The old woman began to tell her story and as she did so she took on a strangely altered appearance. She seemed mesmerized by the pictures she saw in her mind. Ugly, dark, revolting pictures that hypnotized the storyteller with the recollections she was about to share.

It was the last time she had ever seen her husband. He was being pulled by his hair and dragged out the door. He was kicked and beaten by his tormentors and then thrown into the back of a truck and whisked away.

This was Germany in the late thirties. The man was a Jew. His chief tormentor...the village pastor.

As she spoke of each vicious detail, the old woman began to rock her body back and forth and her voice began to wail. I sat stunned and embarrassed as I listened to not just another terrible horror story from the Holocaust but the cry of a wife for her husband, the scream of a lover ripped away.

I was acutely aware of my surroundings as the cries continued to fill the room. I had enrolled as the only Gentile in a class on Jewish history. I was alone among my classmates. Alone and ashamed as I listened to another account of the evil accomplished by people calling themselves Christians.

I will never forget that afternoon in Berkeley. I will never forget it because it is etched into my memory and because I am reminded of it so often.

I am reminded each time someone makes a disparaging remark about Jews. I am reminded each time someone sneers and talks of "jewing" someone else. I am reminded each time there is that forced laugh that follows the story of kykes or niggers or japs or wops.

We continue this legacy of evil when we participate in racial slurs, racial jokes and racial stereotyping. We participate by our telling, our laughter, even our silence. Christ has called us to share the Good News of God’s love for all of creation...not just White, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant males.

We have been called to unite all our sisters and brothers into one family of God. A family of women, men, girls, boys, Jews, Christians, Italians, Norwegians, rich, poor, strong, weak and more and more and more and more.

Everybody.

It is our only hope.

And it is nothing to joke about.