Since I used to be a French teacher, I sometimes amuse myself by reading the Scriptures in French. This week it paid off! The French command to “watch!” in Mark 13 is “Veillez!” That verb jumped out at me, because it is related to the noun for a special kind of vigil. Down in the South of France, near where I used to live, villagers meet at night in each other’s homes for what is called a “veillée.” Men and women, old and young, grandparents, sleeping babies and little children, gather in an old farmhouse kitchen. In front of a cozy fire, they roast chestnuts and tell stories into the night. This is a remote, desolate region of France, high on a windswept plateau, far removed from the prosperous cities of the Mediterranean coast. The land is poor and arid, and the cliffs and caves of the countryside resemble the rugged landscapes here in parts of Colorado. It’s a land full of hardships and isolation. That’s why the people gather at night for a vigil. They gather together to “watch” over the night. They tell ancient stories of the imaginary ghosts and werewolves that fill the dark hollows of their landscape. The stories allow these farmers to talk about their fears and to try to explain the difficulties of their lives. Their gatherings give them a sense of family and community in the midst of a poverty and loneliness that would otherwise crush their spirits completely. These people know what it means to have to stay alert, to watch, to be on their guard.
Why am I telling you all this? Well, a bit to the northeast of these villages, there is another village called “Le Chambon sur Lignon.” Le Chambon, too, is isolated on one of those cold, windswept plateaus. It, too, is a community of subsistence farmers. But Le Chambon has been the object of books, studies, and even films. It became famous for its “watching.” Instead of stories about ghosts and werewolves, villagers in the mostly protestant town of Le Chambon would gather in the evenings to tell stories of their Huguenot past: Stories of resistance in the midst of hundreds of years of violent religious persecution; stories of steadfastness in the face of intolerance; stories linking them to their heroes of the Protestant Reformation.
During the troubled times of the Second World War, a young, idealistic pastor was sent to care for the people of Le Chambon. His new post was a punishment by the church authorities. He had dared to proclaim pacifism in the face of world war, so he was shuttled off to desolate Le Chambon. This pastor, André Trocmé, joined in the nightly vigils. He added Bible study to the local stories, spending days and hours examining the words of Jesus with his small community, studying those words that will never pass away.
Slowly, imperceptibly even, Jesus’ words became part of the hearts and minds of these ordinary villagers. And then, one day, strangers started to straggle into the village, knocking on farmhouse doors and asking for food, shelter, and refuge. They were Jews, hounded by their own government, fleeing transport and death in concentration camps to the east. The villagers of Le Chambon took them in. Working together, as a close community, the villagers hid these Jewish families, hundreds of them, in their homes. They shared their meager food with them. They provided them with false identity papers. They secretly filled their local school with their children …. For years, they did all of this without hesitation, disobeying the laws of their own Vichy government, helping perfect strangers very different from themselves. They even risked imprisonment and death for them.
The people of Le Chambon were interviewed after the war by journalists eager to make heroes out of them. But the villagers couldn’t explain their actions. In a documentary, some of them say things like:
“We did it ‘just because.’”
“It was the normal thing to do.”
“We didn’t have any theory. We just did what had to be done.”
“People came to our doors and asked for help. How could we not open them?”
The people of Le Chambon, during the long winter nights of vigil, had huddled together sharing the transforming words of Jesus. Without realizing it, they had learned how to be on their guard. They were alert, when history knocked on their doors and called on them to act. They knew from the history of their own religious persecution and from the stories of the Scriptures, what was expected of them as Christians. Together, they were ready to face trials and tribulations. They didn’t spend their time searching the heavens for signs or clamoring for control over the future—or even for control over their own lives. As their pastor himself wrote, “in times of crisis … Predictions are a refuge for cowards … There are dangers involved in trying to predict the effects of your actions on your own life, your family’s lives, the lives of your parish, and the lives of your countrymen." [1] Instead of making predictions, this pastor and his flock chose to follow the words of Jesus, to love their neighbors as themselves, and to help the unjustly persecuted innocents around them.
In the words of our Scriptures, Jesus has truly “told us everything ahead of time.” It’s all there, as it has been for 2000 years: the good Samaritan, the woman caught in adultery, the prodigal son, the woman at the well, the healings, the resurrection encounters, the passion and Cross … “Heaven and earth may pass away, but my words will never pass away.”
May we remember to watch with these words. To gather together in a dark, stormy world, to share the burdens of our worries and fears, and to listen to the stories. To teach them to our children. To pass them lovingly from hand to hand, like we pass the chalice and paten. We may not be able to share Eucharist in our own troubled, Pandemic times, but we do still share the Word. The words of Jesus are food that is just as nourishing, just as necessary, as the Body and Blood of Jesus. He gives them to us to “read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest,” as it says in one of my favorite collects. I don’t think that we can be the courageous people that Jesus calls on us to be without making our Christian story a deep part of who we are.
This Advent and beyond, I hope that we will make an effort at St. Ambrose to read and study Jesus’ words: at home, on Zoom, or in someday soon, in person. With the words of Jesus embedded in our minds and hearts, united as a Christian community with a story, we are awake to truth. We will not be sleeping when it is our turn to act responsibly in the turmoil of this world. Let us keep the “veillée,” the vigil. Let us watch together!
[1] Philip Hallie, Lest Innocent Blood be Shed: The Story of the Village of Le Chambon and How Goodness Happened There, 1994.
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