The Ground of My Being

In April 1943, the Gestapo caught up to the conspirator. Dietrich Bonhoeffer was arrested, without being formally charged, and sent to Tegel Prison. The Gestapo sent him to prison for his associations and teachings. At the time, they had not yet discovered his involvement in several assassination plots against Hitler.

Not only had the assassination plots failed, but Dietrich had recently become engaged.

Finding himself in prison, discouraged by failed plots, and fallen in love, one might expect to read of a forlorn or bitter man. Rather, Dietrich remained faithful to his spiritual disciplines. Through these disciplines, he found hope and even moments of joy.

Metaxas describes: “Bonhoeffer maintained the daily discipline of scriptural meditation and prayer he had been practicing for more than a decade… Once he got his Bible back he read it for hours each day. By November he had read through the Old Testament two and a half times. He also drew strength from praying the Psalms… Bonhoeffer once [taught]… it was all the more important to practice the daily disciplines when away, to give oneself a sense of grounding and continuity and clarity.” (438)

Bonhoeffer’s strength in prison did not come from a special gift of faith or courage. Rather, he found grounding, continuity, and clarity from over a decade of prayer, study, and meditation. These practices gave him light in the darkest of times. Like a well-conditioned athlete, Bonhoeffer could run with perseverance because he had been training for over a decade.

The storms of our lives are seldom forecast. When we unexpectedly find ourselves in the midst of darkness, what is the ground of our being that gives us clairity?


* Note: Bonhoeffer's reading of the Old Testament appears to me to be a subversive activity. In their effort to remove all things Jewish, the German government advocated removing the Old Testament. Dietrich's specific reading of these texts and praying of the Psalms was a protest against this anti-Semitism.

Conspirator or Compromiser?

Soon after Dietrich Bonhoeffer returned to Berlin, German tanks rode across Poland, Belgium, and France. Bonhoeffer was in a coffee shop when the news announced that Germany had conquered France—the country it had been defeated by in the First World War.

Everyone in the coffee shop erupted with nationalist pride and lifted their arms in the air to shouts of “heil, hitler.” Bonhoeffer did what everyone else did. The friend he was with in the coffee shop stared at him with his jaw open, wondering how Bonhoeffer could do such a thing. Dietrich leaned down and told him to stand up with everyone else—that there was greater work to be done which could not be sacrificed in a coffee shop.

It was at this point that his friend realized that Bonhoeffer had become a part of the conspiracy to get rid of Hitler.

And yet, to many people on the outside, they saw Bonhoeffer as one who compromised. Bonhoeffer had taken a job with the Abwehr (Germany Military Intelligence) and seemed to be living a life of comfort while others suffered. Although these critics were unaware of the clandestine work he was doing to get rid of Hitler, Bonhoeffer’s actions raise the question of how, as a people of faith, are we called to be amongst or against culture.

This question has existed from the first centuries of Christianity. For the early Christian, did it matter if they fulfilled the Roman law of pinching incense to the emperor? Did it matter if they ate meat sacrificed to a Roman god—if they knew that god didn’t exist? Or, as Christians, are we called to make a stand against idolatry and injustice, even if that means our own peril?

Bonhoeffer struggled with this question in his life. He came to the conclusion that the greater good would be accomplished, if, to some, he looked like a compromiser, while he lived as a conspirator.

How do we live in this tension? In what ways are we called to live a faith that goes against the world around us? Do we live out a life of justice, humility, and love of God? Or, do we compromise our faith?

Should I Stay or Should I Go?

By 1939, the situation in Germany had become dangerous for Dietrich Bonhoeffer. The seminary he began had been shut down because of its speaking out against the National Socialists. His Jewish friends and family members fled to Switzerland. Some of his fellow leaders in the Confessing Church were arrested and would not be freed until after the war. He had already been arrested and released for his teachings. A mandatory draft had been issued for people of his age—he faced the choice of being drafted or being executed.

Initially, Bonhoeffer took a third way. He secured a teaching position at Union Theological Seminary where he had taught nine years earlier. However, from the time he arrived back in New York City he was unsettled. The energy he found there nearly a decade earlier was gone. Moreover, he felt that he abandoned the cause of speaking up for those who had no voice in Germany.

Within a couple of weeks he would turn down the teaching position at Union and return to Berlin, knowing full well the threats and danger awaiting him. After making this decision, and while doing his daily devotional, Bonhoeffer wrote, “The reading again is so harsh. “He will sit as a refiner of gold and silver (Mal 3:3).” And it is necessary. I don’t know where I am. But he knows, and in the end all doings and actions will be pure and clear.”

How convicting is Bonhoeffer’s strength and courage in comparison to our comfort? He walks toward the refiner’s fire by the conviction of his faith. We try to avoid every conflict and slight discomfort. How do we know when to shake the dust off our feet and walk the other way and when to stand our ground?

The Impossible Task

Preaching is an impossible task. The message of God’s love and grace are so overwhelming that no sermon can do it justice. The most carefully crafted text and the most eloquently delivered message fall short.

