Our men's study group just wrapped up its many-months long excursion into the life and works of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. The words of this German pastor-theologian strike the faith bell every so often in moments when they are needed most. One of the documents we studied was the Barmen Declaration, a statement of faith published by the pastors of the Confessing Church - Christians who resisted the co-opting of the German Lutheran Church by Hitler's Third Reich. What Barmen stated unequivocally was that Christians have one Lord and their loyalty may be vested in no other. It was a scathing critique of the way in which Christians had sold out to an ideology and theology of empire.
In the same way, we must denounce any speech, policy or practice in church, culture or political leadership that does not conform to our understanding of the gracious and just God. For Bonhoeffer this required the greatest sacrifice, that of his life. In our own time similar courage is required to speak truth to power. This witness also requires sacrifice, though perhaps of a different sort. Those who dare speak in the public forum fulfill the Biblical role of prophet; they stand outside temple or palace and critique them with a different vision of life.
In the middle of the Holy Week story we know the peril Jesus faces; he entered the city that stones the prophets and dared to upset the status quo. Soon people would conspire against him. His faithful choice took him even farther into the jaws of the beast that would break him. But, as a friend of mine recently shared, what sometimes seems to be burial is really a planting. The last enemy is death. And what once loomed as the impossible adversary and threat becomes the triumph of God in the world and beyond the world.
