Sometimes you read
a book and you know that it is going to stay with you for a long time.
This is one of
them. It goes on the list of ‘books well worth making the effort for’.
This
is the second biography of Bonhoeffer that I’ve read and it has left me all the
more interested in reading what he himself wrote. He earned the reputation
early on in his career of being an academic and theologian of significant
prowess. No doubt it’s very easy to speak down to others from the cold, lofty
platform of intellectual superiority, which let’s face it, is extremely off
putting but in Bonhoeffer’s case, he speaks from a sincere, compassionate,
Spirit-led heart. He comes across as a warm, kind, passionate man of integrity who
journeyed deeper and deeper into faith to the extent that he was able to face
death at the hands of the Nazis with the utmost dignity and courage.
After three
months of reading at night and in snatches during the day, constantly stuffing
this large book into a small bag along with my lunch and wincing at my own
carelessness when tossing it into the back seat of the car at school pick up
time, I came to the final chapter on Saturday morning.
As I waited for the kettle to boil, I picked up a copy of John’s gospel and opened it at random. The page sub-heading was ‘the one who ate bread at my table’. Jesus is upset because he knows that among those eating with him at the table is the one who will betray him.
‘Then he dipped the crust and gave it to
Judas, son of Simon the Iscariot. As soon as the bread was in his hand, Satan
entered him. “What you must do,” said Jesus, “do. Do it and get it over
with.”….Judas, with the piece of bread, left. It was night.’ John
13
I made my cup of
tea and before returning to the Bonhoeffer biography, I read Saturday’s poem in
my book for Lent, The Journey.
It was none
other than ‘Ballad of the Judas Tree’ by Ruth Etchells.
Judas threw the silver coins into the Temple
and left. Then he went out and hung himself.
Matthew 27:5
I found the poem
sad and moving, the word picture of Jesus descending into hell, finding ‘his
Judas there’ and taking him into his arms. His tree of love taking the place of
the tree of betrayal for ever more.
I finally turned
to the remaining pages of Bonhoeffer and read of him being taken away to
Flossenburg concentration camp where he stood before a pseudo court and was sentenced
to death.
It was morning when they hanged him.
Again so sad and
deeply moving but yet such a difference. Here was someone who died in hope, who
said,
‘No one has yet
believed in God and the Kingdom of God, no one has yet heard about the realm of
the resurrected and not been homesick from that hour, waiting and looking
forward joyfully to being released from bodily existence.’
One
man, Judas, hanged guilty, full of remorse, despair, regret, and shame.
One
man, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, hanged innocent, assured, calm and at peace.
The
contrast in their deaths is stark.
Both
knew the man who also hung on a tree. Jesus loved them both but one believed
and one did not.
As
I close the book and set it back on the shelf now a little more dog eared than
before, Easter week fast approaches. As the spring sun shines in a blue sky, these
weekend words go with me and I am sobered by them. I always dread Good Friday.
The day when we stand right in front of a hanging man. Hanging by his own
choice but yet by the will of men. Carrying an unimaginable, colossal weight of
guilt and yet wholly innocent.
The
doctor at Flossenburg who witnessed Bonhoeffer’s death said later, ‘In the
almost fifty years that I worked as a doctor, I have hardly ever seen a man die
so entirely submissive to the will of God.’ What might he have said if he had
witnessed the death of Jesus on the cross? Would he have joined the centurion
in saying, “Surely this man was the Son of God!” Mark 15:39
What
will we say on Friday as we drink the wine and eat the bread?
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