Today is the feast day for the Righteous Gentiles, those non-Jews who risked their lives to save Jews during the Holocaust. This morning I remember in particular Pastor Andre Trocme, whose small French Alps village helped hide and facilitate the escape of an estimated 3,500 Jews during the Nazi occupation of France.
Le Chambon's resistance did not simply begin with the occupation in 1941. As a Protestant, and particularly pacifistic community within Catholic France, the village of Le Chambon had a history of noncooperation and civil disobedience that was generations long before the Vichy government came to power. Pastor Trocme was strong in his opposition to collaboration from the outset, and he led his people to work creatively to resist the powers of occupation, deportation, and death.
As a central practice of his actions, Trocme taught consistently something that is I think helpful for us in our own resistance against the powers of domination in our own contexts: "Look hard for ways to make little moves against destructiveness."
We may not be able to make big moves. We may not have the power or the energy. But little moves can have impact. And as is said in Luther's hymn -- a hymn the villagers of Le Chambon stood on the streets and sang together as Pastor Trocme was being arrested for his subversive activities:
"The Prince of Darkness grim,
We tremble not for him;
His rage we can endure,
For lo! his doom is sure,
One little word shall fell him."
A prayer for this day from the Book of Common Prayer:
Almighty God, who hast created us in thine own image: Grant us grace fearlessly to contend against evil and to make no peace with oppression; and, that we may reverently use our freedom, help us to employ it in the maintenance of justice in our communities and among the nations, to the glory of thy holy Name; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
Ryon Price is Senior Pastor of Broadway Baptist Church in Fort Worth, Texas.
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