The Waking Dreamer: Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Showing posts with label Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Show all posts

Wednesday, September 02, 2026

In the Face of Evil

Romans 12:9-21[1]

Our world is a beautiful one. The presence of God’s love shines through so much of our world. Focusing on the beauty of the earth helps us find joy in the goodness of creation. But our world also includes a disturbing presence. We have word for it. We call it “evil.” I’m not sure we even know what that word means any longer, to be honest. Many of us live our lives without really having to come face-to-face with evil on a day-to-day basis. We know it’s there but may not even recognize evil in our very own community. On the other hand, some of us have been so deeply affected by evil that it has always defined our lives. That’s a tragedy. Most of the people I know who live with the lingering effects of evil are doing everything in their power to set themselves free from it. And that’s a good thing. But make no mistake, we live in a world that includes evil.

To some extent, “evil” is a matter of perspective these days. Is it “evil” to take unfair advantage of someone in a business deal? Sadly, I think the answer these days depends on which side of the deal you’re on! Most people will say that it’s “evil” to deprive a person of their life savings simply to ensure a “win” in the stock market. Most people also agree that the violence that takes innocent lives is “evil.” Especially when it’s “murder.” But when it’s “collateral damage” in the context of war, we may not take it so seriously. It may take the violence of war touching your life directly for you to use the word “evil” for the violence of war. I guess I would say any violence that takes innocent lives is always evil in my opinion!

In our lesson from Paul’s letter to the Romans for today, he addresses the issue of how we as followers of Jesus Christ should respond to the evil in our world. It’s one of the more difficult teachings of the Bible: in effect Paul says, “don’t repay evil with evil but rather with good”! Perhaps the first step for us to try to live out this principle is to become aware of what is truly evil in our world. Unfortunately, I think things have gotten pretty confused here. We tend to see the “evil” that is far away from us. We may not even know the people we’re pointing the finger at, but we label them “evil,” whether rightly or wrongly. But when it comes to the “evil” that lies at our front door, or lies within us, we tend to turn a blind eye. We do that because it feels safer that way, I think. It’s certainly more convenient for us.

Jesus took a different approach: he called “evil” out where he saw it. And he saw it not in the failings of the people who were labelled “sinners” or “outcasts” or “other.” He called out “evil” when he saw people with power and privilege using that power and privilege to take advantage of others in such a way that they were doing real harm to them. I would say things haven’t changed much on that score. All too often, the “evil” that Jesus called out was being perpetrated by the leaders of his day, including the religious leaders. It’s hard for us to swallow, but I know for a fact that there are religious leaders who have so abused their position that they have done real harm. And all too often, they have done it in Jesus’ name!

One of the reasons why Paul’s teaching about how to respond to evil is so difficult for us is because Paul is following Jesus! He’s most certainly referring to Jesus’ teaching when he says, “Bless those who persecute you. Don’t curse them; pray that God will bless them” (Rom 12:14, NLT). Jesus taught his disciples in the Sermon on the Mount to love their “enemies” and to pray for those who mistreated them (Mt 5:44; Lk 6:27-28). But there’s more to it. When Paul says, “Never pay back evil with more evil,” he’s not only following Jesus’ explicit teaching not to “resist an evildoer” (Mt 5:39), even when they strike you, even when they try to take away your most basic necessities! Paul’s going back to the original command to “love your neighbor as yourself” in Leviticus. The beginning of that verse in the original Old Testament context says, “You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge … but you shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Lev 19:18)! The Bible is full of passages that resound with the same approach: don’t repay evil with evil, but rather with good!

I’ll be the first to admit that goes against the grain for most of us. Our tendency is to resist evil; we want to take the side of the victims and rush to their protection. But Paul follows Jesus and the witness of Scripture when he tells us not to resist evil, but to seek to redeem evil. I think his words reflect the wisdom that when we respond to evil with force, we only give it more power. It’s impossible to avoid the truth that “fighting fire with fire” leads inevitably to the point where we become what we’re fighting.[2] When that happens we’ve abandoned the love that God wants us to practice in the world so that we can take part in his work of redeeming the world!

I think one of the hard truths that Jesus and Paul are trying to get across to us is that only a love that is willing to suffer has the power to truly overcome evil and redeem it.[3] That’s hard to take in. But that is precisely the response God made to evil in Jesus Christ. As Frederick Buechner says, “Christianity … ultimately offers no theoretical solution [to the problem of evil]. It merely points to the cross and says that, practically speaking, there is no evil so dark and so obscene—not even this—but that God can turn it to good.”[4] We may not like it, it’s hard for us to hear, but one of the lessons of the cross is that there really is no other way to solve the problem of evil in this world! Only the willingness to respond to hostility with peace, to respond to hatred with forgiveness, to respond to violence with love, can redeem evil.[5]

That all sounds fine and good, but the question has practical dimensions that we all have to face. When someone breaks into my home and threatens to harm me or my family, what am I supposed to do? It’s a difficult question. I probably can’t answer that question for anyone but myself. But what I know is that when it comes to facing these difficult decisions, asking “What would Jesus do?” always leads me in the right direction. For myself, I would say that I would consult with home safety experts about finding ways to protect myself or my loved ones without resorting to violence. But that’s my answer to a question that’s a very personal one. At the end of the day we all have to come up with our own answers to those very personal and practical questions about how we’re going to respond to evil in our world. But we must remind ourselves that the whole Bible, from Moses to the Psalms to Jesus to the Apostles, teaches us not to repay evil with evil, but rather to respond to evil in a way that can turn it to good.

[2] Cf. John Calvin, Commentary on the Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Romans, 477, where he says that the one who “attempts to overcome evil with evil, may perhaps surpass his enemy in doing injury, but it is to his own ruin.”

