"Who do you say that I am?"
“Who do you say that I am?”
Mark 8:27-37
Sometimes, in order to really see the present, we have to look into the past…
Dietrich Bonhoeffer was born on February 4, 1906, the sixth child of Karla and Paula Bonhoeffer. The backdrop of his growing years was the First World War—the modern war that replaced the chivalry of wars fought on horseback across defined battle lines with the carnage of trench warfare and chemical weapons. Having grown up in relative affluence, the war was only a backdrop for his childhood. He grew up and went to seminary.
By the end of the war, the German economy began to suffer mightily. His family, like most families in Germany, suffered in the face of wild inflation. He would tell the story of collecting his father’s life insurance payout—enough money to fill a wheelbarrow—but realizing it was only enough to buy strawberries and chocolate. The loss of the war, the harsh conditions imposed on the country after the war, and the economic upheaval drove a once great nation to desperation. National socialism, led by Hitler, filled that void.
Bonhoeffer was a pastor in the German Evangelical Church which quickly became a target for the Nazis. This church had always been nationalist as well as Christian. As a result, the church was in it’s own despair: “How could God let this happen to our nation?” When Naziism rose, many in the church welcomed this development. The hope was that the church and the nation would grow great again together. This partnership was formalized in laws that required German pastors to sign a loyalty oath to the Nazis. Everyone had to sign. The state took control of the church. These laws, known as the “Aryan laws” transformed the church into an “Aryan Church.” This move meant that there was no place for the Jews in Germany.
As all this was unfolding, Bonhoeffer was serving a German speaking church in Spain for a couple of years. After that, he furthered his studies at Union Seminary in New York City. At that point, he was a “spectator,” observing the changes in his nation and his church from abroad. He was also already recognized as a brilliant, young theologian. Some of the most important theologians of his day argued that he should not return to Germany. Everyone knew that Bonhoeffer would be in trouble if he went home. Bonhoeffer went home anyway. He felt called into the conflict.
Upon his return, Bonhoeffer became instrumental in the formation of the Confessing Church. In this underground church, pastors did not sign the loyalty oath. Churches did not uphold the Nazi ideology. However, the Confessing Church and it’s pastors also did not publicly criticize the Nazis or the Nazi position regarding the persecution of the Jews. Instead, they objected to the law that Jews could not convert to Christianity and be baptized and become leaders. Their objection wasn’t political or a matter of social justice. Their objection was that the state shouldn’t be making internal church rules.
So, by 1933, this promising young man who could have had a long career teaching in the United States, criticizing his homeland from across the sea, instead, joined the resistance, however limited that resistance might seem to us now. In 1933, Bonhoeffer took the next step. He wrote an essay called, “The Church and the Jewish Question,” in which he declared that the Nazis were an illegitimate government and an abhorrent ideology which had to be opposed on Christian grounds. He argued that the church was called to question state injustice, and that it had an obligation to help all victims of injustice, whether they were Christian or not. Ultimately, the church might be called to “put a spoke in the wheel” to bring the machinery of injustice to a halt.
This was the most clear resistance that anyone had expressed from inside Germany to the Nazi regime. He argued that the church cannot be the church and support the Nazis. He argued that the job of the church was not to survive but to be the church, even if being the church led to the eradication of the church by the government. We do the right thing because it is the right thing to do, not because it is prudent. This was an incredibly brave call to faith.
As an aside, I’ve always had a sense that Jewish people are to Germany what African Americans have been historically for America: scapegoats for the nation’s problems and victims of the nation’s violence. In this sense, Bonhoeffer, a really brilliant, good man, never really came to grips with what was happening to the Jews. He fiercely resisted the Nazis. Still, his issue regarding the Jews was that the Nazi laws would keep Jews from becoming Christians—which to him was the goal. Seeing this view in a historical figure like Bonhoeffer—a personal hero of mine—is not so much an indictment of him as it is a caveat that even if we get one response right to the challenges of our day, we are probably still blind to other challenges.
The Gestapo began deporting Jews in 1941. Almost immediately, Bonhoeffer and his colleague and lawyer, Francis Perles, wrote a memo outlining the details of what was happening. They circulated this memo abroad and among military contacts within Germany, hoping that people would be moved to action. Instead, Bonhoeffer and his brother-in-law were arrested for this direct resistance in April of 1943.
Finally, Bonhoeffer, while still in prison, participated peripherally in a failed attempt on Hitler’s life. When this was discovered, he was moved to Buchenwald. In a few months, he was moved to another concentration camp in Flossenburg. On April 9th, 1945, Bonhoeffer and other conspirators were hanged. His brother, Klaus, and two of his brother-in-laws were also executed for resistance activities.
