Lenten sermon on Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Christians and Pagans

Lenten Morning Prayer Ecumenical Centre in Geneva, 25 February 2008

Reflection on Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s “Christians and Pagans”[1]

Epistle Reading: Romans 5:1-11; Gospel Reading: John 4:5-15

The following reflection was prepared and given by two young women pastors, Simone Sinn and Rolita Machila, both currently work in the Lutheran World Federation in the Department for Theology and Studies.

Lent – a time to concentrate on what is essential in our faith and for our lives

Lent is a time when we try to refocus our attention on what is important in life and try to concentrate on what really matters. The gospel story for this week is a prime example of concentrating on what is essential: The central element is water. The meeting point is a well in a desert place. The scene concentrates on two people, Jesus and the Samaritan woman. They interaction is focuses on the issue of water, real water and water as symbol for what essentially sustains life.

For many Christians, Lent is related to the practice of fasting, traditionally understood as abstaining from food, or from certain types of food. There are also creative other forms of fasting. The principle behind this Lenten practice is to do something externally that helps concentrate body and mind on what is essential.

Sometimes we loose sight of what is important, because our lives are filled up with so many things: various job-related, family-related and community-related activities, material goods of different kinds, responsibilities, worries, needs, questions and concerns.

Lent is a time to concentrate on what is important in our lives and in our faith.

Reading of a poem, written by Dietrich Bonhoeffer in July 1944:
People turn to God when they're in need,
plead for help, contentment, and for bread,
for rescue from their sickness, guilt, and death.
They all do so, both Christian and pagan.

People turn to God in God's own need,
and find God poor, degraded, without roof or bread,
see God devoured by sin, weakness, and death.
Christians stand with God to share God's pain.

God turns to all people in their need,
nourishes body and soul with God's own bread,
takes up the cross for Christians and pagans, both,
and in forgiving both, is slain.

Three fundamental questions in “Christians and Pagans”
In a succinct way, this poem sheds light on three fundamental questions: In the first part: What does it mean to be human? In the second: What does it mean to be Christian? And finally: Who is God? Three different encounters between people and God, interrelated and yet distinct.
The poem is entitled “Christians and Pagans”. One translator, however, rightly remarked that the poem should in fact be called “Christians and Others”, as the contrast for Bonhoeffer is really between the true Christian disciple and those others of "normal" religiosity, who still maintained their traditional expectations of how God should act to assuage their pains and griefs.
People in need
The first encounter with God is provoked by human need: „People turn to God when they're in need“. We know this situation well when we, individually or as a community turn to God, ask for help and plead for change. In just a few words, Bonhoeffer describes the human condition, the urgent need of people to turn to someone who can change their desperate situation. These moments of prayer, these situations of addressing one’s cry to God are very existential moments. We want God to react and intervene.

People, both Christians and others, go to God when they are in need. They expect a lot from God, but they also hold on to doubt.

There is a delightful story that I like. A solitary traveller fell over a cliff in the night. Luckily he managed to grab hold a bush near the top, and hung there for dear life in darkness shouting: “Is anybody down there?” After a while, a voice said: “Yes, I am down here. Let yourself go. Trust me. I will catch you. I am God.”

There was a long pause as the traveller thought, then he shouted: “Is anybody else down there?” God asked: “Where is your faith, why do you doubt?”

God in need
There are situations in life where it is difficult to trust in God. We want to see God in power and might, but, as says the second part of the poem, we find God poor, degraded, without roof or bread, see God devoured by sin, weakness, and death. The story goes as follows: There was a young man who quit his job, left home, and opted for not having a well-ordered life any more. He wanders around and is constantly on the move, surrounded by strange friends and dubious people. He has no money. He spends his days with talking, discussing, eating and drinking. This man does not become very old. He provokes enmity, endures hardship and ends at the cross.

God is not a hero. God is in need. The idea of the almighty God is dismantled. We are forced to rethink how we talk about God’s power and might.

This section concludes with “Christians stand with God to share God's pain”. This is a rather unusual definition of what it means to be Christian. As a Lutheran I have often heard the sentence “Here I stand, I can do no other”. This attitude of standing against, being a true protestant is familiar to me. – But now, Bonhoeffer talks about “standing with”, of being in solidarity. It is very clear that this is not just a social attitude, a certain political stance, or a sudden feeling of pity with someone, but it is a deeply spiritual attitude. “Christians stand with God to share God's pain”.

