dietrich bonhoeffer

Death is Grace

~ P. Jason

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Whether we are young or old makes no difference. What are twenty or thirty or fifty years in the sight of God? And which of us knows how near he or she may already be to the goal? That life only really begins when it ends here on earth, that all that is here is only the prologue before the curtain goes up—that is for young and old alike to think about. Why are we so afraid when we think about death? . . . Death is only dreadful for those who live in dread and fear of it. Death is not wild and terrible, if only we can be still and hold fast to God’s Word. Death is not bitter, if we have not become bitter ourselves. Death is grace, the greatest gift of grace that God gives to people who believe in him. Death is mild, death is sweet and gentle; it beckons to us with heavenly power, if only we realize that it is the gateway to our homeland, the tabernacle of joy, the everlasting kingdom of peace. 

For Me the Beginning of Life

~ P. Jason

Bonhoeffer
Eric Metaxas  

Dr. Pünder asked Bonhoeffer to hold a service for them. Pünder was Catholic, as were a number of others. This, and the fact that Kokorin was an atheist, caused Bonhoeffer to demur. He didn’t wish to impose. But Kokorin himself insisted. So less than twenty-four hours before he left this world, Bonhoeffer performed the offices of a pastor. In the bright Schönberg schoolroom that was their cell, he held a small service. He prayed and read the verses for that day: Isaiah 53:5 (“With his stripes we are healed”) and 1 Peter 1:3 (“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! By his great mercy we have been born anew to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead” RSV). He then explained these verses to everyone. Best recalled that Bonhoeffer “spoke to us in a manner which reached the hearts of all, finding just the right words to express the spirit of our imprisonment and the thoughts and resolutions which it had brought.” The other prisoners in the schoolhouse hoped that they might be able to get Bonhoeffer to hold a service for them as well. But there would not be any time for this. Best described what happened: He had hardly finished his last prayer when the door opened and two evil-looking men in civilian clothes came in and said: “Prisoner Bonhoeffer. Get ready to come with us.” Those words “Come with us”—for all prisoners they had come to mean one thing only—the scaffold. We bade him good-bye—he drew me aside—“This is the end,” he said. “For me the beginning of life.”

Powers of Good

~ P. Jason

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

With every power for good to stay and guide me,
comforted and inspired beyond all fear,
I’ll live these days with you in thought beside me,
and pass, with you, into the coming year.

The old year still torments our hearts, unhastening;
the long days of our sorrow still endure;
Father, grant to the souls thou hast been chastening
that thou hast promised, the healing and the cure.

Should it be ours to drain the cup of grieving
even to the dregs of pain, at thy command,
we will not falter, thankfully receiving
all that is given by thy loving hand.

But should it be thy will once more to release us,
to life’s enjoyment and it’s good sunshine,
that which we’ve learned from sorrow shall increase us,
and all our life be dedicate as thine.

Today, let candles shed their radiant greeting;
lo, on our darkness are they not thy light
leading us, haply, to our longed-for meeting?

Thou canst illumine even our darkest night.
When now the silence deepens for our hearkening,
grant we may hear the children’s voices raise
from all the unseen world around us darkening
their universal paean, in thy praise.

While all the powers of good aid and attend us,
boldly we’ll face the future, come what may.
At even and at morn God will befriend us,
and oh, most surely on each newborn day!

An Outrageous Demand

~ P. Jason

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Those who wish even to focus on the problem of a Christian ethic are faced with an outrageous demand—from the outset they must give up, as inappropriate to this topic, the very two questions that led them to deal with the ethical problem: ‘How can I be good?’ and ‘How can I do something good?’ Instead they must ask the wholly other, completely different question: ‘What is the will of God?’

Vast and Unavoidable

~ P. Jason

Psalms
Dietrich Bonhoeffer

It is not war that first brings death, not war that first invents the pains and torments of human bodies and souls, not war that first unleashes lies, injustice, and violence. It is not war that first makes our existence so utterly precarious and renders human beings powerless, forcing them to watch their desires and plans being thwarted and destroyed by more “exalted powers.” But war makes all of this, which existed already apart from it and before it, vast and unavoidable to us who would gladly prefer to overlook it all.

The Figure of the Crucified

~ P. Jason

Bonhoeffer
Eric Metaxas  

Hitler, to whom mercy was a sign of subhuman weakness, arranged for the French to sign the terms of their surrender in the forest of Compiegne on the very spot where they had the Germans sign the armistice in 1918…

Hitler and Germany had waited twenty-three years for this triumphant moment, and if ever Adolf Hitler became the Savior of the German nation, this was it. Many Germans who had reservations and misgivings about Hitler now changed their opinions. He had healed the unhealable wound of the First War and Versailles. He had restored a broken Germany to her former greatness. The old had passed way, and behold, he had made all things new. In many people’s eyes he was suddenly something like a god, the messiah for whom they had waited and prayed, and whose reign would last a thousand years…   

In his book Ethics, which he worked on during this time, Bonhoeffer wrote about the way people worship success:

In a world where success is the measure and justification of all things the figure of Him who was sentenced and crucified remains a stranger and is at best the object of pity. The world will allow itself to be subdued only by success. It is not ideas or opinions which decide, but deeds. Success alone justifies wrongs done…With a frankness and off-handedness which no other earthly power could permit itself, history appeals in its own cause to the dictum that the end justifies the means…The figure of the Crucified invalidates all thought which takes success for its standard. God was interested not in success, but in obedience.

A Quiet, Faithful Pastor

~ P. Jason

Bonhoeffer
Eric Metaxas  

By war’s end more than 80 of the 150 young men from Finkenwalde and the collective pastorates had been killed… 

Bonhoeffer wrote a circular letter to the brethren on September 20:

I have received the news, which I pass on to you today, that our dear brother Theodor Maass was killed in Poland on 3rd September. You will be as stunned by this news as I was. But I beg you, let us thank God in remembrance of him. He was a good brother, a quiet, faithful pastor of the Confessing Church, a man who lived from word and sacrament, whom God has also thought worthy to suffer for the Gospel. I am sure that he was prepared to go. Where God tears great gaps we should not try to fill them with human words. They should remain open. Our only comfort is the God of the resurrection, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who also was and is his God. In him we know our brothers and in him is the biding fellowship of those who have overcome and those who still await their hour. God be praised for our dead brother and be merciful to us all at our end.

A Press Reality and a Past History of Suffering

~ P. Jason

Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy
Eric Metaxas  

Bonhoeffer’s experiences with the African American community underscored an idea that was developing in his mind: the only real piety and power that he had seen in the American church seemed to be in the churches where there were a present reality and a past history of suffering. Somehow he had seen something more in those churches and in those Christians, something that the world of academic theology—even when it was at its best, as in Berlin—did not touch very much.