Last Monday night, as we were passing the Book Cart down the rocks, Chaplain Sue and I found ourselves frustrated by the fact that we had very little good reading material to lend out.  Summer at the Saginaw County Jail is an even tougher time than the rest of the year.  The jail population is up, the donations of books and other reading materials that we rely on are down, and so on this Monday night we had precious little to recommend.  The one notable exception to this was an old, yellowed copy of The Hiding Place by Corrie ten Boom. 

When one of the young men we were talking to asked if we had any inspirational books, Chaplain Sue’s hand beat mine in grabbing up this copy of The Hiding Place, a particular favorite of us both.  Somebody asks for inspiration and you have a copy of this book, you know you’re not going to disappoint.  At this point in a long day I suppose we were both feeling our age a little bit anyway, but when we heard the question, “Corrie ten Boom:  Who’s he?” we realized not only how old we’ve become, but also how young most of you are.

Back in the 1970’s, it would have been hard to find anyone who hadn’t heard of Corrie ten Boom.  Certainly most every Christian of virtually any denomination was familiar with her story, and countless people of all faiths had read The Hiding Place, which was a runaway best seller in 1971.  The Corrie ten Boom I remember was a sweet and gentle little old lady who reminded me very much of my grandmother.  The first time I saw her was on a televised Billy Graham Crusade, and her presence and appearance very much reinforced the deep and powerful message that she presented: that God’s spirit is strongest in us when we are weak, and that it is when we are meek, kind and gentle that he is able to use us in the most profound and powerful of ways.

Corrie ten Boom was born in Holland in 1892.  Her father was a kindly and generous man who earned a good living as a watchmaker and repairman.  Corrie herself apprenticed at this craft and became the first licensed female watchmaker in the Netherlands in 1922.  The Ten Booms were a strong Christian family, and besides working with her father in his watch shop, Corrie organized a Christian girl’s club and worked with handicapped children.  Her brother, Willem, was a prominent pastor and as Nazism arose in Germany, he wrote and preached fearlessly against the anti-Semitism of Adolph Hitler, and warned the Dutch that Holland would fall to Germany if they did not take action:  Her older sister, Betsie, suffered from pernicious anemia, a vitamin deficiency that kept her weak and fatigued and in a constant state of frail health. 

Willem’s preaching proved prophetic when the Nazis invaded and conquered the Netherlands in 1940.  By 1942, the German SS was actively rounding up the Dutch Jews and sending them off to the death camps of the Holocaust.  The Ten Boom family became very active in the Dutch underground, and Corrie and Betsie began hiding Jewish refugees in a secret area of extra rooms within their house.  This was “the hiding place.”  Because of their quiet and gentle courage, many Dutch Jews were spared the horrors of torture and death at the hands of the Nazis.

Thanks to a Dutch informant, the Nazis learned of the hiding place and arrested the entire Ten Boom family in February of 1944.  Corrie’s father would die just ten days later at Scheveningen prison, while Corrie and Betsie would end up in the notorious Ravensbruck concentration camp in Germany.  Betsie’s weak constitution was no match for the horrid condidions they had to endure at Ravensbruck, and as she lay dying she told Corrie, "There is no pit so deep that God's love is not deeper still.”  On Christmas Day in 1944, Corrie ten Boom received a great and unxpected gift.  She was released from Ravensbruck due to what she would learn later was a clerical error.  During the week following her release, all of the other women prisoners remaining at Ravensbruck were executed.

As the war came to an end in 1945, Corrie ten Boom found herself back in the Netherlands setting up rehabilitation centers for the Dutch refugees returning home from the ordeal of the Nazi concentration camps.  In 1946, she returned to Germany as a teacher, and her life was transformed yet again when she met one of the cruelest of the guards she had encountered at Ravensbruck.  This man, having been coverted to Christ and offering his heartfelt apology, posed what she considered her greatest challenge:  finding true forgiveness.  When through God’s unfathomable grace she was able to come to this forgiveness, the burden of the horrors of the war were lifted, and it was a revelation to her.  She then spent the next 30 years as a traveling teacher and evangelist, spreading the great truth of the Christian Gospel that through faith in Christ we find the stregnth to do things that far exceed our own human weakness, and that through God’s grace we find true peace in forgiveness.

Her simple message of God’s great power manifested through kindness, forgiveness and peace struck such a chord with Billy Graham that he invited Corrie to travel with him as featured speaker on the Billy Graham Crusades.  This is how all of America became acquainted with this awesome little woman, then in her 80’s, who exemplified so well how, as Paul tells us today, “the Spirit comes to the aid of our weakness.”  Corrie ten Boom continued to teach the world of God’s power and grace until she suffered a stroke in 1978.  She passed away on April 15, 1983 on her 91st birthday, and in her last words expressed her joy at being able to “celebrate it with the Lord.”

In a world that celebrates physical strength and political power, it’s good to know that the true heroes among us are not the mighty but those that the world looks at as weak.  When we ponder what courage truly is, perhaps we should realize that it is, at it’s most basic level, the ability to stand quietly for what is right – no matter the consequences – when those around us, and even the world itself, believes the great lie that sin, violence and death provide the only way to survive in a world in which the love of most has truly grown cold.  When we come to embrace Christ in our own weakness with the same courage as Corrie ten Boom, we gain the superhuman strength of God’s character that she possessed.  And we come to know, as did Betsie ten Boom, that “There is no pit so deep that God's love is not deeper still.” 

Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Reading 1 Responsorial Psalm Reading 2 Gospel