by this point been preaching for 30 years. Von Jan says that Jeremiah\u201ccontradicts the sermons filled with lies preached by those who announce salvation and victory in their nationalistic intoxication.\u201d7<\/a> SNAP.<\/p>\n After explaining Jeremiah\u2019s message, he brings it into his present, \u201cWhere is the prophet in Germany who is being sent into the king\u2019s house to speak the word of God to him? \u2026 God has sent us such men! They are today either in concentration camps or muzzled. \u2026 and painfully our bishops have not recognized their duty to side with those who have spoken the word of God\u201d8<\/a> He was naming some truths there, definitely including that the hierarchy of the church was working against the will of God and model of Jesus. He continues, \u201cIf therefore today some have to keep silent and others do not want to speak, then certainly we truly have every reason to observe a day of repentance, a day of mourning over our sins and the sins of the nation.\u201d9<\/a><\/p>\n Now, many of you are better at history than I am, but for those whose timelines of Jewish oppression and attempts at annihilation in Germany in the 1930s isn\u2019t very good, a historical note. In early November 1938 a Polish Jewish man murdered a German diplomat in Paris, which was the event used by the Nazis to justify using \u201cstorm troopers against the Jews throughout Germany.\u201d10<\/a> Von Jan preached:<\/p>\n A crime has occurred in Paris. The murderer will receive his just punishment because he has sinned against the commandment of God.<\/p>\n Along with our people (Volk<\/i>), we mourn the victim of this criminal act. But who would have thought that this one crime in Paris could be followed by so many crimes in Germany? Here we see the price we are paying for the great falling away from God and Christ, for the organized anti-Christianity. <\/b>Passions have been released, the laws of God jeered at, houses of God that were sacred to others have been burned to the ground, property belonging to the foreigner plundered or destroyed, men who faithfully served our nation (Volk) <\/i>and who fulfilled their duty in good consciousness have bene thrown into concentration camps simply because they belong to another race, and all this without anyone being eld accountable!11<\/a><\/p>\n I note his use of \u201chouses of God\u201d to talk about the burning of synagogues and connect Christian folk to Jewish folk. This is a man who spoke truth when it was clear how violent the opposition to truth telling was, and he has my deepest respect. This sermon is 4-5 years after the others we\u2019ve looked at in Advent, when conditions had gotten worse and worse. But still he goes on. And, as a veteran of WWI he emphasizes that the Jewish Veterans deserve better! This is a man who follows Jesus of Nazareth.<\/p>\n As the sermon wraps up, von Jan calls on his congregation to pray, \u201cLord, grant us and our nation (Volk) <\/i>a renewed hearing of your word and a renewed respect for your laws! And begin with us!\u201d12<\/a> He worries they aren\u2019t praying enough, \u201cWe are so busy with many things and take so little time for the silence in which we may hear the God\u2019s word, be it in the house of God, be it in our prayer closet. \u2026 A Christian who fails to seek every morning this silence to hear his God endangers himself and harms God\u2019s affairs.\u201d13<\/a> I am simultaneously delighted that he calls on his people to maintain a constant connection to the Divine \u2013 and affirm all that \u2013 and I feel like this is a clue as to how he became the person he was. Because preaching a sermon like this took courage and conviction and faith. The majority of German Christians and preachers took the easy ways out and pledged themselves to Hitler presumably with various ways of justifying it to themselves.<\/p>\n Rev. von Jan, and the others whose sermons we\u2019ve read did not. They stayed the course. They followed Jesus. They stayed true to God. They loved when it was as difficult to love as it could be. And they paid the costs for it.<\/p>\n I agree with Rev. von Jan that we need time to stop and listen to God EVERY day. And my preferred way of doing it is in silence \u2013 although I know very well that we\u2019re all different and silence is a form of torture for many of you! But, when we think about how we listen to the call of God, and especially how we do it when the call of God says \u201cThus says the Lord: Act with justice and righteousness, and deliver from the hand of the oppressor anyone who has been robbed. And do no wrong or violence to the alien, the orphan, and the widow, nor shed innocent blood in this place\u201d and that\u2019s the call we get when we live in a nation that is doing EXACTLY THE OPPOSITE, I think his conclusions hold. We need to stop taking in everything else and make time to take in God\u2019s love and wisdom. All of us, every day, in the ways that work for us.<\/p>\n Because, dear ones, when push comes to shove, I hope we are people who follow Jesus and not ones who justify taking the easy way out. We are people of Love, of God\u2019s love, and we need to soak in it so we are ready to act from it when we have to. And, oddly enough, I think that\u2019s how this becomes an Advent sermon series. We are readying ourselves for the demands of living out God\u2019s love, we are readying ourselves for the coming of Christ. Thanks be to God. Amen<\/p>\n 1<\/a>Preaching in Hitler\u2019s Shadow: Sermons of Resistance in the Third Reich, <\/i>Dean G. Stroud (Grand Rapids: William B. Eardman, 2013) page 107.<\/p>\n 2<\/a>107.<\/p>\n 3<\/a>106.<\/p>\n 4<\/a>107.<\/p>\n 5<\/a>108.<\/p>\n 6<\/a>109<\/p>\n 7<\/a>110.<\/p>\n 8<\/a>111.<\/p>\n 9<\/a>111.<\/p>\n 10<\/a>112, footnote.<\/p>\n 11<\/a>112.<\/p>\n 12<\/a>113<\/p>\n 13<\/a>113.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n December 21, 2025<\/p>\n Rev. Sara E. Baron\u00a0
First United Methodist Church of Schenectady\u00a0
603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305\u00a0
Pronouns: she\/her\/hers\u00a0
http:\/\/fumcschenectady.org\/\u00a0<\/a>
https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/FUMCSchenectady<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"