[3] Jürgen Moltmann, “Love and Sorrow,” in The Gospel of Liberation, 74-75; cf. also Jürgen Moltmann, The Church in the Power of the Spirit, 284, where he refers to Dietrich Bonhoeffer's ideal of a "religionless Christianity" that eschews the "religious" tendency many Christians have had to look to God for "magical" intervention (like a deus ex machina), and therefore tends to be so "otherworldly" as to neglect God's redemptive purpose for the world. Instead, he advocates for a "godly worldliness" in which the effort to "seek first the kingdom of God" leads to a love that shares the sufferings of this world as "God's suffering over the world." Moltmann concludes, "the way of life in the messianic era is stamped by messianic suffering. It is hardly ever recognizable in any other way, for "dying, and behold we live" (alluding to 2 Cor 4:10). See further Jürgen Moltmann, The Way of Jesus Christ, 204: “Anyone who participates in ‘Christ’s sufferings’” becomes a witness “to the coming truth against the ruling lie, to coming justice and righteousness against the prevailing injustice, and to coming life against the tyranny of death.”

[4] Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking, 24.

[5] Cf. N. T. Wright, “The Letter to the Romans,” in New Interpreters Bible 10: 715, where he says that God’s people are to meet the evil in the world “in the way that even God met it: with love and generous goodness.”

Wednesday, September 04, 2024

Training

Ephesians 6:10, 13-21[1]

As I mentioned last week, anyone who’s made the effort to learn a skill knows that it takes practice. But those of us who’ve been serious about trying to learn that skill know that it also takes training. I’ve learned that lesson in my on-again, off-again career as an amateur guitar player. I started trying to play guitar back in 1979. I went off to college that year, setting about teaching myself how to play guitar. I learned some chords, and I could play well enough to lead camp songs, but that was about as far as it went. And it didn’t take long before my guitar sat in a corner mostly unplayed.

Twenty years later I decided to try again to learn to play guitar. This time I took lessons. I started with classical lessons, because I wanted to learn to play the notes on the guitar, not just the chords. I did that for about a year and a half. Life’s changes interrupted my classical lessons, but I kept at it. Several years later, I decided I wanted to learn to play an electric guitar also. The technique is quite different. So I started taking weekly lessons. I did that for about five years. I learned a lot about basic technique. I learned to play some solos, like the one from “Hotel California.” More importantly, I learned something about the music theory behind Blues and Jazz, and I learned to improvise a bit. I still have a lot to learn about playing guitar. But I know that I wouldn’t have gotten anywhere without some training.

We’ve been talking a lot lately about what it looks like to try to live the Christian life. In his letter to the Ephesians, St. Paul has urged us to “lead a life worthy of your calling” (Eph 4:1, NLT). And we learned over the last several weeks that we demonstrate the quality of our faith by the quality of our relationships. We saw that Paul gets uncomfortably specific about what that looks like. And we heard him encourage us to conduct our relationships in such a way that we seek to do good to others, and not to harm, we try to help others, not hurt them, and we look for ways to give to others, rather than trying to take from them. And last week we discussed what it looks like to “live wisely, and not foolishly” (Eph 5:15, CEB) by practicing things like honoring God, and gratitude, and respect for others. And as we have been discussing all along, this way of life takes constant practice.

But I would suggest that living the Christian life also takes training. It’s not something that we can just teach ourselves. We learn to live this way over time, over years and even decades of training and practice. St. Paul alludes to this training in our lesson for today. He uses the analogy of a soldier equipped for battle, with armor, a shield, and even a weapon. These days, using military analogies for the Christian life can be troubling. Unfortunately, throughout the ages too many Christians have taken the “battle” image Paul uses here too literally. And that makes it hard for us to compare a life that seeks to follow Jesus with warfare. But I think the main point of this passage is that it takes training to prepare for living the Christian life.

If we recognize that Paul is using the image of a soldier to encourage us to engage in training, perhaps we can learn something from this passage without endorsing any kind of violence in the name of Jesus. Take, for example, his encouragement to “Let the truth be like a belt around your waist, and let God’s justice protect you like armor” (Eph. 6:14, CEV). I think this suggests one area of training for the Christian life. It has to do with learning to discern and follow God’s will as you understand it. That’s something that takes training, and even discipline. We have to commit to it like a learning a musical instrument, or developing athletic skills, or following a fitness regimen. We commit to seeking to determine the right thing to do, in so far as it is humanly possible. And we try to do the right thing, again in so far as it is humanly possible.

A second line of training may be suggested by Paul’s call for us to “Let your faith be like a shield” and to “Let God's saving power be like a helmet” (Eph 6:16-17, CEV). The good news about our salvation by grace and the hope of the coming kingdom of God is not easy to understand. This suggests another area of training for the Christian life. We have to make an effort to dig into what the gospel means for us and for our lives. That includes Bible study. And Bible study starts with reading the Bible on a regular basis.[2] I think that’s what Jesus was talking about when he called people to “eat” his flesh as the bread of life. He was talking about ingesting his words, meditating on them, internalizing them, and remaining attentive to God’s voice. But we all need help understanding what we’re reading and hearing in the Bible. That’s where organized study comes in. We can participate in a group Bible Study. We can also read books that help make the gospel more understandable and more real to us. I find that helpful after 40 years of study. There are some authors who make it all “come to life.”[3]

Paul suggests a third focus of training in the discipline of prayer. I like the way Gene Peterson renders it in The Message: “pray hard and long” (Eph 6:18). Prayer keeps us connected to God.[4] It’s a source of strength and wisdom. Prayer opens us to the resources that God provides to help us live the Christian life every day, especially when life gets hard. But prayer also opens us up to other people, especially when we pray for them. And we need to pray especially for the people who may be the most difficult for us to love. When we do, it opens our closed hearts and helps us to understand where people are coming from, even when they may do something we find hurtful. Prayer opens us up and helps us live the Christian life.

It takes practice to live the Christian life. I’m still practicing, still trying to learn how to get it right. But more than that, it takes training. When we try the do-it-yourself method of learning to live the Christian life, the results may be just as unreliable as when I tried to teach myself to play the guitar. We need training to learn how to discern God’s will and put it into practice in our lives, in so far as it is humanly possible. We need training to figure out what the right thing to do is, and to figure out how to try to do it. We need training to understand the good news about Jesus that is the foundation for living the Christian life. And we need training to learn how to “pray hard and long.” The Christian life is not a do-it-yourself project. It’s not something we can successfully achieve on our own. Just as I needed a teacher to learn to play the guitar, so we all need to look to those in the body of Christ who can train us in the disciplines that enable us to live the Christian life in the face of the real-life situations we deal with every day. And part of the good news about this is that every day is a day when we can start again to learn how to live our lives more like Christ.

