City Of Refuge

This article is a shortened version of a chapter from the anthology, What About the Russians? A Christian Approach to U.S.-Soviet Conflict, edited by Dale Brown, which was scheduled to be released by Brethren Press in spring, 1984. It is used by permission.—The Editors

In an Ohio church camp several years after World War II, a partly disabled German veteran told how a Russian peasant woman had saved his life. He was fleeing but had been so badly wounded that he could not go on. The woman took him—an enemy, a human being—into her hut, dressed his wounds, tore up her linen for bandages. After he had eaten and slept, he resumed his flight.

The German pastor, physician, and artist Kurt Reuber lost his life in Stalingrad. But in his last months he did a number of portrait sketches of Russians he had come to know. Those faces remain as moving expressions of a humanity shared amid the chaos and abysmal division of war.

Partly because of the ruthlessness of some Soviet actions and policies, partly because of decades of rigorously orchestrated propaganda, Western countries have a deep prevailing fear of the Russians and, joined with that, immense animosity. The Russians on their side are increasingly gripped by fear of us, fear most of all that the United States will launch a nuclear first strike and destroy their country.

How in a world that is careening toward nuclear war can enough people see the human faces of those on the other side of the planet? In this dread time what can we learn from the biblical revelation about the Russians and ourselves?

One evening in the bitterly cold winter following the conquest of France—the winter of 1940-41—Magda Trocme answered a knock at the presbytery door. Outside stood a frail woman with snow covering her meager clothes. She was visibly frightened. The marks of hunger were in her face and dark eyes. She said that she was a German Jew, fleeing from northern France, that she was in danger, and that she had heard that in the village of Le Chambon somebody could help her.

Magda Trocme welcomed her in and fed her at the table near the kitchen stove. As Philip Hallie tells in the book, Lest Innocent Blood Be Shed, that woman was the first of thousands of Jews who during those war years found their way to Le Chambon, where Pastor Andre Trocme and his wife Magda inspired and led the community-wide endeavor to hide them and help them across the nearby border into Switzerland.

To the Trocmes the Old Testament passages about "cities of refuge" (Numbers 35:9-34; Deuteronomy 4:41-43, 19:1-13; Joshua 20:1-9) provided a biblical background for these efforts:

You shall set apart three cities for you in the land which the Lord your God gives you to possess ... This is the provision for the manslayer, who by fleeing there may save his life. If anyone kills his neighbor unintentionally without having been at enmity with him in time past—as when a man goes into the forest with his neighbor to cut wood, and his hand swings the axe to cut down a tree, and the head slips from the handle and strikes his neighbor so that he dies—he may flee to one of these cities and save his life; lest the avenger of blood in hot anger pursue the manslayer and overtake him, because the way is long, and wound him mortally, though the man did not deserve to die, since he was not at enmity with his neighbor in time past ... You shall add three other cities to these three, lest innocent blood be shed in your land which the Lord your God gives you for an inheritance, and so the guilt of bloodshed be upon you.
(Deuteronomy 19:2,4-6,9-10)

The Trocmes knew that people who did not deserve to die were being rounded up and taken off to be killed, and he had a clear obligation to go against the law and protect them. He and his co-workers took very seriously the biblical warning that if the innocent are slain in a city of refuge, the guilt of that bloodshed would be upon those who had failed to give them adequate protection.

Very few of us have ever answered that sort of knock. But far outside our doors are multitudes caught in a danger more awesome than the one that hung over the Jews in Nazi Europe. The little people of the Soviet Union and its allies may at any time be exterminated en masse by Western nuclear weapons. The converse is also the case: we in the West can at any time be obliterated by Soviet bombs. But we, like the villagers of Le Chambon, must do what we can to save the lives of persons about to be killed by the government under which we live.

To be sure, one must face the issue of innocence and guilt. Generally the millions of human beings sent to Auschwitz were not guilty of horrible crimes against humanity. Communists in their wielding of power have committed such crimes. Determined hostility toward them might then seem to be highly appropriate.

The texts about the Hebrew cities of refuge were concerned most of all with distinguishing between the innocent and the guilty. A person who had killed someone accidentally was to be given sanctuary and not handed over to be killed by an avenging relative of the slain person. But anyone found guilty of murder was to be handed over.

