"The God in Striped Pajamas" - Psalms 139:1-12; John 1:1-18

Yesterday my friend and colleague Steve Fringer preached in worship. Steve serves First Presbyterian Church as our visitation pastor, but he is also an excellent crafter of sermons, so I'm excited to share his words here...

She climbed into her parents’ bed, whimpering. A bad dream. In five minutes she was asleep and her father carried her back into her bedroom, laying her in her own bed. She awoke as he pulled the blankets up. “Noooooo,” she whined. “You’ll be all right, sweetheart.” He knelt down beside the bed, his face close to hers in the dark. “I’ll put your night light on. It was only a dream.” “I know. I don’t like to be alone. I get scared.” “Well, mommy and daddy are just down the hall,” he said. “And you know God is always with you.” She was quiet, looking at him and then looking away. “I know, but…” The “but” hung in the dark quiet. “But what?” “Well,” she said, “I like somebody close to me with skin on.”

Our little theologian gives expression to what we all want at times, to what the evangelist says has happened: And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth. Emmanuel—God with us. So, heaven kisses earth; enter Jesus. In the birth of Jesus we see that there is no length to which God will not go to prove that we are loved. To show that God’s love has no bottom, no top, no sides, no end. Yes, we may be afraid to be alone or afraid of the dark, or of the boogie man in the closet or under our bed, or the boogie man of foreclosure or job loss or the diagnosis we dreaded to hear, but since God in Jesus has stepped into our skin we have the reassurance that God knows intimately the depths of our fears, the risk in trusting others, the pain of betrayal, the agony of grief, as well as the dangnabbit feeling of a stubbed toe, the joy of a good laugh, the deep satisfaction of loving others and being loved.

But as our little theologian bemoans--we do at times lose a sense of God’s presence with us. It’s easy to imagine God’s presence and goodness when things are going well and we’re cartwheeling across the sunny mountaintops of our lives. But when we’re scared or alone, trudging through the dark valleys, or wandering in the wilderness, we often wonder, Where are you, God? Even Jesus, in his most painful skin moment, cries, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” And history on more than one occasion has pointed an accusing finger at the faithful and asked, Where was God?

Bruno is a young boy in John Boyne’s novel, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas. His father is a high ranking officer in the German army of WWII and at the beginning of the book the family is being transferred to, as Bruno understands, Out-With. In his new home he finds little to like and cannot find any friends to play with. Soldiers now come in and out of his home, reporting to his father and calling him commandant.

One day Bruno goes exploring and finds a fence that stretches as far as he can see. He walks along the fence for a long time seeing nothing, but then he sees a little speck and coming closer he finds a boy, small, skinny, with large eyes in a thin, grey face, his head shaven. He is wearing striped pajamas, sitting on the ground with his back to the camp and looking through the fence. Bruno sits down in front of him and they talk through the fence. His name is Shmeul and they discover that they share the same birthday and are both nine years old.

Bruno returns day after day, sometimes sneaking food from the kitchen for his friend, who is always hungry, keeping his visits a secret from his family because they’ve forbidden him to go anywhere near the fence. What he learns from his new friend is often too hard for Bruno to believe—that he has no change of clothes, only the striped pajamas and cap he wears, that everyone on that side of the fence doesn’t have their own bedrooms, and the boys don’t have any toys.

One day Bruno contracts head lice and has his head shaven and when he sees Schmeul again, they joke how similar they look, only Bruno is fatter. Shortly thereafter Bruno’s mother decides she and Bruno and his sister will return to Berlin. It’s been almost a year since they arrived in Out-With. Bruno is deeply saddened and when he sees Shmeul he tells him he will be leaving. Shmeul is scared because he can’t find his father. The two boys hatch a plan to go looking for his father together the next day. Shmeul will bring pajamas and cap for Bruno to wear and he’ll crawl under the fence and change clothes; with his short hair he’ll appear no different than the others.

Their plan works. They do go looking for Shmeul’s father, but they get caught up in a large crowd of people who are being forced to march and the grey sky overhead grows darker and the rain falls harder and Bruno starts thinking he should return home because they were having roast beef that night and then he and Shmeul were out of the rain in a large, warm room packed with pajama people and the door closed and all seemed better and, quite out of character, Bruno took Shmuel’s tiny hand in his and told him he was the best friend he’d ever had and then the room went dark.

“Where can I go from your spirit? Or where can I flee from your presence? … if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there. If I take the wings of the morning and settle at the farthest limits of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me fast.” In the end, I believe, it comes down to making a stance, a stance of faith and trust, even when the evidence, be it historical or personal, the evidence of God’s absence or indifference seems overwhelming; evidence such as Bruno and Shmeul’s camp of Auschwitz, or the killing fields of Cambodia, or the ethnic cleansing of Bosnia or Rwanda. Even when we feel alone and lost and scared and God-abandoned in our hospital room or looking at the foreclosure notice. Can we see God, moving in our midst? In Jesus God has stepped into our skin and God is also in the striped pajamas entering the gas chambers, standing with the oppressed, the hurting, the dying. God dying over and over again. And then being born anew in our midst when we walk with someone through their wilderness, make the hard sacrifice, comfort the grieving, listen with our hearts, practice forgiveness, become hope for someone else, live love. Then we become the midwives for God’s birth. Then we make every day Christmas because every day and every moment in every day is sacramental. Then we become the light in the darkness that the darkness does not overcome.

Amen.