Friday 27th Feb. – Lent 2009

An article by Frank    2 Comments

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While in prison for smuggling Jews out of Germany and later, executed for being involved in the plot to assassinate Hitler just before World War II ended, Deitrich Bonhoeffer penned this poem:

Christen Un Heiden – Christians and Unbelievers

Men go to God when they are sore and suffering,
Pray to him for succour, for his peace, for bread,
For mercy for them sick, sinning or dead:
All men do so, Christian and unbelieving.

Men go to God when he is sore and suffering,
Find him poor and scorned, without shelter or bread,
Whelmed under weight of the wicked, the weak, the dead:
Christians stand by God in his hour of grieving.

God goeth to every man when sore and suffering,
Feedeth body and spirit with his bread,
For Christians, heathens alike he hangeth dead:
And both alike forgiving.

On July 16th Bonhoeffer penned a letter to a friend that has been interpreted by many people in various ways. Some have read it as his denial of God. It has been seen as his theology of a religionless Christianity and sometimes as his idea of Christianity without God. These two sentences have thrown many people into states of anger as many others of us have embraced them:

The God who makes us live in this world without using him as a working hypothesis is the God before whom we are ever standing. Before God and with him, we live without him.

I can understand why this would throw people, but it must be read in the context of the whole letter and once this is done, what emerges is an amazing picture of God that is quite pertinent to this time of Lent.

The second paragraph of Bonhoeffer’s poem speaks volumes about his understanding of God. It is a picture that embraces simplicity, weakness and sacrifice. Bonhoeffer’s picture of God is one that conquers power and space in the world through his weakness. He states “only a suffering God can help”. This understanding of God is reflected in the God who dwells in the world’s weakness as in Matthew 25. This God is the sacrificial lamb of Revelation whose wrath judges the world. That wrath is not a wrath of power, rather it is a wrath that judges the corruptness of the world through sacrifice and weakness. It is through its perfect humility that the darkness of the world is revealed and condemned.

Most importantly, the God of the second paragraph of Bonhoeffer’s poem and the God of weakness in his letter revealing the powerlessness of God is the God who enters the world and becomes weak, to the point of death on a cross. In his letter, Bonhoeffer also says this:

God allows himself to be edged out of the world on to the cross. God is weak and powerless in the world, and that is exactly the way, the only way, in which he can be with us and help us. Matthew 8:17 makes it crystal clear that it is not by his omnipotence that Christ helps us, but by his weakness and suffering.

As we embrace simplicity and sacrifice this Lent, what does it look like for us to also embrace weakness and powerlessness in this world? What does it look like for us to stand with the weakest and rather than try and exert power, to instead be “within” that weakness? What does it look like to put ourselves to the side and embrace others? This is not an easy path, but it is the Christian path, to embrace weakness, sacrifice and simplicity. For it is there that power, greed, corruption, prejudice and violence are judged and defeated.

To follow our Lent 2009 journal click here. We will have a new thought available every morning of Lent.