Of Enemies, Violence, Sacrifice
and
Life’s Crosses

2nd Samuel 23:13-17
James 4:1-10
John 2:13-22

I: — For years I have arrived at church on Remembrance Day Sunday with my heart in my mouth. For years I have wondered what this service says to people of recent German ancestry. Have we implied, however unintentionally, that German people are the ogres of the world? that they are people of impenetrable hardness and incorrigible cruelty? To be sure, we in Schomberg are orthodox enough to say we agree with the prophet Jeremiah that the heart of everyone — without exception — “is deceitful above all things and desperately corrupt, beyond understanding.” (Jer. 17:9) But even as we say we agree with the prophet do we quietly qualify the statement so as to suggest that the hearts of one nation, one people in particular are extraordinarily deceitful, uniquely corrupt and thoroughly un-understandable?

The century just concluded, the twentieth century, has found Germany our enemy and France our ally in two major wars. But it hasn’t always been like this. One-and one-half centuries ago the situation was reversed: France was the enemy and Germany the ally. Following the Battle of Waterloo, where the Duke of Wellington defeated the French forces, Wellington remarked, “Never have I come so close to losing.” He would have lost for sure had British troops not been supported by German forces. In other words, labels like “enemy” and “ally” change in a twinkling.

Think of the United States . We Canadians have been allies of the U.S.A. for decades, as have the British. But the British and the Americans haven’t always been allies; there were slaughters in 1776 and 1812. The Citadel, that massive stone fortress in Quebec City , was constructed in the 1800s to protect you and me against the Americans. As soon as the American civil war ended Canadians were nervous lest the victorious Union army, led by General Ulysses S. Grant, decide it might as well turn north and make a clean sweep. From 1900 on the British and American navies vied with each other for superiority just in case the two countries went to war. In the year 1900 there was a celebration for Queen Victoria , and 2,500 British warships were on display for it in British waters. (Not included, of course, were British warships patrolling the high seas. And all of this in a country the size of a postage stamp.) The U.S.A. was determined to develop a navy that could conquer the Royal Navy. And in fact the U.S.A. had on file in Washington as late as 1932 plans for war against Great Britain .

Speaking of the Americans, when Rene Levesque became premier of Quebec in 1976 he began talking about claiming sovereignty over the St. Lawrence Seaway; he talked about reducing exports of hydroelectric power to the United States ; he talked about cozying up to Castro in Cuba . The Americans didn’t say anything about this; they merely did something. They immediately stationed one entire division (10,000 men) of light infantry opposite Kingston in upstate New York , so that these 10,000 soldiers could move quickly to Ottawa and Montreal in case Quebec refused to respect American interests. At the same time the CIA, America ‘s intelligence force, quietly slipped hundreds of French-speaking operatives into the province of Quebec . America wasn’t our ally in the 19th century; it was in the 20th century; I hope it will remain our ally in the 21st.

The expression “concentration camp” has been especially ugly in the past one hundred years. Who invented the concentration camp? The British developed concentration camps in their war against the Dutch in South Africa . The Dutch suffered more fatalities in the camps, we should note (principally through disease), than they suffered through enemy fire.

Jeremiah is correct. The corruption of the human heart is universal.

Nonetheless, while all hearts are corrupt, there do occur in history extraordinary concentrations of evil that are to be resisted at any cost. We cannot use our common sinnership as an excuse for not resisting the appearance of a particular concentration of evil. Naziism was such a concentration.

II: — It goes without saying that to approve armed resistance to an evil like Naziism is to approve violence. Those people who say they are opposed to violence in principle, opposed to violence of any kind, for any reason, must therefore approve non-resistance (at least non-armed resistance) to Naziism. Those people are therefore pacifists.

The tradition of Christian pacifism is long and noble. Many pacifists have suffered terribly for their conviction. There is much about them that appeals to me. I too want to be a pacifist. I am almost a pacifist by conviction — until I see once again a photograph or film footage of little children, four to twelve years old, tightly huddled on a railway platform in eastern Europe or Holland or France . Their parents are frantic. The children are waiting for a freight train — waterless, toiletless, near-airless — that will take them to an extermination site. In a few days they will not be gassed and their remains burnt (the fate of their parents); in a few days these children will be burnt alive. At this point my pacifism evaporates. No longer a pacifist myself in the face of such a hideous spectacle, I have difficulty understanding how anyone else can be.

Please don’t think that because I can’t approve of pacifism in principle I therefore approve of violence in principle. I don’t approve of wanton violence, gratuitous violence, violence for the sake of violence. To approve of violence in principle is to approve the sort of Nazi depredation we rightly deem reprehensible.

At the same time, we should be honest and admit that violence is another word for coercive power, and everyone exercises coercive power in some form every day. If everyone exercises coercive power, then everyone is violent.

When I speak of coercive power I mean that we impose our will on someone else who is unwilling. To impose our will on the unwilling is to coerce them; to coerce them is to violate them.

When the police officer arrests the criminal suspect at gunpoint the police officer is imposing his will on someone who is unwilling. He is coercing the suspect. The police officer with a revolver in her hand exercises the same coercive power as the bank robber with a revolver in his hand. The bank robber is coercing the bank teller; the police officer is coercing the suspect. But both are coercing. Both are imposing their will upon the unwilling.

When the judge sends the convicted person to prison he is imposing society’s will upon the unwilling. Violence has been done. Imprisonment, necessary to be sure, nevertheless remains a horrible form of violence.

When the parent says to her child, “No, you aren’t going to the overnight party. I don’t want to hear any more about it. One more word from you and you won’t go anywhere this weekend”; when the parent says this she is coercing the child. It’s impossible to pretend anything else.

When the dangerously deranged person is sedated and whisked off to the provincial hospital he isn’t asked if he’d like to go. He is strong-armed off to the hospital. The school principal about to suspend the pupil for striking a teacher doesn’t first ask the pupil and her parents if they agree with the suspension. The pupil and her parents are unwilling with respect to the suspension? Too bad. Their will is going to be violated (as it should be).

Someone like Gandhi is often held up as a model of non-violence. I don’t think for a minute that Gandhi believed in non-violence in principle. Gandhi used non-violence as a technique whenever he thought it would be effective; he disregarded non-violence whenever he thought it wouldn’t. If Gandhi had frontally opposed British military forces in India , he and his followers would have been decimated. Therefore he didn’t oppose British military force with whatever military force he could muster. Instead he deployed non-violence as a technique (always assuming, of course, the British tradition of justice, and always assuming that British military might — i.e., violence — would protect him and his followers in their protest against the British.) Gandhi used non-violence against the British in order to establish the oppressive power (violence) of the Indian state.

We can’t pretend that our Lord was less than violent the day he cleaned out the big church in Jerusalem . John tells us that Jesus made a whip out of leather cords. How long did it take him to gather up the cords? How long did it then take him to braid the whip? Plainly, our Lord’s violence was premeditated. He didn’t lose his temper in a flash; he didn’t lose his temper at all. He planned what he was going to do; his violence was premeditated, deliberate.

This story is rooted firmly in the gospel tradition. Every written gospel mentions it. John puts it at the beginning of Christ’s public ministry, thereby having it set the tone for his public ministry. Matthew, Mark and Luke put it at the end of his public ministry (just prior to the cross), thereby making it the climax of his public ministry.

In any case every gospel-writer understands the incident to be crucial. Jesus was not a devotee of non-violence. This shouldn’t surprise us. There is no one who is utterly non-violent. Even the pacifist punishes her misbehaving child; and punishment of any kind is coercion, the imposition of someone’s will upon the unwilling, and therefore a form of violence.

III: — Then wisdom is needed, much wisdom, if we are to forego the illusion that all violence is avoidable and forego as well the wickedness that any violence is acceptable.

Think of our Lord once again. He doesn’t hesitate to act violently when he is exposed to injustice and exploitation. He arrives at the temple (which he loves) only to find devout worshippers being “fleeced”. They are defenceless people. The animal they have brought to the service (or purchased locally for the service) must be blemish-free. The temple authorities, in league with the sellers, pronounce the animals unsuitable. The authorities tell the worshippers the only blemish-free animals are those that the sellers inside the temple are selling. It so happens that these animals cost fifteen times the market price.

The worshippers were financially poor – and were swindled unconscionably. They were devout — and their devotion was exploited shamelessly. When Jesus saw defenceless people being duped and exploited; when he saw poor people rendered poorer still, he became violent on their behalf.

Yet when Jesus is victimized himself, he doesn’t become violent on his own behalf. Concerning himself he exercises not violence but self-renunciation. When his victimizers are nailing him to the wood he will only intercede for them, “Father, forgive them; they don’t even know what they are doing.”

Self-renunciation is sacrifice. To renounce oneself is to give oneself up, to sacrifice oneself. To renounce oneself is to absorb violence, and in absorbing it, to learn that there is a cross at the heart of life. Christians believe that the crosses everywhere in life are to be picked up and shouldered willingly, gladly, even cheerfully.