[2] Cf. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together, Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, vol 5, 59-60: “brief passages cannot and must not take the place of reaching the Scripture as a whole. … The full witness to Jesus Christ the Lord can be clearly heard only in its immeasurable inner relationships, in the connection of Old and New Testaments, of promise and fulfillment, sacrifice and law, Law and Gospel, cross and resurrection, faith and obedience, having and hoping

[3] Cf. Henri Nouwen, Here and Now: Living in the Spirit, 72: “Reading in a spiritual way is reading with a desire to let God come closer to us. Most of us read to acquire knowledge or to satisfy our curiosity. … The purpose of spiritual reading, however, is not to master knowledge or information, but to let God’s Spirit master us.”

[4] Cf. Nouwen, Here and Now, 68: prayer is “the discipline that helps us to bring God back again and again to the center of our life.”

Sunday, September 12, 2021

The Gift is Free, but It's Not Cheap

The Gift is Free, But Not Cheap

Mark 8:27-38[1]

I think we all come to faith with assumptions about what it means to be a Christian. We may think it relates primarily to how we participate in church or our hope for eternal life. In my case, phrases like “abundant life” and “new life in Christ” appealed to my dreams for a happy home for my children. But our faith challenges us to think more deeply than our dreams about “the good life.” To put it bluntly, our faith means we have chosen to follow a man who was executed as a criminal, accused of insurrection. More than that, our faith challenges us to think about what it means to even call ourselves “Christian.” What should we expect of our lives if we dare to call ourselves by the name of a Christ who died a shameful death on the cross?[2] If we let that sink in, I think we have to admit that while the gift of new life in Christ is free, it’s not cheap!

We believe that God gives us the gift of his love freely, unconditionally, and irrevocably. It’s easy to take that gift for granted, thinking since God will love me no matter what, it doesn’t matter what I do. But the truth is that the gift of love did not come “cheaply” for God, it was quite costly. And that means that we cannot take it for granted. We have to consider what God’s costly gift in Jesus Christ means for us if we call ourselves “Christian.” If we say we’re going to follow a Christ who died on the cross, we have recognize that decision will be costly to us as well. And the cost is that we cannot simply live our lives however we please.

As we have seen before, that is the point of our Gospel lesson for today. Peter confessed that Jesus is the “Messiah,” but when Jesus began to teach them that meant he would have to die, it became obvious that Peter didn’t understand at all. Jesus knew that his path of obedience to God would lead him to die on a cross. In fact, he says that he “must” face rejection, great suffering, and ultimately death in order to carry out his role as the “Messiah.” The necessity behind this was that it was the only way for him to carry out God’s plan to offer unfailing love to all of us as a free gift. But that gift comes to us at great cost to God: it comes at the cost of Jesus’ life!

If that weren’t shocking enough, Jesus proceeded to teach his disciples that their obedience to God would lead them on the same path! He told them point blank: “those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it” (Mk 8:35). We know from history that some of the early Christians literally faced death for the sake of their faith in Jesus. While we don’t face death for our faith, we still have to figure out what it means for us to “lose” our lives for Jesus’ sake.

One who actually followed Jesus to the point of death was Dietrich Bonhoeffer. He was teaching theology at the University of Berlin when the Nazis took control of Germany in 1933. At great personal risk, he led a movement of Christians who resisted the idolatry of the Nazi movement. That movement produced the “Barmen Declaration” that is in our book of Confessions today, and reminds us that Jesus represents “God’s mighty claim upon our whole life” and our “joyful deliverance from the godless fetters of this world.[3] When war was imminent, Bonhoeffer initially fled to the safety of New York, but he almost immediately returned to Germany to continue leading the underground church and resisting the Nazis. He was imprisoned in Berlin in 1943 and executed along with other resistance leaders on April 9, 1945.

In the early years of the Nazi era when he was leading the underground church, Bonhoeffer wrote a book simply entitled “Discipleship.” There, he reflected on the tension between the fact that God’s gracious gift comes to us freely, but it is nevertheless costly. Bonhoeffer challenged what he called “cheap grace,” which for him meant grace as forgiveness that doesn’t change the way we live.[4] Bonhoeffer contrasted that with what he called “costly grace”: “it is costly, because it calls us to discipleship; it is grace, because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ. It is costly, because it costs people their lives; it is grace, because it thereby makes them live.”[5]

If we choose to accept God’s incredibly generous gift and follow Jesus as his disciples, we cannot simply pursue our own quest for “the good life.” The gift of God’s love demands the very best we have to give, throughout our lives. Jesus not only taught us, he showed us that the way to truly live is to give yourself away for the sake of others. If we refuse that choice because the price of surrendering our hopes and dreams is too high, the consequence is that we will lose the very heart and soul of what it means to really live. But if we have the courage to follow Jesus, we will find that the path of self-giving is the way to the life that God offers each and every one of us. That’s the wonderful gift God offers: it’s free, but it’s not cheap!

[2] Cf. Jürgen Moltmann, The Crucified God, 36-38: “Christians who do not have the feeling that they must flee the crucified Christ have probably not yet understood him in a sufficiently radical way.”

[3] “The Theological Declaration of Barmen,” The Book of Confessions (2016), 8.14 (p. 283).

[4] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Discipleship, (Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works 4), 43-44: “Cheap grace means grace as … cut-rate forgiveness; … grace without a price, without costs. … Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross.”

[5] Bonhoeffer, 45.

