Advent, a Christmas sermon by Dietrich Bonheoffer and the battle for orthodoxy

Christmas in Nazi Germany, for the Confessing Church members and pastors, must have been a time when Advent took on a deeper sense of reality, not only the birth of Christ but the second coming had significant meaning. The promises, one fulfilled the other coming, were full of hope, the only hope. picture by Stephen Larson

Simple parish political battles, in the midst of the ideological confusion of the era, were overlaid with deep theological rifts. The battle was between members of the Confessing Churches and the German Christians whose members ranged from pagan to moderate. When a church lost a pastor the battle was between church authorities who were often German Christians and church members and other pastors who belonged to the Confessing Church.

Kyle Jantzen in his book Faith and the Fatherland: Parish Politics in Hitler’s Germany writes of the Nauen Parish and the need for a pastor there. The new candidate, Gustav Gille, preached a rather political sermon but included “the Trinitarian version of the invocation and the Apostle’s Creed.” Later it was found that he did not accept all of the Apostles Creed and in his past church made use of syncretistic services. It turned out that Gille was a German Christian activist.

There were many protests against him most from those who had some connection to the Confessing Church. Some of the protest consisted of concern that he neglected to preach about Jesus, that he taught that Jesus was only a model teacher rather than the one who saved by his life and death. After four years of battle this particular parish won and they were appointed a pastor who would simply preach that salvation was in Jesus.

The parish conflicts were not consistent across Nazi Germany, but many of the concerns were the same. Many church leaders were aligned with the Nazi political system. Their ideology which above all else defined “racial superiority” in an extremely “narrow sense” was inconsistent with Christian orthodoxy. As Jantzen puts it:

“… Nazi Ideology violated many core Christian doctrines, such as the common sinfulness of all humanity, the universal judgment of God, the salvation of all humanity through the sacrificial death of God’s Son, Jesus Christ, and the mission of the church to live as a unified body of Christ on earth.”

Looking at the sermons of some Confessing Church members is helpful in understanding that this was a battle between basic Christian doctrine and an imposed ideology which was partly right wing (nationalism) partly liberal and partly pagan. I was thinking as I began this post of Advent and an Advent sermon by Dietrich Bonheoffer given sometime between 1938-1940.
My intention was to copy out some of the sermon. It has four parts; I will copy the first two. It is on the second coming of Jesus and uses the text, Luke 21:25-36.

“Johann Christoph Blumhardt (nineteenth-century Pietist in Wurttemberg) relates how he kept a new carriage in his parish grounds, which would be used for the first time by the Lord Christ when he comes, ‘then I will drive him in it.’ How certain the waiting Blumhardt was about the coming of Christ! How he planned his daily life so that he would be ready for that moment! His mind was fixed upon how he would fare at that moment when he stood before the Lord Jesus. Such certainty is something unknown to us. There is nothing certain, not even our death is certain. Only the second coming of Christ is certain. This faith of Blumhardt is great, but it is too small for the second coming of Christ. For when it happens, the world will not appear as it now appears. The whole creation will be shaken and changed. Sun, moon, and stars will be displaced in their orbits. When God comes to earth, the stars must lose their light before him. The earth itself will be shattered. Creation reaches out towards him. It feels itself dissolving before him. The sea roars and tosses in anguish and joy. And if the universe knows him, how much more will human beings whose Savior and Judge he is. They will in the same manner be aroused when he comes, fearful of the things that are about to happen. Judgment will be over the whole of humankind when he comes to bring the old world to an end.

Only on one place in the earth will it be quite different. There will not be anguish at that place, but joy, not fear, but heads will be held high: that place is the congregation of Christ’s people. They know he comes to redeem them. They are like miners who have been trapped in the depths of the mine, who have suffered, long shut up in the dark, who hear the knocking and the breaking down of walls coming closer. Is it the final caving-in of the mine or the rescuer coming? ‘Lift up your heads because your redemption is drawing near.’ For Christians this world is like a fetter, it is too narrow for them. ‘Dearest Lord Jesus, why do you wait so long? Come, Lord! Here on earth, I am so frightened.’ The earth, its suffering and temptation makes us anxious, but Christ makes us glad, he brings redemption.[1]”

Come Lord Jesus.