Several years ago a well-known leader in the British Methodist Church , Rev. Scott Lidgett, objected to the attention and adulation heaped on a very popular preacher and able psychologist, Dr. Leslie Weatherhead. On one occasion when his heart was especially twisted Scott Lidgett said publicly of Weatherhead, “We are not interested in stars that scintillate but do not illumine.” It was a vicious remark. What did Weatherhead do? He absorbed it. When I say he absorbed it I don’t mean that he gritted his teeth and fought down the urge to retaliate. I mean he never let the remark impair his relationship with Lidgett; he never let the remark curdle his spirit. The remark was simply absorbed and therein neutralized. But we should never underestimate the sacrifice involved in such renunciation.

A year or two ago my mother was reading the newspaper obituary column when she came upon the name of one her former office-colleagues. My mother told me (again) about her late colleague. The woman and her husband had had a child born with spina bifida. The child had to be turned every hour. The woman and her husband took turns getting up in the night, hour-on, hour-off, to turn their son. They did this for thirty years. Having had her sleep interrupted frequently during the night, every night, the woman would come to work in the morning and cheerfully set about the day’s tasks, never once complaining about her lot or suggesting that she and her husband were hard done-by. What kind of self-renunciation is involved here? There is a cross at the heart of life.

A man in one of my former congregations was at worship every Sunday, diligent in his responsibilities on the official board, and enthusiastic at the weekly bible study Maureen and I had in the manse. He and his wife had married in their mid-twenties. Shortly after they married, his wife began behaving oddly, and soon was diagnosed schizophrenic. After that she had good days, bad days, and terrible days. On her worst days she abused her husband. When this fellow was having an especially difficult time he would talk with me. At the end of every conversation he would tell me he was feeling better and could go on caring for his wife (in every sense of “care for”). “I made a promise on our wedding day”, he told me often; “I made a promise to her.” Some promises entail enormous sacrifice, nothing less than a cross.

Our Lord made a promise too. (The bible calls it a covenant.) Our Lord made a promise to all humankind. His promise kept meant self-renunciation for him, self-renunciation so extreme as to end in a dereliction, a forsakenness that is unique.

The truth is, self-renunciation worthy of the name, anywhere in life, is never less than a cross. We should never pretend anything else.

IV: — Today is Remembrance Day Sunday. It is not a day in which we gloat over the superiority of some nations while despising the inferiority of others. Neither is it a day when we boast of violence in principle.

But it is a day when we understand soberly that violence and non-violence are not the simple alternatives that we have been taught. Violence is the exercise of coercion, and coercion is a household commodity: everybody exercises some form of it every day, even must exercise some form of it. The question we must ponder today is, “What kind of coercion (violence) are we to exercise? When? Where? Why? How?”

On Remembrance Day we recall the example of our Lord in the violence he chose to exercise and the violence he chose to absorb. We who are his people must come to the same understanding and make the same self-renunciation. For there is a cross at the heart of life, and therefore a cross everywhere in life. And such a cross God has promised to honour in such a manner that it will redound to his praise even as it eases the distress of us his creatures.

Victor Shepherd
November 2005

Jeremiah 6:14
Romans 12:18
Hebrews 12:14
Matthew 5:9

I: — I have seen the veterans weep as young people belittled, even despised, their service and sacrifice. I have seen veterans rage as people too young to have faced war taunted them with “war-monger,” “killer.” I understand why the veterans weep and rage. I remember what they have told me.

I sat with one such veteran the night his fifteen-year old son was decapitated in an automobile accident. The man was shaking uncontrollably, dry-mouthed, beside himself. “I haven’t felt like this since D-Day,” he told me. What does this tell us about D-Day? Anyone whose fifteen-year old son is killed is scarred for life. Plainly anyone who survived D-Day is scarred for life.

I have long known a clergyman who served on a warship in the Royal Navy throughout World War II. To this day he sits up in bed from time-to-time, terrified, screaming, “My life-jacket; I can’t find my life-jacket.” His wife awakens him and makes him a cup of tea. Together they sit and sip and wait for the sun to rise.

The man is shell-shocked. He’s also irked. He’s irked because when he returned to England after the war his former chums, all of whom had been conscientious objectors, told him he was a cold-blooded killer. They told him this from the pinnacle of their business careers. Since many young men were in the forces during the war, those who weren’t rose extraordinarily quickly in the business world. My friend’s business career, of course, had been stalled for six years. He told his chums that had Britain been invaded (certainly this was Hitler’s intention) they would have had no business career at all – or much of anything else. But they only scoffed at him.

At the conclusion of World War II there were hundreds of airmen who had been burnt horribly. For the most part they had been Spitfire pilots. The Spitfire aircraft, so crucial in the Battle of Britain, had its fuel tank behind the flier. The fuel line ran through the cockpit to the engine in front of the flier. When the aircraft was hit and caught fire, in three seconds the heat in the cockpit was so intense that the flesh melted off the flier’s face. Those men would never have their faces restored. What sacrifice would these men continue to make for the rest of their lives? After all, how many women are going to marry a face they can’t kiss?

Those who scorn the service and sacrifice of veterans even defame them, forget one thing. They forget that they have the freedom to publicize their opinion only because those they are defaming paid the dearest price to guarantee them that freedom.

II: — Don’t think I’m glorifying war. I’m not. I repudiate utterly the outlook of General George Patton who said, “War is humankind’s noblest endeavour. Our humanness is never so rich, our character never so pure, as when we are waging war.” General Sherman, a Union officer in the American Civil War, was far closer to the truth when he announced, “War is hell.”

The greatest military leader in scripture is Joshua. He won many battles. Yet the bible never boasts of them. Why not? Because Israelite conviction shuns war. The Hebrew prophets refuse to sanctify war. Hebrew poets refuse to romanticize war. In his farewell address to his people, Joshua , Israel ’s greatest soldier makes no mention of his military triumphs. Why not? Because the people don’t want to hear of them; because he doesn’t want to be remembered for them; because Israel ’s Messiah is Messiah in truth only if he brings with him peace wherein swords are beaten into ploughshares and spears into pruning hooks, peace wherein war isn’t learned any more.

Whenever war is mentioned someone speaks of Gandhi. Gandhi was committed to non-violent resistance. Let’s be sure to understand something crucial about Gandhi’s movement and method. A leader can rouse the world as Gandhi did only in a setting that upholds natural justice and the right of assembly. Without the right of assembly Gandhi and his followers wouldn’t have lasted a day. Who guaranteed him the right of assembly? Who protected him against mob violence while he orchestrated protests day after day? The British Army did. Gandhi survived day after day as he continued to recommend non-violence just because he was protected by soldiers who weren’t committed to non-violence. Gandhi knew that if he were mistreated he could rely on British justice to help him. In the USA the same was true of Martin Luther King jr.: he could advocate non-violence as a means of social protest just because the Unites States government guaranteed him (by means of heavily armed personnel) the right of assembly and access to the courts.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer lived under a different regime: no natural justice, no guaranteed right of assembly, no protection against molestation. Bonhoeffer, initially impressed by Gandhi’s example, soon saw that Gandhi-type non-violence would do nothing to stem the rising tide of death in Germany and elsewhere. Bonhoeffer was convinced that the fastest way to end the slaughter of combatants and civilians was to assassinate Hitler. He joined a plot (unsuccessful) to do just that. He knew that in some situations the choice isn’t between taking life and not taking it; in some situations the only choice is between taking much life and taking little. This is a terrible choice. It so happens that life often traffics in terrible choices.

George Orwell, then, may have been right. Orwell said, “War has never been right; war has never been sane; but sometimes war has been necessary.”

II: — At the same time Orwell never lived in the nuclear era. What could be said of yesteryear’s conventional warfare can never be said of nuclear warfare. When Orwell said “War has sometimes been necessary” he meant that war has sometimes been the lesser of two evils, sometimes the only way to safeguard the victimized neighbour.

Nuclear war is different. Nuclear war can never be the lesser of two evils. We must understand that it’s impossible to win a nuclear war; it’s impossible to limit or contain nuclear war. It’s impossible for nuclear war to protect the neighbour in any way. And, we should note, it’s impossible to defend against nuclear war. Richard Nixon admitted this thirty years ago. Nixon admitted that while there might be a slight defence against the piloted bomber, there is no defence against the intercontinental missile and none against the submarine-launched missile.

Neither can we protect ourselves against nuclear radiation, fallout. Fifty years ago a small nuclear warhead was detonated on an uninhabited island in the Pacific. One hundred miles away from the point of the explosion another island was saturated with eight times the lethal dose of radiation.

