If we know God's will, we must do it.

The years after World War I, or The Great War as they called it, was a very unstable and vulnerable time in Germany. Their economy was a disaster under the Treaty of Versailles that ended World War One, and Germany resented it. Nefarious political forces – Soviet Communists and Nazis – were preying on their economic troubles, the fear and the resentment hoping to gain control. Once Adolph Hitler was elected Chancellor, the Nazis began to systematically turn every institution toward the singular focus of strengthening Germany to dominate the world.

Where was the Church? The Nazis pressured and eventually took over leadership of the German Church to make it turn away from this whole notion of a suffering savior in favor of Hitler’s Aryan ideal. They literally turned the German Church into a neo-pagan shrine to the state. Many pastors and other church leaders signed on to The Barmen Declaration, which reaffirmed Christian belief. The Nazis used every means they could to silence opposition. Those who signed onto it were pressured. Many left, some were arrested.

This is especially horrifying when we remember that this was Germany; they had been printing Bibles in German for 400 years – since Gutenberg – so the people could read Holy Scripture themselves. This was Martin Luther’s Germany. Sola Scriptura – scripture alone – was his central focus. How could they not embrace the Gospel and turn aside from the evil flowing up from within them as a nation?

At the time, most German theologians had, along with academics around the world, fallen into treating religion as a social science. (That is still how it is taught in universities.) They valued the institution of the church and its role in forming a good society and citizens. But they didn’t actually believe in God or Jesus. Social improvement became the focus framed by what they saw as myths. Most of those social theologians saw the Nazis as a rational way to strengthen their economy and eventually pay back those who had made them suffer so much. It was expedient.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a brilliant German theologian who got his PhD at age 21 in 1927. Sharp kid! Bonhoeffer was among those voices calling the Church back to a true, muscular faith in Christ himself and grounding ourselves in Holy Scripture and prayer so that we might know Jesus and his will for us. He signed the Barmen Declaration and chose to stay.

Among Bonhoeffer’s early principles was this: When we know something of God or of his will, we must follow it. Hang onto that. When we know something of God or of his will, we must follow it. The logic is clear. We believe in an Almighty God who has revealed himself in history and most clearly in the person of his Son Jesus. Once we know what He is on about, we have no rational choice but to follow along.

Today’s Gospel reading follows directly after Jesus asks his disciples “Who do YOU say that I am?” Peter responds correctly, “You are the Christ.” But then, Jesus explains what that means:

“…the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes and be killed, and after three days rise again. And he said this plainly”

Peter is in an awful position. He reacts quite logically.  He knows Jesus.  He has seen and heard wondrous things and, best of all, he’s coming to know Jesus personally.  His desire to protect to protect Jesus and to preserve the movement is absolutely natural. It is wired into his being mentally, biologically and culturally. Can we fault him by any human standard?

But in this case, it is a sin. What is sin? It is doing something, anything, that goes against God’s will or fails to do it by omission. It includes anything that asserts our will over God’s will, no matter how well intentioned or thought out it may be. We cannot define it on our own terms. Our understanding of it must be sought on God’s terms.

In this moment, Peter’s good intentions try and turn Jesus away from following God’s will to following Peter’s will, to tempt Jesus away from God’s will just as Satan – the accuser – tried to tempt him in the wilderness.

Here is the crux – literally the crux which means cross – of the issue: Who has authority? Who is in charge? If Jesus is who he says he is, then he’s in charge, or at least he ought to be, not the government, not social pressures, not anyone else and certainly not me. And when I realize we are in disagreement…he wins.

If he is who he says he is, then we need to be busy finding out what he wants me to do today, tomorrow and in big things or small. We don’t want to be like Peter, making decisions based on our own knowledge and experience, yet finding ourselves opposing what God wants. Remember the old saying, “The road to hell is paved with good intentions?” This is it.

(Bonhoeffer spent a year or so in New York at Union Seminary. He was astounded to see its students having hard opinions on a variety of social issues of the day, yet little to no grounding or foundation for those opinions logically or theologically. Sound familiar? And they didn’t even have social media!)

Today, Holy Scripture and faithful studies of it are more available than ever before. Yet today, people seem to be much more interested in taking positions on social media than seeking God’s will. Think back to Bonhoeffer’s rule: If we know God’s will, we must do it. Now I ask you, does God want you to draw closer to him, to know him more deeply and to love him more completely? Does he want you to study and pray?

It’s important to always remember that we are saved by grace through faith, not by some final exam. But that grace, as Bonhoeffer would write, must not be cheap. We must always remember the terrible cost, the cost Jesus told his disciples must come. Peter couldn’t bear it then. Some would argue with it now.

Be a Christian, but don’t be an uninformed one. As St. Anselm said, faith seeks understanding. If you are not familiar with the Bible, get familiar. If you are not in a regular, daily discipline of prayer and study, start this afternoon. I’m not talking proof-texting, but entering into the great stream of Biblical study and interpretation in its breadth and depth. Get to know Jesus, his will for you, your family, your work, your neighborhood, your church and get on with it.  We have to know it so we won’t work against it.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer took up his cross and followed Jesus. He would stay in Germany despite the increasing danger and work diligently to turn his nation back to Jesus and its Christian roots, teaching and building Christian communities wherever he could, and moving them to remote regions as the oppression grew.

He would save his life by losing it for Jesus’ sake. He was eventually arrested for his complicity in the Valkyrie plot to assassinate Hitler. He was executed in a concentration camp just two weeks before it was liberated by the Allies. He went to his death uncertain about many things, but confident in this Jesus who did indeed suffer and die for him.

The truth of Christ’s identity, the reality of his death and Resurrection, allowed Bonhoeffer to go to his death confident of his own salvation and eternal life with Jesus.  His example endures with profound influence on Christianity to this day. May it be so for every one of us.

AMEN

P.S. The poem below was written by Bonhoeffer during his internment in the Flossenbürg  concentration camp. 

 Who Am I?

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Who am I?  They often tell me

I stepped from my cell's confinement

Calmly, cheerfully, firmly,

Like a Squire from his country house.

Who am I? They often tell me

I used to speak to my warders

freely and friendly and clearly,

as through it were mine to command.

Who am I? They also tell me

I bore the days of misfortune

equably, smilingly, proudly,

like one accustomed to win.

Am I then really that which other men tell of?

Or am I only what I myself 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 colors, for flowers, for the voices of birds,

thirsting for words of kindness, for neighborliness,

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 contemptible woebegone weakling?

Or is something within me like a beaten army

Fleeing in disorder from victory already achieved?

Who am I? They mock me, these lonely question of mine,

Whoever I am, Thou Knowest, O God, I am thine.