Sunday, February 28, 2021

A Cross-Shaped Life

Mark 8:31-38[1]

Most of us have some idea of the “shape” we want our lives to take. We all have hopes and dreams, desires and goals. Typically, we direct our hopes for our lives toward things that are good: our homes, our families, and our careers. We dream of building relationships that will last a lifetime. We long for work that is not only productive but also provides us with a livelihood. We plan for financial security so that we may retire comfortably and have the opportunity to pursue new interests. Because they are near and dear to our hearts, these are the things we cherish. Our hopes and dreams, our desires and goals shape our lives.

Seeking what we cherish most in life is only natural for us. And it is a good thing to pursue these good things. But as Christians, we have to recognize that we also have a higher claim on our lives. We are called to seek God with all our hearts, and to follow Christ in the way in which he consistently obeyed God. We are called to lay down our lives in service to others in the same way that Jesus laid down his life for us. That’s not the path most of us envision in our hopes and dreams, our desires and goals. Perhaps one of the greatest challenges we face as Christians is to figure out how to live our lives under the call of Christ to “deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow me.”

Our Gospel lesson for today marks a turning point in Jesus’ ministry. Up to that time, he had mostly occupied himself with proclaiming the good news—that he was truly bringing God’s kingdom of justice, peace, and freedom into people’s lives. That kind of language fired the hopes and dreams of Jesus’ first disciples, but their dreams were very different from what God had called Jesus to do. After Peter made a bold declaration of faith that Jesus was indeed the “Messiah” they had been waiting for, Jesus “burst” the bubble of their enthusiasm. He told them point-blank that “the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected …, and be killed” (Mk. 8:31). Peter’s shocked response only put into words that the others were thinking: this wasn’t what they had signed up for at all!

Jesus pressed the matter home by insisting that those who wanted to follow him must “deny themselves and take up their cross” (Mk. 8:34). I think at this point Jesus’ closest disciples must have been in a daze. They followed him, thinking that he was going to ascend the throne of David, throw off the yoke of the Romans, and restore the people of Israel to their former glory. And I’m quite sure they saw themselves playing an important role in that restored kingdom. Not only did he tell them that was not what he was called to do, he also told them that wasn’t what they were called to do!

Jesus knew that his path of obedience to God would lead him to die on a cross. What he revealed to his disciples at this point was that their obedience to God would lead them to follow him on that path! Some of the early Christians literally faced the same fate as he did.[2] The persecution they endured for their faith in many cases forced them to choose between their faith and their lives. And when the time came, many of them chose to go to their deaths for the sake of their faith in Jesus.

We don’t have to make that kind of sacrifice for the sake of our faith. But the call to “deny ourselves and take up our cross” still pushes us to think about our commitment to Christ in ways that may be uncomfortable. This language cuts so deeply against the grain of how we live I’m not sure we can even comprehend it! The kind of self-denial that Jesus calls us to practice means that we take all the things we cherish most in life, all our hopes and dreams, all our desires and goals, and we lay them all down at the feet of Jesus.[3]

What that means in actual practice is difficult to work out. For some, like Dietrich Bonhoeffer, it means that we make a break with all the ties and attachments we have in this life.[4] That’s what the call to follow Christ looks like for some. But those of us to are allowed to pursue our hopes and dreams in this life still have to figure out what it means to “deny ourselves.” I think part of the answer lies in recognizing that all those things we cherish most in life can lead us to become trapped in the prison of our own selfish interests.[5] But part of the answer also lies in being willing to give up what we cherish most to God, to recognize that “whether we live or die, we belong to the Lord” (Rom 14:5, NLT).

The plain but perhaps startling truth is that we are all called to make following Jesus the focus of our lives. This means “denying ourselves and taking up our cross.” It means devoting our time and energy not simply to fulfilling our own hopes and dreams, our own desires and goals.[6] It means following Jesus’ example by laying down our lives for the sake of serving others, especially those who are “least, and last, and left out” in this world. It means that the shape of our lives is determined by our commitment to follow Jesus on the path that leads to the cross.

[2] Cf. Harold W. Attridge and Adela Y. Collins, Mark, 408.

[3] John Calvin, in The Institutes of the Christian Religion, 3.7, defines self-denial in terms of recognizing that we are not our own, we belong to God. David Garland, Mark, 327 says it means learning to say “not my will but thine be done.”

[4] Cf. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Discipleship (DBW, vol. 4, 2001), 86-87. He does discuss the possibility (p. 93-97) that this break may be “visible” (actual) or “hidden,” meaning the disciple continues to live in the normal relationships of life.

[5] Cf. John Caputo, On Religion, 2-3, where he defines self-interest in terms of being “caught up in the meanness of self-love and self-gratification,” and people who “love nothing more than getting their own way and bending others to their will.”

[6] Cf. Luke Timothy Johnson, Learning Jesus, 200, where he insists that nowhere in the New Testament is there “an understanding of Christian discipleship compatible with a life devoted to one’s own success, pleasure, comfort, freedom from suffering, or power at the expense of others.”

Tuesday, November 21, 2017

Living for Jesus

Philippians 1:21-30[1]

No matter how far along the path of the Christian life we may find ourselves, I think we always face the challenge of dealing with our own self-interest. Try as we may, it seems to dog our steps all our days. There aren’t many of us who can truly get past concerns of our well-being, our safety, our health, or our financial security. These are matters that are basic to our experience of what it means to be human. We need love, shelter, health, safety, and the means to provide for our basic needs. I’m not sure what it would look like to be able to completely set our self-interest aside.

And yet, the New Testament consistently points to Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross for our sakes and calls us to follow his example. In the words of Jesus, we’re to deny ourselves, take up our crosses, and follow him (Mark 8:34). Dietrich Bonhoeffer famously interpreted this statement by saying, “Whenever Christ calls us, his call leads us to death.”^{^[2]} By that “death” he was referring to the self-denial that “means knowing only Christ, no longer knowing oneself.”^{^[3]} While Bonhoeffer was speaking of the ideal, I think it gets more complicated when it comes to the push and pull of the demands life in the real world makes.

I think that both Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Paul the Apostle knew how difficult it is to put into practice the call to follow Jesus. In our lesson from the letter to the church at Philippi for today, St. Paul writes as a man contemplating the end of his life. He was very likely in Rome, under house arrest, awaiting his day in court with Caesar. Whether the outcome of that trial would be life or death he did not know, but he considered the possibility that he might very well lose his life for the sake of his service to Christ. No one, not even Jesus, could face that prospect without some kind of struggle.

