40 days with Bonhoeffer
Over the season of Lent, I will be posting each day (with the exception of Sundays) a passage from one of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s writings (books, poems, sermons, letters), hoping to introduce us to this hero of the faith, and to allow him to accompany us through this time of reflection leading up to Easter. These reflections will begin on Wednesday 5 March. Check back each day for the next reflection.
Ian Stackhouse
Saturday 19th April
Thank you for being my readers during Lent. I hope you have benefited from these passages. Today’s is the last one and is in anticipation of Easter Sunday. Christ is Risen. Hallelujah.
Selected Passage from Life Together:
The day of the New Testament church begins with the break of day and ends with the dawning light of the next morning. It is a time of fulfilment, the resurrection of the Lord. At night Christ was born, a light in darkness; noonday turned to night when Christ suffered and died on the Cross. But in the dawn of Easter morning Christ rose in victory from the grave.
Ere yet the dawn hath filled the skies
Behold my Saviour Christ arise.
He chaseth us from sin and night,
And brings us joy and life and light
Hallelujah
So sang the church of the Reformation. Christ is the ‘Sun of Righteousness’, risen upon the expectant congregation (Mal 4:2), and they that love him shall ‘be as the sun when he goeth forth in his might (Judg. 5:31). The early morning belongs to the Church of the risen Christ. At the break of light it remembers the morning on which death and sin lay prostrate in defeat, and new life and salvation were given to mankind.
Ian’s Reflection:
As someone who loves the early morning, and long suspected that it carried at least some spiritual import, I was delighted when I came across Bonhoeffer’s sustained reflection in Life Together on the almost sacramental nature of prayer at this time of day. Some rise early out of anxiety, of course, but there is such a thing, says Bonhoeffer, as rising early for the love of God, and the way he evidences it from the Psalms, the Wisdom books, and then the life of Jesus, is simply breathtaking. The first time I came across the passage, I remember the relief I felt, because he both articulated what I had been unable to explain to my friends (who didn’t quite share my love of the dawn), and affirmed my intention to keep observing this hour, as the monastics refer to it, despite all the risks of spiritual pride. I say spiritual pride, because many Christians regard the ability to get up early as some kind of virtue. Hence, it is easy for someone like me to feel a little bit smug. But I don’t see it that way at all. Notwithstanding the fact that some people are naturally more like owls than larks, the call to awaken the dawn is not a virtue but a grace. As Bonhoeffer puts it so memorably here, it is tied to the very heart of the Easter story, and brings with it, therefore, a special promise of his presence. ‘His mercies are new every morning,’ says Lamentations. It is this promise that beckons me to rise early.
Prayer:
As we travel through Holy Saturday, we wait in anticipation of the power of Resurrection. The early morning does indeed belong to the church of the Risen Christ. Hallelujah.
Friday 18th April
Selected Passage from a Sermon on Easter Sunday, Barcelona, April 8, 1928:
Good Friday is not the darkness that necessarily must give way to light…nor is it the winter sleep or hibernation that stores and nurtures the germ of life. Rather, it is the day when the incarnate God, incarnate love, is killed by human beings who want to become gods themselves. It is the day when the Holy One of God, that is, God himself, dies, really dies – of his own will and yet as a result of human guilt, and no germ of life is spared in him such that death might resemble sleep. Good Friday is not, like winter, a transitional stage. No, it really is the end, the end of guilty humanity and the final judgement humankind pronounces upon itself. And here only one thing can help: God’s mighty act coming from God’s eternity and taking place among humankind. Easter is not an immanent, inner-worldly occurrence, but a transcendent one, and that means a more than worldly occurrence, God’s intervention from within eternity and commitment to God’s Holy One by raising him from the dead.
Ian’s Reflection:
There is no one quite like Bonhoeffer, in my opinion, who is willing to roughen up our nice sensibilities and remind us of the starkness of the gospel. In contrast to the pleasantness of some worship traditions which present the resurrection of Easter Sunday as simply a natural, expected corollary to Good Friday – a kind of springtime renewal – Bonhoeffer presents the passion of Jesus as something rather more dramatic. He is a Lutheran whatever else he is, and he reflects in his preaching both the angst and the offence of the message of the cross. I am sure for some people, especially in the nice suburbs, this comes across as a bit extreme. Why does everything have to sound so grim. For myself, however, the starkness of the cross is a great relief. From where I am standing, it does justice both to the reality of the final judgement humankind pronounces upon itself – it really is the end, says Bonhoeffer – and the unexpectedness, not to mention the sheer wonder of resurrection.
Prayer:
Holy God, as much as I love daffodils and lambs gambolling on the hills, I know that Passiontide is much darker than I care to embrace. But I thank you that the finality of your death is what makes your resurrection so utterly surprising and so utterly good. Hallelujah.
Thursday 17th April
Selected Quote:
‘One act of obedience is better than a hundred sermons’:
Ian’s Reflection:
This reminds me of the phrase in the Bible, ‘to obey is better than sacrifice.’ The fact that sacrifice is replaced by sermons is because Bonhoeffer is a Lutheran. In his tradition the pulpit is central, not the altar. But the issue is the same, namely the importance of expressing our faith in concrete acts of discipleship, and not just talking about it. And it’s not that sermons are unimportant; any more than the sacrificial system was redundant in the Old Testament. Anyone who knows anything about Bonhoeffer knows that he has a very high view of preaching. He regarded preaching as a sacramentum verbi, the sacrament of the word. He believed that through the act of preaching Christ is ushered into the congregation. But he also believed that for preaching to complete its work one had to be a doer of the word and not just a hearer. Hence this provocative but strikingly prophetic statement. It’s nothing that Isaiah couldn’t have said, or Hosea, or John the Baptist, or even Jesus, for that matter. For a while, I had it on my notice board, just by the desk where I prepare my sermons. It kept me grounded.
Prayer:
Dear Lord, on this Maundy Thursday help me to keep your obedience to the forefront of my thinking and help me to be not just a hearer of your word but a doer also. In Jesus name. Amen.
Wednesday 16th April
Selected Passage from Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Called by God, by Elizabeth Raum:
Among the most powerful influences in Dietrich’s life was his grandmother, Julia Bonhoeffer. While he was at the university in Tübingen, Dietrich lived with her. Grandmother Bonhoffer was a brilliant and fascinating woman who remained alert to political changes in Germany and the world. Years later, the family told with pride the story of the ninety-year-old grandmother’s confrontation with Hitler’s S.A. troops. When a boycott was placed on all Jewish businesses in April of 1933, she walked past the S.A. troopers and through the barricades, to patronise a Jewish shop. ‘I will buy my butter where I always buy it,’ she said to the S.A. troopers at the barricades before she entered the shops.
Ian’s Reflection:
If you ever wondered where Bonhoeffer got his fearlessness from, then this story gives you part of the answer. One can only imagine the faces of the soldiers as his grandmother ignored their stupid cordon and proceeded with her shopping as if everything was normal. When I first read about this episode, her dressing down of the young men in their uniforms, I laughed out loud. I may have even punched my fist in the air. At a time when compliance, even among Christians, was being used as an excuse for doing nothing, it was a relief to me to read of a woman who made a virtue not of compliance but of defiance. Contrary to what some preachers teach, there are certain laws that one should simply not obey. Indeed, to obey is to collude with the wickedness, in this instance rank antisemitism. Julia’s grandson Dietrich would take this a step further, as the decade progressed, and claim, famously, that ‘he is no Christian who sings the hymns but does not harbour the Jew.’ In the aftermath of Kristallnacht, when thousands of synagogues and houses all across Germany were smashed and destroyed, Bonhoeffer drew the line very clearly for the Christian community: you either protect the Jews or you have as good as denied the faith. I have long felt my own generation would be tested on this.
Prayer:
Lord, give me the same fearlessness as Julia Bonhoeffer, the discernment to know when to deploy it, and the grace to know when to wait. In these confusing and chaotic times, give us courage and wisdom in equal measure. Amen.