That differentiation received a strange reverse fulfillment in the trial of Jesus. The one who completely deserved protection from those intent on killing him was not given sanctuary. The Jerusalem oligarchy and the crowd handed over a completely innocent person to be crucified and rescued a murderer from the death penalty. Through that handing over, all the people involved incurred some degree of guilt for the shedding of innocent blood. And all human beings were implicated.

At the crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth, the division between the innocent and the guilty fell in an extraordinary, new way. Only one was innocent. All others were guilty. "Cursed be every one who does not abide by all things written in the book of the law, and do them" (Deuteronomy 27:26 as quoted in Galatians 3:10). But that one took the guilt, bore the curse, died the death. It was, within the mystery of God's love, "life for life" (Deuteronomy 19:21).

A hymn addresses "you who for refuge to Jesus have fled," and that is an echo of Hebrews 6:18, "we who have fled for refuge." At the cross the guilty can become the innocent; God made Jesus "to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God" (2 Corinthians 5:21). This Jesus, who prayed, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do," this Jesus, risen from the dead, became the refuge, the sanctuary, the rescuer for any who came with whatever proportions of guilt and innocence to him. Those earlier cities of refuge have such fulfillment in him that none are to be handed over to human or divine vengeance.

If for ourselves we accept Jesus' taking our place and keeping the worst from coming upon us, we cannot—without flagrant incongruity—give others over to the threat or actuality of the worst on earth they might deserve. Those who have taken refuge in Jesus Christ become the new "city set on a hill" (Matthew 5:14). In the hearts of people of that city, refuge in Christ is given also to the leaders and masses in designated enemy countries; they are not handed over to be killed.

The Old Testament, in keeping with the avowed intent of the judicial system in any society, gives emphasis to the task of distinguishing between the guilty and the innocent. The latter are not to be condemned to death and killed. Only God can weigh the measure in which little people far removed from the levers of political power are guilty or innocent of dark deeds committed by their government and its agents.

Most Russians are even farther removed from those levers than are most Americans. Elections for them are still more weighted against decisive change in national leadership than are U.S. elections. It should be clear to us that in relation to the darker aspects of the Soviet system there is a rather wide segment of the Soviet population that is relatively innocent—and often more on the victim side. We should keep very much in mind that there are in the Soviet Union 50,000,000 professing Christians and 16,000,000 members of the communist party.

Correspondingly, an important element in the just war position has been the rejection of indiscriminate slaughter of civilians. But in the wars and cold wars of the 20th century that distinction has become more and more illusory. It is profoundly contrary to the Old Testament concern for the relatively innocent and to the elementary wisdom of judicial codes around the world when nationalist passions and nuclear strategies consign entire populations to possible execution.

The grotesqueness of the current nuclear arrangements can be seen in relation to the people of Poland. There has been in the West broad sympathy for the Poles in their continuing resistance to Soviet-imposed repression. Yet in a Third World War it is probable that Western nuclear warheads would kill most, if not all, of the people of Poland (while Soviet bombs would be doing the same to the populations of Western Europe).

The Poles happen to live within the wrong military alliance. How preposterous it is when concern for them strengthens a reliance on weapons that can so easily annihilate them. The same considerations hold overall for the Czechs, the Hungarians, the Rumanians, the Bulgarians, the East Germans, and for wide ranges of the Soviet population, which is a patchwork of 100 nationalities.

Beyond concern for the multitudes of relatively innocent Russians and Eastern Europeans, we can consider those who are more guilty and the way in which corporate guilt by complicity is shared by Russians generally. But then the mirror-image of all that is to be found on the American side. The great majority of both Russians and Americans give assent to a vast arsenal of nuclear weapons which at hair-trigger readiness could, even through some computer malfunction, bring death to hundreds of millions of people on the other side of the planet.

The New Testament moves beyond protection for the innocent to rescue for the guilty. The problem of evil is not centered in other persons, the other side, the enemy country. That problem for each person is centered in the person and in what is held to as "us." "Judge not, that you be not judged ... Why do you see the speck that is in your brother's eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye?" (Matthew 7:1,3). "Therefore you have no excuse ... whoever you are, when you judge another; for in passing judgment upon him you condemn yourself, because you, the judge, are doing the very same things ... 'None is righteous, no, not one'" (Romans 2:1,3:10).

