Connections&
June 4, 2000
The Ascension of the Lord
    "You will be my witnesses to the ends of the earth."
     Acts 1:1-11

• "Go into the whole world and proclaim the gospel to every creature."
  

Jakob the Liar
In the film Jakob the Liar (based on the novel by Jurek Becker), Robin Williams portrays Jakob Heym, a café owner in Nazi- occupied Poland in 1944.  Jakob and his Jewish neighbors have been herded into a rat-infested ghetto to await transport to the death camps.
     One night, taken into custody for breaking curfew, Jakob accidentally overhears a radio transmission at German headquarters that Russian troops will soon be liberating Poland.  Although owning a radio is a crime and receiving news from the front is almost as risky, Jakob shares what he overhears with his friends Mischa and Kowalsky.  Jakob swears the two to secrecy, but the next day news of the Russian "rescue" has spread throughout the community -- as does the rumor is true; but, encouraged by the ghetto's doctor, Jakob reluctantly continues his role as the ghetto's "prophet Isaiah,"  fabricating news reports in order to raise people's devastated spirits, especially those of an orphaned girl Jakob is hiding.  The Nazis learn of the nonexistent radio from informants, but despite torture and eventually execution, Jakob refuses to destroy the little hope of his neighbors by admitting that his "news" has no basis in fact nor is there any secret radio.
    "We have learned to live without firewood, without potatoes, without decent clothing," one of Jakob's neighbors says, "but no one can live without the future."
    Jakob the Liar gives his life for the medicine of hope.

CONNECTION:  On the Mount of the Ascension, Jesus calls us to be "Jakobs" -- agents of hope, prophets of compassion and peace.  We who has seen and heard the story of Jesus, the love God made human for us, are now called to bring that hope into the lives of family and friends, of the poor and forgotten, of the lost and the troubled.  May God give us the courage to be Jakobs in our own communities -- prophets of hope in the love of God we have witnessed in the story of Jesus the Christ.