There could not be a better way to celebrate this 20th anniversary of the destruction of the Berlin Wall by the people of Berlin than to recall the enduring significance of the work of a citizen and lover of Berlin, Dietrich Bonhoeffer and to salute the contribution of Eberhard Bethge, Bonhoeffer’s friend and biographer who served as the Pastor of St George’s in the 1950’s.
I was very moved to visit the Bonhoeffer house in Berlin and to see in the room in which he wrote the Cost of Discipleship a print on the wall of London recalling the years he spent here between 1933-35. It has already been possible to forge a link between Bonhoeffer’s School, the Walter Rathenau Gymnazium and St Mary’s Hendon so that a new generation can appreciate the cost and the power of living by principle.
It is good that we are meeting in a university setting since Bonhoeffer was an intellectual but one who did not make thoughts his aim. He could with honour have remained in the US as a known opponent of the Nazi regime on the outbreak of war but he said “I will have no right to participate in the reconstruction of Germany after the war, if I do not share the trials of this time with my people”.
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He has played a part in the reconstruction of Germany by his writings and example powerfully validated by the manner of his death. Hitler already confined to his bunker in Berlin as the Reich disintegrated around him in April 1945 sent orders that Bonhoeffer was not to be allowed to survive the collapse of the Nazi regime.
His legacy is still inspiring and troubling.
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He was acutely conscious of the displacement of God from the culture of Europe and the relegation of God to the suburbs of our interest. “One may ask whether ever before in human history there have been people with so little ground under their feet.”
One response to all this is described by Bonhoeffer as “our clerical tricks”. “The displacement of God from the world and from the public parts of human life, led to the attempt to keep his place secure at least in the sphere of the “personal”, the “inner” and the “private”. And as every man still has a private sphere somewhere, that is where he was thought to be most vulnerable. The secrets known to a man’s valet – that is to put it crudely the range of his intimate life from prayer to his sexual life – have become the hunting ground of modern pastoral workers.”
This is part of what Bonhoeffer meant by “religion”, a self-contained inwardness which is opposed to the Biblical understanding of the relationship between God and the whole person whose “heart” is formed and expressed by outward actions as well as inner dispositions.
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Bonhoeffer protested against any attempt to evade the reality of the state of Western culture in his day. He protested against any tendency to treat God as a supplement to reality or an escape from it. “Jesus Christ came to initiate us not into a new religion but into life” – life in all its fullness. In the incarnation, God took upon him our flesh and dwelt among us, he was not a “drop out” God.
But of course he came unto his own and his own received him not. The worldliness of God is to be distinguished from what Bonhoeffer described as “the shallow and banal this-worldliness of the enlightened, the busy the comfortable or the lascivious”. “Profound this worldliness”, is, he said, “characterised by discipline and the constant knowledge of death and resurrection.” His last words, after he knew that he had been condemned to death included a message to Bishop Bell of Chichester, “This is the end – for me the beginning of life. [Tell the bishop] that I believe with him in the principle of our universal Christian brotherhood which rises above all national interests and that our victory is certain.”
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Hats off to the Historic Chapels Trust. You have restored an important place of assembly for the German community in London which reminds us of the rich and fruitful relationship we have had with Germany since the time of the Steelyard and the merchants of the Hanse. You have honoured the memory of a man who had a gift for friendship and with whose encouragement we look forward to building afresh the close cultural ties between Germany and the UK in order to serve a new Europe and a new World.