Celebrating Bonhoeffer in Berlin
"The important thing is that we should have come to look with new eyes at matters great and small, at sorrow and joy, strength and weakness, that our perceptions of generosity, humanity, justice and mercy should have become clearer, free, less corruptible."
Charles Marsh and Archbishop Williams
On the invitation of Wolfgang Huber, Bishop of the Evangelical Churches of Berlin-Brandenburg, Project on Lived Theology Director, Charles Marsh, traveled to Berlin, Germany, to participate in the services and celebrations remembering Dietrich Bonhoeffer. The fourth of February 2006 marked the centenary of the birth of this pastor, theologian and resister executed by the Nazis in 1945. One high point was a nationally televised service at which Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury, preached.
"For Bonhoeffer, involvement in the world is not undertaking a bold programme of service or reform; it is simply doing what has to be done, in awareness of God – more specially in awareness of God’s presence with us in the form of Jesus in his agony in Gethsemane. We are to live out the obligations of our daily life conscious of how all around us is the presence of the suffering Christ. God has promised and chosen to be with us in our most serious need. And, as Bonhoeffer spells out in a well-know poem written in prison, we go to him in his suffering and need. We stay awake with him. That is faith: neither hectic, self-justifying action nor private piety, but abiding in Gethsemane."
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-- Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury
From the English translation of a sermon delivered in German at St. Matthäus Church, Berlin at a service marking the centenary of the birth of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Sunday 5th February 2006. The entire sermon can be found online.
For information on other centenary events and Bonhoeffer studies see the Bonhoeffer Society website: www.dbonhoeffer.org.