February 5, 2006
(Fifth Sunday after the Epiphany)
Blessed Dietrich Bonhoeffer
By The Very Rev. Terry White, Dean
2 Kings 4:8-37 • Psalm 142 • 1 Corinthians
9:16-23 • Mark 1:29-39
(From
The Lectionary Page)
When the 2003 Sundance Film Festival rejected Martin Doblmeier's feature-length documentary, "Bonhoeffer," Doblmeier and his staff decided to seek out Sundance audiences on their own. They called the interfaith council of Park City, Utah (where Sundance is held) and hatched a plan to show the film in local churches as the press and Hollywood heavies arrived in Park City for America's preeminent film festival. All but one showing was sold out, and reporters picked up on "Bonhoeffer," as much for its ingenious method of "going to Sundance" as the film itself.
It's appropriate that the church--the one human institution that Dietrich Bonhoeffer believed above all things was the living incarnation of Christ, of God on earth, and our only hope for salvation--also saved this important documentary from obscurity. PBS airs this documentary tomorrow evening in conjunction with the 100th anniversary of Bonhoeffer’s birth. KCPT airs the program tomorrow night at 9 p.m.
Born on February 4, 1906 in Breslau, Germany into a large, bourgeois family, Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a prodigy. His doctoral dissertation, which he submitted to the University of Berlin at the age of 21, was labeled a masterpiece by his professor Karl Barth, himself arguably one of the greatest Christian theologians of the last 400 years. Ordained a Lutheran pastor and taking his own chair at the university, by age 28 Bonhoeffer was one of the few voices in Nazi Germany speaking out publicly against Adolph Hitler. At age 33, he became a member of the small team assembled by the resistance to assassinate the tyrant. At age 39, he was executed after a term in the concentration camps, just as the Nazis were defeated.
That resume obscures Bonhoeffer's struggle with what seems like an unbroken call to fight evil intellectually and politically. Repeatedly, Bonhoeffer chose to leave his homeland—twice to teach at Union Theological Seminary in New York City, where he was safe to apply his exceptional intellectual gifts to the crucial theological and ethical questions of the day. Yet twice he returned to Germany, for he felt that if he were going to be a part of the nation’s rebuilding, he had to be present during its darkest days, whether or not he could do anything to save it or himself from doom.
Because of his stature in the church, his close family connections to members of the resistance, and his non-pacifist ethical stance, he was identified as an ideal conspirator to join in the plot to assassinate Hitler. And conspire he did, working in the Nazi's military intelligence office, while acting as liaison for the plotters to the British. When he was arrested in 1943 and sent to Buchenwald (and later to Flossenbürg), it was for collecting funds to send Jews to safety outside Germany. In the end, Hitler would personally order the death of each member of Bonhoeffer's renegade group, even as the Allies had begun liberating the camps. Bonhoeffer was executed three weeks before Allied troops liberated Flossenburg.
Bonhoeffer's activism is in the direct lineage of 20th-century justice movements. While teaching at Union Seminary, which borders Harlem, Bonhoeffer frequented the Abyssinian Baptist Church, one of the city's most important historically black congregations. There he was inspired by the theology of liberation that emerged from the African-American slave experience. After working briefly in England, he traveled to India to study non-violent resistance from Gandhi and his followers.
Bonhoeffer was a source of theological and personal inspiration to Archbishop Desmond Tutu and other South Africans in their struggle to defeat apartheid. Bp Tutu summarizes the power of Bonhoeffer's witness, challenging us to look on him as a model, not an idol. Countering the notion that some, like Bonhoeffer, are destined for greatness while the rest of us can sit back and watch history go by, Tutu observes that we are all called by God to participate in creating a just world. “Giving your life to freedom fighting, to God, is not easy, Father Desmond says. "There is no shaft of light that comes from heaven and says to you, ‘Okay, you are right.’ You have to hold on to [the call] by the skin of your teeth and hope that there is going to be vindication on the other side.”
In Bonhoeffer’s writings, such as The Cost of Discipleship, one inevitably asks: What does it mean to have faith, to follow God today?
Bonhoeffer would probably answer that question as he did near the end of his life, in writing to his close friend Eberhard Bethge: “It is only by living completely in this world that one learns to have faith. By this worldliness, I mean living unreservedly in life’s duties, problems, successes and failures. In so doing, we throw ourselves completely into the arms of God, taking seriously not our own sufferings, but those of God and the world. That, I think is faith.” (Macky Alston, The Challenge of Bonhoeffer)
In the late 1930s Bonhoeffer wrote about the necessity of "risking" peace and "daring" a loving presence to others – words which seem to fly in the face of his later justification of assassination. But Bonhoeffer formulated his theology and ethics in the crucible of a long and ultimately fatal struggle with the Nazi regime in Germany. His story is a fascinating window onto the dilemmas of twentieth-century ethics and spirituality, and easily translates to today.
“We have been silent witnesses of evil deeds…will our inward power of resistance be strong enough for us to find our way back?” Bonhoeffer asked. Our collect for this Sunday asks God to set us free from the bondage of our sins that we may know the liberty of abundant life in Christ. From our lessons for today, bondage is represented by death, by a debilitating high fever, and in Paul’s argument, by not assuming the obligation to preach the gospel in ways that everyone can understand. Of particular note, in the Gospel, when Peter’s mother-in-law is healed, she gets up and serves. When the bondage of the fever left her, she served.
This is the cost of discipleship. The more we are healed, the more we serve. And in serving, we are healed and released from bondage.
Archbishop Tutu is right. No beam of light commissions us when the moment is right. We have received grace, thus, it is imperative that we serve. Let us live unreservedly in life’s duties, problems, successes and failures. Let us know the liberty of throwing ourselves completely into God’s arms. And let us reject silence in the face of evil. Blessed Dietrich, pray for us.