And yet, by the time Paul writes this letter to his dear friends in the church at Philippi, it seems he has already come to some kind of resolution of the crisis. In fact, the situation had created an internal conflict within him. As he relates to his friends, he was torn between the options of “departing and being with Christ” which he considered “far better” and “remaining in the flesh,” or continuing with his life of service, which he knew was “more necessary” for them (Phil. 1:23-24). Between the two, Paul reassures his friends that he is convinced that he will get through the crisis and continue to serve on their behalf.

At the beginning of all this, Paul makes a statement that may seem strange to us. He says, “For me, living is Christ” (Phil. 1:21). If we understand that purely from a theoretical standpoint, we might be able to grasp what he’s saying. One translation says it this way: “To me the only important thing about living is Christ.”^{^[4]} Another renders it this way, “For me, life finds all of its meaning in Christ.”^{^[5]} I think we can understand that Paul was so dedicated to the cause of Christ that it had become the sole purpose of his life. He found fulfillment by living for Jesus.

If that were as far as it went, I think we could all admire St. Paul for his sacrifice, his dedication, and his single-minded devotion to serving others for the sake of Jesus Christ. But I’m not so sure that’s all there is to it. For one thing, it makes it too easy for us to let ourselves off the hook for not being the kind of “super-Christian” that St. Paul was. More importantly, Paul makes it clear elsewhere that he meant for all of us to follow his example in serving others for the sake of Jesus with the same kind of devotion and sacrifice that he did. In fact, in another of his letters Paul says that Christ died for us “so that those who live might live no longer for themselves, but for him who died and was raised for them” (2 Cor. 5:15).

We, too, are to find the meaning of our lives in Christ. I think that’s why St. Paul said what he did: “For me, living is Christ.” To say that living is Christ goes beyond finding our highest fulfillment in living for Jesus. If we define our commitment to Jesus by saying “For me, living is Christ,” it means completely redefining all the ties we have relied on for meaning in life. To say, “For me, living is Christ” means leaving behind all that we might call our “old selves” in order to find new life in Christ. Living for Jesus in this sense means no more and no less than finding our life in Jesus Christ himself, and in him alone!^{^[6]}

In the push and pull of our daily lives, this may seem like an impossible ideal. Reality has a way of thwarting all our best intentions and diverting us from this kind of single-minded devotion to living for Jesus. But Christ’s call demands an answer: will we take up our cross and follow him or will we try to excuse ourselves due to the “conflicts” in our lives? If we want to say “For me to live is Christ,” I think it means that we renounce our ideas of self-sufficiency and find our true lives—and our true relationship with every facet of our lives—through the lens of our commitment to Christ. I’m not saying that it will be easy. It’s a perspective we must continually seek to learn. But I do believe that’s what it means to be the kind of people who are living for Jesus.

[2] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Discipleship, 87.

[3] Bonhoeffer, Discipleship, 86.

[4] Philippians 1:21, New Century Version

[5] Philippians 1:21, New International Reader’s Version

[6] Bonhoeffer, Discipleship, 62, 65, 74.

Wednesday, May 10, 2017

Costly Grace

Romans 5:1-11[1]

I think we are a people for whom God’s grace doesn’t make much sense. I mean, think about it: the whole idea is that God loves us just because he chooses to do so no matter what we do or don’t do to deserve it. That’s not something we “get” very easily. We’re wired to understand things like working hard to get somewhere in life; if anything is worth doing, it’s worth doing right; and you don’t just get handed whatever you want on a silver platter. But the idea that God—especially God—would grace us with his love simply because he chooses to do so is something of a stretch for most of us.

In our world, we’re much more comfortable with the idea that “God helps those who help themselves.”[2] I think many people view the Christian faith from this perspective—as if it were some kind of barter system, where we exchange going to church and helping the less fortunate and giving our income so that God will give us eternal life in paradise. It is the idea that we have to earn whatever we hope to receive from God’s hand in the end. And in fact, that idea has actually been endorsed at times by church leaders because it can be an effective way to motivate the flock. The fact that it turns salvation into an elaborate “pay-to-play” transaction doesn’t seem to matter to those who take that approach.

In contrast to that line of thinking, in our lesson from the Letter to the Romans for today, the Apostle Paul speaks about a God who offers peace, hope, and life to us all. Not because of anything we could possibly do to deserve it, but simply because God chooses to do so. It’s an act of grace. It’s purely a gift. And as difficult as it may be for us to comprehend, that means there’s nothing we can ever do to deserve it. I think that makes a lot of us uncomfortable, because we prefer to be in control of our destiny. Although I don’t know why we would think we could control our eternal destiny!

But in fact, Paul says that God pours out his grace for us precisely when we are in no position to do anything to earn it for ourselves. He says that God sent his Son to die for us when we were helpless and even antagonistic toward God. As Gene Peterson translates Romans 5:6 in The Message, “Christ arrives right on time to make this happen. He didn't, and doesn't, wait for us to get ready.” Paul says that at just the right time, Christ died for the sinners and the ungodly—and in Paul’s mind that includes us all! He doesn’t talk this way to browbeat us for our fallen condition, but to bring us to the place where we can accept the gift of peace and hope and life that God offers us all.

But that’s really the question: how do we accept the gift of the amazing grace that God is offers us through Jesus the Christ? If it’s simply a gift that we can never deserve or earn, then it might make sense to think that we can just sit back and let God do his thing. But the fact of the matter is that’s not how it works either. Both extremes miss the point—we cannot earn it, but neither can we just sit back and act like we are entitled to it. That’s what Dietrich Bonhoeffer called “cheap grace”! By that he meant grace that doesn’t really have a lasting effect on our lives.[3]

By contrast, when grace really grabs us it changes us for good. The word that the Scriptures use for that is repentance. The Scriptures call us all to repent; that is, we have to come to the point where we can acknowledge our faults in order to accept the gift of the grace that God offers us. It might seem like a contradiction to say that there’s nothing we can ever do to deserve or earn it, but that we have to come to the place where we admit our failings in order to receive it. And yet, various recovery programs have taught us that the only way to start the journey toward healing is to recognize that we have a problem. I think the same thing holds true for God’s grace. It really doesn’t make much of an impact on us that God loves us so freely until we realize that we need it. God’s grace becomes something life-changing when we fully grasp that we cannot live without it.