A twenty-megaton warhead isn’t large by today’s standards. Nevertheless, a twenty-megaton explosion in Toronto in one second would raise the surface temperature of the city to four times the heat at the centre of the sun: 150 million degrees Fahrenheit. At this temperature people don’t burn; they don’t even boil; they are vaporized, without so much as ashes left over. Anyone in Toronto who survived the blast would suffocate as the ensuing firestorm sucked all the oxygen out of the air. Those outside the city would die slowly of radiation.

Why do I speak of nuclear warfare at all? Hasn’t the USSR crumbled? Let’s not be naïve: the countries of the former USSR are staggering economically. If their economic malaise worsens they could re-communize themselves tomorrow. In this case the arms race would heat up instantly. What’s more, many smaller nations now have nuclear arsenals. Who knows when these smaller nations are going to inflict nuclear war on each other? Once it began, where would it end?

IV: — The truth is, with present-day conventional weapons nations can wreak the kind of havoc they could only wreak with nuclear weapons thirty years ago. In other words, conventional weapons today have the killing capacity of last generation’s nuclear weapons. Conclusion: armies that don’t have nuclear weapons can kill as effectively as armies that have. Then who needs nuclear weapons? Since nuclear weapons aren’t needed, some nations will be tempted to wage conventional warfare with its new levels of killing power, but without the disadvantages of nuclear war; namely, that nuclear war is unwinnable and uncontainable. If nations think that conventional warfare (now as deadly as nuclear) is winnable and containable, then it becomes more likely that conventional warfare will break out. When it does break out it will annihilate as many people as only a nuclear war could have consumed three decades ago.

The truth is, many conventional weapons are now deadlier than nuclear weapons. The F-4 Phantom Fighter aircraft delivers greater destruction conventionally than does the nuclear cruise missile. Conventional chemical warfare can readily obliterate cities the size of Hiroshima . So who needs nuclear weapons?

The Starlight scope, a heat-sensor the size of a small telescope, can tell the difference between male and female bodies at a range of 1000 metres by means of the difference in heat given off by the pelvic areas of a man and a woman. The Starlight scope can therefore detect any heat-producing item: tank, soldier, missile-launcher, artillery piece.

Speaking of artillery, we should understand that the killing capacity of conventional artillery is 400% greater now than in World War II. In World War II TNT was the explosive in artillery shells. Today it’s plastic. Plastic explosives are far more powerful than old-fashioned TNT. It used to be that an artillery shell killed people by means of metal fragments that spewed out and struck people within a few feet of it. Today a small artillery shell only four inches in diameter but containing plastic explosive will kill anyone within 200 feet of it – but not by metal fragments; by concussion, sheer blast, without any metal fragments at all.

In World War II aiming was very inexact. It took an artillery crew six minutes to zero in on a target. Today all aiming is done by computer. The computer zeroes in on a target in fifteen seconds. In WW II it was very difficult to hit a moving target. Today laser illumination will direct an artillery projectile onto a target 30 km. away moving at 80 kmh.

So much for artillery. What about armour? In WW II a tank could penetrate 5 inches of steel plate at a range of one mile. Today a tank can penetrate 10 inches of steel plate at a range of three miles.

But of course tanks don’t merely fire at targets. Tanks are also targets to be fired at. Anti-tank guns can penetrate the most-heavily armoured tank. The truth is, however, the tank doesn’t have to be penetrated at all. One kind of anti-tank projectile doesn’t penetrate the tank; instead, when the projectile strikes the tank it spreads a “blob” of plastic explosive no bigger than a dinner plate on the tank’s surface. The dinner plate of plastic explodes so powerfully that the thick armour of the tank is dented, only dented. Still, the explosion outside the tank is so thunderous that chunks of metal are blasted off inside the tank and the crew dies instantly.

What about air power? One helicopter ( America ’s C-130H), discharging all its conventional weapons at once, can reduce all the buildings in a city block to rubble in less than one minute. So who needs nuclear weapons?

The Fuel Air Munition bomb carries an explosive liquid that is released in a dense cloud over a heavily populated city. When the cloud is properly formed a fuse in the same bomb ignites the cloud. The ensuing destruction is greater than that of many nuclear warheads. So who needs nuclear weapons?

And then there are chemical weapons. Chemical weapons are exceedingly destructive. They happen to kill exceedingly slowly. Plainly the worst feature of chemical weapons will be their psychological devastation.

While we are speaking of psychology we must be sure to understand that in any war psychiatric casualties outnumber deaths 3-1. This 3-1 ratio has remained constant since the American Civil War in the 1860s when it was found that a soldier was three times as likely to become deranged as he was to be killed. The same ratio obtained in both World Wars. In 1982, when Israel invaded Lebanon , once again psychiatric casualties prevailed at a ratio of 3-1. (When a war ceases all sides have myriads of veterans who are psychiatrically ruined for life.)

This ratio will change when war next breaks out. It is expected, for several reasons, that the ratio of psychiatric casualties to deaths will change from 3-1 to as high as 100-1. In other words, any major conflict today will see unprecedented carnage and unprecedented craziness.

V: — What I have brought forward today: where does it all leave us? It should leave us hearing with unstopped ears our Lord Jesus Christ who cried, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.” If our ears are really unstopped we shall note that Jesus speaks of peacemakers, not peace-wishers or peace-hopers or peace-preferrers. War, we know, “breaks out.” But peace never “breaks out.” Peace has to be made. Jesus insists that peace, unlike war, has to be made. Then we must never begrudge money and effort given over to peacemaking. We must never begrudge money spent on international travels and visits and exchanges. For as long as we are meeting one another we recognise a common humanness in each other. As long as we are meeting each other we de-mystify our neighbour as ogre or monster or less-than-human.

Jesus says “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.” “Son of” is a Hebrew expression that means “reflecting the nature of.” To be a son of God is to reflect the nature of God. Therefore it must be God’s nature to make peace. And so it is. Then we have to examine how God makes peace with us, his rebellious creatures, so that we might learn to make peace among our neighbours. How does God make peace?

[1] We are told in scripture that God has made peace with a wayward world “through the blood of the cross.” In other words, God makes peace with a wayward world through a sacrifice that he makes at enormous cost to himself. If God can make peace only through his self-offering and self-renunciation, we can be peacemakers only in the same way ourselves.

I stress this because we tend to venerate the sacrifices made for war but belittle the sacrifices made for peace. I am not denigrating in any way the sacrifices Canadians and others made in war. Still, I do want us to understand that sacrifices made for peace are to be honoured as much. Peacemaking entails no less sacrifice than war-waging.

Then we must never scorn the service peacemakers render and the sacrifice they make. Fifty years ago we applauded the person who made costly sacrifice, especially the supreme sacrifice, in time of war. Then we must do as much for those who strive to make peace. If a soldier crouched in freezing mud in a foxhole for hours on end we thanked him. I know people who, for the sake of peace and the demonstrations essential to peace, have done as much and suffered as much – yet they are rarely thanked. Surely they are entitled to something besides scorn and ridicule. They merit the same recognition as the bravest war hero.

The “Sojourners” organization in the USA is a group of Christians dedicated to pursuing peace and justice. Several years ago, during the “cold war” between the USA and the USSR , the Sojourners community learned of a railway train that was transporting nuclear warheads across the country to a military site. One of the “Sojourners,” protesting the traffic in nuclear weapons, lay down on the railway tracks. The train ran over him, severing both legs. He survived only because a nurse happened to be nearby and she prevented him from bleeding to death. The press ridiculed the man as silly. Had he thought the train was going to stop? (In truth, he had thought it would.) And now he was legless for the rest of his life? “He gave up his legs for nothing, stupid man,” public opinion opined.

No Christian who clings to the cross can say this. Bystanders on Good Friday would have said that our Lord gave up his life for nothing. He announced himself, “No one takes my life from me; I lay it down of my own accord.” Then plainly he didn’t have to go to the cross. The two criminals on either side of him – their lives were taken; they had no choice in the matter. Jesus laid down his life. Uselessly? God made his peace with the world right there. You and I must never be found saying “pointless” dismissively when we hear or read of what someone, somewhere, is doing to make peace. Remember, peace has to be made; peace doesn’t break out.

[2] While we are pondering how God makes peace we must understand that God never short-circuits justice. The prophet Jeremiah insists that a false peace (soon to break down) occurs when “wounds are healed lightly;” that is, when injustices aren’t redressed. To want peace without justice is to want magic – and everywhere in scripture God’s face is set flint-hard against magic. Peace without justice is impossible. When Jeremiah denounces those who shout “Peace, Peace” where there is no peace, no shalom, Jeremiah means we mustn’t cry for peace where we won’t do anything for justice.

In all of this I want to return to the cross. Plainly God doesn’t make peace by “puppeteering” people and situations and events. God makes peace between himself and the world by that sacrifice whose price he himself pays gladly. In his self-giving, justice is served; legitimate grievance is addressed; violations are admitted to be violations; and there is no false peace. Genuine peace between God and his creation is made as God himself enters the fray and sacrifices himself for the sake of peace.

