Each Wednesday,     Tim Carson shares 
the wonderings of heart and mind and the inspirations and quandaries of the spirit. You are invited to wonder along with him through the telling of stories, reflections on faith and observations on the events that shape our lives.  

Tim Carson

 

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Wednesday Wonder
September 13, 2017
 
We are presently experiencing a renewed interest in studying the life and writings of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German pastor, teacher and martyr who lived and died during the rise and fall of Nazism. Even as a group in my own congregation begins a journey with Bonhoeffer through the better part of a year I have noticed other conferences and classes springing up around the country. Certain historical moments return certain themes and witnesses to us.
 
During the ascendancy of Adolf Hitler and his fascist, nationalist, totalitarian, supremist, world dominating movement, Christians in Germany had to ask themselves a question: "On whose side shall we be?" At first the churches and leaders steered an uncomfortable middle ground, hoping for the best. But the best did not come. Instead Hitler and the Reich claimed to be God ordained. The invasion of other countries began. The Jews were systematically persecuted. They sought absolute power and required total allegiance. What would Christians choose in light of this idolatry and persecution of the Jews?
 
The majority of German Christians responded with silence, complicity and support of Hitler's regime. The Catholic Church, largely in the south, signed a concordat that secured their protection as long as they would not interfere or speak about the policies and actions of the Reich. The State Lutheran Church was more activist; it became the religious leg of the regime, propping up the Reich with a millennial theology of domination. The clergy became puppets. The churches became the halls of civil religion. Swastikas adored Christmas trees.
 
What happened was that Christians, Churches, sold their souls and danced with the devil. They did this out of a fear of reprisal or worse some longing to be part of the rising power. The churches became false churches, anti-churches. But not all did.
 
Many pastors saw all this for what it was and began to teach, preach, write and organize against it. This was the so-called "Confessing" church, the underground church, the resistance church. In the Barmen Declaration they pronounced their true allegiance to the only Lord ("Fuhrer") Jesus Christ. Karl Barth's hand was in this and he continued to be involved in the Confessing Church until he was deported. Other pastors and leaders were imprisoned.
 
Dietrich Bonhoeffer was one of the central leaders of this resistance. He spoke clearly about the Jewish persecutions, writing that it was a contemporary form of the crucifixion of the Jesus. He led an underground seminary in the north of Germany for two years until it was closed down by the Gestapo. And he returned from New York where he had studied and taught at Union Theological Seminary on the last boat before the United States entered the war. He returned to be with his people in their time of suffering. And he returned to continue his secret work as a part of a conspiracy to assassinate Adolf Hitler.
 
That decision on the part of a pacifist pastor to engage in violence was not an easy one. In light of the urgency of the situation, the ethical choice was made. The failed plot made him vulnerable. He was arrested and imprisoned. Eventually, as Berlin was falling, just before Hitler took his own life and the lives of his family, he ordered the execution of all the conspirators. And Bonhoeffer and others went to the gallows.
 
While he was in prison Bonhoeffer's letters, poems and various writings were smuggled out by friends and sympathetic guards. These were later collected under one cover, his Letters and Papers from Prison. One of his oft quoted poems is Who Am I? It struggles with the dramatic difference between the perceptions of other people and his own self-awareness. It is a classic autobiographical writing from the heart of a person on the edge, having staked everything, even his own life:
 
Who am I? They often tell me
I would step from my cell's confinement
calmly, cheerfully, firmly,
like a squire from his country-house.
 
Who am I? They often tell me
I would talk to my warders
freely and friendly and clearly,
as though it were mine to command.
 
Who am I? They also tell me
I would bear the days of misfortune
equably, smilingly, proudly,
like one accustomed to win.
 
Am I then really all that which other men tell of?
Or am I only what I know of myself,
restless and longing and sick, like a bird in a cage,
struggling for breath, as though hands were compressing my throat,
yearning for colours, for flowers, for the voices of birds,
thirsting for words of kindness, for neighbourliness,
trembling with anger at despotisms and petty humiliation,
tossing in expectation of great events,
powerlessly trembling for friends at an infinite distance,
weary and empty at praying, at thinking, at making,
faint, and ready to say farewell to it all?
 
Who am I? This or the other?
Am I one person today, and tomorrow another?
Am I both at once? A hypocrite before others,
and before myself a contemptibly woebegone weakling?
Or is something within me still like a beaten army,
fleeing in disorder from victory already achieved?
 
Who am I? They mock me, these lonely questions of mine.
Whoever I am, thou knowest, O God, I am thine.
 

@Timothy Carson 2017

 

Click here to go to Tim Carson's blog, VitalWholeness  http://vitalwholeness.wordpress.com/  

Broadway Christian Church
573.445.5312   www.broadwaychristian.net