And yet, even through the inadequacies of the stumbling preacher, there is power in the proclaimed Word. Something happens. A gift of grace is offered and lives are moved.

In 1932, Bonhoeffer wrote, “A truly evangelical sermon must be like offering a child a fine red apple or offering a thirsty man a cool glass of water and then saying: Do you want it?”

Later, Bonhoeffer taught his students, “We must be able to speak about our faith so that hands will be stretched out toward us faster than we can fill them.”

For Bonhoeffer, the Word proclaimed was “A ship loaded to the very limits of its capacity.” (Metaxas 272)

It is this ship, loaded down with grace, that is impossible to completely and perfectly articulate in the best of a 15 to 20 minute sermon.

And yet, it is that impossible task that has the power to offer a light in the darkness. Preaching is one of the means of grace that can touch a troubled soul and feed a hungry heart. Through preaching, God can take a message that fails to completely reveal the mystery and beauty of God’s nature to offer a word of hope.

While Bonhoeffer was speaking specifically about the Word preached from the pulpit, it has often been said that the Christian life is the only sermon many people will see. If this is true, how do our lives shine as a means by which people can find the answer to their needs? Perhaps it is through our broken and impossible lives that God’s grace can be at work offering healing in a hurting world.

Living the Sermon

Throughout much of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s life, Jesus’ teaching found in the Book of Matthew, Chapters 5-7, known as “The Sermon on the Mount,” carried great significance. Bonhoeffer mentions the Sermon on the Mount continuously and uses it to shape how he lived his life and how he envisioned the church.

In a letter to his brother, Karl-Friedrich, Dietrich writes, “I think I am right in saying that I would only achieve true inner clarity and honesty by really starting to take the Sermon on the Mount seriously. Here alone lies the force that can blow all of this idiocy sky high—like fireworks, leaving only a few burnt out shells behind.” (Metaxas 260)

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus calls on his disciples to live in a way that is often counter to what is found in the rest of the world: to see the poor as blessed, to turn the other cheek, to love the enemy, to deny self through fasting, to put away judgment and worry.

It is these things that Bonhoeffer seeks to base his own identity and life around.

It is these things that Bonhoeffer seeks to base the church around.

In effect, Bonhoeffer says in the above quote, that it is this kind of humility and life lived that has the power to change the world.

How could our world be changed if we set aside our desires for power, vengeance, and getting ahead, and sought to truly take seriously Jesus’ words and live out the Sermon on the Mount?

Making Christ Counterfeit

It is easy to read Dietrich Bonhoeffer as the man who pointed to the complicity and the compromises of the German Church during the Nazi era.

While Bonhoeffer railed against a church that said nothing as Jewish people were denied their basic human rights and even enforced rules of pure Aryanism for their own clergy, Bonhoeffer’s criticism did not end there.

He was critical of the church in its better forms. He was critical of the Confessing Church which he founded.

Bonhoeffer’s fear was that church, even his church, had already become an institution of religiosity, instead of a gathering of people who dedicated themselves to living in the way of Christ. This is what he thought was missing from people’s lives—the daily living out of the faith, dying to self, living to Christ, in every moment and in every area of life. Metaxas summarizes by saying that “one’s faith must be shining and bright and pure and robust.” Anything short of this not only resulted in little more than institutional religion, but fell short of who Christ is. A compromised life turned Christ into “a tawdry man-made counterfeit.” (248)

It doesn’t take a prophetic voice to say that so much of our Christian lives today are filled with compromise and counterfeit. Polls indicate that over 90 or even 95 percent of Americans claim a belief in God. And yet, the society around us bears little fruit of those statistics. Among Western nations, the United States has one of the highest percentages of people in jail. By watching our actions and reading our advertising, our temple seems to be consumerism and achieving possessions, positions, and power more than humbling ourselves before God.

While the complicity of our faith and culture are not new, what Bonhoeffer points to is that not only do we compromise ourselves and the church, but our actions compromise Christ. Many times, our actions are the only Christ that others see. People see Christ through us.

What do they see? A life dedicated to doing good, avoiding harm, and loving God? Or do they see a life that looks like everything else in the world around them? Do they only see the counterfeit and not the Christ?

Faith Lived versus Believed

Throughout Christian history there has been a tension between faith as a matter of a series of beliefs and faith as a life lived.

A student of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s tells the story of a time the professor took his students for a camping trip in 1933. While traveling through the woods, they came across a family in search of food. Bonhoeffer asked if the children were fed—the father replied, “Not so much.” Dietrich asked permission to take the children with him, fed them, and brought them back.

This is what the Christian faith looks like.

As important as our creeds and traditions are they pale in comparison to our actions.

Jesus spent very little time teaching people the right things to think but constantly urged right action.

Being a follower of Jesus Christ is about more than acknowledging Jesus’ historical existence—it is about following in the way of Christ.

One of the greatest joys in my ministry is the time I spend every week in our “Helping Hands” ministry where we give lunches, bus passes, clothing, and toiletries to homeless people. The greatest joy does not come in simply handing someone a lunch, but the real joy comes in the relationships formed, the prayers shared, and in building community beyond the church walls.