Tuesday 15th April
Selected Passage from The Cost of Discipleship:
What makes the Christian different from other men is the ‘peculiar’, the ‘extraordinary’, ‘the unusual’, that which is not ‘a matter of course’. This is the quality whereby the better righteousness exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and the Pharisees. It is the ‘more’, the ‘beyond all that’. The natural is one and the same for heathen and Christian, the distinctive quality of the Christian life begins with the extraordinary. It is this quality which first enables us to see the natural in its true light.
Ian’s Reflection:
The Sermon on the Mount was, for Bonhoeffer, the most critical aspect of Jesus’s teaching. And central to the Sermon on the Mount is the urgency to live an extraordinary existence – a ‘more than’ righteousness. In Bonhoeffer’s reading of the text, this does not mean a spectacular, sensational kind of Christianity. Nothing is more distasteful to him than an overly passionate piety. Rather, it means a call to live beyond the normal standards of civic religion and live a radical ethic that extends love even to those who are enemies. After all, as Jesus pointed out, anyone can love their fellow-countrymen. What’s so unusual about that? And the mistake of Protestant ethics, as far as Bonhoeffer was concerned, was to dilute the faith to just that: patriotism, loyalty to friends and industriousness. The gospel, on the other hand, calls us to transcend these natural impulses, and to live in such a radically different way that it exposes natural civility as merely ‘a matter of course’ kind of religion.
Prayer:
Gracious Lord, help us to live beyond the natural expectations of civic religion and love not just those who love us, but love those who are different to us – even our enemies. For this we will need your Holy Spirit in abundance. In Jesus name, Amen.
Monday 14th April
Selected Passage taken from a letter to Eberhard Bethge concerning students who had left the seminary to serve the church in remote places:
To the extent that one can even speak about it, there is no spiritual life in these congregations. And then to be completely alone. May God give all those brothers in similar situations the strength to be patient and to endure but also the joy of missionaries.
Ian’s Reflection:
The congregation Bonhoeffer is referring to in this letter is a church in Magdeburg where Bonhoeffer had preached the day before, and where one of his former students, brother Vibrans, was ensconced. The letter is hardly groundbreaking compared to other writings, but why it stuck out for me when I stumbled upon it is because it underlines how much Bonhoeffer lamented the spiritual state of the country, and how much he cared about the welfare of those whom he had sent out from the seminary to preach the gospel. He felt their loneliness, as well as the discouragement they must have felt trying to minister to such tiny congregations. Indeed, he wonders later in the correspondence if the situation is sustainable, which is remarkable when you remember how much Bonhoeffer prized committed. For someone like me, however, all this proves is how wonderfully pragmatic Bonhoeffer can be. Passionate, yes, but not so passionate that he could not exercise discernment and relieve a young pastor of any unnecessary guilt that might accrue when one has laboured hard without success.
Prayer:
We pray today for all those ministering in inauspicious and discouraging contexts. Give them your sustaining grace to keep going, and to see signs of your grace amid trials. In Jesus name. Amen.
Saturday 12th April
Selected Passage from Bonhoeffer’s Lectures on Preaching:
The New Testament contains several expressions for preaching, each with it’s own distinctive emphasis. Kerussein refers to public proclamation, such as the announcements of an ancient herald on a foreign assignment. It suggests an element of newness, the announcement of something which has not been heard before. Euaggelizein expresses more strongly it’s connection with the subject matter of proclamation, with the joyful content of the message, the euaggelion. Its similarity to the word aggelos, or messenger, underscores the element of mission in the messages and indicates that one allows himself to become the bearer of good news. It is in this spirit that the preacher should enter the pulpit, as the messenger from Marathon with is exultant cry – ‘The victory is won!’
Ian’s Reflection:
Preaching is first and foremost an announcement of good news. As Bonhoeffer so vividly describes it, the preacher arrives like the runner from Marathon with a declaration of an astonishing victory. When I first read this, I was blown away, not at the thought of running such a long distance but at the enormity of the preacher’s call. It’s one thing to announce victory over the Persian in Athens. Defeating the Persians in battle was indeed a miracle. But the good news of preaching is nothing less than resurrection. Indeed, a sure indication that one has heard, or experienced, Christian preaching is the glorious realisation that the world is now a different place. How sad, then, as so often happens, when the pulpit reduces to petty moralism or four step formulas. As much as these sound like preaching, they are anything but.
Prayer:
Dear Lord, may your preachers make a joyful and glad announcement of your victory in the world. May it never reduce to itsy bitsy advice, but may it expand to wonderful good news.
Friday 11th April
Selected Passage taken from Ethics:
The Church is not there in order to deprive the world of a piece of territory, but precisely to prove to the world that it is still the world, the world which is loved by God and reconciled with Him. The Church has neither the wish nor the obligation to extend her space to cover the space of the world. She asks for no more space than she needs for the purpose of serving the world by bearing witness to Jesus Christ and to reconciliation of the world with God through Him. The only way in which the Church can defend her own territory is by fighting not for it but for the world, otherwise the church becomes a religious society which fights in its own interest and thereby ceases to at once to be the church of God and of the world.
Ian’s Reflection:
If Bonhoeffer had a loathing of anything about Protestantism, which was of course his natural home, it was the way it tended to regard the spiritual and the secular as two opposing and mutually repellent spheres. Why he disliked it is because in this understanding the Church usually ends up as nothing more than a religious society, detached from the world, and trapped in its own piety. Indeed, the crisis that Germany passed through revealed that this is precisely what the church had become: a space for faith, and unrelated to the world as it is. For Bonhoeffer, however, the church is not a space for faith, but a space of faith that exists for the sole purpose of bearing witness to the world that it is loved by God and reconciled with Him. To imagine the church as a pocket of piety, a piece of the world that has been given up so that Christians can get on with their private activities, is to betray this grand vision of salvation and to reduce faith to an otherworldly irrelevance.
Prayer:
Dear Lord, capture me with a grand vision of your world and the great magnificence of your benevolent reign. In Jesus name. Amen.
Thursday 10th April
Selected Passage from a sermon preached in Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, Exaudi, May 28th, 1933:
As for this Moses, we do not know what has become of him. Up, Aaron, make us gods, who shall go before us. That is the second stage. Which follows immediately from the first. The worldly church, the church of priests, wants to see something. Now it will wait no longer. It must go to work by itself, see by itself, do by itself what God and the prophets are not doing. What is the use of the priest, what is the use of the church if they are constantly kept on the watch? No, our church ought to have something. We want to see something in the church. We will not wait.
Ian’s Reflection:
My first encounter with this sermon was through Dave Hansen, a devotee of Bonhoeffer and our speaker at a pastors’ conference in 1998. Like most of the delegates at that time, I was up to my neck in church growth formulas, trying to find my way out of the morass of religious activity. In Dave’s opening address to the conference, he mediated the message of this uncompromising sermon – as I now realise – and through Bonhoeffer presented us with a choice: will we live by faith or live by sight? Will we wait in prayer or insist on making things happen? Will we worship the One God, or will we run after many gods? The choice is ours. Not easy when the people complain, wondering where this fellow Moses has disappeared to. In fact, it’s not long in the story before the people give up waiting for Moses to come down the mountain and build an idol instead. As Bonhoeffer puts it in this sermon, the church of the Word gives way to the church of the world, not for lack of religion but for lack of patience. Indeed, the lack of patience leads to a glut of religion: a plethora of gods, all of them impressive but none of them living.
Prayer:
Forgive us, Lord, when we act out of impatience and end up making a golden calf. Help us not to panic into action and to believe that one word from you is worth waiting for. Amen.
Wednesday 9th April
Today is the 80th anniversary of Bonhoeffer’s death.
These are the last words he spoke, before his execution: ‘This is the End – for me the Beginning of Life.’
