Dietrich Bonhoeffer - Meditating on the Word

Translated and Edited
by David McI. Gracie

A COWLEY PUBLICATIONS BOOK

ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD PUBLISHERS, INC.

Published in the United States of America

by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.

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Copyright 1986, 2000 by David McI. Gracie

First Rowman & Littlefield Edition 2008

All translations from the writings of Dietrich Bonhoeffer are selections from the complete works, Gesammelte Schriften, copyright Chr. Kaiser Verlag, Munich, and are used by permission. Quotations from the psalms, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Psalter of the 1979 Book of Common Prayer.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Bonhoeffer, Dietrich, 19061945.

[Selections. English. 2000]

Meditating on the Word / Dietrich Bonhoeffer; translated by

David Gracie. 2nd ed.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references.

I. MeditationChristianity 2. Sermons, GermanTranslations into English. 3. Bible. O.T. PsalmsSermons. 4. Bible. O.T. PsalmsMeditations. 5. Bekennende KircheSermons. 6. United churchesGermanySermons.

I. Gracie, David McI., 1932II. Title.

BV4813 .B62313 2000

ISBN-13: 978-1-56101-184-1

Printed in the United States of America.

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information SciencesPermanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

by David McI. Gracie

A Letter to Dr. Rudiger Schleicher

A Letter in Wartime

Sermon for the 6th Sunday After Trinity

Sermon for the 6th Sunday After Easter

A Sermon Outline for Advent

A Sermon at the Funeral of Frau Julie Bonhoeffer

A Sermon on a Psalm of Vengeance

A Sermon on the Suffering of the Righteous

Our Need for Gods Word

Your word is a lantern to my feet, says the psalmist, and a light upon my path (119:105). For many, however, the Bible is only a closed book on a shelf or a book to be opened as a literary and historical curiosity. But in Christianity, the religion of the Incarnate Word, what keeps bringing the word alive for us is the witness of those men and women who have been hearers and doers of the word. Pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer is certainly one of those witnesses. These meditations of his on the words of Scripture may enable us to allow the light of the word to shine on our paths.

Much ink has been used in the debates over the centuries about the inspiration of Holy Scripture. Just how holy is it, and who made it so? But I like best the aphorism of the Jewish philosopher who said, Inspiration is measured by what it has inspired. That philosopher is Emmanuel Levinas, a teacher of the word himself, whose understanding of the commandments of God as leading to a life lived for others is like that of Bonhoeffers, a Lutheran pastor who preached Christ as the man for others.

On April 9, 1945, before he was taken away to be executed by the Nazis after being implicated in the plot to kill Adolf Hitler, Bonhoeffer led a prayer service for the other prisoners who were with him. Among the texts for that Sunday on which he commented was Isaiah 53:5, By his stripes we are healed. He taught the meaning of that passage by his own death, which has become a source of healing for subsequent generations of Christians who have tried to come to terms with their churchs role in the persecution and slaughter of the Jews of Europe.

He paid for Gods Word with his life and taught Gods Word by his death. This epitaph is from a novel that Bonhoeffer was writing in prison, and it applies very much to the author himself. In the same novel he has a woman leaving a Sunday service deeply dissatisfied by the sermon she has just heard. She reflects on the situation in Germany where the preaching and teaching of the Word seem to be dying out:

The congregation, the entire locality, her own family were left without the Word of God and that meant that sooner or later their life must become completely disoriented.... Was it Gods will to judge this generation by withdrawing his Word from them? But even if this was so... God wanted people who would oppose this judgment, who by Gods Word would hold fast to him and not let go until he blessed them.

Holding fast by means of Gods word, Bonhoeffer spoke out early and publicly against Nazism and on behalf of the Jews, saying that the church has an unconditional obligation to the victims of any ordering of society. In 1939 he left the temporary security of Union Theological Seminary in New York City to go home to Germany and head an underground seminary of the Confessing Church. This was the breakaway communion of those who separated themselves from the national church that followed Hitler. Later he joined in the active opposition to Hitler while serving in a military intelligence unit. The story is well known and needs no retelling here. What deserves our closer attention is how his story and the biblical story merged, how he came to live, as one of his greatest admirers, William Stringfellow, put it, in a continuing biblical context.

The night of November 7-8, 1938, the night that has become known as Kristallnacht, in cities across Germany Jews were attacked and killed, their synagogues and businesses ransacked and burned. Joseph Goebbels, Hitlers minister of propaganda, wrote in his diary, As I drive back to my hotel I hear the shop window glass smashing. Bravo! Bravo! The synagogues burn like big old shacks.

Bonhoeffers friend and biographer, Eberhard Bethge, tells us how Bonhoeffers Bible became his diary for Kristallnacht. In the Bible that he used for his daily meditations, the date 9-11-38 is written in the margin of Psalm 74, at verse 7, They said to themselves, Let us destroy them altogether. They burned down all the meeting places of God in the land. The following verse is underlined, with an exclamation

I am amazed that someone could read the psalms and open them to present reality, thus opening present reality to prayer. It is important to note at the outset that Bonhoeffer taught that the psalms were to be prayed, prayed with Christ, whose prayers he believed they really werein this case, with the Christ whose weakest and most defenseless brothers (as he called the Jews of Germany) were being persecuted.

A few days later, in a circular letter to pastors in the Confessing Church, Bonhoeffer wrote: I have been thinking a great deal about Psalm 74, Zech. 2:8, and Rom. 9:4f. and 11:11-15. That leads us into very earnest prayer. He wanted them to look up those passages and to heed especially Gods words about his people Israel in Zechariah 2:8Whoever touches you touches the apple of my eye.