April 9^th, 2008

John 21: 1-14

Dietrich Bonheoffer

What a contrast between our gospel reading and the life and death of Dietrich Bonheoffer. Ironically, it is the gospel that drove Bonheoffer to the very dangerous way he lived and it was the gospel for which he died. In the gospel for today we have the joy of the apostles being with the risen Lord. Jesus had appeared to the apostles before, but seemed to disappear as quickly as he would appear. But at each of his appearances, there would always be joy and celebration.

It was at death that Bonheoffer believed that he would be unfettered from the connections and the troubles of his church and country. Bonheoffer felt that in death, he would finally and fully have the freedom to experience the joy and celebration of his faith, in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus.

Bonheoffer’s professional life began when WW II began. And likewise, Bonheoffer’s life ended when WW II ended.

At the heart of the European front was Germany, Bonheoffer’s home country. By the time Bonheoffer became an ordained pastor, many of the German Lutheran pastors had taken an oath in support of Hitler. These pastors and their churches, the majority in Germany, became known as the German Christians. Bonheoffer and about a quarter of the Lutheran churches resisted the Nazis rather than profess loyalty to them; this group of pastors and Christians began what became known as the Confessing Church.

The German Christians approved of an Aryan clause to rid the nation and the church of any Jewish presence. The president for the Lutheran Church threatened to remove from pastoral office any pastor refusing to take a civil oath of loyalty to the Aryan clause which was presented by the churches as a birthday offering to Adolf Hitler.

There was one meeting of the German Christians that has become known as the Brown Synod meeting, September 4^th, 1933. It is called the Brown Synod because so many of the pastors, including three quarters of the Lutheran pastors in Germany, appeared in brown shirts, sporting the swastika as a declaration of loyalty to Adolf Hitler.

One pastor of the German Christian church was recorded as saying, “Christ has come to us, to Germany, through Adolf Hitler.” For many, Hitler was indeed seen as the savior of Germany after Germany was defeated in WW I.

Bonheoffer’s confessing Church started a couple of underground seminaries, but within time, both were shut down by the Gestapo. Eventually, the Gestapo banned Bonheoffer from teaching and preaching and all public speaking. The Gestapo also removed his radio broadcast from the air.

Bonheoffer was eventually arrested April 3^rd, 1943, not because of not taking the oath of loyalty to the Aryan clause, or for being the leader of the Confessing Church, but for his direct involvement in smuggling 14 Jews to Switzerland. Two years later, Bonheoffer with five other cohorts was executed by hanging April 9, 1945, a month before the war was over.

Over and over again, as in many ways as he could until he was executed, Bonheoffer preached and taught and wrote that the church is the body of Christ, only; the church is loyal only to Christ; the church is bound solely to Jesus Christ. The churches only oath is to Christ. He was a dangerous menace to Nazi Germany.

Returning to the resurrection appearance of Jesus in our gospel today, it is to the resurrection that Bonheoffer spoke his last words. “This is the end, but for me it is the beginning of life.”

Amen,

Pastor Scales