Ian’s Reflection:
These are the last words Bonhoeffer spoke just before he was executed by the Nazi’s on the morning of 9th April,1945. Eminently quotable, these words encapsulate his long-standing fearlessness about death, and his faith that death is not a terminus but a gateway. It reminds me a little of what C.S. Lewis wrote about life beyond death in the Narnia stories. Everything up till now, he wrote, is just the Title Page. Now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read. Bonhoeffer’s life feels more than just a title page, of course. It was an epic. And I often wonder what he would make of the cottage industry that has grown up around his story. I think he would be shocked. But if his words are to be believed – and they resonate of course with the very heart of our Christian faith – then it’s irrelevant what he would think about it. What he is enjoying now is a depth of existence that will make this life seem, to use Lewis’s metaphor, like a shadowland.
Prayer:
Dear Lord, I thank you for this man who demonstrated such courage in the face of evil, and such faith in the face of death. Help us to live likewise, and to know that beyond this life is unimaginable glory. Amen.
Tuesday 8th April
Selected Passage taken from a letter written to his brother Karl-Friedrick on 14th January 1945:
The restoration of the church will surely come from a sort of new monasticism which has in common with the old only the uncompromising attitude of a life lived according to the Sermon on the Mount in the following of Christ. I believe it is now time to call people to this.
Ian’s Reflection:
The Sermon on the Mount was for Bonhoeffer the crux of Christian discipleship, certainly in the early years. As the evangelical church in Germany capitulated to the pernicious ideology of national socialism, Bonhoeffer saw in Jesus’s teachings a way of combating the apostasy through a recovery of rigorous discipleship. He described this radical commitment as something akin to a new monasticism. Those who use the phrase new monasticism in our contemporary setting would do well to remember this. The new monasticism that Bonhoeffer imagined was not just about intentional community, important as that is, but Christ-centred morality. It hinges upon our willingness to spurn the easy way and enter with Jesus on the narrow path. As Bonhoeffer says, the new monasticism has very little to do with the old, except on this one regard, that it is utterly focused on a life of obedience to the call and the will of God. No compromise. Just singular commitment to living out the Sermon on the Mount.
Prayer:
Dear Lord, give me the courage to stay focused on you in long obedience in the same direction, and the grace to live this out with my brothers and sisters in Christ. In Jesus name. Amen.
Monday 7th April
Selected Quote from Ethics:
So that this might become clear, let us ask why it is that precisely in thorough grace situations, for instance when I am with someone who has suffered a bereavement, I often decide to adopt a penultimate attitude particularly when I am dealing with Christians, remaining silent as I share in the bereaved man’s helplessness in the face of such a grievous event, and not speaking the biblical words of comfort which are, in fact, known and available to me. Why am I often unable to open my mouth, when I ought to give expression to the ultimate? And why, instead, do I decide on an expression of thoroughly penultimate human solidarity?
Ian’s Reflection:
This passage is not as hard to understand as it first appears. For ultimate, think of all those passionate Christians you know who wade into pastoral situations and cite biblical texts but who fail to exercise discernment as to what is needed. In one sense, they speak right words. They have discharged their belief in the ultimate; but in another sense they are terribly wrong because their knowledge of the word, their having it at their fingertips, prevents God from speaking in his own time. Hence, the need to cultivate a liking for what Bonhoeffer calls the penultimate, whereby we say nothing and simply stand in solidarity with our fellow human being. Adopting such a stance is not an expression of mistrust in the ultimate word. Not at all. All my pastoral experience confirms what Bonhoeffer says here: that my reticence to speak, my decision to adopt a penultimate attitude of silence, does in fact point all the more genuinely to the ultimate. It sounds like unbelief; it is in fact the supreme act of faith. To be at peace with the penultimate, to be able to exercise it in ministry, is only possible for those who know the ultimate.
Prayer:
Gracious Father, as much as I feel confident in your ultimate word, help me to speak it sensitively and wisely in this penultimate and messy world of ours. Help me to know when to speak, when to listen, and when to say nothing and just pray silently. In Jesus name. Amen.
Saturday 5th April
Selected Quote from The Cost of Discipleship:
‘When Christ calls a man he bids him come and die…’
Ian’s Reflection:
It is a radical thing to follow Christ. As scary as it sounds, it requires an utter and complete detachment from the things of this world. This abandonment of our worldly attachments, Bonhoeffer urges, comes not at the end of an otherwise happy life, but at the beginning. Indeed, if we don’t feel the weight of the cross at the beginning – the summons to unite ourselves with Christ in his death – it is likely we will not feel it at all. Tragically, a respectable religion will grow in its place. We might even call it god-fearing. But it will be a world away from the utter surrender of everything to Christ, which is the heart of it. As Bonhoeffer typically reminds us, Christianity is not an adjustment of our old life but its ending, and the fact that we embrace this at all is in fact the hallmark of a true encounter with Christ. The Christ who calls us is the Christ who bids us come and die. Anything less than this summons, which so often is the case in our attempts to make the faith relevant, is a pseudo gospel and a parody of Christ.
Prayer:
Dear Lord, I surrender all to you, and I promise to preach such a gospel however unpopular it is. In Jesus name. Amen.
Friday 4th April
Selected Passage taken from Life Together:
In confession a man breaks through to certainty. Why is it easier for us to confess our sins to God than to a brother? God is holy and sinless. He is a just judge of evil and the enemy of all disobedience. But a brother is as sinful as we are. He knows from his own experience the dark night of secret sin. Why should we not find it easier to go to a brother than a holy God? But if we do we must ask ourselves whether we have not often been deceiving ourselves with our confession to God, whether we have not rather been confessing our sins to ourselves and granting ourselves absolution. And is not the reason perhaps for our countless relapses and the feebleness of our Christian experience to be found precisely in the fact that we are living on self-forgiveness and not a real forgiveness?
Ian’s Reflection:
For a long time I believed, like a good Protestant, that it was better to confess one’s sin directly to God rather than to another person because at least with God there is mercy. Fall into the hands of men, as King David so starkly put the matter towards the end of his life, and you get judgement. Reading this last chapter of Life Together, however, altered my view about this a little, if not my practice. I came to see that confessing only to God could end up as nothing more than self-confession, and the forgiveness that flows from self-confession nothing more than self-forgiveness, which is no forgiveness at all. In contrast, I came round to the idea that confession of sin to a brother, however awkward it might feel, does at least hold the possibility of freedom. Rightly handled, the brother acts as God, says Bonhoeffer, and is able to both receive the confession with honesty and offer forgiveness with authority. As St James reminds us towards the end of his short epistle, confessing our sins to each other is a powerful means of grace. The times when I have had the courage to do it have been utterly transformative and confirmation of everything that is written here. The fact that we don’t avail ourselves of it is a great loss to spiritual growth.
Prayer:
Gracious God, I am truly grateful that I can come to you alone, through the priesthood of Jesus, and speak the most honest words. Help me to be as honest with a brother or sister when I need to, and through them receive your mercy and love. Amen.
Thursday 3rd April
Selected Passage taken from a sermon on the eve of national church elections, July 23rd, 1933:
But it is not we who build. He builds the church. No man builds the church but Christ alone. Whoever is minded to build the church is surely well on the way to destroying it; for he will build a temple to idols without wishing or knowing it. We must confess – he builds. We must proclaim – he builds. We must pray to him – that he may build. We do not know his plan. We cannot see whether he is building or pulling down. It may be that the times which by human standards are times of collapse are for him times of great construction. It may be that the times which from a human point of view are great times for the church are times when it is pulled down.