Sanctuary for the innocent is not enough. Each of us is in desperate need of sanctuary for the guilty. Because we have been given sanctuary in Jesus Christ, we are to give the Russians sanctuary in our hearts, minds, and actions. We do not leave them to their impending doom. We are ready to risk our lives in countering the terror that presses upon them. Beyond becoming a "nuclear-free zone" with regard to what we look to for protection, we take up the task, by attitude and witness, of offering sanctuary, refuge, asylum to Russians. All their weapons cannot for much longer hold back that terror with its base among us from sweeping over them. They can have no effective civil defense. The most promising defense for them comes from communities of refuge here that disengage themselves from that base and extend love's domain.

Adolf Hitler described how his anti-Semitism developed as he walked the streets of Vienna: "Wherever I went, I began to see Jews, and the more I saw, the more sharply they became distinguished in my eyes from the rest of humanity." The most decisive element in his attitude was this setting of the Jews apart from the rest of humanity. Actually all who were not Germans, Aryans, were seen as somewhat outside. But the Jews were focused upon as the epitome of those set off from humanity.

It is significant that for American English the most frequently used term parallel in form to anti-Semitism is anti-communism. Anti-Semitism is directed mainly against people. Anti-communism is usually thought of as ardent opposition to communism as an ideology. But anti-communism also is directed mainly against people. The ideology as such is hardly perceived as the threatening adversary, but rather the people who dynamically represent it. They come to be seen as apart from humanity.

In a society more and more overcome by hatred of the Soviets, what weight can we give to those gospel passages that center in Jesus' command, "Love your enemies" (Matthew 5:38-48; Luke 6:27-36)? Jesus directed the imperative to "you that hear." The primary question is not what relevance this teaching has for U.S. foreign policy, but rather what directive it carries, if any, for American Christians in relation to the Russians.

It is commonly claimed that this teaching applies to personal enemies but can hardly be taken as applicable to national enemies. However, what Jesus gives as background for that command points in almost the opposite direction. He quotes Leviticus 19:18: "You shall love your neighbor as yourself," which is introduced there by the precepts: "You shall not hate your brother in your heart, but you shall reason with your neighbor, lest you bear sin against the sons of your own people." Neighbors were the fellow Israelites. There was to be no hatred toward or vengeance against persons within this ethnic and faith grouping. That formulation left the way open for the popular inference: one could rightly hate those outside this grouping or even outside one's own Jewish sect if it was seen as the only true Israel.

Some such division was implied in the question a lawyer put to Jesus with regard to the second great commandment: "And who is my neighbor?" (Luke 10:29). The rabbis had debated endlessly about who were to be excluded. In his reply Jesus struck down the popular demarcation between the in-group and those outside. For Jews of the time, Samaritans were the most hated and despised outside ethnic group.

Enmity between the two peoples had deepened over hundreds of years—intensified by incidents such as the destruction of the Samaritan temple on Mount Gerizim by a Jewish army in 128 B.C. and the desecration of the temple in Jerusalem by Samaritans who entered at night and scattered corpses there. Jesus was a child when that defiling of the temple was perpetrated (about 6 A.D.). For most Jews the deed must have come as infuriating confirmation of their darkest opinions about the Samaritans. One of the nastiest insults the Jerusalem adversaries of Jesus could direct at him was to call him a Samaritan (John 8:48).

In the command, "Love your enemies," the enemies Jesus reckons with are those who proceed as adversaries of the new people of God. They hate, curse, abuse the disciples of Jesus. The crucial division is not between the Jewish in-group and those outside but rather between those who have been drawn together around Jesus and those who see this new grouping as a threat and move against it. The division comes within the society.

But the hostile front moves only from the one side. Disciples are to face those adversaries with a love that takes shape in acts of good will, blessing as answer to cursing, and intercession for them. Love reaches out to overcome the division.

For Jesus the severest test of love comes when disciples are confronted by persecutors, not simply individuals who manifest a strong dislike for them, whatever may be the origins of that, but adversaries moving concertedly against them and the faith they seek to live. That is what enemies were for Jesus and for the early Christians. For followers of Jesus in many periods and places that is mainly what enemies have been.

American Christians generally do not, in a decisive way, have such enemies within the society. But the dominant fearful picture of who the Russians are and what they could do to us corresponds to the description Jesus gave of enemies. There is no Soviet persecution of Americans. But this possibility is seen as the great threat which military might must hold in check. What is feared is not so much a persecution of Christians but the prospect that the entire population would be dealt with in a fashion comparable to a terrible persecution of the church. The nuclear arsenal is seen as holding back the persecutors.