The peace that Christ summons us to make; our peacemaking (genuine peace that doesn’t attempt a false peace through healing wounds lightly) entails no less sacrifice than war-waging.

The unknown writer of Hebrews urges us, “Strive for peace with all men….” Paul pleads, “If possible, as far as it depends upon you, live peaceably with all.” Jesus insists that it is the makers of genuine peace who are going to be recognised on the Day of Judgement as having mirrored in especial manner the nature of God himself.

Victor Shepherd
November 2004

1st Chronicles 16:8-13
Galatians 2:1-10
Luke 22:14-23

At least once a week I tell my seminary students that of all the subjects in the theological curriculum the most important, unquestionably, is Old Testament. For it’s through studying the Old(er) Testament that we come to know the specific Hebrew meanings of common English words.

Today we are going to probe the Hebrew meaning of “remember”. We shall be helped to understand “remember” if we first learn the meaning of “forget”. To forget, in modern discourse, is simply to have an idea or notion slip out of the mind. To forget a person is simply no longer to have the idea of that person in one’s consciousness. But in the Hebrew bible to forget someone is much more serious: to forget someone is to annihilate that person, obliterate him, destroy him. When the Israelites cried to God not to forget them they didn’t mean, “Be sure to think of us once in a while.” They meant, “Don’t annihilate us, don’t blot us out.” It’s obvious that to forget, in Hebrew, has to do not with ideas but with living realities. In the same manner to remember has to do not with recollecting notions but with living realities. In a word, to remember, Hebraically, is to bring a past event up into the present so that what happened back then continues to happen right now — and is therefore the operative reality of our existence. What unfolded back then, altering forever those whom it touched then, continues to be operative now, altering forever those who “remember” it now. When the Israelites are urged to remember the deliverance from slavery of their foreparents centuries earlier they aren’t being urged merely to recollect a historical fact; rather they are being urged to live the same reality themselves, the reality of deliverance, seven hundred years later. Just as their foreparents knew most intimately a great deliverance at God’s hand, together with the gratitude and the obedience which that deliverance quickened, so they are now to know most intimately a similar deliverance at God’s hand, together with a similar gratitude and a similar obedience.

This is very different from the way we speak of remembering today. When we remember we merely bring to mind the idea or notion of an event. But when our Hebrew foreparents spoke of remembering they meant something far stronger; they meant that what had happened in the past continued to be a present, operative, life-altering reality.

I: — Over and over the Hebrew bible insists that God remembers. God remembers his covenant; God remembers his holy promise; God remembers his steadfast love; God remembers his mercy. All of these items amount to the same thing. God’s covenant is his bond with us. Of his own grace and truth God has bound himself to his people. He will never quit on us out of weariness or give up on us out of frustration or desert us out of disgust. He has pledged himself to us. To be sure, his gracious pledge to us aims at forging in us our grateful pledge to him; as he binds himself to us we are to bind ourselves to him. Nevertheless, even though we break our covenant with him he never breaks his with us. Our gratitude to him may be — is — as fitful as our moods; nonetheless, his graciousness towards us is unvarying.

The psalmist tells us that God remembers his holy promise. His covenant is his promise, and because he “remembers” it his promise remains operative no matter what.

And since the God whose promise is forever operative is the God whose nature is a fountain of effervescing love, the psalmist maintains that God remembers his steadfast love.

And when this love meets our sin, this love takes the form of mercy; God remembers his mercy. In a word, the operative reality permeating the entire universe at this moment is God’s remembered covenant, promise, steadfast love and mercy.

Since God is God his memory must be exceedingly good; in fact, is there anything God doesn’t remember? Does God have a photographic memory, remembering everything forever? The truth is, God is supremely good at forgetting; he loves to forget, literally “loves” to forget. A minute ago I said that to forget, in Hebrew, doesn’t mean to let slip out of one’s mind accidentally; to forget is to annihilate deliberately, blot out, obliterate. To God’s people who humble themselves penitently before him, says the prophet Isaiah, God declares, “I, I am he who blots out your transgressions for my sake, and I will not remember your sins.” The prophet doesn’t mean that God has absentmindedly lost track of human sin. He means that God has blotted out the sins of repentant people; their sin is no longer operative, it no longer determines their standing before God or impedes their access to God. God is marvellously adept at forgetting whenever he beholds repentant people.

But of course there is always that throbbing mercy of God which we want God to remember, for we want such mercy to remain the operative truth, the final truth, the ultimate reality of our lives. For this reason the dying criminal, crucified alongside our Lord, gasped with his last gasp, “Lord, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” The dying criminal, profoundly repentant, had just rebuked the unrepentant criminal strung up on the other side of Jesus, “Don’t you fear God? You and I are under the same sentence of condemnation, and we deserve it.” It is a wise person who knows that her sentence of condemnation is precisely what she deserves, wise again when her plea which pushes aside all frivolous requests is simply, “Jesus, remember me”. This plea is a plea that the mercy which was wrought at the cross become now and remain eternally the operative truth and reality of our womb-to-tomb existence. “Jesus, remember me.” “I, I am the God who blots out your transgressions for my sake, and I will not remember your sins.”

II: — Those men and women whom our Lord remembers in this way; a peculiar remembering is required of them as well. In the sermon on the mount Jesus says to his disciples, “If you are offering your gift at the altar, and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift at the altar and go; first, be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift.” Jesus insists that as we gather with others for worship our own spiritual affairs must be put in order. To think we can worship the holy God and cavalierly overlook the unholy corruption of our hearts and the spiritual disorder of our lives is to dishonour God. Jesus speaks, in the Sermon on the Mount, of the futility of attempting to worship God while our heart and our brother’s heart are estranged. By extension, Jesus speaks of the futility of attempting to worship God while any spiritual disorder about us is unaddressed. This is not to counsel scrupulosity, a perfectionism which leaves people nervous, self-rejecting, and despairing. But it is to get serious about putting right what we know not to be right in our lives.

You see, to overlook or regard as trivial what we know to be out of order within us is only to find it getting worse. What is spiritually corrupt will never get better by itself. Hatred will never re-nature itself as love; it will only become more hateful until it consumes and controls us. Lust will never alchemize itself into non-exploitative affection; lust will only disguise itself as affection as it worsens until it fills the horizon of our life. When are we going to learn that the person found lying can be forgiven (and should be forgiven) but cannot be trusted? I am dismayed when I come upon people who are indifferent to truth-telling and transparency. Don’t they know that they will not be trusted (at least by me)? They have advertised themselves as devious and bent on deceiving others. Plainly they are untrustworthy.

Whatever our spiritual disorder is, says Jesus, we should first “remember” it; then we should be sure to “forget” it. He means we should acknowledge our spiritual disorder as operative right now in order that it might be obliterated and we ourselves be healed.

The Christians who characteristically have had the best perspective on such matters are my old friends, the 17th century Puritans. The Puritans (who have been maligned with a reputation they don’t deserve) are the master diagnosticians of the human heart. On the one hand the Puritans knew that people who are always taking their temperature are neurotic fusspots. On the other hand, the Puritans knew that people who never take themselves to a physician, even when the symptoms of illness are glaring, are simply fools. The Puritans had read our Lord’s word, “If you are bringing your gift to the altar and you remember whatever spiritual corruption lurks within you, do something about it immediately — otherwise your worship is phoney, and your declared love for God pretence.”

Thomas Watson, my favourite Puritan thinker, states pithily, “Christ is never loved till sin be loathed.” At the same time Watson is careful to leave with us that word which will spare us self-rejection but will rather comfort us as it redirects us to our Lord himself: “Do not rest upon this, that your heart has been wounded for sin, but rather that your Saviour has been wounded for sin.” His final pronouncement takes us back to the God who remembers his own steadfast love and promised mercy: “Are they not fools who will believe a temptation before they believe a promise?” God remembers his promise of mercy, and we must remember the selfsame promise as often as we remember the disorder within us.

III: — We are not yet finished with our Hebrew lesson in remembering. Paul tells the Christians in Galatia that they must remember the poor. To remember the poor, everyone knows by now, isn’t to recall them to mind, or even to think charitably about them. To remember the poor is to make the reality of their poverty an operative ingredient in our discipleship.

Next question: who are the poor? I do not dispute that there are economically disadvantaged people in our midst. At the same time, virtually no one in Canada is economically destitute. The social welfare system in Canada virtually guarantees that no one is destitute; no one is economically resourceless. In Canada there are two ways of contributing to the financial needs of the needy: voluntary and involuntary. The voluntary way is to make a donation when someone knocks at your door. The involuntary way is income tax. The income tax which we pay supports those who cannot maintain themselves elsehow. When Maureen’s father was accommodated in a nursing home, Maureen became aware of the large government subsidy required to keep her father there. Maureen also figured out that what it cost the taxpayer to accommodate her dad in the nursing home was precisely what she herself paid in income tax. When other schoolteachers complained in the staffroom about having to pay income tax, Maureen gently told them she was glad to “remember” her father.

