Freedom verses Fear

Note: This section was used as the introduction for my sermon on August 1st, "Jesus Teaching on Fear".

It was January of 1943 and the German theologian and pastor, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, had been poking his finger in the eye of the Nazi regime for a decade.

As each new law was passed that took away the humanity of the Jewish people, Bonhoeffer spoke openly and publicly against this brutal anti-Semitism.

When the German church sat passively and silently by when people with disabilities were taken away to be killed, Bonhoeffer founded the Confessing Church which spoke out against the state church.

When the German propaganda machine tried to keep the rest of the world in the dark about what was going on inside Germany, Bonhoeffer traveled throughout Europe exposing the actions of the Third Reich.

And when the hopes of a peaceful change in government did not happen, Bonhoeffer became a part of the resistance movement that tried several times to assassinate Adolph Hitler.

So, by early 1943, the German Gestapo was hot on the trail of the German pastor and theologian. Unknown to him, his phone was tapped, his movements were followed, and a case against him was coming together.

In the midst of this struggle, a very curious thing happened. Bonhoeffer fell in love and rather quickly became engaged to a woman named Maria von Wedemeyer.

The falling in love thing would not be unexpected for people of their age. But many people thought the engagement, for someone like him, was foolish and even dangerous for Maria.

Bonhoeffer’s friends and family did not know the full extent of his involvement in the German resistance. Even when he was arrested in April 1943, they thought he would be questioned and quickly released. When, in fact, he would never be released. Yet, they knew he was involved in something. And that by getting engaged, he was putting Maria in danger.

Why do that? Why not just wait for the war to be over like many other young people had decided?

For Bonhoeffer, allowing oneself to fall in love, choosing to get engaged, was an exercise in freedom. This was not merely freedom for freedom’s sake; it wasn’t a mere act of defiance in the face of a tyrannical government.

This was a freedom based on Bonhoeffer’s understand of who God is and what it meant to live as a Christian.

When friends and family asked him why he would get engaged at a time like this, his answer was that he was living into the freedom given to all of us by God. Bonhoeffer believed that as followers of Jesus Christ, living on this side of the resurrection, that our lives should be filled with freedom, joy, and beauty.

To live in any other way was to deny the present reality of Christ among us. Bonhoeffer believed that to allow oneself to be consumed or controlled by fear meant a failure to live into the life he had been given in Christ.

Even when he spent the last two years of his life in prison, he saw fear and pity as falling short of being the kind of person who had found life in Jesus Christ. Even in a Nazi prison in the midst of World War II, he found ways to live a life of freedom.