I think a big part of what St. Paul was getting at is that we cannot “save” ourselves. That might seem obvious, but I think there are a wide variety of ways in which we go around trying to “save” ourselves. What St. Paul knows is that repentance and faith go hand in hand—you can’t have one without the other. We can’t really come to the place where we put our faith in Jesus as our savior until we realize that we are simply unable to save ourselves. That’s a hard thing for many of us to admit to ourselves. No amount of effort, no amount of service, no amount of giving will suffice. Our only way to find the peace and joy and new life that God offers us is by recognizing that we need it, and that we can’t do anything on our own to get it.

The season of Lent is a time for us to come to terms with who we are—we are all in need of the gift of grace and new life that God offers us through Jesus Christ. But it’s also a time to recognize that grace is “costly” as Bonhoeffer said it.[4] And St. Paul makes it clear how much it cost to make it possible for us to have access to this grace: it cost Jesus his life. It cost God the life of his own son. I think that pretty much takes care of any notion that we can somehow deserve or earn God’s grace. That’s another reason for the season of Lent. It’s a time for us to get past the pride that keeps us from acknowledging our need, so that we can accept the gift of God’s costly grace.

[2] This phrase entered our society through Benjamin Franklin’s “Poor Richard’s Almanac.” It is not a quote from the Bible, despite what many think!

[3] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Discipleship, Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, vol. 4 (2001), 43-44: “Cheap grace is means grace as bargain-basement goods, cut-rate forgiveness, cut-rate comfort, cut-rate sacrament; … Cheap grace is grace without a price, without costs. … Cheap grace means justification of sin but not of the sinner. Because grace alone does everything, everything can stay in its old ways. … So the Christian need not follow Christ, since the Christian is comforted by [cheap] grace! … Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without the living, incarnate Christ.” This edition of Bonhoeffer’s classic work is vastly superior to the previous English translation, The Cost of Discipleship. In some cases the older version actually renders the German of Bonhoeffer’s Nachfolge into English in direct contraction to the German original! For example, on page 44 of Discipleship, Bonhoeffer speaks ironically about “Cheap Grace” leading the Christian to try to do something exceptional, and as a result “there is no difference between Christian life and worldly life.” In The Cost of Discipleship, 44, the same statement is rendered to say that it is imperative for the Christian “to distinguish his life from the life of the world,” and the motivation is so that the world will believe in “the free gift of grace” (“billige Gnade,” which is correctly rendered “cheap grace” in the newer version). There are many such examples of this reversal of meaning in Cost of Discipleship.

[4] Cf. Bonhoeffer, Discipleship, 45: Costly grace “is costly, because it calls to discipleship; it is grace, because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ. It is costly, because it costs people their lives; it is grace, because it thereby makes them live. It is costly, because it condemns sin; it is grace, because it justifies the sinner. Above all, grace is costly, because it was costly to God, because it costs God the life of God’s Son… and because nothing can be cheap to us that was costly to God. Above all, it is grace because the life of God’s Son was not too costly for God to give in order to make us live.”

Wednesday, April 09, 2014

Nothing Lost

Ezekiel 37:1-14[1]

At some point in life, many of us will lose hope. We will find that, whether due to our choices, or due to circumstances beyond our control, the ground has given way beneath our feet, and we have been swept away to a place where we feel completely and hopelessly lost. From the days of Homer’s Odyssey, this theme has been the subject of poetry, novels, plays, and even films.[2] The experience of being lost is part of life. I think it can feel so hopeless because when you feel lost, really lost in life, it can seem like you will never find your way again. It’s hard to hope when fear, sadness, and pain are your constant companions, and you wonder whether you’ll ever find joy, peace, and love again.

It would seem that the people of Israel felt that way in exile. They were a whole world away from everything that was “home” to them. I’m sure after spending not only years but decades in a place that was very foreign to them, it was difficult for them not to feel lost and hopeless. In fact, that was the whole reason for Ezekiel’s vision of the valley of dry bones.[3] As the Lord speaks to the prophet, he says that the vision of new life was intended to address the fact that “the whole house of Israel” was saying “Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are cut off completely” (Ezek. 37:11). We don’t really know how long they had been in exile when the prophet received this vision, but it’s likely that they had been there for perhaps 15 to 20 years![4] They had felt lost for so long many of them had probably begun to forget what it was like to be “home.” It’s no wonder they had given up hope!

Into this despair, the message that the Lord had for Israel is that nothing and no one is ever beyond hope! Think about the lesson for today: what could be more hopeless than dried-out bones. How can bones come back to life again? It would seem that there was nothing left to which God could give new life. And yet, before Ezekiel’s eyes, he sees new life come to those lifeless bones. And the message that God has for the people is that “ I will open your graves of exile and cause you to rise again.” (Ezek. 37:12, NLT). It was a dramatic demonstration that nothing and no one is beyond the hope of new life--not even those who have felt lost so long they’ve forgotten what it’s like to be home. [5]

If there was ever anyone who deserved to feel lost, I think it was Dietrich Bonhoeffer. When the Nazis came to power in 1933, Bonhoeffer immediately began to oppose their propaganda, even though he put himself at great risk to do so. He took part in forming an underground community known as the Confessing Church, and illegally ran a seminary that was closed and relocated several times. Although he had two different opportunities to leave Germany, Bonhoeffer decided that he had to share the fate of the church in Germany if he were going to have a role in rebuilding it after the war.[6] And as a result of his work with the German resistance movement, he was arrested on April 5, 1943, and was held in prison without trial until his execution on April 9, 1945.