Bonhoeffer’s life story takes us from a man who is very religious—pious, moral, ethical to the point of being almost other worldly—to a man whose faith leads him into the most worldly of choices. He was raised to love his country. He never could have imagined that he would be a part of a plot to bring his government down. He was raised to love his church. He never imagined he would help found a separate church that would be attacked relentlessly by his childhood church. He was raised as a person of privilege who never would have imagined his life ending in a place as impoverished and barren as a cell in a concentration camp.
What underlies his story is a radical sense of discipleship. We don’t worship our nation. We don’t worship our church. We don’t retreat into our personal purity and piety. Instead, God leads and we follow. Bonhoeffer’s question for his age was this: “Who is Jesus Christ for us today?” His answer was that Christ is the one who calls us to confront a political ideology that is toxic, a church that has been coopted, and a world that is filled with injustice. He warns us that God will not swoop in and stop such things. We are responsible. The God who suffered and died on a cross is suffering with the powerless who are being abused by godless people. That suffering God is calling to us, asking, “What, then, will you do?”
That was almost eighty years ago. Bonhoeffer died on April 9th, 1945. This year, April 9th, 2023, is Easter Sunday. All these years later, Bonhoeffer’s question rings true: “Who is Jesus Christ for us today?” After nearly eighty years of human suffering on an epic scale—war after war, famine after famine, genocide after genocide—we see the truth that Bonhoeffer saw: if we are determined to destroy one another, God will not stop us. God will poke at our consciences and plead with us to do something. God will remind us that we are responsible. The best we may get to say in the end is, “At least we tried to do something—however blind we might have been, however limited our choices might be.” If we’re wondering who Jesus Christ might be for us today, maybe he’s the one who calls us to take responsibility for and act on behalf of those who are still suffering in our world today.
This carries us straight to the heart of our text. Jesus and the disciples are walking across the country side. Jesus asks them a question. Jesus asks: “Who do people say that I am?” “Well, Jesus, some people think you’re John the Baptist, back from the dead—that’s mostly people who loved John from the start. Some people think you’re Elijah—there have always been a lot of Elijah fans. Other people who have their own favorite prophets think you’re that favorite prophet. In other words, Jesus, lots of people look at you and see the return of someone the world has seen before.”
Jesus then puts the disciples on the spot: “Who do you say that I am?” Peter, the disciple who is alway ready to take a risk and go first, speaks up: “You are the Christ, the Messiah.” At that point, we might expect applause to break out. After all, Peter just nailed the right answer, right? Instead, Jesus tells them not to say this to anyone. What’s up with that?
The problem here is not that the titles “Christ” or “Messiah” are wrong. What’s wrong are the understandings attached to those titles. In Jesus’ day, the Messiah or the Christ was supposed to make Israel great again. He was expected to be a warrior. He would rid the country of Roman rule and become the king. Like all the other understandings of Jesus, this is too narrow of a vision, too political, too “self-interested.” The words and the expectations fall short of understanding the God who doesn’t just love us but so loves the world.
Jesus tries to set the disciples straight: “It is necessary that the Son of Man proceed to an ordeal of suffering, be tried and found guilty by the elders, high priests, and religion scholars, be killed, and after three days rise up alive.” This is not a story of worldly power or triumph. This is a story of a suffering servant who is going to die. It’s going to look for all the world like all has been lost. “Of course,” Jesus adds, “then I’ll rise again.” But seriously, how many disciples do you think heard that last part at all?
Of course, Peter objects. He was a powerful guy who had been able to overpower all sorts of things in his life. Then, Jesus calls Peter, “Satan.” Jesus is really saying, plain and simple, “Don’t tempt me!” Then, Jesus tells Peter to get out of his way: “Don’t be a barrier. (The next barrier will be the stone in front of his tomb. The women will ask on their way there: “Who will roll the stone away?” Jesus tells Peter that Peter has no idea how God really works: God removes barriers; God calls us to be willing to be lead rather than to insist on leading; God calls us to live the Way Jesus taught us to live.
The underlying lesson of almost all of Jesus’ teachings is that the only life worth living is a loving life. This is why we are here: to love one another and to love God. The truth is that when we sign on to love we also sign up to suffer. Things happen that we can’t fix. We don’t have the power. We don’t have control. In the end, we have to face our fears and embrace the suffering so that we can do the next loving thing. When that suffering comes, we can trust that Christ will be present, ready to teach us how to bear the sacred weight of our cross.