Ian’s Reflection:
After so many years of hanging around the church, getting involved in activities, reaching out in evangelism, it is very easy to fool ourselves into thinking that everything hinges on us. We can in fact delude ourselves into thinking that it is we who build the church, not Jesus, and that with just a little more effort, or a few more programmes, we will soon have a successful enterprise. How wrong we are. Rather than building the church, warns Bonhoeffer, such hubris will only ruin the church. It will place us where Jesus ought to be, and get us focusing on all the wrong things. All we need to do, Bonhoeffer exhorts us, is stick to the simple things. And as we do those, things that don’t catch the headlines, lo and behold Jesus builds his church. It is always this way round. We confess, he builds; we pray, he builds; we worship, he builds.
Prayer:
Gracious Father, forgive us when we delude ourselves into thinking that we are at the centre of the church. It is not our church but yours. Help us to make our contribution, always in the knowledge that unless you build the house, we labour in vain. In Jesus name and for his glory. Amen.
Wednesday 2nd April
Selected Passage is a Poem, Who am I? taken from Letters and Papers from Prison, compiled by Bonhoeffer’s good friend, Eberhard Bethge:
Who am I? They often tell me
I step out from my cell
calm and cheerful and poised,
like a squire from his manor.
Who am I? They often tell me
I speak with my guards
freely, friendly and clear,
as though I were the one in charge.
Who am I? They also tell me
I bear days of calamity
serenely, smiling and proud,
like one accustomed to victory.
Am I really what others say of me?
Or am I only what I know of myself?
Restless, yearning, sick, like a caged bird,
struggling for life breath, as if I were being strangled,
starving for colours, for flowers, for birdsong,
thirsting for kind words, human closeness,
shaking with rage at power lust and pettiest insult,
tossed about, waiting for great things to happen,
helplessly fearing for friends so far away,
too tired and empty to pray, to think, to work,
weary and ready to take my leave of it all?
Who am I? This one or the other?
Am I this one today and tomorrow another?
Am I both at once? Before others a hypocrite
and in my own eyes a pitiful, whimpering weakling?
Or is what remains in me like a defeated army,
Fleeing in disarray from victory already won?
Who am I? They mock me, these lonely questions of mine.
Whoever I am, thou knowest me; O God, I am thine!
Ian’s Reflection:
Very few of us, if any, will suffer the isolation that Bonhoeffer experienced as a result of his faith. Being locked away on account of our commitment to Christ is not something we are likely to experience. What we all experience, however, no matter what our circumstances, is the gap that this poem describes between how others perceive us and who we know ourselves to be: in other words, the gap between our on-stage persona, which can often be impressive, and our off-stage interior life. For Bonhoeffer, the contradiction between the two is so vivid that he questions who he really is. So great is the difference between his serene outward appearance among the prisoners over against the devastation he feels inside that one senses he is about to call himself a hypocrite. That he doesn’t is a huge relief, as far as I am concerned, for Bonhoeffer is simply being honest about his ability to cope with a crushing loneliness. It leads him, also, to the most profound conclusion that even though he doesn’t know which of these two people he really is, God knows. More than that, God knows that amidst the bundle of contradictions of the human heart, our deepest affections are for Him.
Prayer:
Dear Lord, I too don’t quite know who I am half the time. Who others perceive me to be is not always who I think I am, or even who I want to be. But you know me, God, and you surely know that I am yours. Thank you.
Tuesday 1st April
Selected Passage taken from Bonhoeffer’s Eight Theses on Youth Work in the Church:
Youth enjoys no special privilege in the church-community. It is to serve the church-community by hearing, learning, and practicing the word. God’s spirit in the church has nothing to do with youthful criticism of the church, the radical nature of God’s claim on human beings nothing to do with youthful radicalism, and the commandment for sanctification nothing to do with youthful impulse to better the world.
Ian’s Reflection:
In the contemporary church it is a practically an article of faith that unless we have a ministry dedicated to youth, we will lose them. How challenging, therefore, to hear Bonhoeffer’s take on all this. Writing as someone who spent a great deal of time with young people in the church, and who truly believes in their importance, he reckons that the best thing we can do is challenge the notion of ‘Christian youth’ altogether, take care not to over-specialise, and place them in the centre of the church community. By doing that, our youth will be exposed to the very same disciplines as the rest of the church; and in the process the church will be set free from the what he Bonhoeffer calls ‘youthful criticism’. Which is not to say we shouldn’t have a youth ministry, nor that we should stop trying to listen to the particular needs of young people. On the contrary, there is nothing more important than coming alongside young people. But if we are to take them seriously (and I believe I speak for all our youth team in this respect) we will need to lead them into the general concourse of the church’s life and faith.
Prayer:
Dear Lord, we thank you for the youth of the church, and for all the joy that they bring us. Give us courage to not just hold them in the church, which is so tempting, but to take them seriously, and lead them – and them lead us – in the way of Jesus. Amen.
Monday 31st March
Selected Passage taken from Ethics:
There is always a danger of intense love destroying what I might call the ‘polyphony’ of life. What I mean is that God requires that we should love him eternally with our whole hearts, yet not so as to compromise or diminish our earthly affections, but as a kind of cantus firmus to which the other melodies of life provide a counterpoint.
Ian’s Reflection:
This is pure genius. Who but Bonhoeffer could take technical musical terms like these and make out of them a most profound reflection on the meaning of life? He is right of course. In order for human beings to fully flourish we need both a counterpoint and a cantus firmus: that is, the melody of a thoroughly earthly life that is grounded in, yet most definitely not swamped by, a life in God. To overdo the God part is to destroy what Bonhoeffer calls the polyphony of life. It is to elevate the divine over the human. On the other hand, to remove the cantus firmus, the bass line of God’s presence, is to rob ourselves of the very thing that energises our human existence. We need both. And we need to hold them in loving tension. A bit like the person of Christ, says Bonhoeffer, we need both the human and the divine.
Prayer:
Dear Lord, help me not to be so spiritual that I fail to be human, but not so earthly that I lose that bass line of your divine love. Have mercy. Amen.
Saturday 29th March
Selected Passage taken from a letter to his friend, Erwin Sutz:
I no longer believe in the university; in fact I never really have believed in it—to your chagrin.
Ian’s Reflection:
The idea that one can do theology in detachment from the church is a relatively new one. For most of the church’s history it was a given that those who study theology do so in service of the church, or else it is not really theology. Bonhoeffer stands in this tradition. It’s not that he couldn’t hold his own in the university. Far from it. One only needs to read Bonhoeffer for a few moments to realise his intellectual prowess. But why he rejected the university as a way of learning is because it failed to nurture what ought to lie at the heart of all theology which is a love for God. Furthermore, the university fails, in Bonhoeffer’s estimation, to inculcate a passion to serve the congregation of God’s people. Hence, his preference for the preachers’ seminary over and against the university. Of course, even a seminary is no guarantee of devotion. One can just as easily hide oneself from real life in a seminary as one can in a university. But by placing the church and her mission as the focus of study, which is what Bonhoeffer tried to do in the seminary at Finkenwalde, it does at least lessen the danger of just writing theology for other theologians.
Prayer:
O God, deliver us from dry, abstract theology and help us to believe that the wonder of a local congregation is the only place to truly think, speak and act. In Jesus name. Amen.
Friday 28th March
Selected Passage taken from a sermon Bonhoeffer preached in Berlin, Second Sunday after Epiphany, January 15th, 1933:
The old story of Gideon is being played out in Christendom every day. I will be with you in the face of the enemy…What does Gideon do? What do we do? We rustle up all our own forces; we reach out for every means of help; we calculate; we weigh; we count; we arm ourselves with offensive and defensive weapons. Until then, suddenly and unexpectedly – nobody knows the hour- the living God is there and assails us again: if you have faith, lay down your weapons; I am your weapon. Take off your armour; I am your armour. Put away your pride; I am your pride…Don’t try to be strong, mighty, famous, respected, but let God alone be your strength, your fame and honour. Or don’t you believe in God?
