To Be a People
I was dismayed when I saw tears spring into *Laura’s eyes – tears unintentionally provoked by my own words.
Laura had come by my dorm room hoping to catch my roommate, but not finding her, she stayed to talk with me. Laura was an upperclassman and a member of our college choir, which I had recently joined. We didn’t know each other well, but I always enjoyed our interactions and appreciated her ironic sense of humor.
Our conversation took a serious turn when Laura brought up last year’s choral tour of Poland and Germany. Between performances the choir had visited Auschwitz, the infamous concentration camp. Laura explained that, as a Jewish person, this visit had been particularly meaningful – and difficult – for her.
As a new choir member, I had missed out on last semester’s tour. “I’ve always wanted to go to Auschwitz,” I said enviously. “It would be so fascinating!”
That was when the tears came into her eyes. Laura gently told me I was looking at Auschwitz and the Holocaust with the wrong eyes. One phrase particularly struck me:
“Those are my people.”
I’m grateful Laura didn’t write me off then and there. We remained on warm terms, continuing to share laughs during rehearsals, until COVID-19 made our school go remote halfway through Laura’s final semester. I haven’t seen her since, but her words stuck with me.
My people.
I had no concept of what it means to be a people. Although my grandma grew up in a German-speaking household, the daughter of immigrants, I had no German identity. Nor did I identify with the people of Wales, despite being able to trace my paternal line through centuries of unpronounceable Welsh names.
I suspect many Americans can relate. Despite the ability to track our heritage through DNA testing and research, without the language, culture, and customs of our forebears, we lose connection with them. Our individualistic culture encourages us to pursue our own dreams with little reference to our families in the past, present, or future. But this is not the case for everyone.
That afternoon in my dorm room, the concept of peoplehood was novel to me. I couldn’t grasp why the sufferings of people in a different time and place would affect Laura so deeply. Though I understood the grisly horror of the Holocaust, those terrible events – like the disaster in Pompeii – seemed remote and impersonal. Laura, with her Wisconsin accent, seemed as far removed from Auschwitz as I considered myself. Yet she had said, “My people.”
Over the next few years I would mull over that conversation, never any less perplexed by Laura’s response. It wasn’t until my junior year of college that I started to understand – and that was thanks to my Hmong American roommate, *Joy.
Despite our busy schedules, Joy and I found time to connect and learn about each other’s backgrounds. Joy was the granddaughter of Hmong refugees who, with thousands of their people, had fled Laos to escape communist forces seeking revenge against them for helping the US military during the Vietnam War. Many of these refugees eventually immigrated to the US, Joy’s grandparents among them.
Raised in the close-knit Hmong American community, Joy demonstrated the same strong sense of peoplehood that Laura had shown. Joy’s people not only shared an ethnicity; they shared a sense of mutual obligation, collective need, and shared fate. When Hmong gymnast Sunisa Lee took gold in the Tokyo Olympics, it wasn’t just her immediate family who celebrated. The entire Hmong American community – including my friend Joy – rejoiced in the success of one of their own.
Was it so crazy, then, that Laura should still carry the weight of an atrocity that murdered millions of her own?
In Genesis 12 God told Laura’s distant forebear, Abraham,
“I will make you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great; and I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse. And in you all the families of the earth will be blessed” (vv. 2-3).
These words are as much for Laura as they were for Abraham. Scripture demonstrates that God loves the Jewish people collectively and individually. Recognizing this, it makes sense to me that Laura should love her people in the same way.
But where does this leave Gentile believers like me? Have we any reason to identify with Laura’s grief for her people?
Did you catch the last line of Genesis 12:3? It says, “And in you all the families of the earth will be blessed.” God’s multigenerational promise made to Abraham contains a promise for the Gentile nations as well. Paul references it in Galatians 3:7-9:
“The Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, ‘All the nations will be blessed in you.’ So then, those who are of faith are blessed with Abraham, the believer.”
From the beginning God planned to adopt Gentiles into the spiritual blessings of His covenant with Abraham through the blood of Jesus. Galatians 3:29 tells us that those who belong to Jesus are considered heirs of Abraham. If belief in Messiah makes us Abraham’s spiritual heirs, then the sufferings of Abraham’s genealogical heirs should be deeply personal to us.
Of the many reasons why my freshman self was wrong to view the Holocaust as I did, this is the most significant: The blood of the Jewish Messiah Jesus ties my concerns to those of the Jewish people.
Laura looked to Auschwitz and said, “Those are my people.” Gentile believers can look to Auschwitz and say, “Those are my Heavenly Father’s people.”[1]
A great follow-up prayer would be, “Heavenly Father, how could I be a blessing to a Jewish person today?
Written by Miriam, LIFE’s Communications Assistant
How would God have you bless the Jewish people today and thus implement Genesis 12:3?
If you haven’t already, perhaps consider a visit to a Holocaust museum or memorial to gain a better understanding of the horrors of God’s chosen people’s history.
Where would Jesus be had He been living under Nazi rule during the Holocaust?... As a Jewish man, He would have been subject to being rounded up and sent to a camp.
Endnotes:
[1] The Hebrew term “ami” (My people) is found in the Old Testament 169 times where God is speaking. In context, in every case but one (Isa. 19:25) the “people” whom God uniquely identifies as His own are the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (variously called “Hebrews,” “Jacob,” “Israel,” “Judah,” “chosen people,” etc.) – i.e., the Jewish people of today. For a list of all the references, contact office@lifeinmessiah.org and request the “My people word study” document.