In feeding the hungry (physically, emotionally, and spiritually) we are the ones who are fed with the greatest banquet feast of all.

How many people are searching? How many are like the 1933 family searching for food in the woods? People are searching, not only for literal food, but for meaning, purpose, and identity.

The Christian faith has often been described as one beggar telling another where to find bread. As a people of faith, we have an amazing aromatic bakery, filled beyond capacity, to share with a hungry world.

It is in that sharing that our faith finds its deepest meaning.

Who Needs Who?

Who Needs Who?

Author Eric Metaxas tells the story of one of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s first students, a man named Wolf-Dieter Zimmermann. Zimmerman was present at Bonhoeffer’s first lecture at Berlin University in 1932 and recalled hearing the following words, “…we often ask ourselves whether we still need the Church, whether we still need God. But this question, he said, is wrong. We are the ones who are questioned. The Church exists and God exists, and we are asked whether we are willing to be of service, for God needs us.” (Metaxas 125)

In this opening lecture, Bonhoeffer makes a provocative statement that has great relevance today. For the last century, and more, modern society has questioned the relevance of the church. Often, the basis of these questions center on the ability of the church to meet our needs. We treat the church with a consumer mentality—assessing the church in the way we would a health club, a restaurant, or a department store.

Bonhoeffer calls on us to see something greater. Not the church with a little “c”, but the Church with a capital “C”--the proper noun Church. Not the church on the corner that is a beautiful building where people gather once a week, but the Church as something created by God, united in Christ, called together by God’s Holy Spirit.

The Church as the body of Christ, active in the world.

Bonhoeffer teaches that the Church exists, because God exists. The role of this Church is to discern how it can be about God’s work in the world, for, as Bonhoeffer says, God needs us.

Why does God need us?

We have often heard that we need God as the means by which we receive forgiveness, hope, comfort, and salvation.

But why would an all-powerful, all-present, all-loving God need fragile and broken people like us?

I believe it is because God has chosen to use us as a means of grace. Think of the Risen Christ, standing on the lakeshore, making Peter breakfast, and asking “If you love me, feed my sheep.” (John 21)

God needs us to be a light in the darkness, a hope in a troubled world, a hand that offers a cup of cold water to the thirsty.

God needs us—and when we are about God’s work—that is the fullest meaning of Church.

So the question we need to ask ourselves is whether we are willing to be more than a member of the church, but to fully be the Church—alive, active, and about God’s work in the world.

What is Church?

What is Church?

For Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the question, “What is Church,” occupied much of his thought and scholarship. The question began to bounce around in his mind during the young man’s trip to Rome, served as the center for his doctoral dissertation, and informed his ecumenical vision.

For Bonhoeffer, the radical nature of this question came in how he understood the church. For most German-Lutherans in the 1920s and 1930s, membership in the church was tied to identities of language, heritage, and even nationalism. To be a member of the church was not to see one’s self as a worldwide “communion of saints” that transcended race and culture, but, to see one’s self as part of a distinictive state institution.

For 21st century people, living in the United States, this connection between church and state may be difficult to completely comprehend. Yet, it is the same thing that Soren Kierkegaard wrote about years before when he declared “Christianity no longer exists.” Kierkegaard’s comment was not a theological assessment on the existence of God, but a commentary on the efficacy of state religion. The gap between the Christ of faith and the practice of religion was so wide that Kierkeegard no longer saw the church as a means of grace.

Bonhoeffer remained more optimistic than Kierkegaard, understanding the church as an institution both created by God and, at the same time, a part of the world. Bonhoeffer understood church as a place of both proclamation and fellowship. But, above all else, he understood the church as centered in Christ. In his travels to the United States, Bonhoeffer was puzzled at churches that he assessed as little more than social clubs or charity institutions—but institutions that offered little gospel.

It is difficult for me to assess whether this remains the case in many churches today. Having responsibilities in the church I serve every Sunday, I don’t have a lot of opportunity to experience churches other than my own—or to hear sermons outside of the one’s I preach. A definite limitation of the job.

Nonetheless, the question, “What is Church,” remains an essential one. What are we doing, what are we about, in the church? Is the church merely a social organization where we throw our arms around the necks of old friends? Surely fellowship is important, but it cannot be the sole function of the church. Is the church merely a humanitarian organization? Surely service is important, but we must be more than another organization trying to make the world a better place. Is the church merely here to validate our existence? Surely we can know that we (and all people) are created in God’s image and surrounded by God’s grace, but church must be about more than us.

For Bonhoeffer, church begins with God. Church is not about who we are or who we are trying to become, it is about God. In 1933, he writes “God, the living Christ, founded the community; it is his people called from the world by his Word, bound to him as the sole Lord in faith, bound to their brothers [and sisters] in love.”

This is church: the community founded by God, in which the people of God are nurtured, equipped, and sent into the world as the people of God--for the transformation of the world.

When we speak of issues of God, faith, and church may we always remember to begin with God.