". . . And just when everything is bearing down on us"

Dietrich Bonhoeffer’ wrote extensively on theological topics, including the incarnation and birth of Christ and Advent. Some of his great sermons where from the times he left Germany and traveled throughout Europe and across the ocean to the United States.

But when World War II began, Bonhoeffer’s deep and practical faith fueled an active resistance to Hitler’s regime. In 1943 he was imprisoned and spent much of his last years incarcerated before being killed in 1945 at the Flossenbürg concentration camp. Rather than diminishing his faith, his imprisonment bolstered his commitment to sharing a theology of suffering with those who would listen. Much of his writing from these years was in the form of letters.

The following are two quotes. One from a sermon in 1928, the other from a letter to his fiancée in 1943. Both are deeply insightful examples of trauma-informed theology, reminding us that Jesus and the Advent characters are no strangers to the hardships and pain of this world.

“Celebrating Advent means being able to wait.
Waiting is an art that our impatient age has
forgotten. It wants to break open the ripe fruit when
it has hardly finished planting the shoot.... For the
greatest, most profound, tenderest things in the
world, we must wait. It happens not here in a
storm but according to the divine laws of sprouting,
growing, and becoming.”

- from an Advent sermon, December 1928, compiled in Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Christmas Sermons.

“…And just when everything is bearing down on us to
such an extent that we can scarcely withstand it,
the Christmas message comes to tell us that all our
ideas are wrong, and that what we take to be evil
and dark is really good and light because it comes
from God. Our eyes are at fault, that is all. God is in
the manger, wealth in poverty, light in darkness,
succor in abandonment. No evil can befall us;
whatever men may do to us, they cannot but serve
the God who is secretly revealed as love and rules the
world and our lives.”

- from a letter to fiancée, Maria von Wedemeyer from prison, December 13, 1943, compiled in God is in the Manger.

 

"With Greater Intensity and Anticipation": Alfred Delp and Advent

Tonight I’m sharing two quotes from Father Alfred Delp, a Jesuit priest and philosopher who was part of the German Resistance during WWII. Like Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Delp was imprisoned for his opposition to Hitler, and executed in 1945. Shortly before his death, Delp wrote extensively about Advent, recognizing it is a time to be “deeply shaken—the time not only to remember the birth of the Christ Child, but to participate in this unfolding and ultimate revelation of God that began in the Holy night.” (Jenny Howell, Advent of the Heart: The Prison Meditations of Alfred Delp, SJ).

Acting as a modern-day Paul, Delp reflected,

“I see Advent with greater intensity and anticipation than ever before. Walking up and down in my cell, three paces this way and three paces that way, with my hands in irons and ahead of me an uncertain fate, I have a new and different understanding of God’s promise of redemption and release.”
(from in When the Time Was Fulfilled: Christmas Meditations).

From what is probably his most succinct and most quoted work, Delp writes uses his strengths as a philosopher to paint a picture of Advent as the “already; not yet” event of Christ’s first coming and future return: 

"Advent is the time of promise; it is not yet the time of fulfillment. We are still in the midst of everything and in the logical inexorability and relentlessness of destiny . . . Space is still filled with the noise of destruction and annihilation, the shouts of self-assurance and arrogance, the weeping of despair and helplessness. But round about the horizon the eternal realities stand silent in their age-old longing. There shines on them already the first mild light of the radiant fulfillment to come. From afar sound the first notes as pipes and voices, not yet discernible as a song or melody. It is all far off still, and only just announced and foretold. But it is happening, today."
(from Advent of the Heart: Seasonal Sermons and Prison Writings, 1941-1944)

While we all have hardships that can make worship and reflection difficult, we live nowhere near the atrocities of Nazi Germany. If we were in Delp’s shoes today, would we focus as intently on God’s sure promise? Not a promise about his physical freedom from tyranny, but Israel’s ancient Advent promise and the fulfillment of that promise that had already come. It’s a convicting thought. For Paul the Apostle tells us even more plainly in his letter to the Romans (8:18), “For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us.”

"God is in the Manger," from Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Many of you are familiar with Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s famous books, The Cost of Discipleship and Life Together. But while he was in prison prior do his execution in 1945, he wrote many papers and letters on various theological topics, including the incarnation and birth of Christ. In 2010, some of these writings were compiled into an Advent devotional, entitled, God is in the Manger. When I read Eric Metaxas’ biography of Bonhoeffer a few years ago, I was reintroduced to the deep and practical faith Bonhoeffer shared through his life and works. I am continually grateful for his perspective on the sovereignty of God in the midst of human tyranny and fear. Here are a few quotes from God is in the Manger. I apologize that I don’t have the exact references for each segment, but as you read them, you can imagine Bonhoeffer, paralleling a modern-day Paul the Apostle, encouraging his cohorts from the confines of a prison cell. May his words wash over us, and sink deep, as they bring to mind images of our own time’s tyranny and fear.

“God travels wonderful ways with human beings, but he does not comply with the views and opinions of people. God does not go the way that people want to prescribe for him; rather, his way is beyond all comprehension, free and self-determined beyond all proof. Where reason is indignant, where our nature rebels, where our piety anxiously keeps us away: that is precisely where God loves to be. There he confounds the reason of the reasonable; there he aggravates our nature, our piety—that is where he wants to be, and no one can keep him from it. Only the humble believe him and rejoice that God is so free and so marvelous that he does wonders where people despair, that he takes what is little and lowly and makes it marvelous. And that is the wonder of all wonders, that God loves the lowly…. God is not ashamed of the lowliness of human beings. God marches right in. He chooses people as his instruments and performs his wonders where one would least expect them. God is near to lowliness; he loves the lost, the neglected, the unseemly, the excluded, the weak and broken.” 

― Dietrich Bonhoeffer, God Is In the Manger, p. 22

“...And then, just when everything is bearing down on us to such an extent that we can scarcely withstand it, the Christmas message comes to tell us that all our ideas are wrong, and that what we take to be evil and dark is really good and light because it comes from God. Our eyes are at fault, that is all. God is in the manger, wealth in poverty, light in darkness, succor in abandonment. No evil can befall us; whatever men may do to us, they cannot but serve the God who is secretly revealed as love and rules the world and our lives.”  

― Dietrich Bonhoeffer, God Is In the Manger, p. 5

“Look up, you whose gaze is fixed on this earth, who are spellbound by the little events and changes on the face of the earth. Look up to these words, you who have turned away from heaven disappointed. Look up, you whose eyes are heavy with tears and who are heavy and who are crying over the fact that the earth has gracelessly torn us away. Look up, you who, burdened with guilt, cannot lift your eyes. Look up, your redemption is drawing near. Something different from what you see daily will happen. Just be aware, be watchful, wait just another short moment. Wait and something quite new will break over you: God will come.” 

― Dietrich Bonhoeffer, God Is In the Manger, p. 40