Barbara: Hi everyone- welcome to 40 minutes of faith. My name is Barbara Cox and I host this weekly podcast to explore God's word and our relationship with God. Today's guest is Blake Shipman. And we're going to be talking about a pastor in Germany many years ago, whose life and writings are still relevant today.
I met Blake at Wartburg theological seminary, where we have both been students. Blake is from Illinois and has lived in Iowa for his undergraduate degree from Wartburg college and is currently a master of divinity student at Wartburg seminary. He's a cradle Lutheran and has worked in parish ministry for nearly three years. Welcome, Blake. How are things for you these days?
Blake: Thanks for having me. Barb, things are crazy, but God is still good. And so I'll continue on.
Barbara: Our Bible passage today is from Romans chapter 13, verses one to five. And if you're following along in a paper Bible, it's towards the back of the Bible in the new Testament. I'm going to read verses one through five from the message version of Romans 13.
“Be a good citizen. All governments are under God in so far as there is peace and order it's God's order. So live responsibly as a citizen. If you're irresponsible to the state, then you're irresponsible with God and God will hold you responsible. Duly constituted authorities are only a threat. If you're trying to get by with something decent citizens should have nothing to fear. Do you want to be on good terms with the government, be a responsible citizen and you'll get on just fine, the government working to your advantage, but if you're breaking the rules right and left, watch out the police aren't there just to be admired in their uniforms. God also has an interest in keeping order and he uses them to do it. That's why you must live responsibly, not just to avoid punishment, but also because it's the right way to live.”
Typically, we would talk about this Bible verse right now and why did we pick it and things like that. Just for today, I was hoping that we could take a look at the life of this man Dietrich Bonhoeffer. And then get back to this verse a little bit later on for reasons that will hopefully become obvious at that point.
And would you start us off with a morning Prayer that was written by our pastor theologian Bonhoeffer?
Blake: This prayer comes from Bonhoeffer’s time in prison. He was in prison towards the end of his life, between the years 1943, 1944. And he wrote letters and papers. He wrote just to write, he wrote poetry- and the guy never wrote poetry in his life until then. And so this is one prayer that comes out from his letters and papers, which is a massive anthology of all his writings from the time he was imprisoned to the time that he was executed by the third Reich. So this one is dated November 23rd of 1943. And this is a prayer for prisoners in the morning.
“God, I call to you early in the morning, helping me pray and collect my thoughts. I cannot do so alone. In me, it is dark, but with you, there is lights. I am lonely, but you do not abandon me. I am fainthearted, but from you will comes my help. I am restless, but with you is peace. In me is bitterness, but with you is patience. I do not understand your ways, but you know the right ways for me.”
Barbara: when did you first hear about Bonhoeffer and what was intriguing to you about him?
Blake: I first heard about Dietrich Bonhoeffer in my final year of undergraduate work at Wartburg college. And I was taking a class on Lutheran heritage and we were taking the Lutheran faith from the time of the reformation up to the present day.
And one of the projects was giving a report on the confessing church and Dietrich Bonhoeffer. And that I knew that he was a German theologian. I knew he had something to do with world war II, but that's it. So I delved in and I called Dr. Craig Nessan, he's the Dean at Wartburg theological seminary. And he is also one of the premier American Bonhoeffer theologians. And he gave me the whole timeline of what went down when and where and why Bonhoeffer is such a force in the theological world still to this day.
And that planted the seed. And then I came to seminary. And we started reading Life Together and I realized, I like this work. My theology and his theology are pretty close to each other. And so I wanted to read more and more and more.
Barbara: I do believe that certainly Bonhoeffer is a theologian and that's a pretty big word, but I also believe in another concept that Lutherans talk about, which is the priesthood of all believers. And that includes a word that we don't typically use often, I mean priests, because our pastors aren't typically called priests.
I'm wondering , who is a theologian and what is this priesthood of all believers business? Because I tend to put people on pedestals and Bonhoeffer's definitely on a pedestal, even though I know that we're not really supposed to do that.
That's not always the greatest idea, but I don't want him to seem so distant. So that's why I'm asking what is it theologian? And to what extent are we all theologians?