In ancient Israel the poor were commonly gathered up in the expression, “widows and orphans and sojourners”. The sojourner was a resident alien. As an alien the sojourner was uncommonly vulnerable. Widows were bereft of income (in a society where wage-earners were exclusively male). Orphans were bereft of everything. They were vulnerable too. In other words, the meaning of “poor” in Israel was unusually vulnerable”; the poor were those who are especially defenceless.

When Paul urges us to “remember the poor” he means that we are to be fused to those who are extraordinarily vulnerable. These people may not be financially poor at all. Nonetheless, we are surrounded on all sides with people who are extraordinarily vulnerable, defenceless, even though they may be wealthier than we. It’s not difficult to find people who are financially adequate yet who are emotionally vulnerable, psychiatrically vulnerable, racially vulnerable, ethnically vulnerable, physically vulnerable, intellectually vulnerable. And of course those who are spiritually vulnerable are legion — everyone, in fact. Then what exactly are we to do as we “remember” such people? There is no pre-packaged formula; there is no sure-fire, step-by-step program of remembering the poor. One thing we must do, surely, is scatter ourselves among those who are vulnerable, defenceless, in any respect.

Because of my responsibilities on Sunday morning I rarely socialize on a Saturday evening (no more than once or twice a year.) On one such occasion, however, I was to go to a brass band concert in which one of my friends was playing. I was about to back my car out of the driveway when a car drove up furiously into the driveway of the house next door. A young woman emerged, ran up onto the front steps, and began pounding the door, kicking the door, and banging on the kitchen window, all the while shouting for the occupant to come out. (Plainly she was bent on harming the occupant.) It so happened that the occupants were a very elderly, infirm couple of Polish extraction with limited English facility. They refused to open the door, and were cursed all the more loudly, as the furious attacker kept pounding on the kitchen window until it broke. (It turned out the furious woman was looking for the woman who was a tenant in the house’s basement apartment.) I can’t describe the terror that overtook the elderly couple upstairs. They were beside themselves. I telephoned the police, then sat with the shaken couple until the police arrived; I gave the police the licence number of the car and a description of the miscreant, and did what I could to comfort the distraught old folks until I had to leave for my social engagement. My point is this: at the moment of the assault, the aged couple were poor in the biblical sense of “poor”; that is, they were extraordinarily vulnerable, defenceless. They were not financially underprivileged; obviously they could afford to live on my street. Still, they were “poor” at that moment. To remember the poor in this context is to do what the moment requires.

Who are the poor for us? The single mother whose husband has gone to jail? The child who is intellectually challenged and is tormented by other children? The elderly man who gets flustered and confused every time he goes to the bank and cannot pay a bill without unravelling? The unmarried person who finds living in an exclusively couple-oriented society almost a form of solitary confinement? The spiritual groper who doesn’t know whether to try the New Age Movement or Old Age Atheism or Jesus Christ or Kung Fu — and who wonders if there is even any difference? Whom do you and I know to be especially vulnerable, defenceless? These are the people whom our lives must intersect, for only as their vulnerability becomes an aspect of our lives are the poor remembered.

IV: — And then there is another aspect of “remembering” that we must mention in view of the season that is upon us. On Remembrance Day we shall remember. Many who remember on that occasion will remember in the popular sense of recalling to consciousness the idea of war, plus the idea of service rendered by relatively few on behalf of many. Even such remembering is certainly better than no remembering. But because you and I have gone to school in Israel , we are going to remember in a much profounder sense. We know that to remember is to make a past event the operative reality, the determining truth, of our lives now.

What was the past event? It was sacrifice, enormous sacrifice, the costliest sacrifice imaginable, for the sake of justice and peace. The circumstances in world-occurrence at the time of our foreparents required that they bear arms to secure justice and peace. The circumstances in world-occurrence at this moment do not require that Canadians as a whole bear arms. But this is not to say that the sacrifice required of us is any less. Justice and peace have never been obtained without sacrifice, and never will be. After all, that justice which is our justification before God, and that peace (shalom) which is our salvation before God; these were obtained only by the sacrifice of the cross. Then we must understand that to redress the slightest injustice anywhere in life; to supplant hostility with peace anywhere in life; this requires sacrifice of some sort, however undramatic — and always will.

Today is Remembrance Day Sunday. We remember the sacrifice our foreparents made years ago. To remember such sacrifice is to have all that they gave and gave up become the operative reality of our lives now. Then it remains only for you and me to decide what this gospel-vocation for justice and peace requires of us now. To be sure, such a vocation will require something different from each of us. In “remembering” in the sense in which we must remember, we must ever keep in mind the Remembrance Day statement, “Lest we forget.” “Lest we forget” doesn’t mean, “Lest a recollection of something decades old fade from consciousness”; “Lest we forget” means “Lest the sacrifice our foreparents made be blotted out, annihilated, rendered of no account.” In a fallen world where injustice and savagery are the order of the day, justice and peace arise only as sacrifice is made; which is to say, only as the sacrifice made on our behalf is remembered, and thereby made the operative reality of our lives now. To remember a sacrifice made for us is simply to make our own sacrifice on behalf of others.

When we remember on Remembrance Day, we remember (in the biblical sense) those who were poor (vulnerable) in a special sense. But this is surely to remember those who are poor in the widest biblical sense. And we remember these people just because God first remembers us. He remembers his covenant with us, his promise to us, his steadfast love and mercy for us. He doesn’t forget. Which is to say, so far from being blotted out, believing and repentant people are held dear in the heart of God, and will be for ever and ever.

Victor Shepherd
November 2006

1892 – 1984

I: — For years I have arrived at church on Remembrance Day Sunday with my heart in my mouth. For years I have wondered what our service has said to people of German ancestry. Have we implied, however unintentionally, that German people are the ogres of the world? that they are people of impenetrable hardness and incorrigible cruelty? To be sure, we in Streetsville are orthodox enough to say we agree with the prophet Jeremiah that the heart of everyone — without exception — “is deceitful above all things and desperately corrupt, beyond understanding”.(Jer. 17:9) But even as we say we agree with the prophet do we quietly qualify the statement so as to suggest that the hearts of one nation in particular are exceedingly deceitful, corrupt and ununderstandable? The last thing I want to do today is foster the myth of superiority; namely, that some of us are superior inasmuch as our hearts are more benign than the hearts of others.

Yes, the two major wars of this century found Germany our enemy and France our ally. If we were to push back one century earlier, however, we should find the situation reversed: France was the enemy and Germany the ally. Following the Battle of Waterloo, where the Duke of Wellington defeated the French forces, Wellington remarked, “Never have I come so close to losing.” He would have lost for sure had the British troops not been supported by German forces. In other words, labels like “enemy” and “ally” change in a twinkling.

Think of the United States. We Canadians have been allies of the US throughout this century, as have the British. But the British and the Americans haven’t always been allies; there were slaughters in 1776 and 1812. The Citadel, that massive fortress in Quebec City, was constructed in the last century to protect you and me against the Americans. Around the turn of the century British and American navies vied for superiority just in case the two countries went to war; and in fact the US had on file plans for war against Great Britain as late as 1932.

The expression “concentration camp” has been especially ugly in the past one hundred years. Who invented the concentration camp? Not the Germans; the British developed concentration camps in their war against the Dutch in South Africa. The Dutch suffered more fatalities in the camps than they suffered through enemy fire. Jeremiah is correct. Human sinnership is universal.

Nonetheless, while all hearts are alike deceitful and corrupt, there do occur in history particular concentrations of evil which are to be resisted unremittingly. We cannot use our common sinnership as an excuse for not resisting the appearance of a particular evil, a concentration of evil. Naziism was such an appearance.

II: — Today we are honouring a German pastor who resisted. His name is Martin Niemoeller. Born in 1892 into the home of a Lutheran clergyman, N. insisted throughout his boyhood that all he wanted to do was go to sea. Having finished first in his highschool class he was accepted into the Naval Academy (a most prestigious institution) and entered as an officer-cadet. Quickly he established his reputation: academically brilliant, and brazenly impudent (at least to the extent that naval regulations permitted.) Both qualities would stand him in good stead when he came to defy naziism. Further training qualified him as a submarine officer. Throughout World War I he served on several submarines, narrowly escaping death twice: once when his boat was depthcharged while submerged and once when rammed while on the surface. In between sea-duties he was appointed to naval headquarters in Berlin, an experience he treasured in that it taught him how bureaucracies work.

Niemoeller maintained that the turning point in his life came on the 25th January, 1918, as he and his fellow-officers huddled in the claustrophobic confines of their underwater death-trap. They were debating the horrors of warfare. Niemoeller insisted that he saw at that moment that the world is not a morally tidy place; the world is not guided by moral principles; neutrality in the world’s struggle is not possible; at the same time, those who uphold the right are scarcely without fault themselves. He jotted in his diary, “Whether we can survive all trials with a clear conscience depends wholly and solely on whether we believe in the forgiveness of sins.”

