German theologian and martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote: “We pay more attention to dying than to death. We’re more concerned to get over the act of dying than to overcome death.”
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German theologian and martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote: “We pay more attention to dying than to death. We’re more concerned to get over the act of dying than to overcome death.”
Socrates mastered the art of dying; Christ overcame death as the last enemy. There is a real difference between the two things; the one is in the scope of human possibility, the other means resurrection. “It is not from ars moriendi, the art of dying, but from the resurrection of Christ, that a new and purifying wind can blow through our present world.”
Bonhoeffer penned these words as his native Germany was being swept up in the evil of Nazism and preparing for war.
These are words for the Church when acquiescence to fear and bigotry overtook much of the population of Germany. Bonhoeffer and other Church leaders of various denominations composed the Barmen Declaration that spoke powerfully to the evil that was spreading like a cancer in Europe. It was a clarion bell of hope in a world that seemed hopeless.
An ecumenical group of Christian leaders in the United States composed a new declaration this year entitled, Reclaiming Jesus: A Confession of Faith in a Time of Crisis. This is an excerpt of Reclaiming Jesus:
We believe how we treat the hungry, the thirsty, the naked, the stranger, the sick, and the prisoner is how we treat Christ himself.
“Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me” (Matthew 25:40). God calls us to protect and seek justice for those who are poor and vulnerable, and our treatment of people who are “oppressed,” “strangers,” “outsiders,” or otherwise considered “marginal” is a test of our relationship to God, who made us all equal in divine dignity and love. Our proclamation of the lordship of Jesus Christ is at stake in our solidarity with the most vulnerable. If our gospel is not “good news to the poor,” it is not the gospel of Jesus Christ (Luke 4:18).
I believe the gospel of Jesus Christ calls our congregations to be places of hope and community in a more and more hostile world.
It calls us to be places of welcome and sanctuary to the vulnerable and oppressed. A gospel that is “good news to the poor” calls us to speak out against immoral immigration policies that tear families apart. In all times and places, but especially here and now, the gospel of Jesus Christ propels us to be engaged in the world as communities of faith that live in the light of the Resurrection.