Ian’s Reflection:
The story of how Gideon mustered a huge army to fight the Midianites, only to be assailed by God who summons him to scale down the numbers, is the stuff of Sunday school drama. In the hands of Bonhoeffer, the story of Gideon becomes a prophetic challenge to the German church to stop trusting in its own means and to start believing in God. I remember reading it for the first time (under a bus shelter, can you believe, while waiting for the rain to stop), and being completely overcome by the message. As Bonhoeffer says, the story of Gideon is being played out in Christendom every day. Calculating, weighing and counting – which is what Gideon does in the first instance – is what we leaders do all the time. Instead of trusting in the word, the sacraments and the commandments of God, we try every means possible to grow the church. But then, ‘suddenly and unexpectedly – nobody knows the hour – the living God is there and assails us again.’ God urges us to let his grace be sufficient, him alone be our strength, our fame and honour. And then the killer line, which haunts me, even now: ‘Or don’t you believe in God?’
Prayer:
Almighty God, give me the courage to trust in your mightiness and not in my haughtiness. Help me to see that your power is made perfect in my weakness, and that all I need to do is trust you. In Jesus name, and in the power of the Spirit. Amen.
Thursday 27th March
Selected Passage taken from a Letter to Maria von Wedemeyer:
I think we are going to have an exceptionally good Christmas. The fact that every outward circumstance precludes our making provision for it will show whether we can be content with what is truly essential. I used to be very fond of thinking up and buying presents, but now that we have nothing to give, the gift God gave us in the birth of Christ will seem all the more glorious.
Ian’s Reflection:
My congregation realised early on that Bonhoeffer was something of a hero of mine. Consequently, I would often be given excerpts, quotes, devotionals, etc – none more precious than a set of Advent reflections from a dear couple called Dennis and Maureen. This particular reflection I have selected here occurs early on in the book, about day four, and when I read it the first time I was simply blown away. Here is a young man, deprived of company, unable to properly celebrate what was undoubtedly his favourite Christian festival, namely, Christmas; but his deprivation, he says, serves only to heighten his appreciation of the good news. Isn’t that incredible? No hint of resentment. No sense of entitlement. Rather, a faith that has been stripped down to its essentials, and alive with meaning. I was so taken with what Bonhoeffer writes here to his fiancé that I think I quoted it pretty much everywhere I went. I loved the cadence of the sentence as much as anything, and the vividness of the new reality: ‘now that we have nothing to give, the gift God gave us in the birth of Christ will seem all the more glorious.’ Amazing.
Prayer:
Dear Lord, in our consumer world, where we are sated with too much, restore to us the wonder of your gift in Jesus, and help us to live grateful and contended live. For Jesus’ sake. Amen.
Wednesday 26th March
Selected Passage taken from Bonhoeffer’s Lectures on Preaching:
Strict textual preaching is the true way to overcome the demand for more sermons. The torment of waiting for fresh ideas disappears under serious textual work. The text has more than enough thoughts. One really only needs to say what is in it. Anyone who does that will not have to complain anymore about scarcity of ideas. When we ask ourselves, ‘What shall I say today to the congregation?’ we are lost. But when we ask, ‘What does this text say to the congregation? we find ample support and abundant confidence.
Ian’s Reflection:
Bonhoeffer speaks for all preachers when he describes the pressure to come up with good sermon illustrations. These days of course there are whole websites dedicated to helping us find just the right one to accompany whatever point we are wanting to make, so the task is perhaps a little easier. But the problem with a good sermon illustration, as we all know, is that it can end up as more memorable than the text itself, and sometimes a distortion of the text. For these two reasons alone, I took serious note of Bonhoeffers maxim, many years ago now when I first read it, to let the text speak for itself, any try to cut down on illustrations that are extraneous to the text. After all, as Bonhoeffer so confidently states, the text has more than enough thoughts. The more time we spend in serious textual work, we more we realise it is a sheer treasure trove of thoughts and images, covering the whole spectrum of literary genres. By the time we’ve finished, it’s more a case of what do we leave out rather than what do we add by way of foreign material. And it’s not that we should never introduce an illustration. That would be churlish of me to say so. But why I love Bonhoeffer is because he confronts us with the question as to whether we really trust the Bible to speak to the congregation.
Prayer:
Give all preachers courage to preach the Bible and to believe that the text has more than enough thoughts to build up the congregation. As they begin work on their sermons for this coming Sunday, give them inspiration from your Word. In Jesus name. Amen.
Tuesday 25th March
Selected Passage taken from a sermon for his niece Renate and long-time friend Eberhard Bethge’s wedding:
‘As you first gave the ring to one another and have now received it a second time from the hand of the pastor, so love comes from you, but marriage from above, from God. As high as God is above man, so high are the sanctity, the rights, and the promise of marriage above the sanctity, the rights, and the promise of love. It is not your love that sustains the marriage, but from now on, the marriage that sustains your love.’
Ian’s Reflection:
In May 1943, one of Bonhoeffer’s nieces, Renate, married his friend Eberhard Bethge. Bonhoeffer was unable to attend, of course, since he was in prison. Undeterred, however, and anxious to contribute to the wedding day, he wrote a sermon, a typically long sermon, in which he underlined for the young couple the utter seriousness of the commitment they were making. In contrast to the emphasis on romantic love, which has become in our day almost the sole rationale for a marriage, Bonhoeffer points out the vocational nature of married life, understanding it to be less a haven of happiness but more like an office, a post of responsibility for the sake of the world. Indeed, when it comes to love, Bonhoeffer is typically concrete. At first, we might wonder at his matter-of-fact ness. Who wants a marriage without love? That reduces it to an institution. But that is not what Bonhoeffer intends. Rather, he wants to show how fickle the feelings of love can be, and how much they depend on the bond of a marriage in order for feelings to sustain and flourish.
For anyone who is married (and remember that Bonhoeffer never did marry) it’s the most obvious thing and I have used this sentence many times in my own wedding sermons. At that precise moment of a wedding, when feelings run high, when love is in the air, I admit that his words jar. Why spoil a wedding day with such sombre tones? But we are not there just for a wedding; we are there to affirm a marriage. And whilst love should absolutely be the core of any marriage relationship, Bonhoeffer is right to preach that it can only be so by virtue of the marriage itself. It is marriage that sustains love, and not the other way round.
Prayer:
Dear Lord, we pray for all those who are married. May the covenant bonds of marriage sustain the love between husband and wife. And may all those considering marriage enter into it as a vocation and not just a romance.
Monday 24th March
Selected Passage taken from Ethics:
‘Telling the truth,’ therefore, is not solely a matter of moral character, it is also a correct appreciation of real situations and of serious reflection upon them. The more complex the actual situations of a man’s life, the more responsible and the more difficult will be his task of ‘telling the truth.’
Ian’s Reflection:
Telling the truth is fundamental to moral character and lies at the heart of any ethical code. So what on earth does Bonhoeffer mean when he speaks of the difficulty in certain situations of telling the truth? That sounds like moral relativism. Or situational ethics, at the very least. Actually, it is neither of these. Bonhoeffer is not exploring moral philosophy. He is focused on the reality of God and the actuality of living in a world where telling the truth is not as simple as it appears. Which is not to say that anything goes – not at all – but is to say that life is complex and requires, in each situation, serious reflection as to what God would have us do. Having lived through one of the darkest periods of human history, no wonder Bonhoeffer saw it this way. One can imagine occasions during the war, for example, when not telling the truth would prove vital for the protection of people whom the Nazi’s were hunting down. We also have examples in the Bible of course. As someone once said, some people don’t deserve to have the truth told them. The key question is who, what and when.
Prayer:
Gracious God, life is complex, and we often don’t know what to do. Please give us wisdom to know how to act in each situation. In Jesus name. Amen.
Saturday 22nd March
Selected Passage taken from Life Together:
Often we combat our evil thoughts most effectively if we absolutely refuse to allow them to be expressed in words….He who holds his tongue in check controls both mind and body (James 3:2ff). Thus, it must be a decisive rule of every Christian fellowship that each individual is prohibited from saying much that occurs to him.