Blake: a theologian is anyone that takes the word of God and try to decipher what it means for themselves, in their time and their space. You're a theologian, Barb, I'm a theologian. Anyone that wrestles with the word and tries to decipher what's going on is a theologian.
And the priesthood of all believers- in the time of the reformation, the Catholic church had this idea of there is the laity and then the priesthood, and the priesthood are in a class of their own. And Martin Luther, the person who kicked off the reformation, came in and said, no, it's not like that. We are all on the same playing field. We are all in this priesthood. We are all ordained as good by God, even though we are sinful and broken. And so because of that, we are all priests in the priesthood of believers.
Barbara: Thank you. And some people go to school and read 800 page textbooks. This one's called The Bonhoeffer Reader. It's edited by Green and DeJonge. And I have a couple of quotes for us to talk about, but you don't have to read fancy books to be working through this stuff in your heart and your soul and in your mind and talking with other people about it. One of the important concepts that I took from a class that I also took from Dr. Nessan, that included conversations about Bonhoeffer was the concept of grace and discipleship. And Bonhoeffer used a very interesting term that I had not heard before, even though I, like you, am a cradle Lutheran- and I hadn't heard of the concept of cheap grace before. It sounds kind of weird. It's really an interesting term. So on page 456 of my Bonhoeffer Reader book, it explains “discipleship is the reception of God's grace in faith and obedience to God's command.” So how about cheap grace?
Blake: I'm going to take a crack at reading something out of Discipleship. He wrote this when he was teaching at the underground seminary in Germany, now modern day Poland. And this is what he wrote about.
“Cheap grace is that grace, which we bestow upon ourselves. Cheap grace is preaching forgiveness without repentance. It is baptism without the discipline of community. It is the Lord's supper without confession of sin. It is absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship. Costly grace is the hidden treasure in the field for the sake of which people go and sell with joy, everything they have. It is the costly Pearl for which price the merchant sells all that he has. It is Christ's sovereignty. It is the call of Jesus Christ, which causes a disciple to leave his nets and follow him.”
So that's what Bonhoeffer writes about cheap grace, and I teach cheap grace like this. So say I go out and do something bad. Let's say I robbed a store, and after I'm done robbing it, I think, well, I can forgive myself for this. So it's all fine. So I'm bestowing this grace upon myself. And while it might work for a little while, in the end, it's not God's grace given to me, it is a grace I bestow upon myself. So I've cheapened this whole idea of grace so much so that it's not of use.
Barbara: it sounded to me when you were reading, it's almost like taking the easy way out. Like we want people to take the good stuff. Absolutely. And the good stuff is free and yet there's more to it than just saying I forgive myself. And also back to a little bit of an earlier conversation too, when you talk about confession and forgiveness, that's something that's also different in some faith denominations, because there's ways of having confession directly one-to-one with someone, there's confession in a group that many churches do during a worship service where everyone reads the same words and then they're forgiven as a group. I don't want to oversimplify it, but it's kind of taking the easy way out.
Blake: I think you're spot on. It's taking the easy way out, indeed.
Barbara: discipleship isn't supposed to be always super, super hard all the time, but it can be hard and we'll be talking more about that. Now you mentioned underground and I know what you're talking about, but I just wanted to follow up on that. Can you explain for a minute when you said that he wrote this from an underground seminary, what was that all about? Was it really underground?
Blake: I say underground seminary to say that it was a seminary in hiding. And so the dynamics of Germany at the time, we're in the era of the third Reich, Nazi, Germany. In order to get more control over the German people, the Reich also influenced the regional churches of Germany very heavily. So they formed what they call the Volkskirche, the people's church. And there was a group of theologians that spoke out against it and said, we are not going to do what they commanded us to do, which was pretty severe.
They were trying to “de-Jewify” the Bible, as one person called it. So they took out the old Testament, took out all the Psalms. They took out every aspect of Jesus being Jewish. And that was going to be the scripture.
