By Pastor František Janák, Calvary Lutheran Church in Concord, NC

Introduction to the series

Recently, I had the opportunity to intentionally place art around the office at Calvary. It is one of the joys of starting out somewhere new — the office is a canvas to be filled. Not quite clean as it is not a bare and formless room, but still a ton of canvas space to paint on. It took me a while as I realized that each of the pictures holds a distinct meaning to me and thus their placement matters.

First Picture - Lidice by Emil Waenke (1901–?)

At first glance, it looks like a serene winter scene with old architecture—and you wouldn't be wrong. However, as you might guess, there's much more to this image. The picture itself isn't particularly valuable—it's a numbered reproduction from the early 20th century by painter Emil Waenke that we found in an antiquariat in Prague. What matters is its subject: Lidice, Bohemia before World War II.

This view has been gone for about 82 years. Lidice, an agricultural village in Central Bohemia, had existed since 1318. On June 9, 1942, German occupation forces shot 172 boys and men, some as young as 14. They also murdered 60 women and 88 children. A few children survived because they were deemed "Aryan enough" and were forcibly adopted by German families. The Nazi regime then burned the village and destroyed its remains with explosives, completely obliterating it.

Those familiar with World War II in Europe might understand the context: SS Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich—commander of the German Reich Security Main Office, acting governor of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, and principal architect of the Holocaust—was assassinated on May 27, 1942, by Czech resistance operatives with British Army support. The subsequent reprisals claimed about 5,000 lives in the Protectorate.

The morality of the assassination is complex. While my younger self firmly believed it had to happen, I'm less certain today, having learned more about the reign of terror unleashed following Operation Anthropoid, which led to Heydrich's death in a hospital on June 4, 1942. Nevertheless, this picture serves as a crucial reminder—not only of the event but of existence's fragility in our broken world, where entire villages and cities can vanish with sufficient resources, motivation, and lack of oversight. It also reminds us how vital it is to continue the prophetic work of announcing the Kingdom of God's coming, where such atrocities have no place, where the mighty are cast down and the oppressed are comforted and lifted up. The world may view this as naive foolishness or worse, but as Jesus warned us, that is the way of the cross—the world cannot fully grasp the Kingdom of God's values.

This is one of the pictures in my office—a reminder whenever I'm tempted to say "oh surely, it will blow over" or "it doesn't concern me" when fascism and other concerning ideologies are on the rise once more. It does concern me, and it won't simply blow over by itself. Our Christian witness matters—now and always until the end of time—especially in times of adversity and great need.