Ian’s Reflection:
I don’t speak German, so I don’t know if this passage is meant to be funny or not. All I can say is that the first time I read it, especially the bit about not saying much that occurs to us, I laughed out loud. It has a feel of Jesus’s words about ‘not taking the speck of dust out of someone’s eye without taking the plank out of your own eye first,’ which I cannot imagine Jesus saying without a wry smile. And as far as I understand it, Bonhoeffer’s comment here about the power of the tongue is consistent with his sharp wit about the church which features throughout his work. After all, what could be odder than a Christian fellowship? And what could be more satisfying, as well as self-justifying, than to speak much that occurs to us about a brother or sister? It’s the easiest thing in the world, and what makes Christian community potentially so deadly. Hence, the prohibition, not on things like advice and guidance, but on observations about people that we store up in our head. Indeed, by holding our tongue we begin to see the other person not through the lens of our own image but as they truly are in the image of God. By not speaking much that occurs to us, we have a chance of releasing each other to be the people that God has made each one of us to be.
Prayer:
Dear Lord, forgive us that we so often look at each other with a critical eye, and then say things that cause damage rather than encourage. Help me to hold my tongue, think before I speak, and instead of feeling frustrated with someone, learn to bless them instead. Amen.
Friday 21st March
Selected Passage taken from The Cost of Discipleship:
The child asks of the Father whom he knows. Thus, the essence of Christian prayer is not general adoration, but definite, concrete petition. The right way to approach God is to stretch out our hands and ask of One who we know has the heart of a Father.
Ian’s Reflection:
As we grow in a life of prayer it is easy to regard our simple petitions as less spiritual than the more contemplative prayers that emerge from monasteries and retreat centres. Compared to those prayers of adoration, our simple petitions to God can appear no more than a shopping list. According to Bonhoeffer, however, this is where we are wrong. Yes, our petitions can be very basic, but it is precisely the concrete nature of these prayers that endear them to our Father. Indeed, if you know anything about Bonhoeffer – be it his views on preaching, or confession – the more concrete we can be, by which he means specific, the better. To ask specific prayers and believe that our Heavenly Father will answer them requires vulnerability, importunity and childlike trust. Hence, the essence of prayer is not adoration, no matter how mystical one can appear, but those simple prayers of asking.
Prayer:
Dear Lord, I bring to you today my very specific, concrete prayers in the confidence that you do not despise them but welcome them as my heavenly Father. And thank you for the way these heartfelt petitions bring me closer to you. Amen.
Thursday 20th March
In a letter to theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, Bonhoeffer wrote:
‘I have come to the conclusion that I made a mistake in coming to America. I shall have no right to take part in the restoration of Christian life in Germany after the war unless I share the trials of this time with my people.’
Ian’s Reflection:
As it was, Bonhoeffer never experienced life in Germany after the war. He was executed just ten days before the end of the war on a charge of treason against the state. But that’s not the point. The point is that Bonhoeffer realised very soon after his arrival in New York in 1932 that he was in the wrong place, and the reason it was the wrong place is because whatever else Christian discipleship means it means solidarity with those who suffer. More specifically, it means solidarity with our compatriots. I’m sure Bonhoeffer would have found suffering in New York. His beloved Harlem would have offered him a lifetime of service. But just at that moment, as the lights were going out over Europe, as Germany came fully under the spell of Hitlerism, solidarity could mean only one thing for Bonhoeffer. In this sense, we might regard him as a true patriot. He was executed for treason. Technically, he was an assassin. But in truth he was martyred for sheer love of his country. I suspect he knew that would be the case. In boarding the ship back to Germany, he was signing his death warrant. But then again, maybe his contribution to the restoration of Christian life after the war has been more powerful because of it. There is nothing more fruitful than a single seed that falls to the ground and dies.
Prayer:
Dear Lord, I thank you for the courage of people like Bonhoeffer who for sheer love of his country, and for the upward cause of Christ, are willing to pay the ultimate price. Help us to be just as courageous in the times in which we live.
Wednesday 19th March
Selected Passage from Letters to Maria Von Wedermeyer:
“What is happiness? It depends so little on the circumstances; it depends really only on that which happens inside a person.”
Ian’s Reflection:
Taken from his last letter to his fiancé, Maria von Wedermeyer (Christmas 1944), Bonhoeffer gives expression to an inner happiness as a result, surprisingly, of intense solitude. In the quietness of his prison cell, an invisible reality opened up to his soul which was so present as to make his circumstances redundant. Instead of loneliness, his soul experienced such deep connectedness to past conversations, close relationships, and the repository of faith, as to make the prison cell a kind of congregation. As Bonhoeffer states, you must not think me unhappy. The experience of solitude, as even I have discovered in a much less coercive environment (and over a much shorter length of time), heightens the senses, and opens up a fellowship of the heart that is as real as the walls that surround you. To be able to live there, to live in the depths of the soul’s memory, is happiness itself and, as Bonhoeffer so rightly says, defies all circumstances. Rather than our circumstances determining how we feel, we discover through solitude a peace that transcends our circumstances.
Prayer:
Gracious God, thank you for the power of memories that can bring a sense of communion with the saints, and real happiness despite the outward situation. Above all, thank you for the peace that you alone can bring to the human heart. May I experience that peace today.
Tuesday 18th March
Selected Passage from Bonhoeffer’s Essay, After Ten Years:
Quality is the bitterest enemy of conceit in all its forms. Socially it implies the cessation of all place-hunting, of the cult of the ‘star’; an open eye both upwards and downwards, especially in the choice of one’s more intimate friends, and pleasure in private life as well as courage to enter public life. Culturally it means a return from the newspaper and the radio to the book, from feverish activity to unhurried leisure, from dissipation to recollection, from sensationalism to reflection, from virtuosity to art, from snobbery to modesty, from extravagance to moderation. Quantities are competitive; qualities are complementary.
Ian’s Reflection:
Written at the end of 1942, and part of an essay in which Bonhoeffer reflects on the last ten years of his turbulent life, we discover in these lines the secret of his indomitability which is the sense of quality in both social and cultural life. As far as I understand it, this means a retreat not from public life, as such, but from its various expressions of conceit. It means the end of competitiveness, and the hurriedness that inevitably attends it, and a return to a slower, more reflective way of living – one that is content to forgo the glittering prizes for the sake of depth. My guess is that Bonhoeffer’s prescription is unlikely to be that popular. It wasn’t popular in his own day. How could it be popular now, in our news obsessed world? Words like modesty and moderation are hardly going to excite in the age of sensationalism. But for Bonhoeffer they are precisely the virtues we need to recover for a better day that may yet appear amidst the ruins of our modern world.
Prayer:
Dear Lord, give us courage to live humble lives, not worrying about things far beyond us, as the Psalmist says, but stilling and quietening our souls, like a child at rest on its mother’s knee. For Jesus’ sake. Amen.
Monday 17th March
Selected Passage from a letter to Dietrich’s sister, Emmi Bonhoeffer:
“If I sit next to a madman as he drives a car into a group of innocent bystanders, I can’t, as a Christian, simply wait for the catastrophe, then comfort the wounded and bury the dead. I must try to wrestle the steering wheel out of the hands of the driver.”
Ian’s Reflection:
The debate as to whether Bonhoeffer really was a conspirator in the attempted assassination of Hitler, or whether he maintained his pacifism to the end, lies right at the heart of Bonhoeffer studies. I am not about to engage with it here. What both camps can surely agree upon however, even if you take the pacifist line, is that faith, for Bonhoeffer, was no pious acceptance of the status quo, which it so often is, but a determination to strike at the heart of injustice. As he says here, it is not enough to just respond to the consequences of catastrophic evil; one must try to arrest its advance; not just sit in the passenger seat, while the madman drives into the crowd, but wrestle the steering wheel out of his hands. What that looks like, how, when and who, will depend on the context of course, and also how far our conscience will allow us to go. It may even require us to go beyond our conscience, if indeed the only option requires us to break a command. But then life is messy. For Bonhoeffer, ethics can never be just textbook, but a concrete choice made before God in the midst of reality.