In March, 1918, he resigned from the navy; on Easter Sunday of the same year he married his best friend’s sister, Else Bremer. Soon he was a theology student at the University of Munster. Needing money (by now he and his wife had one child; eventually they had seven) he found work as a plate-layer on the state railways. At this point he was a full-time railway labourer, a full-time student, and a husband and father. “As a young fellow you can take it”, he was heard to comment years later.

When he began ministerial work in an inner-city parish he was not paid enough to support his family. Inflation was skyrocketing in Germany. Carefully his wife picked the gold lace off his submarine-commander’s uniform and sold it to a jeweller. The money didn’t last long. He was unemployed several times. His naval officer’s monthly pension, greatly devalued on account of the collapsing German economy, purchased half a loaf of bread. Years later he wrote, “I discovered and still know what it feels like to have no fixed employment and means of existence and sustenance.”

His ministerial training concluded in 1924, N. was ordained, even preaching at his own ordination service. The text was Philippians 3:12: “I press on to make [the power of his resurrection] my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own.” Within a few years (1931) he was pastor of St. Anne’s church, Dahlem, a suburb of Berlin.

Hitler took the nation by storm. It is easy to understand how. Following World War I Germany was in economic ruins. The people were humiliated by the defeat of 1918, impoverished, confused, lost. Hitler promised to rebuild the economy, restore the people’s pride, overturn their national humiliation and eliminate the rampant immorality in the larger cities. Hitler seasoned his public speeches with religious references. He talked about the blessing of Almighty God, a necessary pillar in the new state. He handed out pious stories to the press. He showed a tattered bible to some deaconesses and declared that he drew strength from the Word of God. When speaking to religious people he imported an unctuous note into his voice. Then he announced, “Today Christians, not international atheists, stand at the head of Germany.” It is little wonder that people came on board.

It is greater wonder, then, that Niemoeller did not. He discerned that Hitler was distorting the Christian faith in order to use it in the service of political power. The state church, known as “German Christians” (to be distinguished from the Confessing Church, confessing that Jesus Christ is the one Word of God) published manifestos boasting of national superiority. Pastors were ordered to read out a proclamation of thanksgiving, praising the state “for assuming, in addition to all its other tasks, the great load and burden of reorganizing the church”. Niemoeller refused to read it. Already he realized that Hitler merely wanted to use the church politically, thereafter leaving it to “rot like a gangrenous limb”, in the words of the Fuehrer himself.

In 1932 nazi leaders ordered a boycott of Jewish shops and businesses. To his horror Niemoeller saw that his theology professors, together with thousands of other academicians, supported this move; worse, they wrote and spoke vigorously in behalf of the ideology. Soon a nazi decree appeared which targeted pastors of Jewish ancestry. They were to be ousted from their pulpits. Of 18,000 Protestant pastors in pre-war Germany, only 23 were of Jewish ancestry. Yet so very intense was the anti-semitic hatred that the machinery of the state was mobilized to eliminate a trace element.

The pseudo-faith of the state church was labelled “Positive Christianity”. “Positive Christianity” gathered up rabid nationalism, racial purity and military superiority. N. denounced “Positive Christianity” passionately, insisting that the gospel permits the church to preach Christ-crucified only. At the same moment Hitler announced, “If you are a nationalist you are already a Christian”. N. replied that the Fuehrer’s fulmination was mere neo-paganism.

When N. noticed that most pastors promoted “Positive Christianity” in order to save their skin he stated publicly that there was “a shameful faintheartedness among many ministerial brethren”; furthermore, any clergyman who took refuge in being “politically correct”, waiting for the storm to pass, was “a traitor to Jesus Christ”. Of the 18,000 pastors only 7036 sided with Martin.

From 1933 on N. was aware that the Gestapo (secret police) was shadowing him wherever he went. And then on 11th November (Armistice Day!) the government informed him that he had been “permanently retired”. Whereupon the congregation of Dahlem, as resolute as their pastor himself, informed the government that their pastor would continue to shepherd them. Two days later a huge rally in a sports stadium featured a speaker who shouted, “If we are ashamed to buy a necktie from a Jew, we should be absolutely ashamed to take the deeper elements of our religion from a Jew”. “Positive Christianity” had clearly repudiated Jesus Christ.

Matters came to a head in 1934. Niemoeller courageously appeared at a meeting of nazi officials. Excerpts from a secretly taped conversation exposed him. Hitler, enraged, ordered him to step forward, berating him furiously. “I was very frightened”, N. admitted later. Hitler continued his tirade. “Every time I leave this Chancellery [building] in my car, I am aware that someone might take a revolver and shoot at me.” At this point Niemoeller was bathed in a freedom he had never expected. Listen to him: “I felt absolutely liberated. That was my salvation. I knew that this man was more anxious than I. I felt, ‘You have given yourself away’. If he has more anxieties than I, then I have the courage to face him. His authority was absolutely negated when I felt that he was more governed by fear than I.” Emboldened now, N. spoke into Hitler’s face, “We pastors have a responsibility for the German people laid on us by God. Neither you nor anyone else can take that away from us.” Hitler turned on his heel and stormed off.

When Martin returned home his frightened wife asked him, “Is Hitler a great man?” “He is a great coward”, replied N., and then added that Hitler would certainly brutalize the man who had contradicted him to his face. That evening the Gestapo raided the N. home, taking away the lists of pastors who had joined the pastors’ protest organization. A few days later a bomb exploded in the house, setting it on fire. Immediately thousands of pastors resigned from the protest movement. Niemoeller’s friends offered to smuggle him and his family to Sweden. He turned down the offer.

As a theology student Niemoeller had asked one of his professors, “What is the meaning of the expression ‘the church’? The professor had dismissed the question cavalierly: “Why worry about it? Is it so important?” Now thousands of people throughout Germany were asking N. for an answer. He stated publicly, “It is dreadful and infuriating to see how a few unprincipled men who call themselves ‘church government’ are destroying the church and persecuting the fellowship of Jesus.” And then he reminded his congregation of the conviction of the apostle Paul: it is a privilege to suffer for the sake of the gospel.

On 1st July, 1937, he was eating breakfast with his wife when the secret police arrested him. He had already been to prison five times, had always been released within a day or two, and expected the same quick release this time. His assumption was incorrect. This time he would be in prison for eight years. As he was being admitted to the Berlin prison he was accosted by the prison chaplain, a man whom N. recognized from his naval days, a man who was now a nazi stooge. “Pastor N.”, the chaplain remonstrated, “Why are you in prison?” N. stared at him and replied, “Why are you not?”

During his imprisonment in Berlin N. wrote to his wife frequently, as well as to others. We should listen to excerpts of these letters, for they show us faith refined in the fire of harassment.

In February, 1938, Niemoeller was put on trial. To the surprise of many he was acquitted. Before he could be released, however, Hitler announced that N. was now the personal prisoner of the Fuehrer himself.

Then he was sent to Sachsenhausen, a concentration camp, and stripped of his possessions. He asked for, and had returned to him, two items dear to him: his bible and his wedding ring. In solitary confinement now, he was not permitted to converse with anyone. The only sounds he heard were the cries and groans of men undergoing torture. He was spared execution only because nazi authorities did not wish to sully their international reputations. Else suffered a nervous breakdown. Then she and the seven children were expelled from the manse, and were now without accommodation or livelihood.

In 1941 Niemoeller was transferred from Sachsenhausen to Dachau. The years crawled by. Four years later, in April, 1945, together with 150 other prisoners and accompanied by an execution squad, he was taken to northern Italy. His overseers knew, however, that the war’s end was imminent and would be followed by the war crimes trials. They decided not to execute anyone. Three days later American soldiers took Niemoeller into their care.

He was exhausted, scrawny and tubercular. All he wanted was to be reunited with his family. Allied forces detained him, however, and questioned him by the hour, aware that he had vast knowledge of the inner workings of the Third Reich. Niemoeller begged to be allowed to go home. His request was refused. At last the tuberculosis patient went on a hunger strike. Four days later, scrawnier than ever, he was allowed to go home. On 24th June, 1945, he was reunited with his wife. Immediately he was sent to a sanatorium. He did not return to his church in Berlin, certain as he was that the Russians would kidnap him.

After the war he worked tirelessly in behalf of food relief and Germany’s economic reconstruction. A British school principal wrote him telling him how much the schoolboys admired his resistance to Hitler, and asked him to write the boys a line or two telling them how he found the strength to resist. Niemoeller merely quoted our Lord’s words in Matthew 6:34: “Don’t worry at all then about tomorrow. Tomorrow can worry about itself! One day’s trouble is enough for one day.” New York University awarded him its most prestigious recognition, inscribing on the bronze medal which honoured him, “Martin Niemoeller — Courageous Churchman”. Accolades were heaped on him. Nevertheless, whenever dignitaries asked him how he wished to be introduced he invariably replied with transparent simplicity, “I am a pastor”.

