Dietrich
Bonhoeffer's Lessons for Lent
Message
of Hon. David Kilgour to
1st
Baptist Church
Elgin
at Laurier
April
4, 2001
Ottawa
Next
week (April 9th)
will be the 56th
anniversary of the execution
of the German pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer, aged 39, in
Flossenburg,
Germany.
It strikes me that
Bonhoeffer's life and faith
have something very important
to say today about both Lent
and Easter.
Permit
me therefore to draw heavily
on a book of Bonhoeffer's
writings selected by Robert
Coles in the Modern Spiritual
Masters Series.
First, a little history
about what much of the Christian
world considers to be one
of the 20th century's best-known
and most universally-admired
martyrs.
Bonhoeffer was born
in 1906 to a respected German
family.
He completed his work
for a doctoral degree in theology
and in 1931 became a lecturer
in religion at Berlin University
and was also ordained as a
Lutheran minister.
In 1933, only two days
after Hitler was made chancellor, Bonhoeffer, then only 27,
broadcast on radio a warning
about totalitarianism, but
was cut off the air as he
spoke.
Later the same year,
in company with Pastor Martin Niemoller, he warned Germany's
church ministers about the
dangers of Nazi rule.
A year later, he helped
to organize the Confessing
Church, which was a critical
response to Hitler that called
on Germans to stand first
with Christ.
By 1936, he was no
longer permitted to teach
at Berlin University and a
year later his Confessing
Church seminary was closed
by the Gestapo.
He published his Cost
of Discipleship
the same year and was soon
in contact with political
opponents of the regime.
As the war loomed,
he went to London to share
his anxieties about Germany
with British church ministers.
He went on to the U.S.,
but left safety there within
weeks to return to Germany
much to the dismay of American
friends.
In fact, he was able
to do more travel in Europe
until 1943 despite the was,
when he became engaged to
Maria von Wedemeyer.
Three months later,
he was arrested and put in
various prisons, including
Buchenwald concentration camp,
before he was executed as
a "traitor" just
days before Hitler committed
suicide.
Bonhoeffer had become Kierkegard's
"Knight of Faith",
ready to stand for Jesus when
virtually all other Germans,
including most theologians
of all faiths, were shouting
"Heil Hitler" to
the Devil. As we saw, unlike so many other victims and
other martyrs of the Third
Reich, Bonhoeffer could easily
have stayed abroad as thousands
of other Germans did.
From all indications, Dietrich
was an immensely likeable
person, full of compassion
and moral vigour.
When his Confessing
Church broke with other churches,
he fully expected that the
"cost" of their
effort could include death
if necessary in pursuit of
a committed Christian life.
The reason he returned
to Germany from America just
before World War II began
was related to this conviction.
If he were to have
any believability with Germans
after Hitler's defeat, he
was convinced he must be part
of the struggle that must
precede the end of Germany's
gangster period.
The key to Bonhoeffer's gifts
to us Christians today, as
Coles notes, was "his
decision to live as if the
Lord were a neighbour and
friend, a constant source
of courage and inspiration,
a presence amid travail and
joy alike, a reminder of love's
obligation and affirmations
of death's decisive meaning
(how we die as a measure of
how we have lived, of who
we are)."
Bonhoeffer's most famous book,
The Cost of Discipleship,
was published in 1937.
In it, he attacked
directly the so-called German
Christians who put loyalty
to the Reich ahead of obedience
to the cross.
What he termed "costly
grace" was what compels
a person to submit to the
cross of Christ and follow
him.
It is grace because
our Saviour said: "My
yoke is easy and my burden
is light."
The message of Bonhoeffer
most relevant to Lent and
Easter here emerge in his
book "…the Son of
man must suffer many things,
and be respected by the elders,
and the chief priests, and
the scribes, and be killed,
and after three days rise
again…" (Mark 8:31)
Rejection and terrible
pain were placed on Jesus
by necessity even though,
as we know, the concept of
a suffering Messiah was unacceptable
to our church even in its
earliest days.
For Bonhoeffer, this
suffering also applied to
Jesus serious disciples in
the past and present as well.
God deems some worthy
of martyrdom, but for Bonhoeffer
no-one is permitted to suffer
more than he/she can bear.
Bonhoeffer says the
call of Christ puts Christians
in the middle of the arena
constantly pitted against
the devil.
Believers encounter
new temptations daily and
must suffer for Jesus' sake.
Only the constant support
of the One who bore the sins
of all sustains us to persist.
Suffering for Bonhoeffer
was the badge of a true discipleship,
but bearing one's cross, as
with Christ, is the only way
to overcome suffering.
Suffering must be endured
by all Christians in order
that it too will pass away.
Characteristically, Bonhoeffer
felt the Confessing Church
had given in to its Nazi oppressors
too quickly.
After 1937, he wrote
letters of encouragement to
members of his disbanded church. "…We knew that a life with Jesus
Christ and his church is worth
staking everything on",
he wrote in one letter.
In a secret address
in 1939 to believers, he asked,
"How do you intend to
die one day? Do we believe in the power of death and sin,
or do we believe in the power
of Jesus Christ?
Of the two there can
only be one."
His major work on ethics was
published only posthumously. On love, for example, he wrote that without
it everything falls apart,
but "in this love everything
is united and everything is
pleasing to God."
The final letters
Bonhoeffer wrote from prison
are equally eloquent.
To his parents at the
end of 1943 he wrote: "…the
horrors of war are now coming
home to us with such force
as will no doubt, if we survive,
provide us with the necessary
basis for making it possible
to reconstruct the life of
the nation, both spiritually
and materially, on Christian
principles."
To his fiancée, Maria:
"No evil can befall us:
whatever men may do
to us, they cannot but serve
the God who is secretly revealed
as love and rules the world
and our lives…"
To a dear friend: "One
must completely abandon any
attempt to make something
of oneself, whether it be
a saint, or a converted sinner,
or a churchman, a righteous
man or an unrighteous one;
a sick man or a healthy one.
By this worldliness
mean living unreservedly in
life's duties, problems, successes
and fairness, experiences
and perplexities.
In so doing we throw
ourselves completely into
the arena of God, taking seriously,
not our own sufferings, but
those of God in the world-watching
with Christ in Gethsemane."
His last letter to his mother
five months before his death:
"thank you for all the
love that has come to me in
my cell from you during the
past year, it has made every
day easier for me…My
wish for you and Father and
Maria and for all of us is
that the New year may bring
us at least an occasional
glimmer of light and that
we may once more have the
joy of living together.
May God keep you both
well."
I hope you'll all agree that
Dietrich Bonhoeffer's message
to Christians everywhere is
a unique one, especially during
the season of Lent.
What is your cross
and mine?