And this group of theologians got together and said, we're not going to do this. And so they formed what they called the pastor's emergency league. Martin Niemoller was the first leader of this, and then he was subsequently arrested and thrown into a concentration camp early in the war and he survived.
You might've heard of his famous poem- first, they came for so so-and-so, and I didn't say anything. And then they came for … and then they came from me, and I had no one to speak up for me. And Bonhoeffer was a part of this group as well. And the pastor’s emergency league morphed into what's called the confessing church.
And they signed this unified document saying, this is what we believe. This is what we have against the people's church. And then the state came in and said, Nope, you're outlawed. You can't do this. You can't preach in churches. You can't teach. So they said, we will go into hiding.
And so that's exactly what they did. And Bonhoeffer was over in England at the time, pastoring a German immigrant church in London. And then when he came back to Germany, he became the head of a seminary. And this was a hidden seminary in Germany. This was Northeast of Berlin, North sea. And they actually took over this estate of a family and the matriarch in the family was very kind of on offer and said, come on in we'll we'll house. You. And so he set up the seminary and he taught for the church and eventually the Reich found out that they were doing this and they came in and shut them down.
But even then, Bonhoeffer found places to put his pupils into different parishes, and he would travel around and make sure they're doing okay. And then they would gather them in random spots, sometimes the shed in the middle of the woods, and they would have class together.
And that held up until the war on the Eastern front broke out. So that was the underground seminary, and it was going up until the start of the invasion of Poland.
Barbara: I have one little spot of levity for us before we really dig deep into some substantive and serious conversation. And that is that Bonhoeffer did write a lot about life and community, which you had already referenced. He wrote about silence and life with other people. And I found just one particular sentence, very humor-full, he wrote about singing. He said, unison singing is better. And this is a quote, “the solo voice drowns out everything else, bellowing and quavering at the top of its lungs.”
Blake: he was a very jovial man. He was a talented musician. He played piano, any chance that he got to make music, he was there. His family was full of musicians and they would get together and they would have these jam sessions of classical musicians throughout the eras. And he also enjoyed the little things in life, like a good walk. He was a man that knew self care well, and so he there'd be days where he would get the seminary and the teaching. Then all of a sudden, he would say, that's enough for today. Let's all go to the beach. And so they would all go to the North sea and have a fun day.
Barbara: wasn't he also influenced by the music that he heard in New York in churches?
Blake: Indeed. Bonhoeffer was over in New York twice, once as a student at union theological seminary and the next time as a guest lecturer at union. And while he was at union, he has been recorded to say that he learned the most from his time in Harlem.
And he went to Abyssinian Baptist church in Harlem, and he heard all of these African-American spirituals while he was there. He loved them so much that they impacted his life in a very fun way. When he was over in the seminary, there would be afternoons where he would just sit with a record player and put on one of the spirituals that he heard in New York. And that would be the community's time together.
Barbara: we're going to be really now getting into some serious stuff. And the New York pieces is a little bit of a segue as well, because the Bible verse from Romans could go in lots of directions. We could have a year's worth of podcast episodes just about these verses here, but when it comes to Bonhoeffer, we have some quotes from him as well as more of the story of his life. And I wanted to bring up a quote from the textbook that there are three possible actions from the church to the state. One is questioning the state as to the legitimate state character of its actions. Service to victims. And then finally seizing the wheel. If the church sees the state to be failing in its function of creating law and order.
And the reason that we have this Bible verse is that in Romans we're told that governments are good, governments are from God and that citizens should be good citizens. And now one of the questions becomes, when do you say no? And you had already talked a little bit about that at the beginning, when churches were told to leave out the whole old Testament and the Psalms and not mention that Jesus was Jewish. And I'm wondering if you could just tell the story of how and when did Bonhoeffer returned from New York? Why did he return and how was his thinking and teaching being shaped by what was happening in his Homeland at the time?
Blake: Bonhoeffer was in New York the second time. He was going over as a guest lecturer at union. He heard that war is going to break out in Germany any day. Now his parents were writing him saying, this is not looking too good for us. You might want to get home. And [his mentor] was saying, we can shelter you. We can safeguard you. You can say in America, we will make sure that you have whatever you need. And Bonhoeffer said, no. If I want to have any stake in rebuilding my country after this, I need to go and suffer with my people. So from the get go, he had a sense of camaraderie with the suffering people in Germany and he wanted to be there to be with them in their suffering.