[1] Edwin Robertson, Editor, Dietrich Bonheoffer’s Christmas Sermons

Jesus, the coming King

If we listen and agree we shall be deceived, and if we follow we shall fall into hell. As we sat around the tables at our Presbytery meeting talking about what might be a center that the whole Presbytery could agree to, I could only think of our great divide. And in words placed on the Witherspoon Society’s site by their web master I know that the chasm is a spiritual one as wide as eternal death is from everlasting life. It can only be healed if God reaches out in redemption. Picture by Penny Juncker

The words I saw were written by John Shuck a Presbyterian (U.S.A.) pastor in Tennessee. The words are a part of an advent meditation that Doug King saw as “thoughtful” and so posted them on the Witherspoon site. The words:

“What might it mean for Jesus to return? The return of Jesus is a powerful symbol of finding rest, peace, justice, and balance in our personal lives and in our interconnectedness with earth. To sing, ‘come thou long expected Jesus’ is to sing with the expectation of fulfillment for balance and peace.”

The writer of those words, Shuck, goes on to suggest that the kind of return he is writing about will happen if we are willing to give birth, if we we are open to the creativity of “the universe.” Furthermore the kind of anticipation we are to have is “an anticipation” of “an expansion of our consciousness or awareness.”

I am writing about this because I do not understand the outlook of those who search for a central focus which ignores the very heart of the gospel, that is, that Jesus died for sinners. Why are some holding on to an expectation that our center as a denomination or a Presbytery will hold around the building of clothes closests or homeless shelters, while they fail to hold dear the Lord Jesus Christ and the hope of his personal coming.

It seems that for some, such new age theology, equates with the same theology that insists on the ordination of unrepentant homosexuals. And such an impersonal understanding of Jesus just might very well be the only proper way of connecting him to those who wish to allow sin free reign. With such meaning we can throw away the transforming power of Jesus. We can forget to look for him. Forget advent.

As Yeats wrote, the center does not hold. And surely “some rough beast” moves among our shadowed churches wishing to be born in place of the King of Kings.

The truth is the Lord Jesus Christ is returning. He was King, he is King and he will be King forever. We celebrate now the Incarnation, the birth of the eternal Son into our world. That is the Christmas story. But it is so much more. He is the God who lived with us and died for us. He is the God who rose to give us new life.

But it is still more. He is the eternal Son forever fully God and fully human. We are united to him in his resurrection. We are fed and nourished by the Lord of heaven. Nothing can ever separate us from him. He is the coming King who has set up his everlasting Kingdom.

“And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. “ (John 1:14)

Second Sunday in Advent-Coming to Him in obedience

Second Sunday in Advent.

The savior of our souls, Jesus , was born in a small town in the Middle East. He is the King past, the King who came, lived and died for his people and he is the coming King whose appearance we wait for with anticipation and great joy.

“The scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet, until Shiloh come, and to him shall be the obedience of the people.” (Genesis 40:10)

The Tyndale Commentary on Genesis points out that some scholars connect this verse to Ezekiel 21:26f. "In words addressed to the last king of Judah: 'Remove the mitre, and take off the crown ... until he comes whose right it is: and I will give it to him.' Here is the best support for the Messianic content which Jewish and Christian exegesis has found in the saying from earliest times."

First Sunday of Advent: a Star out of Jacob

The first Sunday of Advent:

"The words of him who hears the
words of God
and knows the knowledge of the Most High.
Who sees the vision of the
Almighty,
falling down, yet having his eyes uncovered.
I see him, but not now;
I behold him, but not near;
A star shall come forth from Jacob,
A scepter shall rise from Israel ... (Numbers 24: 16-17a)"

From the Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries:

"That Balaam evidently senses a gap between his vision and its fulfillment is suggested by verse 17: I see him, but not now; I behold him, but not nigh. Thus, though these predictions were fulfilled for the first time, partially at any rate, some three hundred years after Balaam in the reign of David, traditional Jewish and Christian interpreters have seen another fuller realization of these prophecies in the Messiah. And this is the characteristic of many messianic passages in the Old Testament. On one level they are but expressions of hope for a good and righteous king. but on another plane, they must be looking for something more, for no real king ever came up to the ideals expressed (e.g. Ps. 72:; Is. 11, etc.). In interpreting these last words of Balaam both perspectives must be respected. Primarily they refer to royal triumphs in the period of the early monarchy, but these victories prefigure the greater conquests of Christ at his first and second advents."

"There shall a Star from Jacob come" Felix Mendelssohn