Service on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/seeyouonsunday/videos/1450323446121970 and YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=otyZ84NZfdA
Dietrich Bonhoeffer was born in 1906, 10 minutes before his twin sister. He was one of eight children and the youngest boy. His father was a psychologist who taught in Berlin and his mother came from a long line of educated and well off people, including multiple leaders of the German church.
His family was incredibly close and tight-knit and stayed close as they grow older. So when news came that his older brother Walter had died during world war, I the family was devastated. It may have been one of many influences that led 14-year-old Dietrich Bonhoeffer to declare that he was going to be a theologian.
He graduated with his first PhD summa c** laude, which I think is good in 1927 at the age of 21. And the German Lutheran Church one could not be ordained until they were 24. So Bonhoeffer went to Barcelona to be an assistant pastor to a German-speaking church there, he finished a second dissertation which allowed him to teach, and he spent a year at Union seminary in New York. He was ordained the next year 1931 when he was 25. He taught confirmation classes to kids from the other side of the tracks of Berlin from where he grew up.
He became part of the European ecumenical, inter-Christian community, and made connections with theologians and clergy across Europe. He, with several others, founded the Confessing Church to persuade the German churches to not align themselves with the Nazis. He spoke up against the Nazi regime to the point that they said he could no longer live or work in Berlin. The Confessing Church had a seminary to train religious leaders in response to fascism that was trying to claim the church. and ultimately did, and the seminary was shut down by the Gestapo.
Bonhoeffer was brought into the Abwehr, the CIA of Nazi Germany as a way of not having to pick up a gun and join the fighting. He became a chaplain to the Agents there, many of whom were plotting and planning an overthrow and execution of Hitler.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer was arrested in early 1943 for avoiding military service and helping others do the same. They thought it was not a big deal, that he would live and make it out. With 1944 failed July assassination attempt, everything changed. thousands were arrested and those in power set in motion the end.
In April of 1945, a month before Germany’s surrender, Dietrich Bonhoeffer was executed along with several of his family members, and members of the Abwehr.
To begin, we need to go backward a little bit. The German for more than 400 years at that point, had been deeply wrapped up in the teachings of Martin Luther. Now, there is good in the teaching of Luther–that we are saved by grace and not by our works or resources. The problem comes when a community realized that they are saved by grace and so works were not necessary. For Luther, teachings like the Sermon on the Mount were ideals that we will never live up to, the perfected kingdom of God.
There were two more things about Lutheranism: there was a connection and a defaulting to the state, and Luther was very anti-Jewish, which meant that there were many people in many German churches, not to mention the rest of Europe who were anti-Jewish. It would happen from time to time, that there would be a re-publishing of an article of Luther’s about burning all synagogues. It’s not good.
Before the rise of the Hitler, when Bonhoeffer was in New York, there were 2 students he met there that made a significant impact on his theology. One was a black Baptist–Albert Franklin Fisher who brought him to his church, introduced him to Gospel music–a lifelong love. Where he met preachers of the Social Gospel, of the black Christ, of how the suffering Christ share experiences with the suffering of the poor, the suffering, the marginalized, the vulnerable.
The second was a French pastor and pacifist Jean Lasserre who deeply impacted Bonhoeffer’s understanding of the Sermon on the Mount–that it is not some ideal beyond our reach but a life we ought to live, every day, following Christ as disciples.
They were among the people and things that changed everything for him.
In our reading today, Jesus is teaching to his disciples, to those who have ears to hear, that we are all going to have to choose–the paths of this world or the path of Christ, the ways of the world or the way of Christ, and it can’t be both. The ways of the world are always going to exploit the vulnerable, use violence on the masses, use people, horde for the few to the detriment of the many. The ways of the world will always lead to death, destruction, … The way of Christ is wholeness, abundance, life, justice, and hope.
Here’s the thing, as the Nazis rose up, as they took control of… everything, they started to make moves on the church. They appointed their own leader, they made declarations about who could be leaders or members of churches, they asked the churches and their leaders to declare Hitler as the head of the church.
Before Jesus talks about talking following him and not the world, he has this rough interaction with Peter.
Jesus asks the disciples who the crowds say Jesus is, and then who the disciples say Jesus is. Peter says the Messiah, the savior, the one who will bring wholeness to the community, to individuals, to creation.
