Isaiah 1:1, 10-20
Wearying God – Finding Hope
James Sledge August
7, 2016
In
spring of 1944, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German pastor and theologian, had been
in a Nazi prison for a year because of his ties to the German resistance. Later
that year, things grew more dire as the Nazis discovered his role in a plot to assassinate
Adolf Hitler, and he would be hanged in 1945 at a Nazi concentration camp just
two weeks before US soldiers liberated it.
Previously,
Bonhoeffer had been a prominent leader in the Confessing Church movement,
Christians from both Lutheran and Reformed churches who protested Nazi
intrusion into church affairs, and the church’s willing to cooperation.
Bonhoeffer was appalled by a requirement to expel any church member with Jewish
ancestry.
Bonhoeffer
spoke out against the Nazis from the beginning, arguing publically that
Christians’ ultimate allegiance was to Christ and not to the Fuhrer. Although
he was not involved its actual writing, these ideas became part of the
Theological Declaration of Barmen, approved in May of 1934 by the Confessing
Church. Barmen is in our denomination’s Book
of Confessions, and its banner hangs in the back of our sanctuary, notable
for the crossed out swastika on it.
Bonhoeffer
could have safely ridden out the war as a professor at Union Theological
Seminary in New York City, but in 1939 he returned to Germany, convinced that
he had to be there to have any say in some dimly glimpsed, hoped for future.
Even
in from prison in that spring of 1944, Bonhoeffer was thinking about the future.
From his cell, he penned a letter to a colleague’s infant son who was being
baptized. The many-page letter includes these words near its end.
Today you will
be baptized a Christian. All those great ancient words of the Christian
proclamation will be spoken over you, and the command of Jesus Christ to
baptize will be carried out on you, without your knowing anything about it. But
we are once again driven back to the beginning of our understanding.
Reconciliation and redemption, regeneration and the Holy Spirit, love of our
enemies, cross and resurrection, life in Christ and Christian discipleship –
all these things are so difficult and remote that we hardly venture any more to
speak of them. In the traditional words and acts we suspect that there may be
something quite new and revolutionary, though we cannot as yet grasp or express
it. Our church, which has been fighting in these years only for its
self-preservation, as though that were an end in itself, is incapable of taking
the word of reconciliation and redemption to mankind and the world. Our earlier
words are therefore bound to lose their force and cease, and our being
Christian will be limited to these two things: prayer and righteous acts among
men. All Christian thinking, speaking and organizing must be born anew out of
this prayer and action.[1]
As he wrote his letter, churches all
over Germany were still holding regular worship services, but Bonhoeffer clearly
did not think such actions meant much. They had become too detached from the
gospel, from the words Jesus spoke, and from the hope for that new day Jesus
proclaimed – the kingdom, the reign of
God.
In
our scripture today the prophet Isaiah speaks for God. I cannot endure solemn assemblies
with iniquity. Your new moons and your appointed festivals my soul hates; they
have become a burden to me, I am weary of bearing them. When you stretch out
your hands, I will hide my eyes from you; even though you make many prayers, I
will not listen; your hands are full of blood. Wash yourselves; make yourselves
clean; remove the evil of your doings from before my eyes; cease to do evil,
learn to do good; seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead
for the widow.
Dietrich
Bonhoeffer understood Yahweh’s complaint better than most. Most Nazis were
members of the German church. Almost all of them had been baptized. Many
regularly attended worship. All while slaughtering millions of Jews and others considered
undesirable or impure. All while pursuing a war of aggression that killed
millions more. All while imprisoning or executing any who dared question or
challenge them.
Bonhoeffer
knew all about worship abhorrent to God. But where exactly is the line? At what
point can God no longer endure worship, solemn assemblies, festivals and
prayers? According to Isaiah, it is when people are no longer moved by evil and
injustice, when the oppressed and marginalized are ignored, when the powerless
and weak are not protected.
When
the lives of worshipers and the society they build do not reflect the ways of
Yahweh, who has a special concern for the lost, the poor, the broken, the
alien, the powerless, the forgotten, then worship ceases to be worship, and
merely grates on God’s ears.
And
that’s just a little unnerving when I think of all the times I’ve shrugged my
shoulders at obvious injustice, or been too busy or worried about my own
problems to do something that might actually help those who are vulnerable and
powerless. I live a stone’s throw from the nation’s capital yet I’ve never
added my voice to a protest or march, never stood with those for whom God has
special concern.
Oh,
I’ve hoped for them. I’ve voted for people I think might help them. But I’ve
rarely done anything that cost me. My love for neighbor isn’t very Christ-like.
It’s more of an if-it’s-not-too-much-trouble-to-me kind of love. What must God
think of my worship?
But there is good news. With God, there
is always good news. With God the future is always open. We are never captive
to our failings or our past. You can see it in the words of Isaiah, God’s
longing for a new future. “Come now, let us argue it out,
says the LORD: though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be like snow.” And
in Christ Jesus, we see the power of God to transform even the most heinous evil,
even the cross, into a glorious new future.
_______________________________________________________________________________
We
do not have a baptism in our worship today, but we do celebrate another ancient
Christian ritual, the Lord’s Supper. I wonder if we might borrow Bonhoeffer’s
words about baptism for it. “In the traditional words and acts we suspect that
there may be something quite new and revolutionary, though we cannot as yet
grasp or express it.”
In
a world where going to church has too often become a substitute for being the
body of Christ, perhaps we too need to be renewed through Bonhoeffer’s “prayer
and righteous acts...” Perhaps as we come to the table, it can be part of a
renewed prayer life that is radically open to God’s presence. Perhaps it can
nurture us for renewed focus on “righteous acts,” on loving our neighbor. For
surely there is something new and revolutionary waiting to be born, something
we cannot yet grasp, but that Jesus calls us to be a part of when he proclaims
good news and says, “Come, follow me.”
[1]
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Prayers from Prison (New York: Macmillan
Publishing, 1971), 299-300.
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