He died in 1984, aged 92. A few days before his death he remarked, “When I was young I felt I had to carry the gospel; now that I am old I know that the gospel carries me.”

III: — As often as I reflect on the man whom the gospel carried I ask myself in what way he continues to inspire and nourish and hearten me, and just as often I come back to the matter of courage; simple courage. Niemoeller was intellectually gifted; but so were the many university professors who tested the political waters and decided that their intellectual gifts would be used in the service of self-preservation. Niemoeller’s intellectual gifts were never used in the service of head-game rationalizations and cowardly excuses. All his gifts were vehicles of his courage.

Courage, we must remember, is not the absence of fear. The bravest people are afraid. Courage means that for frightened people their fear has not deflected them from doing what they know they are appointed to do.

Niemoeller frequently quoted a text from the book of Joshua: “Be strong and of good courage; be not frightened, neither be dismayed. For the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.”(Joshua 1:9) The Israelite people have known the bitter taste of bondage in Egypt and they have endured the hardships of the wilderness; now they are poised to enter the promised land. Then they realize that enemies abound in the promised land. If they are going to possess the promise they cannot avoid conflict. Their spirits sink. “Be strong and of good courage…for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go”. Even when a child of God goes face-to-face with the most powerful and evil man in Europe; even when a child of God goes to prison; even when a child of God goes on a hunger strike he does not do any of this alone!

C.S. Lewis used to say that courage is not one more expression of our Christian obedience, along with patience, faithfulness, honesty, cheerfulness, etc; courage, rather, is every expression of our obedience at the testing point. Generosity, for instance, comes easy when the recipients of our generosity are appreciative; easier still when our generosity is granted public recognition. But when our generosity is met with ingratitude — or worse, ridicule — then courage is simply generosity being tested lest our hearts shrivel.

Truthfulness comes easy except when it doesn’t come easy. A trite remark? Not at all. So un-trite is it that we make excuses for people who are untruthful under pressure; we make even more excuses for people whose untruthfulness varies directly with the price of truthfulness. Courage is truthfulness when the price of truthfulness is staring us in the face.

Yet we must never think of courage only in the sphere of heroism on an international scale. Courage is exemplified every day by the most ordinary people in the most ordinary circumstances. the highschool student who doesn’t “borrow” someone else’s essay when cheating is a way school is survived; the single mother who struggles to see her children arrive at something higher than the lowest common denominator on the street; the person haunted by any of the longterm mental difficulties which have to be contended with every day lest such difficulties be surrendered to; the person with severe arthritis for whom climbing stairs is more arduous than ascending Mt. Everest. The woman who was Maureen’s maid of honour at our wedding; she died slowly, aged 36. Her brother said to me later, “She made it so easy for everyone else in the family.” How much courage it takes to “make it so easy” when capitulation to resentment and envy and petulance and anger can make it wretchedly difficult for everyone else!

Only infrequently has my work as a pastor taken me among heroes. But every day my work as a pastor takes me alongside people whose courage leaves me awestruck. What courage it takes not to let adversity embitter; not to let disappointment sour; not to let sheer bad luck provoke spite and envy! What courage it takes in the most straitened circumstances not to yield to despair.

Courage, as Niemoeller knew, is both a gift and a summons. “Be strong and of good courage… for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go”. Courage is both something God supplies and something we must do.

But of course even our doing, however much it is our doing, is finally that which Jesus Christ forges in us. “When I was young, I felt I had to carry the gospel; now that I am old, I know that the gospel carries me.”

F I N I S

Victor A. Shepherd
November 1991

1906-1945

His Life

Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s foreparents were people of much courage and much ability. In 1933, when his paternal grandmother was 91 years old, she walked defiantly through the cordon which nasty stormtroopers had thrown up around Jewish shops as part of the anti-Jewish boycott. His maternal grandmother was a gifted pianist; in fact, she had been a pupil of the incomparable Franz Liszt. Bonhoeffer’s mother was the daughter of a world-renowned historian. His father, a neurologist, was a professor in the University of Berlin, and chief of Neurology and Psychiatry at Berlin’s major hospital.

Bonhoeffer himself was born on 4th February, 1906, in Breslau, then part of Germany, now part of Poland. He and his twin sister, Sabine, were the last of seven children. By age 10 his own musical talent appeared (he was now playing Mozart piano sonatas) as well as his proclivity to do the unusual. (For instance, a special treat on his birthday was an egg beaten with sugar. It tasted so good that the ten year old gathered up his pocket money and bought himself a hen!)

The family was religiously indifferent, the father being an agnostic. Bonhoeffer therefore startled the family when he announced, at age 14, that he was going to be a pastor and a theologian. The response was incomprehension. His older brother, Karl-Friedrich (who later distinguished himself as a physicist) tried to deflect him from this course, arguing that the church was weak, silly, irrelevant, unworthy of any young man’s lifelong commitment. “If the church really is what you say it is”, replied the youngster, “then I shall have to reform it.” Soon he began his university studies in theology in Tuebingen and completed then in Berlin. His doctoral dissertation exposed his brilliance on a wider front and introduced him to internationally-known scholars.

Following ordination Bonhoeffer moved to Barcelona, Spain, where he was the assistant minister to the German-speaking Lutheran congregation there. While he had been born to the aristocracy and therefore knew a social privilege denied most German people (especially the 25% who lived on the edge of starvation) Bonhoeffer yet displayed a remarkable ability to relate genuinely to all sorts and classes and types of people.

In 1930 he went to the United States as a guest of Union Theological Seminary, NYC. There he was dismayed at seeing how frivolous American seminarians were concerning the study of theology. His dismay peaked the day a most moving passage from Luther’s writing on the subject of sin and forgiveness was greeted with derisive laughter. Bonhoeffer retorted, “You students at this liberal seminary sneer at the fundamentalists in America, when all the while the fundamentalists know far more of the truth and grace, mercy and judgement of God than do you.” Quickly he recognized the plight of black people in the US, worked among impoverished blacks in the city, and worshipped regularly at a Baptist church in Harlem. In 1931 he returned to Berlin and resumed his university teaching.

While he was certainly a gifted scholar and professor, Bonhoeffer was always a pastor at heart. Not surprisingly, then, at the same time that he lectured he also instructed a confirmation class of 50 rowdy boys in one of the worst slums of Berlin. His first day with the boys was remarkable. As he walked up the stairs to the second floor room the boys at the top of the stair-well pelted him with garbage and began chanting repeatedly the first syllable of his name, “Bon, Bon, Bon…” He let them continue until they wearied of it. Then he quietly began telling the boys of what he had known in Harlem; how there existed another group of people whose material prospects were as bleak as theirs; how it was that Jesus Christ neither disdained nor abandoned anyone; that no human being, however bleak his circumstances, is ever God-forsaken. Bonhoeffer moved into the boys’ neighbourhood and lived among them until the instruction was over. Many of the youngsters remained his friends for life.

In 1933 Bonhoeffer took a leave of absence from the university and moved to London, England, where he pastored two German-speaking congregations. By now he was immersed in the ecumenical movement, assisted, of course, by his facility in French, Spanish and English (he spoke English flawlessly). The life-and-death struggle for the church in Germany was underway. Did the church live from the gospel only, or could the church lend itself to the state in order to reinforce the ideology of the state? Bonhoeffer argued that the latter would render the church no church at all. An older professor of theology, who conformed to nazi ideology in order to keep his job, commented, “It is a great pity that our best hope in the faculty is being wasted on the church struggle.” As the struggle intensified it was noticed that Bonhoeffer’s sermons became more comforting, more confident of God’s victory, and more defiant. The struggle was between the national church (which supported Hitler) and the confessing church, called such because it confessed that there could be only one Fuehrer or leader for Christians, and it wasn’t Hitler. Lutheran bishops remained silent in the hope of preserving institutional unity. Most ministers refused to support the confessing church, whispering that there was no need to play at being confessing heroes. In the face of such ministerial cowardice Bonhoeffer warned his colleagues that there was no chance of converting Hitler; what they had to ensure was that they were converted themselves. An Anglican bishop who knew him well in England was later to write of him, “He was crystal clear in his convictions; and young as he was, and humble-minded as he was, he saw the truth and spoke it with complete absence of fear.” Bonhoeffer himself wrote to a friend at this time, “Christ is looking down at us and asking whether there is anyone who still confesses him.”

Bonhoeffer was much taken with Gandhi’s non-violent resistance, and planned to go to India to learn more of Gandhi’s pacifism. Before he could get to India, however, he was urged to return to Germany in order to lead an underground seminary at Finkenwald. (This seminary aimed at supplying pastors for the confessing church, since not one of the university faculties of theology sided with the confessing church.) In no time Nazi authorities withdrew his Berlin professorship. Bonhoeffer calmly replied, “I have long ceased to believe in the universities.”