Where does this happen? How do we experience that? We might be drawn into God’s story by listening to the biblical accounts of Jesus’ life, passion and death during the time of Lent, by breaking the bread at the Lord’s table on Sundays, by standing with the least who are hungry, thirsty, who are foreign or naked on all days of our lives. “Christians stand with God to share God's pain.” – A big sentence that still needs further meditation and spiritual exploration, but sometimes also the simple self-critical question: Do we Christians actually do that? Where is our attention actually geared towards?

The poem does not get stuck in the question of Christian identity but draws our attention to who God is and how God acts. In the movement of this poem it becomes evident that God is not just the antidote to our sinfulness and suffering, but God involves Godself in our suffering. In protestant theology we often find this polarized image of the sinful human being on the one side and the merciful and gracious God on the other. This poem shows that there is a much more intimate dynamic: God existentially shares our existence, God’s incarnation involves Godself in our suffering and in return also calls us to participate in God’s suffering. The bible and the cross are in the midst of the community.

God turns to all people in their need

The theocentric focus of the third part widens the horizon and sheds a new light on the relationship between Christians, pagans and God. “God turns to all people in their need”. As Paul says in his theological argumentation in Romans 5: God takes the initiative and responds to the human need in a way that reconciles all human beings with God and one another.

“God turns to all people in their need.” Jesus went up to the Samaritan woman and draws her in a conversation about her life. The woman actively engages in that reflection about what really matters in life. She gives her heart to Jesus and recognizes who Jesus is. In him, she realizes that God nourishes body and soul. God’s own bread is the source of life. This experience creates a sparkling faith in the Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well. Amen.


[1] As translated in "A Testament to Freedom: The Essential Writings of Dietrich Bonhoeffer," ed. Geffrey B. Kelly & F. Burton Nelson (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1990), p. 549.

Liturgy for third week in Lent

The following liturgy was put together by Rev. Simone Sinn and Rev. Rolita Machila from Zambia. Both are currently working in the Lutheran World Federation's department of theology and studies.

Third week of Lent ~ Morning Prayer in the Ecumenical Centre on 25 February 2008
“Encountering God”

With the Ecumenical Prayer Cycle we pray for France and Germany
Bible Readings according to the Revised Common Lectionary

Welcome

Opening Responses
In the beginning when it was very dark, God said: Let there be light.
And there was light. (Gen 1:3) (The Candles are lit)

In the beginning when it was very quiet, the Word was with God.
And the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. (John 1:1-2) (The Bible on the Altar is lifted and opened)

When the time was right, God sent his Son.
Born of a woman, he came among us. He shared our human existence.
(Gal 4:4) (The Cross on the altar is lifted)
(As the congregation begin to sing the Bible and cross are carried into the congregation and placed amongst the people)

Hymn Praise to the Lord, the Almighty the King of Creation

Prayer
Our Father, who has set a restlessness in our hearts
and made us all seekers after that which we can never fully find,
forbid us to be satisfied with what we make of life.
Draw us from base content and set our eyes on far-off goals.
Keep us at tasks too hard for us that we may be driven to Thee for strength.
Deliver us from fretfulness and self-pitying;
make us sure of the good we cannot see and of the hidden good in the world.
Open our eyes to simple beauty all around us
and our hearts to the loveliness people hide from us
because we do not try to understand them.
Save us from ourselves and show us a vision of a world made new. Amen.
(Eleanor Roosevelt)

Epistle Reading: Romans 5:1-11
1 Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, 2 through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand; and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God. 3 And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, 4 and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, 5 and hope does not disappoint us, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us. 6 For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. 7 Indeed, rarely will anyone die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person someone might actually dare to die. 8 But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us. 9 Much more surely then, now that we have been justified by his blood, will we be saved through him from the wrath of God. 10 For if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, much more surely, having been reconciled, will we be saved by his life. 11 But more than that, we even boast in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.

Taizé Chant: El Senyor es la meva Forca / Meine Hoffnung (first Portuguese, then German)

Gospel Reading: John 4:5-15 (please stand)
5 So Jesus came to a Samaritan city called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. 6 Jacob's well was there, and Jesus, tired out by his journey, was sitting by the well. It was about noon. 7 A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, "Give me a drink." 8 (His disciples had gone to the city to buy food.) 9 The Samaritan woman said to him, "How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?" (Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans.) 10 Jesus answered her, "If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, "Give me a drink,' you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water." 11 The woman said to him, "Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? 12 Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well, and with his sons and his flocks drank from it?" 13 Jesus said to her, "Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, 14 but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life." 15 The woman said to him, "Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water."