It’s hard for me to imagine how hard those two years must have been for him. Yet, even in a Nazi prison, Bonhoeffer was able to maintain his hope. In a letter in which he described the difficulty of waiting in prison without any prospect of release, he reflects on the words of a German Christmas hymn. In one verse, the Christ child says to all those who suffer: “Let pass, dear brothers, every pain; what you have missed I’ll bring again.”[7] Bonhoeffer concludes from this “that nothing is lost, that everything is taken up in Christ, .... Christ restores all this as God originally intended for it to be.”[8]

In a very real sense, many of us have experiences in life that can push our ability to hold onto hope past its limits. Our forms of “exile” can go on so long that we can begin to feel lost; lost to ourselves, lost to life, lost even to God. But one of my favorite themes of Scripture is that those who feel lost are never lost to God.[9] In story after story, somehow, God always finds a way to bring them home again. I believe that still holds true today.[10] There are all kinds of ways we can find ourselves lost in this world. And some of us have to endure that “exile” so long we may lose hope of ever feeling at home again. But the promise of scripture is that no one is ever beyond hope. No one is ever truly lost to God. Even when we may feel lost, we can trust that we are not lost to God. No matter what our circumstances may be, we can hold on to our hope that in his time, and in his way, God will bring new life to us all.[11]

[2] Among others, James Joyce patterned his Ulysses (the latinized version of the Greek name Odysseus) after The Odyssey; Charles Frazier’s Cold Mountain bears some similarities and was called an “American Odyssey” by the New York Times; Daniel Wallace’s Big Fish: A Novel of Mythic Proportions draws on both Ulysses and The Odyssey; and the 2000 film by Joel and Ethan Coen, “O Brother Where Art Thou” is loosely based on The Odyssey.

[3] Cf. Katheryn Pfisterer Darr, “The Book of Ezekiel,” New Interpreters Bible VI:1503: “Their hope has perished; and without hope, they might as well be dead. The future, ..., seems as barren as the past years and present experience of exile.” Cf. also Walther Eichrodt, Ezekiel, 310-11, “The despair of the exiles meets here with something much more than a mere superficial word of comfort. Ezekiel does not see any less sharply or realistically than the rest of his fellow countrymen the utter ruin to which Israel has been reduced. He therefore demonstrates to them that under such conditions the sole basis of hope lies in the superhuman and miraculous power of his God, ... . All that has been said about the way in which such a God will accomplish salvation must be seen against the background of well-justified desperation on the part of man. That desperation can only admit itself to have been overcome when it meets with the Lord of life in all his mysterious power.” (emphasis added)

[4] On the dating of this oracle, cf. W. Zimmerli, F. M. Cross, F. M., & K. Baltzer, Ezekiel: A commentary on the Book of the Prophet Ezekiel, 245-46, 258.

[5] Darr, “Ezekiel,” NIB VI:1504: “When we raise our vision to look beyond what our mundane eyes can see, we watch the impossible happen through God’s eyes.”

[6] Cf. Eberhard Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer: A Biography, 655.

[7] Cf. Peter Frick, Bonhoeffer’s Intellectual Formation: Theology and Philosophy in His Thought, 29. It is Paul Gerhardt’s hymn, “Frölich Soll Mein Herze Springen.”

[8] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison, 169. He also says that this is related to the idea expressed in Ephesians 1:10 of the restoration of all things.

[9] Cf. Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics 4.3:771: God’s “omnipotent mercy rules over all without exception, … no matter how lost they are they are not lost to him.” (emphasis added). Cf. also Barth, Church Dogmatics, 2.2:29: “God Himself in His freedom has decided that [man] shall stand, that he shall be saved and not lost, that he shall live and not die.”

[10] Cf. Darr, “Ezekiel,” NIB VI:1504 where she quotes Elie Wiesel to the effect that “every generation needs to hear in its own time that these bones can live again.”

[11] Cf. Jürgen Moltmann, Theology of Hope, 209: This is a new promise of life, for it is no longer attached to the condition of a possible repentance, but promises a creative act of Yahweh upon his people beyond the bounds of the temporal and the possible . Cf. also Paul J. Achtemeier, Romans, 134: “Only when the power of sin, ..., has been overcome by the greater power of God’s Spirit, working through his Son, can people trapped in that life be free to pursue another kind of life. ... But once the Spirit, working through Christ, has broken that power, a new world is born and a new life is possible (vv. 9, 11a).”

Tuesday, December 31, 2013

Light Overcoming Darkness

Heb. 2:10-18[1]

For many of us, there is no darkness we fear more than death. It is the ultimate unknown. I realize that when we are young, death may seem remote and almost unreal. Until someone your age passes away. Someone you knew and perhaps even loved. Then the stark reality of death hits you. And when it does, most of us are unprepared for the fear that grips us. In response to that fear, we seem obsessed in this culture with keeping death as far away from us as possible. And perhaps for good reason--there seems to be no logic, no rhyme or reason to the way the “grim reaper” takes its victims. Our inability to make any sense out of death only increases our fear.[2] But our New Testament lesson for today presents us with the good news that, because we bear this burden of mortality, Jesus also came as one of us, made of flesh and blood. He came not only to show us God’s unfailing love and abiding presence with us, but he also came specifically bearing our mortality so that he could die. And the purpose of his death was to “free those who all their lives were held in slavery by the fear of death” (Heb. 2:15). Though the text doesn’t spell out precisely how it is that he sets us free from the fear of death, the gospel message elsewhere reminds us that Jesus didn’t just come to die, but also to be raised from the dead, and to triumph over all the powers of darkness in this world, most importantly death.

Part of the purpose of his coming in the vulnerability of our flesh and blood was to demonstrate that our God is not so high and exalted as to be unconcerned with and unmoved by our burdens.[3] Rather, by entering our broken and confusing existence as Immanuel, “God with us,” Jesus took upon all the burdens that we bear.[4] And so he made it clear that God is not the cold and distant deity whom people have cringed before, and at times even hated. Rather, God is the one who loves us so much that, as we say in one of our statements of faith, Jesus died to show us God’s love as “a love that is ready to suffer for our sakes.”[5]

That was the conclusion Dietrich Bonhoeffer came to as he sat in his cell in a Gestapo prison camp. He said, “God lets himself be pushed out of the world on to the cross. He is weak and powerless in the world, and that is precisely the way, the only way, in which he is with us and helps us. … only the suffering God can help.”[6] And our lesson for today says it this way: “Because he himself was tested by what he suffered, he is able to help those who are being tested” (Heb. 2:18).