While instructing his students at Finkenwald he became engaged to Maria von Wedemeyer. He was 35 years old, she, 18. (Maria von Wedemeyer married after the war and lives in Germany today.) During the long days of Bonhoeffer’s imprisonment the two were to correspond as often as authorities and censors permitted them. She visited him once a week. He always wanted her to let him know when she was coming. If she surprised him, said Bonhoeffer, he was deprived of the joy of anticipating her visit.

At this time North American and British church leaders were impatient with any discussion of theology, preferring to concentrate on the church’s politics. Bonhoeffer irked them by insisting that they were preoccupied with symptoms only. While the political compromises were dreadful indeed, the root problem, the disease, was theological: the church was infested with heresy. For this reason Bonhoeffer tirelessly addressed the issue of heresy, maintaining that the church can live only by its confession of Jesus Christ as the one Word of God which it must hear and heed and proclaim.

Two American professors coaxed him into returning to the US and to a teaching position in NYC. As soon as the boat docked Bonhoeffer knew he had made a mistake. He knew that Germany would shortly be at war, knew that the devastation of his native land would be indescribable. He was convinced he would have no credibility in assisting with its recovery and restoration unless he himself endured the devastation first-hand. He was in the US only four weeks.

By this time he was forbidden to speak anywhere in the Reich. Visser’t Hooft, the General Secretary of The World Council of Churches, asked him, “What do you pray for in these days?” “If you want to know the truth”, replied Bonhoeffer, “I pray for the defeat of my nation.”

While he had been a pacifist only a few years earlier, Bonhoeffer’s pacifist convictions were receding. He saw that untold suffering among the German people (especially civilians), as well as among the allies, would swell unless Hitler were removed. He quietly met with several high-ranking officers of German military intelligence who were secretly opposed to Hitler. Together they conspired to assassinate Hitler. Unbeknown to them, the intelligence arm of the secret police was spying on the intelligence arm of the army. The conspiracy was discovered. Bonhoeffer was arrested and assigned to a prison in Berlin. It was April, 1943. He was to be in prison for two years. He was allowed to read, and naturally enough spent most of his time perusing literature, science, philosophy, theology, and history. Much of his reading had to do with the 19th century cultural heritage of Germany. He also managed to reread the Bible 2.5 times

In July, 1944, the hidden bomb which was meant for Hitler did explode, but exploded while he was out of the room. The incriminating files which the secret police turned up pointed to Bonhoeffer directly, as well as others like General Oster and Admiral Canaris. Underground plans were being made to help Bonhoeffer escape when it was learned that his brother Klaus, a lawyer, had been arrested. Bonhoeffer declined to escape lest his family be punished. (He was never to know that Klaus was to be executed in any case, along with a brother-in-law, Hans von Dohnanyi.) It was at this time particularly that Bonhoeffer ministered to his fellow-prisoners awaiting execution, among whom was Payne Best, an office in the British Army. His tribute to Bonhoeffer deserves to be heard.

“Bonhoeffer was different, just quite calm and normal, seemingly
perfectly at his ease… his soul really shone in the dark desperation
of our prison. He was one of the very few men I have ever met to whom God was
real and ever close to him.”

Bonhoeffer was removed from prison and taken to Flossenburg, an extermination camp in the Bavarian forest. On the 9th of April, three weeks before American forces liberated Flossenburg, he was executed. The tree from which he was hanged bears a plaque today with only ten words inscribed on it: Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a witness to Jesus Christ among his brethren.

The physician who signed his death certificate, Dr. Fischer-Huellstrung, was profoundly impressed by Bonhoeffer, and later wrote of his impression. It is only fitting that we have a physician read such a tribute, and I have asked Dr. Robert Bates of our congregation to acquaint us with Dr. Fischer-Huellstrung’s testimony.

THEMES FROM BONHOEFFER’S WRITING

I have read Bonhoeffer for years and have profited from him unmeasurably. Many themes recur in his writings, and I want to introduce three of them to you at this time.
(i) First the cost of discipleship. In 1937 Bonhoeffer wrote a book with just this title:

COST OF DISCIPLESHIP. It is an extended discussion of the sermon on the mount. The first chapter is called “Costly Grace”. It begins, “Cheap grace is the deadly enemy of the church. We are fighting today for costly grace. Bonhoeffer goes on to say, “Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, communion without confession… . Costly grace is…the kingly rule of Christ, for whose sake a man will pluck out the eye which causes him to stumble; it is the call of Jesus Christ at which the disciple leaves his nets and follows him.”

Bonhoeffer was always rendered angry and sad upon hearing Luther’s discernment of the gospel falsified and perverted. Such perversion riddled the doctrine of justification. “The justification of the sinner in the world”, said Bonhoeffer, “degenerated into the justification of sin and the world. … The only person who has the right to say he is justified by grace alone is the person who has left all to follow Christ.”

Bonhoeffer knew something that we often prefer not to know, that Jesus Christ certainly invites us to become his follower and companion, even as our Lord insists that we can be a companion of him, the crucified one, only as we willingly shoulder our own cross. In other words, the rewards of the kingdom are for those and those only who embrace the rigours of the kingdom. We are disciples ourselves, and the fellowship we belong to is Christian, only as suffering and sacrifice are gladly taken up for the sake of the kingdom.
(ii) The second theme: Christian community. I have already spoken of the underground seminary which Bonhoeffer operated in Finkenwald. While it was indeed a seminary, ie, a school for the training of ministers, it was also more than a school, since all of the students lived on the premises, eating and sleeping and relaxing together. Not surprisingly the students, under Bonhoeffer’s leadership, learned what it is to exist as a community. His wisdom and insight are available to us through his little book, LIFE TOGETHER.

The book is studded with gems. Bonhoeffer notes on the opening page that the physical presence of other Christians is a source of incomparable joy and strength to all. It was so in NT times when people like Paul and John craved seeing the faces of those to whom they were writing; it is so today. In fact, says Bonhoeffer, the physical presence of one Christian to another is a sign of the presence of Jesus Christ himself.

Bonhoeffer maintained that in any Christian fellowship we belong to each other only because we first belong to Jesus Christ. We are united to Christ in faith, and because united to him, we are united through him to one another. God has ordained that we be united to one another through Christ inasmuch as every Christian needs other Christians to speak and reflect the Word of God to the Christian herself. None of us is so thoroughly possessed of Christian wisdom and maturity that we no longer need our fellow Christians. I need my sister Christian as a proclaimer and bearer of God’s word. And why do I need her in this way? Bluntly Bonhoeffer states that the Christ in my own heart is never as strong as the Christ in my sister’s presence or my sister’s word. Therefore within the Christian community we shall always need each other as the embodiment of God’s word of grace.

What’s more, since all of us have feet of clay and sin-riddled hearts, it is only as I see my bother or sister through Christ that I am no longer impeded by hear faults, nor she by mine. Bonhoeffer had in his bloodstream Paul’s word to the Christians in Rome: “Welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you.”

Perhaps the pithiest comment Bonhoeffer made on the matter of community is this: “he who can no longer listen to his brother will soon be no longer listening to God either; he will be doing nothing more than prattle in the presence of God too.”

(iii) The last theme I am going to discuss pertains more to me and Joan than to you: it concerns the work of the pastor. Bonhoeffer was a university professor who wanted nothing more than to be a pastor. He esteemed the work of the pastor even as he recognized the spiritual discipline which must surround all pastoral activity. “No pastoral conversation is possible without constant prayer”, he wrote; “other people must know that the pastor stands before God as the pastor stands before them.”

Bonhoeffer, sophisticated as he was in many branches of learning, yet knew that the ministry of the Word is just that: the ministry of the gospel of the crucified one. The pastor may certainly draw on whatever insights he gains from his learning; yet he must never forget that he is spokesperson for that word which is ultimate. For this reason Bonhoeffer never hesitated to say, for instance, “We do not understand sin through our experience of life or the world, but rather through our knowledge of the cross of Christ. The most experienced observer of humanity knows less of the human heart than the Christian who lives at the foot of the cross. No psychology knows that people perish only through sin and are saved only through the cross of Christ.”

Bonhoeffer recognized that the pastor slakes the thirst of his congregation only as the well within the pastor is deep. He wrote, “A parishioner must be able to sense that the pastor’s words overflow out of the fullness of his heart. They can tell if our proclamation is a spiritual reality for us.”

Today is Remembrance Day, a day when we commemorate the departed in a special way. As expected, Bonhoeffer had something to say about commemoration and cemeteries. “The cemetery surrounds the church to show that the place of worship is simultaneously the place of burial. The whole congregation is gathered here, the church militant and the church triumphant, those who are still being tested and those whose trials are over.”

The trials of Dietrich Bonhoeffer are over. May you and I be found as faithful in the midst of ours. Then we, like him, shall move from the church militant to the church triumphant.

A M E N