In the Stalinist decades there was wide Soviet persecution, and even wholesale slaughter, of Christians and other groups. Since then the modes of repression have become more restrained, and for most Christians and non-Christians in the Soviet Union, life is more tolerable than most Americans suppose. But the critical issue is not how bright or dark a picture we have of Soviet society and Soviet intentions. There is much darkness in every society and government. Whatever degree of correlation there may be between American Cold War images of Russians and who they are actually or potentially, to this degree Russians most of all are enemies Jesus tells us we must love. By and large we are not faced with nearby persecutors. If that command of Jesus in its central intent is to be seen as having any relevance for our present situation, then we are given the task of loving far-away persons who might incline toward doing terrible things to us.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote: "And who needs our love more than those who are consumed with hatred and are utterly devoid of love? ... As brother stands by brother in distress, binding up his wounds and soothing his pain, so let us show our love towards our enemy. There is no deeper distress to be found in the world, no pain more bitter than our enemy's." That applies when we look toward the darkness within the Soviet society—and within the United States.

The claim is sometimes made that one can go into battle loving the enemy soldiers or that there can be love for the Russians alongside a readiness to have and use nuclear weapons against them. However that may be in terms of mental acrobatics, Jesus was not talking merely about some emotional state of mind. He said, "But love your enemies, and do good" to them (Luke 6:35). That love is to be as forward and tangible in its expression as God's giving sun and rain to the unjust. Agape is "a gracious, outgoing, active interest in the welfare of those persons who are precisely antagonistic." It is "being there for that other person before God." Such love cannot lay hold of rifle or hydrogen bomb.

Love of enemies is the opposite of our ordinary human response. But it is not some impossible ideal in an overwhelmingly lofty ethic. God loves that way and has loved us that way. We who live after the crucifixion of Jesus can contemplate a far greater wonder than the example Jesus pointed to: "While we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son" (Romans 5:10). What should be overwhelming is not the ethic but God's love for us. And as we are drawn into marveling at that love and reciprocating it, naturally and without heroics our love will tag along with God's loving those who are most hardhearted and difficult.

The common translations of Matthew 5:48 with "perfect"—"You, therefore, must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect"—are usually understood to express a call to be flawless, without error or sin. But behind the Greek word is the Hebrew tamim of Deuteronomy 18:13. God in loving is whole, undivided, all-embracing. As the New English Bible has it: "You must therefore be all goodness [toward enemies], just as your heavenly Father is all good." In the United States and around the world the chief and most decisive division that would delimit love is between our side and the enemy's side. But Christians, like God, are not to be divided and delimited.

Jesus does not ground his commands with regard to enemies in an expectation that they will be transformed into friends. In specific instances God may or may not succeed in bringing that about. For Jesus it is of prior and utterly crucial importance that disciples be transformed, that toward enemies they live the breakthrough of God's love into their lives. But this is so crucial partly because it can have a role in God's strategy toward those—even as the obedience of Jesus, when his adversaries were closing in on him, was central for all God's purpose.

Jesus does call for a love toward enemies that is vibrant with expectancy. The unconverted love those who love them (Matthew 5:46-47). If persons they treat as enemies respond in love, this may possibly elicit love in return. But we can be filled much more deeply with a resilient hope for the enemy if we glimpse the wonder and dynamic of God's love reaching to the enemy and understand that God has overwhelmed even our rebellion.

Western cold warriors, so many of them church people, tend to view the Russians as quite beyond hope. But this constitutes atheist denial of God's living, loving sovereignty over the world. Love, also in looking toward the Russians, "hopes all things" (1 Corinthians 13:7). In the hilltop city there is abounding hope that enough light can shine forth to cause even Soviet communists to "give glory to ... [the] Father who is in heaven" (Matthew 5:16). All this has decisive implications with regard to alternative approaches for relating to the Soviets. Confronted by the Russians and the call of Jesus, we can be sure that God in his purposes for them can better use our caring, prayers, and conciliatory initiatives than our animosity and hydrogen bombs.

Dale Aukerman was a writer and speaker and was on staff with the Brethren Peace Fellowship when this article appeared.