Good Friday
Rev. Dona Johnson | March 29, 2024
Unwilling to allow the church to compromise its most fundamental beliefs in the face of Nazism, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a Lutheran pastor worked tirelessly to keep the true spirit of the church alive in Germany, his resistance cost him his life.
“I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.”
While imprisoned in a Nazi concentration camp Bonhoeffer composed prayers for the other prisoners, circulating them illegally and he prayed for the prison guards—he kept everyone going…
On Sunday February 8, 1944 Bonhoeffer led a worship service for the prisoners. He titled his sermon, “Through his stripes we are healed” (Isaiah 53:5). He continued with 1 Peter 1:3 “According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead…” Early the following morning Bonhoeffer was led to the scaffold. The camp doctor watched: through the half-door in one room of the huts I saw Pastor Bonhoeffer, before taking off his prison garb, kneeling on the floor praying fervently to his God. I was most deeply moved by the way this loveable man prayed, so devout and certain that God heard his prayer. At the place of execution, he again said a short prayer then climbed the steps of the gallows, brave and composed. His death ensued a few seconds. In the almost fifty years that I worked as a doctor, I have hardly seen a man die so entirely submissive to the will of God.
“Who Am I” is one of his well-known poems written from his prison cell.
Who am I?
Who am I? They often tell me
I step from my cell
calm and cheerful and poised
like a squire from his manor.
Who am I? They often tell me
I speak with my guards
freely, friendly and clear,
as though I were the one in charge.
Who am I? They also tell me
I bear days of calamity
serenely, smiling and proud,
like one accustomed to victory.
Am I really what others say of me?
Or am I only what I know of myself?
restless, yearning, sick, like a caged bird, struggling for life breath, as if I were being strangled, starving for colors, for flowers, for birdsong, thirsting for kind words, human closeness, shaking with rage at power lust and pettiest insult, tossed about, waiting for great things to happen, helplessly fearing for friends so far away, too tired and empty to pray, to think, to work, weary and ready to take my leave of it all?
Who am I? This one or the other?
Am I this one today and tomorrow another? Am I both at once? Before others a hypocrite, and in my own eyes a pitiful, whimpering weakling? Or is what remains in me like a defeated army, fleeing in disarray from victory already won?
Who am I? They mock me, these lonely questions of mine, Whoever I am, Thou knowest me, O God, I am thine! 1