THE FOCUS OF MY LIFE
“People should not be ambivalent
themselves just because everything else is. … Do people exist today who never
tire of undividedly focusing all their thoughts and desires on a single
objective?” These are the words of a 21
year old girl to her boyfriend, a soldier in the German army during the early
years of the Second World War. Sophie Scholl
was writing to Fritz Hartnagel who was beginning to question his own
involvement in Hitler’s objectives.
Sophie was part of a group of students
in Munich University who realised what was happening –as many in Germany did at
the time - and decided to protest. Secretly
they composed leaflets denouncing the Nazis’ aims and deeds, and circulated
them in many of the cities of Germany.
It was extremely dangerous and eventually they were caught, “tried” and
executed by guillotine. Sophie never
flinched throughout her trial and up to the moment of her death she spoke to
all of the evil and disastrous consequences of supporting Hitler’s aims.
We too live in an ambivalent world,
though not as cruel as it as then. I
have just been to Europe; where I stayed, rapid trains run to the centre of
London every three minutes and nearly everywhere multiple and varied services are available.
And yet, despite the abundance of
choices, there is a deep felt desire for something that satisfies the heart: a
thirst for relationship and yet an inability to achieve it. There is a desire for community together with
a desire to pursue individual goals and it seems often impossible to join these
two together. In Zimbabwe today we want
the common good: we want to see justice for all the people. But often we only want these things so long as
they do not interfere with my own goals, my own programme. Sophis’s words, “People should not be
ambivalent themselves just because everything else is”, are a direct call to us
today to focus our lives. What do I
really want? Sophie backs up her words with the witness of her life. She died
for these words. She could not tolerate
ambivalence in herself and she wanted passionately to convey this message to
Fritz and to others. “Where your treasure is, there will your heart be too.”
16 September 2018 Sunday
24 B
Isaiah 50:5-9 James 2:14-18 Mark
8:27-35
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