For All Who Suffer--September 4, 2025

For All Who Suffer--September 4, 2025

"Remember those who are in prison, as though you were in prison with them, those who are being tortured, as though you yourselves were being tortured." (Hebrews 13:3)

More than eight decades ago, a young pastor watched as people in towns and cities across his country were rounded up and made to disappear, first quietly and discreetly, and then soon enough more blatantly with broken glass in storefront windows and public arrests, to prison camps, "detention centers," and processing facilities where no one could track them any longer.  The young pastor had heard from other ecclesiastical leaders that it wasn't really the Church's job to critique how the government did its job, muttering some standard theological boilerplate about the rightful rule of The State and a couple of cherry-picked verses from Romans 13, and a good many other pastors decided to keep their mouths closed and decide it was none of their business to say anything more.  After all, nobody knew for sure where those people who had been rounded up were sent to, and surely, it must have been humane, just, and all in good order, right?  But our young pastor was persuaded otherwise and decided to speak up.

He was convinced that the Scriptures did not teach Christians like him to stare at his feet in order to ignore while others were made to disappear, had their right of residency taken away, or were sent by trains to other countries outside the original jurisdiction of his country where they couldn't be checked on or brought back.  In fact, his reading of the New Testament led him to a rather radical (at the time) claim: "The church has an unconditional obligation to the victims of any ordering society, even if they do not belong to the Christian community."  You may well have guessed his name by now--our pastor in question was Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and ultimately, he paid with his life for his resistance to the powers of the day in 1930s Germany, and for his concern for the Jewish neighbors from his country, who had lost their citizenship with the stroke of a pen, been rounded up by secret police (because without their citizenship they no longer had a "right" to remain in the country, and their very presence in Germany thereby became a crime), and then disappeared as if into thin air.

I mention Bonhoeffer right now because those words of his above, from his 1933 writing, "The Church and the Jewish Question," seem to take seriously the verse for this day's devotion from Hebrews 13:3, which many of us heard read in worship this past Sunday.  And while the anonymous writer of Hebrews certainly wasn't picturing Kristallnacht or Auschwitz, the biblical writer does call the followers of Jesus to a radical empathy with those who are bound, detained, imprisoned, and tortured.  In fact, the writer of Hebrews dares us to put ourselves in their place: "remember those imprisoned as though you were in prison with them, and those who are being tortured, as though you yourselves were being tortured."

It's worth noting, I think, that while the writer of Hebrews may well have other Christians in mind who are being imprisoned or tortured (certainly Paul had lived through both in the book of Acts, as Luke tells it), he doesn't limit his concern to those who share the Christian faith.  The writer of Hebrews doesn't say, "You should have compassion for those who are imprisoned, but only as long as they're Christians!" nor does he say, "If they are Christians and they are being tortured, we should care about it, but if they can't recite the Creed, they're on their own!"  Instead, the writer of Hebrews simply issues a broad call for the followers of Jesus to put ourselves in the place of all who are imprisoned, all who are rounded up into detention centers, all who are mistreated and made to disappear from public sight and accountability somewhere, without stopping to put bounds or limits on that empathy. We are called to care for those who suffer, not because they are necessarily members of religious community, but because of Jesus, who knew what it was to be imprisoned and tortured.

Part of following Jesus to the margins is to see his face among those who were rounded up, put on cattle cars, and sent to detention centers conveniently located across the borders where their abuse could be hidden, as happened to more than six million souls before the Second World War ended.  Part of it is to see his face among the victims of the Killing Fields of Cambodia, the mass graves of Rwanda, the children being starved in Gaza, the hostages being held by Hamas, and the faces of those still being made to disappear day by day.  And the writer of Hebrews dares us to take one more step further: to see ourselves in their place, because we are followers of Jesus, and Jesus chose to stand with all humanity, every victim, every prisoner, and everyone who has had a name replaced with a number.  Because of Jesus' solidarity with those who are imprisoned, tortured, or detained, we are called to the same solidarity.  

The writer of Hebrews doesn't offer exceptions, either, for the people we find particularly unsavory.  He doesn't mention only caring about those who are wrongly accused, or those who were illegally detained (after all, all the folks sent to Treblinka and Birkenau were sent there because laws and executive orders had been issues that made it legal to send them there).  The writer of Hebrews only mentions the fact that they suffer.  Those who are imprisoned are worthy of our compassion, even if we also are called to have compassion on those who are victims of rightly convicted criminals, too.  Those who are detained and made to disappear are worthy of our empathy and advocacy, regardless of their status, country of origin, or language.  The writer of Hebrews doesn't give us any fine print or criterion for whose suffering should matter to us, because Jesus himself threw his lot in with the whole of humanity, the guilty and the innocent, the imprisoned and the tortured, all of us.  Jesus, after all, promised Paradise for the guilty criminal dying on the cross next to him and also prayed for forgiveness for the officers who held the hammer to crucify him. The writer of Hebrews simply calls us to walk in the same path as the One we confess as Lord.

For a lot of the past two millennia, a good many church folks have looked for ways to water down or paper over the radical call from the Scriptures to put ourselves in the place of all who are detained, all who are imprisoned, and all who are mistreated--whether or not the powers of the day insist it is "perfectly legal" or not.  The writer of Hebrews, standing alongside voices like Bonhoeffer's from the last century, reminds us that this is what it means to follow Jesus: we are called to put ourselves in the place of all those who suffer, because Jesus put himself in their place first at the cross.

How might that change the trajectory of our day... our week... our lives?

Lord Jesus, enable us to stand, as you have, in the place of all who suffer. Let us reflect your love authentically.