Prayer:
Dear Lord, I am truly in awe of this man who for the sake of the suffering violated his own principles. Have mercy Lord on all those who face these extreme dilemmas.
Saturday 15th March
Selected Passage taken from Poems:
“Not from the hard ground,
where blood and race and binding oath
are sacred and powerful;
where the very earth itself
keeps guard and defends
the consecrated orders of creation
against the madness and frenzy of disorder;
not from the hard ground of the earth,
but freely chosen and desired,
the longing of the spirit,
which neither duty nor law requires,
the friend will offer to the friend.”
Ian’s Reflection:
Bonhoeffers’ friendship with Eberhard Bethge at the seminary in Finkenwalde has long been a matter of scholarly debate, with one of his more recent biographers (remembering of course that Bethge was the original biographer) claiming that Bonhoeffer harboured unrequited feelings of love towards his friend. Personally, I don’t think that is the case, but even if it was, it is certainly not the hidden meaning of this poem about friendship. What Bonhoeffer gives expression to here is the unique place that a deep friendship has in all our lives. Different from the institution of marriage, friendship explores, sometimes more freely even than the conventions of marriage, the longings of the soul before God.
It’s not either/or of course. Legal institutions like marriage need not be devoid of spiritual longings – God forbid – any more than a friend has to be a soul mate. But I doubt there is a person reading this who has not experienced at least once in their life the richness of a friendship in which so many of our human longings for correspondence and understanding are satisfied. It is this that the poem celebrates, and which we are all grateful for.
Prayer:
Dear Lord, thank you for the gift of friends who I can journey with as I make my way, in this life, towards your heavenly city. Amen.
Friday 14th March
Selected Passage taken from Life Together:
The first service that one owes to others in the fellowship consists in listening to them. Just as the love of God begins with listening to his Word, so the beginning of love for the brethren is learning to listen to them. It is God’s love for us that he not only gives us his Word but also lends us his ear. So it is his work that we do for our brother when we learn to listen to him. Christians, especially ministers, so often think they must always contribute something when they are in the company of others, that this is the one service they have to render. They forget that listening can be a greater service than speaking.
Ian’s Reflection:
Bonhoeffer is nothing if not direct in his writing and teaching. It’s what I love about him. Indeed, it’s what I love about German theology. There’s nothing flowery about it; just matter of fact and very concrete. And yes, on the matter of speaking and listening he could have stated things a little less forthrightly, but let’s be honest, he’s right: people tend not to approach Christians with their needs, because most of us are not given to listening. Or if we are listening, we are waiting for a pause in the conversation so that we can get back to our natural activity which is speaking. It’s a sorry state of affairs, says Bonhoeffer later on in the passage, because soon enough we will be prattling to ourselves, not just in the presence of another but in the presence of God – and what could be more pathetic than that.
How we address this, Bonhoeffer doesn’t say. What we do know, however, is that he put great value on silence. And in this silence, we have time to choose our words carefully – the meaning of them, and how many. In the home Bonhoeffer grew up in, words mattered. May they matter to us too.
Prayer:
Dear Lord, as the apostle James commands, help me to be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to become angry. In Jesus name, Amen.
Thursday 13th March
Selected Passage taken from Ethics:
Confession of faith is not to be confused with professing a religion. Such profession uses the confession as propaganda and ammunition against the Godless. The confession of faith belongs rather to the “Discipline of the Secret” in the Christian gathering of those who believe. Nowhere else is it tenable…
Ian’s Reflection:
Perhaps more now than even Bonhoeffer’s time, the church arms itself with propaganda in order to convert the world to its beliefs. We hope by the profession of our religion to impact the godless with the truth of the gospel. So often, however, our evangelising ends up as marketing, and our words cheapen. We sell Jesus. The antidote to this, says Bonhoeffer, is to go underground for a while and adopt the discipline of the secret. In other words, keep your piety for the closet, just as Jesus counselled in the Sermon on the Mount; and as regards the world just simply be there for others. By adopting such a discipline, we don’t cease to witness. On the contrary, by preserving the mysteries of the faith, and refusing to commercialise them, we end up saying a lot more, even if we never open our mouth. Secrecy protects our faith from profanation and makes our presence in the world something like incarnation.
Prayer:
Dear Lord, give me the courage to go underground for a while, and not feel the need to constantly make an impact on the world. Help me to trust that you do that, even more so when I simply stay close to you. Amen.
Wednesday 12th March
Selected Passage taken from Life Together:
Let him who cannot be alone beware of community… Let him who is not in community beware of being alone
Ian’s Reflection:
This famous quote, found in Life Together, is utterly profound and repays a great deal of reflection. There is no contradiction here. Rather, a warning to avoid the excesses of community, on the one hand, and solitude on the other. Both are important of course. Time alone is precious, as is company with others. But they can only be energising in so far as they relate to each other.
Take the first warning: who has ever spent time with an extrovert who simply cannot imagine, even for a few moments, being quiet and on their own? They are exhausting, and eventually quite boring. Conversely, who has spent time with an introvert who finds conversation tedious, and wants nothing more than to leave a gathering to go home and read a book? As much as we might sympathise with that instinct, there is in fact something quite selfish about it. Indeed, the solitude one craves after ends up more of a loneliness which, in my experience, is an altogether different mode of being, and possibly what is in Bonhoeffer’s mind as he issues the warning.
True solitude, of the kind that is healthy, is not loneliness. Strange as it sounds, solitude is an essential part of belonging to community and often enhances it. Time alone allows us to think of others and even pray for them. Likewise, if we carry our solitude with us, our relationships become deeper. No longer clawing for affection, we can both give and receive love without suffocating others with our need.
Prayer:
Gracious Lord, help me to strike the right balance between solitude and community. Deliver me from any fear of solitude and silence, but also help me avoid making it an idol and a way of avoiding people.
In Jesus name. Amen.
.
Tuesday 11th March
Selected Passage taken from Psalms: The Prayer Book of the Bible:
‘Therefore it is the prayer of human nature assumed by him which comes here before God. It is really our prayer, but since he knows us better than we know ourselves and since he himself was true man for our sakes, it is also really his prayer, and it can become our prayer only because it was his prayer.’
Ian’s Reflection:
The Psalms are located right in the heart of the Bible, and anyone who has ever prayed them soon discovers how utterly human they are. They are God’s word, to be sure, but expressions of the whole range of our human experience. And if that is all they are, then they are a rich treasury of devotion. For Bonhoeffer, however, they are more than that. Given the church’s conviction about the full humanity of Jesus, they are first and foremost his prayers. Indeed, they can only be our prayers, according to Bonhoeffer, because Jesus prays them before the Father on our behalf, and for our sakes. When I first read this, I must confess I didn’t entirely agree. It felt to me as if Bonhoeffer was trying to sanitise the rawness of the Psalms, and make them presentable for Christian prayer. The more I think about it, however, the more I realise that what he is really doing elevating the rawness by placing it in the person of Jesus. As we pray the Psalms through Jesus, our prayers are no less human. We may want to say they are more human, even as they become more holy.
Prayer:
I thank you, Lord, for this wonderful collection of prayers right at the heart of the Bible. I am so grateful that you gift me with words to say in every season of life, in and through Jesus, my Lord and my Saviour.
Monday 10th March
Selected Passage taken from Eric Metaxas’ biography Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy in which he quotes Bonhoeffer reflecting on becoming a saint:
‘I remember a conversation that I had in America thirteen years ago with a young French pastor. We were asking ourselves quite simply what we wanted to do with our lives. He said he would like to become a saint (and I think it’s quite likely that he did become one). At the time I was very impressed, but I disagreed with him, and said, in effect, that I should like to learn to have faith….