But that really is the question, isn’t it? Can a God who is vulnerable enough to enter our brokenness really be powerful enough to do something about it? It would seem that a God who is able to suffer with us is a God who is just as impotent as we are in the face of our suffering and ultimately our experience of death. In fact, that has been what some have concluded: God loves us, and God suffers with us, but at the end of the day, that’s about all God can do for us.[7] If that’s the case, I’m not sure many would conclude that God is “able to help” us at all.

Others are unwilling to relegate God (and us) to such a helpless state in which our experience with death leaves us with a mystery of suffering that we cannot solve. So they insist that though our experience of suffering and death may be burdensome to us now, God will ultimately bring good from it.[8] Once again, while there is some comfort to that, “ultimately” can seem like a very long time. Sometimes it can be a very long time. So what are we to do in the meanwhile? How does the suffering love of our vulnerable God help us then?

Well, for one thing, I think we must not underestimate the power of that love that was poured out at the cross. It may look like the Jesus who dies on that cross was just as weak as any other man. It may look like God is unable to do anything except suffer the pain of watching his son die. And yet, if we were to conclude that, we would be vastly underestimating the power of God’s love.[9] Yes, love can be vulnerable. It does not retaliate, it does not lash out at those who may in fact take the life of the one who loves. But love always breaks the power of evil. As we say in that same confession, “An abyss of suffering” has been “swallowed up by the suffering of divine love.”[10] Love always wins the day, no matter how long it takes.

But there is more to it than that. Although our lesson doesn’t mention it, surely the implication is there: Jesus did not remain in the grave. Death was not powerful enough to hold him. God raised him from the dead, and by so doing not only vindicated the power of suffering love, but also demonstrated that God does more than “just” suffer with us when we suffer. Rather, the resurrection is the demonstration that “God’s light is more real than all the darkness, that God’s truth is more powerful than all human lies, that God’s love is stronger than death.”[11] And so in the vulnerability of Jesus taking on flesh and blood and dying for us all, and in the astonishing power of God raising him to life, we see God’s light overcoming all the darkness, even the darkness of death. And, as the Scripture says, “The light keeps shining in the dark, and darkness has never put it out” (Jn. 1:5, CEV)![12]

[2] Cf. especially Paul Tillich, “The Destruction of Death,” in The Shaking of the Foundations, 170: “fear is, above all, fear of the unknown; and the darkness of the unknown is filled with the images created by fear. ... this is true to an absolute degree with respect to death -- the absolutely unknown.” Cf. also Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics 3.2:601: “Death is the great mark of the unnatural state in which we exist.”

[3] Cf. Jürgen Moltmann, The Spirit of Life: A Universal Affirmation, 130-31: “the messianic Son of God unreservedly takes on himself the conditions of our vulnerable and mortal existence, and becomes a human being like us. ... In this sense ‘the sufferings of Christ’ are not just Jesus’ sufferings; they are the sufferings of the poor and weak, which Jesus shares in his own body and his own soul, in solidarity with them.”

[4] Cf. Barth, Church Dogmatics 1.2:152: “That the Word became ‘flesh’ in this definite sense, this consummation of God’s condescension, ...: this is the revelation of the Word of God.” Cf. also ibid. 4.1:165: “the ancient creeds were also right when under the concepts passus, crucifixus, mortuus, sepultus [suffered, crucified, died, buried], they believed that they were saying everything that is decisive about the man Jesus.”

[5] The Study Catechism (1998), question 8.

[6] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison, 219-220. Cf. also Moltmann, Spirit of Life 131, where he echoes Bonhoeffer, and adds, “it is true that a God who cannot suffer, and suffer with us, could not even understand us.”

[7] Cf. especially, Harold Kushner, When Bad Things Happen to Good People. Kushner and his wife endured the loss of their young son, and in the face of such intense suffering, he concluded that God loves us and wants the best for us but is basically powerless to do anything about it.

[8] Cf., for example Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking, 24: “Christianity … ultimately offers no theoretical solution [to the problem of evil]. It merely points to the cross and says that, practically speaking, there is no evil so dark and so obscene—not even this—but that God can turn it to good.” Cf. similarly, Charles Poole, Is Life Fair? 68: “Ultimately, finally, God will have the last word, and the goodness and grace of God will triumph and prevail over all that is evil and hurtful and destructive and wrong.” I do not wish to dispute these statements. I find them meaningful. I only wish to comment on the very human difficulty of placing all one’s hopes on “ultimately.”

[9] To this end, Steven R. Harmon, “Hebrews 2:10-18,”Interpretation 59 (Oct 2005), wisely reminds us that neither an “unnuanced” theopassianism (God suffers with us) nor an “unnuanced” affirmation of divine impassibility (God is incapable of suffering) will do. He presents the balance in perhaps the clearest way I have ever seen (pp. 405-6): “To affirm that God suffers when God's creatures suffer rightly maintains God's sympathy and solidarity with those who suffer. To affirm this without further qualification, however, overlooks the dissimilarity between God's relationship to suffering and the human sufferer's relationship to suffering. Much human suffering is against our will; God's suffering is always voluntary.” He adds (p. 406): “Only the suffering God can help, but it is only the suffering of the God who has greater power than we do over suffering that is able to help.”

[10] The Study Catechism (1998) question 45.

[11] Henri Nouwen, Here and Now, 32.

[12] Cf. G. C. Berkouwer, The Work of Christ, 337-39, where he emphasizes that “The light that emanates from Christ’s victory is consequently a bright light” by pointing out how affirmations of Christ’s victory over death and the powers that suppress humanity echo throughout the New Testament.

The Waking Dreamer