Beloved Community in Dachau

I spent the morning at Dachau Concentration Camp memorial site, just outside Munich. I wandered the grounds and exhibitions: the roll call area, barracks, infirmary, prison, crematorium.

The camp was established two months after Adolf Hitler took power. Initially, it confined political opponents — later, sexual and ethnic minorities were locked up. Living conditions were horrific: over 200,000 people were imprisoned at Dachau, and at least 41,500 people died from hunger, disease, torture or murder. No wonder I was depressed.

Eventually I made my way to the north end of the camp, where the religious memorials stand. There was the Roman Catholic “Mortal Agony of Christ Chapel” — correlating the prisoners’ misery and death with Jesus’ passion. The Russian Orthodox “Resurrection of Our Lord Chapel” featured an icon of the risen Christ leading prisoners to freedom. The Jewish Memorial lamented the destruction of European Jews.

A handful of people was gathering in the courtyard of the Protestant “Church of Reconciliation.” Finding someone who spoke English, I asked what was happening. The church, I learned, worships every Sunday. I was welcome to join.

Worship was simple: a song, Scripture, a brief meditation. We recited the Lord’s Prayer — my English blending with German voices. We passed the Peace. We stood in a small circle to celebrate the Eucharist, offering bread and wine to each other with words of benediction. I received in German, I passed on in English. A closing song. A prayer.

Then they wanted to know my story. I was a college professor from Chicago doing research for teaching the Holocaust. In graduate school I studied the ethics of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the Lutheran pastor who resisted the Nazis and was executed. My words were translated; questions were asked. With warm well-wishes, we parted. I had been blessed beyond measure.

How could I not be? I encountered holy ground on the site of horror. Blessing on the site of cursing. Welcome on the site of rejection. Inclusion on the site of exclusion. Grace on the site of condemnation. Life on the site of death.

In a place where Jewish men and women, homosexuals, Roma-Sinti victims, Soviet prisoners of war were savagely mistreated, I was graciously accepted. Dachau represents the worst of human evil, yet in that place I experienced the best of human and Christian good. I was given unconditional welcome. And that’s the gospel, pure and simple: God has welcomed and accepted us though we are sinners (Romans 5:1-11), so we should welcome others without exception (Romans 15:7).

Jesus proclaimed and embodied God’s dream. In first-century Palestine, illness and disability kept people from participating in social and religious life. Healing restored them to physical health, family relationships and social status. Jesus healed those on the outside of society — a leper, the slave of a Roman army officer, an old woman, a demon-possessed man, a paralyzed person, a tax collector, a young girl, a blind man. He overturned exclusionary social attitudes by renaming people he healed. He called the bleeding woman “daughter” (Mark 5:34), the woman with the bent spine “daughter of Abraham” (Luke 13:16) and the man lowered through the roof “friend” (Luke 5:20). Jesus gives each a new identity that the community had been unwilling to recognize.

In first-century Judaism, meals represented intimacy. Eating with others was a sign of respect, while refusing to share a table expressed ostracism. The purity system with its sharp social classifications frowned on contact with morally questionable people. But Jesus ate with tax collectors and sinners (Mark 2:15). His inclusive table fellowship created a hospitable space that widened the boundaries of who is welcomed. The woman at the well (John 4) was triply distant from Jesus—a woman, a sinful woman, a sinful Samaritan woman. But she was blessed by him — a pious Jewish man — despite these differences.

St. Paul established inclusive religious communities where the wall separating Jews and Gentiles, slaves and masters, men and women (and non-binary individuals), is demolished (Galatians 3:28). He rebuked the Corinthian practice of dividing by social class for Eucharist — the rich members eating excessively and separately from the poor members, humiliating and excluding them. Instead it was to be a “communion” where all enjoyed the love feast together (I Corinthians 11:17-34).

What I experienced that Sunday morning in Dachau is what we followers of Jesus are called to be and do. The folks gathering for worship didn’t know me at all. I spoke English and was American, they spoke and were German. I was Episcopalian, they were Lutheran. I was a foreigner, they were locals. I was a stranger, they were friends. And yet I was made one of them. They never asked about my sexual orientation, my marital status, my political leanings, my bank account, my past choices. They simply welcomed me as I was.

This is the gospel vision of beloved community where every person without exception is included. In his recent song “Orders,” Bruce Cockburn gives a long list of people we want to exclude—the cruel fighting neighbors, the crooked priest, the pastor preaching hate, the self-inflating government leader, all “the ones we think we’re better than.” Then Cockburn reminds us of Jesus’ command: “a challenge great, as I recall, our orders said to love them all.”

In Dachau, a place where I least expected it, I caught a small glimpse of that inclusive social vision where all belong. I left that awful place challenged to become, in my own stumbling way, more welcoming — especially of those I love to hate. I want others to know I’m a Christian by my love (John 13:35).