I discovered later, and I’m still discovering right up to this moment, that 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, experiences and perplexities. In doing so we throw ourselves completely into the arms of God, taking seriously, not our own sufferings, but those of God in the world—watching with Christ in Gethsemane. That, I think, is faith; that is metanoia; and that is how one becomes a man and a Christian (cf. Jer 45!). How can success make us arrogant, or failure lead us astray, when we share in God’s sufferings through a life of this kind?’
Ian’s Reflection:
I too had wanted to become a saint. In my evangelical zeal, I imagined it to be an exercise in ever increasing sanctification, culminating in something approximating perfection. And then life happened. Instead of pursuing the goal of sainthood, all of my time was taken up dealing with the mess of the everyday, sometimes to the point of despair. It felt like I was living anything but a victorious Christian life. What Bonhoeffer helps me to see in this passage is that this need not be so. On the contrary, only by abandoning any notion of trying to be somebody, even something as noble as a saint, and embracing our life as it really is, do we cultivate a life of faith. Paradoxically, by virtue of worldliness, by which Bonhoeffer means the ups and downs of life, do we end up throwing ourselves into the hands of God. Through the mystery of suffering, we end up in the most profound place of all, which is Gethsemane. Keeping watch with Christ in that place is real faith and, I dare say, not too far short of sainthood.
Prayer:
Dear Lord, I want to throw myself completely into your arms and find you in all the ups and downs of my life. In Jesus name, Amen.
Saturday 8th March
Selected Passage from Letters to London, Bonhoeffer’s previously unpublished correspondence with Ernst Cromwell, 1935-36:
In speaking of the rise of fascism in his country, and incidents of persecution, Bonhoeffer writes: ‘it is only happening episodically so far, and the main thing is not to regard one’s own importance too highly, to feel as though one has to be something like the sole saviour of the Church or Christianity. That would be ridiculous. ‘Don’t take yourself too seriously’ – even in these really serious matters, and especially in them.
Ian’s Reflection:
Ernst Cromwell was one of Bonhoeffer’s confirmands during his parish ministry in London in the mid-1930s. He corresponded with him and on one occasion, with the blessing of the parents, took Ernst to Scotland to climb Ben Nevis. That Ernst made the letters available in recent years is truly a gift because they offer a unique insight into the inner world of a man who was already, by 1935, on a collision course with Hitler over state interference in church life. As far as Bonhoeffer was concerned, the future of Christianity was at stake. But here, in this tender piece of writing to a young believer, it’s like he’s reminding himself to calm down a bit and avoid the Elijah syndrome of thinking he’s the sole saviour of the church. Not taking ourselves too seriously, which is a phrase Bonhoeffer must have picked up during his time in England, is a good piece of advice – even to oneself. Strangely, by not thinking too highly of ourselves, we will be better placed, in my opinion, to make an important contribution in our sphere of responsibility. But that is all it will be: a contribution.
Prayer:
O God, these are challenging times that we are living through and much needs to be done. We need faith and courage to stand strong against the tide of evil in our world. Even so, help me to get a right perspective, not take myself too seriously, and remember that you are still in charge. Amen.
Friday 7th March
Selected Passage from Meditating on the Word:
The first moments of the new day are not the time for our own plans and worries, not even for our zeal to accomplish our own work, but for God’s liberating grace, God’s sanctifying presence.
Ian’s Reflection:
I have this quote in the original German in my pocket Bible. It was given to me by a member of the congregation. Whether I adhere to it or not is a good question. How easy it is, first thing in the morning, to turn on the radio, or check our emails, and to feel anxious before the day has even got going. Conversely, when I have had the courage to forsake all of that and simply sit, first thing, in God’s presence, what a difference it makes. What a liberation, in fact. It’s not that problems get resolved. Sometimes they can get worse. What changes, however, is our dealing with it. By starting the day with God, we are set free from the danger of just reacting to everything and enter a life where we can properly respond. By giving our first moments to God, the day becomes less an exercise in what I can accomplish and more about how I can pay attention. Less about my efforts and more about grace.
Prayer:
Dear Lord, give me courage to resist noise first thing in the morning, and instead to just sit here in your presence, asking you to fill the day, and allowing you to guide me. For Jesus’ sake, Amen.
Thursday 6th March
Selected Passage from Life Together:
God hates visionary dreaming; it makes the dreamer proud and pretentious. The man who fashions a visionary ideal of community demands that it be realized by God, by others, and by himself. He enters the community of Christians with his demands, sets up his own laws, and judges that brethren and God Himself accordingly. He stands adamant, a living reproach to all others in the circle of brethren. He acts as if he is the creator of the Christian community, as if his dream binds men together. When things do not go his way, he calls the effort a failure. When his ideal picture is destroyed, he sees the community going to smash. So he becomes, first an accuser of his brethren, then an accuser of God, and finally the despairing accuser of himself.
Ian’s Reflection:
I have read this passage many times to seminarians – and also to the various staff teams over the years here at Millmead. Almost always it provokes a strong reaction. ‘Visionary dreaming is surely what leadership is all about?’ they say. ‘What’s wrong with having some ideals?’ Thus begins a lively debate, as we try to unpack what exactly Bonhoeffer means.
It’s worth remembering that Bonhoeffer was writing this at a time of hyper-visionary leadership in Germany. I am speaking about Hitler of course. And if you ever wanted an example of how ideology destroys a community rather than builds it up, Nazism is it. Bonhoeffer’s focus, however, is not the nation but the church, and how even in the Christian community our idealism, our visionary dreaming about community life, can be the very thing that destroys it, for the simple reason that people don’t conform to ideals – not even the ideals of a visionary. Church life, alas, is altogether more messy than someone’s ideals. And what binds it together, therefore, is not a strategic vision but the grace of God. Once we come to terms with that, and stop posturing, things begin to grow. But they grow not because we force them to grow, but because we thankfully receive the Christian community as it really is. The way forward in church life is not idealism. That way lies death. The way forward is through realism, patience and love.
Prayer:
Gracious God, help me to receive the church as it is, not as I want it to be. Help me to love it, warts and all. May your leaders be those who strive for excellence but also those who exercise deep compassion for your people. May we stop analysing and start celebrating the wonder of the body of Christ.
Amen
Ash Wednesday 5th March
Selected Passage from The Cost of Discipleship:
Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession, absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.
Costly grace is the treasure hidden in the field; for the sake of it a man will go and sell all that he has. It is the pearl of great price to buy which the merchant will sell all his goods. It is the kingly rule of Christ, for whose sake a man will pluck out the eye which causes him to stumble; it is the call of Jesus Christ at which the disciple leaves his nets and follows him.
Ian’s Reflection:
As a Lutheran preacher, Bonhoeffer believed wholeheartedly in justification by faith alone. That’s the grace bit. But with the capitulation of the German church to Nazism, he realised that it is possible for faith to end up as complacency – what he would call ‘cheap grace’. Hence, in the opening chapters of The Cost of Discipleship, Bonhoeffer is at pains to point out that the flip side of grace is obedience. As someone once said, salvation is free, but it will cost you everything you have.
On the surface this sounds like a contradiction. And if the stress is placed in the wrong place, it is a contradiction. Some preachers so emphasise obedience that it undoes the gift of grace and makes salvation into something we do. But Bonhoeffer is not saying that. Instead, with great skill, he is simply teaching, as Luther himself taught, that for grace to be truly saving it will end up as passion to follow Jesus, no matter what. We are justified by faith alone, but it is not a faith that is alone. If that is difficult to understand it is because we have not yet found the pearl of great price. Once we do, the desire to sell up and give everything begins to make sense.
Prayer:
Dear Lord, your love is so amazing, so divine, it demands my soul, my life, my all. On this first day of Lent, forgive me if I have ever made your grace cheap.
Amen