Jesus then tells the disciples that he would be arrested, tortured, killed, and raised on the 3rd day.
Peter says, “No, let’s not do that. That’s a terrible plan.”
And Jesus said, “Get behind me tempter, get in line, follow me and not the way of the world.”
Take up your cross and follow.
Following the way of the world is to lose your way.
To follow the way of Christ is to live in this life, to gain abundance, and wholeness.
This was the Confessing Church–the church that confesses Christ as the head of the church, not the state.
It was just the beginning. Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a splinter in the side of the state, at the very least an annoyance. It certainly was one of the reasons that he was on the list when they went to round up political dissidents.
With all these experiences, Bonhoeffer wrote Discipleship. He wrote of cheap grace–grace that didn’t cost anything, that doesn’t ask anything of you, or that you have accepted and not followed the way of Jesus, not taken up the cross. Because the other is costly grace–grace that asks things of you, that cost Jesus his life, that suffers for justice, that lives counter to the ways of the world. We strive to peace but that doesn’t mean it is going to be easy. He writes that when Jesus calls us come and follow, he bids us come and die–die to the ways of this world, to selfishness, to self-serving, to individualist thinking, to scapegoating the other, to using others, to passivity. And live in the way of love, justice, abundance, hope, community, action, compassion.
He did not hesitate to speak truth, justice, compassion, to the people and to power. His faith, his following Christ, his taking up the cross was about living fully in this world and name it’s trouble and evil.
The other way, there was an overturning of the Johnson Amendment–it was put in place to restrict non-profits from endorsing particular candidates, particularly when it came to giving money, but it technically included churches.
There have been many churches who have used it as a reason to not talk about politics at all, as a way to stay above the fray, to really stay away from trouble. Maybe out of fear, some churches have stayed silent on issues when we should have spoken up.
In Bonhoeffer’s time, the Confessing Church failed at its mission, the German church became the German National Church. It stayed silent when there was suffering, when there was abuse, when there was evil.
Here’s the thing, I don’t think we’re going to change our way of doing things–we are political but not partisan.
But we cannot stay silent in the face of evil. We cannot look at suffering and call it good. We cannot see injustice and do nothing. We cannot let the powers define the church. We cannot continue to follow the ways of the world and still claim Christ. You cannot claim Christ and nationalism. To be a nationalist is not take up Christ’s cross, and to not follow him.
It may mean losing something, some people… you may have to let some things go.
But we cannot follow Christ and ignore genocide in Gaza. We cannot follow Christ and support deporting without due process, internment or concentration camps because of one’s skin color, budgets that cut resources for the poor, the disabled, the elderly, the young. We cannot stay silent.
The great Mandy Petinkin was asked about Israel and Gaza, and he cited his great film character Inigo Mentoyo–at the end of the Princess Bride, Indigo was asked what he would do now, and he said, he had been in the revenge business for so long, he didn’t know what to do with the rest of his life–being in the revenge business had changed him. Mr. Petinkin was wondering what this genocide in Gaza was going to make of the Jewish people, his people.
And we could say the same. In these days, in these struggles, in these times, what is the Christian church going to be come? Who will be when it is all over? The Church in Germany is still trying to come to terms with how it responded in the face such evil.
The strange thing about Bonhoeffer in these days is that everyone is claiming him as the representative of their cause–those who what to claim him as a martyr who spoke truth to justice in the face of evil, who preached justice and empathy, who reminded the believers that following Jesus can be difficult, costly, and fulfilling.
And, Bonhoeffer was invoked in the introduction of Project 2025 to support Nationalism and to justify violence, as if Bonhoeffer loaded and carried a gun to kill Hitler.
They ask the question: Are we in a Bonhoeffer moment? Do we need to join a resistance? an assassination attempt? start a new church?
Those who study Bonhoeffer, professionally, suggest that that is the wrong question. Instead we ought to ask: Who is Christ for us today?
What does it mean to call Christ messiah in our time?
What does it mean to call Christ the head of the church in our days?
Who is Christ on the cross today?
Who is being killed like Christ?
Who is suffering like Christ?
Who is vulnerable, struggling, marginalized?
Who is Christ for us today?
And then, what does it mean to follow that Christ? To take up the cross that Christ is carrying and follow where ever it might lead us.