Their names were Curtis Adams, Mager Bradley, George Davis, Jr., Thomas Forte, Robert Green, James Leatherwood, Nathaniel Moss, George Motten, William Pritchett, James Stewart, and Due Turner. They came from Alabama, Mississippi, West Virginia, Texas, Arkansas. Thrown together by war, they were members of the 333rd Field Artillery Battalion, a segregated African American unit serving in Belgium during World War II. When the Germans began what came to be known as “the Battle of the Bulge” in December 1944, the 333rd stayed in place to support the withdrawal of the mostly white infantry regiments around them. These eleven men were captured by the Waffen-SS in a forest near the town of Wereth; they were tortured and murdered, and their bodies left unburied. Although the fact and nature of their sacrifice was well documented, it was never officially recognized by the U.S. government until 2017.[1]
Tag: unity
One of the things I try to do when I read the stories of Jesus in the Gospels, when he uses an odd or striking metaphor like “I will make you fishers of people”[1] or, as it is put in this Gospel, “from now on you will be catching people,”[2] is to figure out if he’s referring back to Law or the Prophets, and whether it might be the lectionary’s choice for a first lesson. Sometimes that helps me figure out whether there is a thematic link between the lessons and, if so, what it’s supposed tell us, but unfortunately that’s not the case today. Jesus doesn’t seem to have had Isaiah in mind when he summoned Peter and his business partners.
So for the past week or so, I’ve been pondering what might be the reason for putting the Isaiah reading –– which, although it comes in the sixth chapter, is the story of Isaiah’s initial call to be a prophet –– together with Luke’s version of Jesus recruiting Simon Peter and the sons of Zebedee, James and John, to be disciples. The simple answer, of course, is that they are both stories of calls to ministry, but they are so different!
