A Letter from Bonhoeffer
From Tegel Bonhoeffer was taken in October to the Gestapo prison on Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse in Berlin, and from there in February to Buchenwald, in April to Regensburg, and from there via Schönberg to Flossenbürg, where he was executed on April 9, 1945. Eberhard Bethge published the first selection of the theological letters from prison in 1951, after publishing Ethics in 1948 on the third anniversary of Bonhoeffer’s death.
A week from today is your birthday. I looked at the Daily Texts again and meditated for a while on them. I think everything depends on the words “in Him.” Everything we may with some good reason expect or beg of God is to be found in Jesus Christ. What we imagine a God could and should do—the God of Jesus Christ has nothing to do with all that. We must immerse ourselves again and again, for a long time and quite calmly, in Jesus’s life, his sayings, actions, suffering, and dying in order to recognize what God promises and fulfills. What is certain is that we may always live aware that God is near and present with us and that this life is an utterly new life for us; that there is nothing that is impossible for us anymore because there is nothing that is impossible for God; that no earthly power can touch us without God’s will, and that danger and urgent need can only drive us closer to God. What is certain is that we have no claim on anything but may ask for everything; what is certain is that in suffering lies hidden the source of our joy, in dying the source of our life; what is certain is that in all this we stand within a community that carries us. To all this, God has said Yes and Amen in Jesus. This Yes and Amen is the solid ground upon which we stand. Again and again in these turbulent times, we lose sight of why life is really worth living. We think that our own life has meaning because this or that other person exists. In truth, however, it is like this: If the earth was deemed worthy to bear the human being Jesus Christ, if a human being like Jesus lived, then and only then does our life as human beings have meaning. Had Jesus not lived, then our life would be meaningless, despite all the other people we know, respect, and love. Perhaps we sometimes lose sight of the meaning and purpose of our calling. But can’t one express that in the simplest form? The unbiblical concept of “meaning,” after all, is only one translation of what the Bible calls “promise.”
I sense how inadequate these words are to accomplish what they would like, namely, to reassure you and make you happy and secure in your loneliness. Surely this lonely birthday does not have to be a lost day if it becomes an occasion once again for you to lay the clear foundation you want for the rest of your life. It’s often been a great help to me in the evening to think of all the people whose prayers I can count on, from the children to the grown-ups. I think I owe a debt of gratitude for God’s protection in my life to the prayers of others known and unknown.
Something else: often the NT says, “be strong” (1 Cor. 16:13; Eph. 6:10; 2 Tim. 2:1; 1 John 2:14). Isn’t human weakness (stupidity, immaturity, forgetfulness, cowardice, vanity, corruptibility, vulnerability to temptations, etc.) a greater danger than wickedness? Christ makes human beings not only “good” but also strong. Sins of weakness are truly human sins; willful sins are diabolical (and thus also “strong”!). I must think about this some more ….
Who Am I?
Who am I? They often tell me
I step out from my cell
calm and cheerful and poised,
like a squire from his manor.
Who am I? They often tell me
I speak with my guards
freely, friendly and clear,
as though I were the one in charge.
Who am I? They also tell me
I bear days of calamity
serenely, smiling and proud,
like one accustomed to victory.
Am I really what others say of me?
Or am I only what I know of myself?
Restless, yearning, sick, like a caged bird,
struggling for life breath, as if I were being strangled,
starving for colors, for flowers, for birdsong,
thirsting for kind words, human closeness,
shaking with rage at power lust and pettiest insult,
tossed about, waiting for great things to happen,
helplessly fearing for friends so far away,
too tired and empty to pray, to think, to work,
weary and ready to take my leave of it all?
Who am I? This one or the other?
Am I this one today and tomorrow another?
Am I both at once? Before others a hypocrite
and in my own eyes a pitiful, whimpering weakling?
Or is what remains in me like a defeated army,
Fleeing in disarray from victory already won?
Who am I? They mock me, these lonely questions of mine.
Whoever I am, thou knowest me; O God, I am thine!
