Given at First Congregational Church of San Francisco
Sunday, January 27, 2002
Rev. Wilfried Glabach
minister@sanfranciscoucc.org
 

Do you remember our German service in October last year? Maybe you'll remember that it was on October 31st 1517 that Martin Luther nailed the 95 theses on the door of the Wittenberg Castle church. His intent was to open a public debate over the issue of indulgences. It was only this issue Luther wanted to  talk about: indulgences and salvation. The  concern for other theological issues came later. But his theses were the start for splintering the church into hundreds of denominations.

Today I would like to talk about Dietrich Bonhoeffer. In a few days, on February 4, is his birthday. 1906 he was born along with his twin sister Sabine in Breslau, Silesia. Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a Lutheran Pastor in Germany prior to World War II. He studied theology in Tubingen, New York and at the University of Berlin, where I have been also in 1999. There he was concerned with systematic theology, especially the work of Karl Barth, an important Protestant theologian from Switzerland, who was teaching in Bonn. When Bonhoeffer came to New York to study at Union Theological Seminary 1930 to 1931  he wrote to a friend in Germany that he did not find much theology in the United States of America. He found Americans  to be lazy thinkers and not well trained systematicans. Americans don't do theology like Germans do, he said (I also have my opinion about it…) He said the Americans were concerned with the "social Gospel." For them the gospel needed to be practical and applicable to the social concerns facing the nation. The gospel, they said, needs to result in service to the community. After his time in New York Bonhoeffer went back to Berlin, where he worked as a professor at university. 

Bonhoeffer served as curate for a German church in Barcelona, Spain, and worked in churches in Sydenham and London, Great Britain. Bonhoeffer's early travel to Rome, the time in Barcelona and New York, travels to Mexico and Cuba opened him to the ecumenical worldwide church.   Before the rise of the Nazi dictatorship, Bonhoeffer was concerned for the German church. He found the church lacking in passion and ignorant of biblical scripture. There was a growing nationalism in Germany after the lost World War I, and the mainline church was supporting it. With the rise of the Third Reich, Bonhoeffer found himself in even more opposition to the German mainline church.  "We especially deplore the fact that the state measures against Jews in Germany have had such an effect on public opinion that in some circles the Jewish race is considered a race of inferior status," he wrote. "We protest against the resolution of the Prussian Synod and other Synods which apply the Arian Paragraph of the state of the church…"

Bonhoeffer's position against the state church lead to a split. There was a nationally supported church on one side. And there was a second church called the "confessing church", a group of Lutherans who left the state church because of its close ties with the Nazis. This "confessing church" was organized in May 1934 at Wuppertal-Barmen, Germany in the Rhineland (the Barmen Declaration is still very important in many churches; pastors were ordained on it…) For this church Bonhoeffer formed a new seminary, one that would train pastors for a different kind of church. He was not only a teacher and a pastor, but a significant voice for the confessing church. Because he was outspoken about German political policy he got word that the was slated to be arrested at a concentration camp. The confessing church worked quickly to get him out of Germany and he returned to the United States of America. But already as he traveled by ship to New York he began to ponder his return to his country. He felt that he was abandoning the country that he loved in this difficult time of uncertainty and ambiguity. He felt he needed to be there to speak a dissenting and open word.

In 1939, the year when World War II began, Bonhoeffer started working on a book that would later be titled "ETHICS". He continued to work on it even after he returned to Germany during the war. Meanwhile he was facing his own ethical  dilemma, what role should he play while Germany was sacking the countries of Europe?  He friend from the World Council of Churches in Geneva, Switzerland asked him, "What do you pray for these days?" Bonhoeffer answered, "I pray for the defeat of my nation, for I believe that is the only way to pay for the suffering which my country has caused in the world… If we claim to be Christians there is no room for expediency. Adolf Hitler is the Antichrist; therefore we must go on with our work and eliminate him."  

Bonhoeffer faced an ever increasing moral dilemma. The confessing church had taken a stand against violence and he was working with another resistance movement to plot the assassination of Hitler. He knew that if they were successful he would never again work as a pastor. If they were unsuccessful he was not likely to be alive. All the while  he continued to write his book on Ethics. Two attempts on Hitler's life were  managed by the resistance. Bonhoeffer helped planning both of them.

Both failed and Bonhoeffer and others were arrested immediately. He spent two years in prison. During that time he wrote quite a lot and continued his studies. Those notes have been compiled in a book titled "LETTERS AND PAPERS FROM PRISON." 

Our readings today talk about becoming and being a disciple. In Matthew 4 we hear about the first disciples. And in John 8:31 Jesus says "If you continue in my word, you are my disciples; and you will know the truth and the truth will make you free." The disciples answered him: "We are descendants of Abraham and have never been slaves to anyone . What do you mean by  saying, YOU WILL BE MADE FREE?"

The tension is being a disciple between freedom and slavery. Jesus says to the disciples, that to know the truth is to be free. But what does Jesus mean with  being slaves to anyone? Slavery and freedom is a major theme in the Old Testament. The people of Israel left slavery in Egypt, later they were brought to Babylon to live in exile. What did they mean by asking "We have never been slaves?" Have they forgotten an important part of their history?

We are really in a similar situation. None of us have been slaves, right? We are not in a situation where people hold power over us, are we in a situation where someone else can tell us what to do?

I know freedom is very  important , especially in America. We like to think of ourselves as entirely free. For us freedom means that we can do what we choose as long as it doesn't affect someone else's freedom, true? But maybe we are not as free as we think. Are you able to work half of your time so that you will have more time for yourself or your partner? Are you able to sell your house and live more simply?  When we think of it in those terms we all have masters. They may be different, but each of us is enslaved in some way. Do you feel free to walk away from your friends? Do you feel free to make major changes in your life? When you hear Jesus' call to discipleship - sell what you have, give the money to the poor and then come and follow me, do you feel free to do that? When we have things that we cannot or will not leave behind then we have to wonder, who is the slave and who is the master?

Isn't it ironic, that while we consider ourselves free we have very little freedom to change the circumstances in which we presently see ourselves? The other irony is that the people who proclaim radical freedom are often the one who are most hated. Jesus was killed because he proclaimed a radical freedom, freedom from the Jewish law, freedom to serve only God. You remember, Luther was excommunicated because he proclaimed radical freedom, freedom from indulgences and freedom from a church that said you had to pay for your salvation. Bonhoeffer was killed because he said that people should be free from Nazi oppression and that Jews should be able to live in freedom.

The irony is that those who are free instantly become more powerful than those who hold on to power. Bonhoeffer was more free in prison than many of the Germans who lived in their houses and never questioned the Third Reich. Bonhoeffer has chosen a path that matched his conscience.

Jesus proclaimed a radical freedom. It is a freedom that allows us to find ourselves not in what we can produce, not in how much money we make, or in what we are able to accumulate. We are free to find ourselves as children of God - loved, accepted, forgiven, free. 

On Sunday April 8th, 1945, Bonhoeffer had just a worship service, when two soldiers came in, saying, "Prisoner Bonhoeffer, make ready and come with us," the standard summons to a condemned prisoner. As he left, he said to another prisoner, "This is the end - but for me, the beginning- of life." Bonhoeffer was hanged the other morning. Three weeks after his execution Hitler committed suicide and the camps were liberated by the Allies.  "And when this cup you give is filled to brimming with bitter sorrow, hard to understand, we take it thankfully and without trembling, out of so good and so beloved a hand." (New Cent. Hymnal 413)

AMEN.