Taizé chant: El Senyor
In the Lord I’ll be ever thankful, in the Lord I will rejoice! Look to God, do not be
afraid, lift up your voices, the Lord is near; lift up your voices, the Lord is near

O ma joie et mon espérance, le Seigneur est mont chant. C’est de lui que vient le
Pardon. En lui j’espère, je ne crains rien. En lui j’espère, je ne crains rien.

Reflection

Christen und Heiden ~ Christians and Pagans ~ Poem by Dietrich Bonhoeffer 1944

Christen und Heiden Menschen gehen zu Gott in ihrer Not,
flehen um Hilfe, bitten um Glück und Brot,
um Errettung aus Krankheit, Schuld und Tod.
So tun sie alle, alle, Christen und Heiden.

Menschen gehen zu Gott in Seiner Not,
finden ihn arm, geschmäht, ohne Obdach und Brot,
sehn ihn verschlungen von Sünde, Schwachheit und Tod.
Christen stehen bei Gott in Seinem Leiden.

Gott geht zu allen Menschen in ihrer Not,
sättigt den Leib und die Seele mit Seinem Brot,
stirbt für Christen und Heiden den Kreuzestod,
und vergibt ihnen beiden.

Christians and Pagans[1]
People turn to God when they're in need,
plead for help, contentment, and for bread,
for rescue from their sickness, guilt, and death.
They all do so, both Christian and pagan.

People turn to God in God's own need,
and find God poor, degraded, without roof or bread,
see God devoured by sin, weakness, and death.
Christians stand with God to share God's pain.

God turns to all people in their need,
nourishes body and soul with God's own bread,
takes up the cross for Christians and pagans, both,
and in forgiving both, is slain.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, July 1944

Intercessions

at the phrase "We turn to you, O God” we will sing the Taizé chant Oculi nostri.

Gracious God, we come before you in our human need.
We pray for those women, men and children who lack basic material goods like bread, clean water, clothing and shelter.
We pray for those who are ill and whose body suffers.
We pray for those who feel left alone in their suffering.
We pray for those who lack basic social relations, those who miss father and mother, those who miss their children, those who miss close friends.
We pray for those who lack basic spiritual nourishment, whose soul cries out to you from the desert.
We pray for those who suffer from the burden of their guilt.
We turn to you, O God. -

Oculi nostri

We pray for those who have lost orientation in their lives and who have no sense of what really matters.
We pray for those who have lost hope and who need new encounters that spark new visions and renewed courage.
We pray for those who have lost the ability to share in the suffering and pain of others.
We pray for those who are overwhelmed by their workload and who are burnt out.
We turn to you, O God. -

Oculi nostri

We pray for pastors, teachers and all Christians who preach and teach your liberating and empowering Gospel message.
We pray for the ecumenical movement and the ecumenical organisations locally and internationally. We pray for the programs and projects planned in this house and for us as staff.
With the ecumenical prayer cycle we pray for the countries and churches of France and Germany.
We pray for the migrants in these countries,
we pray for the political and economic leaders,
we pray for the people engaged in social, political and environmental movements,
we pray for the churches and people of other faiths.
We turn to you, O God. -

Oculi nostri

We are drawn into your Gospel story, a story of healing and of suffering, a story of wholeness and of brokenness, a story of fullness and of need.
God, help us share your pain in this world, help us share your bread and your grace.
We turn to you, O God. -

Oculi nostri

Lord’s Prayer said by each in their own language

Hymn
Bless now, O God, the Journey
by Sylvia G. Dunstone
326 in the new ELCA book of worship With one Voice

Sending Forth

Let go of what you have.
Say goodbye and turn your face to what lies ahead.
You have a long way before you.
God says, “I will be with you.”
Let us encourage one another on our way together.

Let us go in the strength which God gives us.
We will go gently into the land that you, O God, will show us.
We will go together, looking out for signs of your presence.
Christ has gone before us.
Christ is waiting for us, there where we are.
(Ecumenical Prayer Cycle, In God's Hands p. 96)

Hymn:
1. Nita mwimbiya Bwana, kwa ku wa yeh yeh amenionah (3 times then repeat “amenionah” 8 times)
2. Nita mwimbiya Bwana, kwa ku wa yeh yeh ana ni penda (3 times then repeat “ana ni panda” 8 times)3. Nita mwimbiya Bwana, kwa ku wa yeh yeh ana ni juwa (3 times then repeat “ana ni juwa”

[1] As translated in "A Testament to Freedom: The Essential Writings of Dietrich Bonhoeffer," ed. Geffrey B. Kelly & F. Burton Nelson (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1990), p. 549.