So it never was a question of do I stay or do I go? It was always, always, I will go back and be with my people no matter what.
Barbara: unfortunately, we know how it ended and he didn't know at the time, but I'm sure he was intelligent enough of a person to know that it was a risk or is always a risk, especially with rumors, maybe floating around and things built up kind of gradually. So people became more astute.
Blake: When it comes to Romans 13, this is a big old ball of wax that we've been wrestling with for a long time. And I think in the vein of Bonhoeffer offering theology, he would say yes, Romans 13 is there, but we also have a vested interest in making sure that those who are on the fringe, those who are being persecuted are taken care of.
So what's more important? Listening to Romans 13 and following up the state says, or listening to our commandment from Christ? Following the great commission, living as Christ would live in our world, and love your neighbor?
Barbara: I've got a couple of more quotes to bring us even deeper into this because Bonhoeffer also said if government oversteps its task at some point by making itself Lord over the faith of the church community, then at this point, it is indeed to be disobeyed for the sake of conscience and for the sake of the Lord.
I know it in this day and age 2021, our political system is to some degree in upheaval about this. So I don't mean right now today to go do something. That's not at all what we're saying, but in the context of world war II, this makes a lot of sense to me.
And I'm sure that Bonhoeffer witnessed and heard about many government overstepping.
Blake: The government had their whole hand in the way that the church was being ran. Hitler himself would name puppet leaders to the Volkskirche- even at times [they] would rebel and say, no, we can't have this.
And for the most part, the third Reich had control over everything that the church would do. That is that speaking to exactly what you're saying, Barb, that when [government] makes themselves Lord of the church, then you need to do something. And that definitely was happening in Bonhoeffer's time. Another thing that the state was doing, if pastors had Jewish descent, they had to step down from the pulpit. Didn't matter if they were presenting the gospel of Christ, didn't matter how far back it was, in the eyes of the third Reich, you were Jewish and you were subhuman.
Barbara: And even beyond the church, I know that Bonhoeffer was aware of many other things, just culturally going on in terms of people were expected to denounce their neighbors. People were being carted off in the middle of the night and after a while, it wasn't even in the middle of the night anymore.
And one of the things that when I was talking about putting people on pedestals, I know that there has been some talk about people were surprised that it appeared that Bonhoeffer was actually working for the government in a government building. Can you speak a little bit about that?
Blake: I sure can. So the movie Valkyrie is this suspenseful film that tells a story of this plot to assassinate Hitler and take over the German state by implementing their plan of succession, which was called operation Valkyrie. So this was a true story and Bonhoeffer had a hand in this plot.
So Bonhoeffer was recruited by some family members [who] worked for the military intelligence service, which was the branch of the government that was getting ready to perform this plot.
And he had connections to the church of England. And through that, he had connections to the English government, because at that time, the church of England and the government were pretty much hand in hand.
So they wanted to use Bonhoeffer to communicate with the allies, to see if they can negotiate peace and see what could happen there. And they also use Bonhoeffer's contacts to help free some Jewish citizens of Germany and help them escape. And so they had a group of Jewish people escaped through the mountains in Southern Germany, into neutral Switzerland.
So yes, Bonhoeffer worked for the government. And for the longest time before any of his writings came out, a lot of people saw that and thought, hold up. He's going against what he said. We can't listen to this guy. He was obviously a turncoat. It wasn't until after his letters and papers from prison came out, that people started to realize that no, he was actually more or less being a double agent working seemingly for the government, but also working to assassinate Hitler and do all the things that he did.
So he was arrested originally for helping Jewish people escape into neutral Switzerland. It was at the closing days of the war. And so eventually they put him on this convoy of very influential people. There was Bonhoeffer, there was the famous polka musician. There was a relative of Joseph Stalin in this convoy that was being moved from prison down into the Southeastern corner of Germany.
We don't know exactly where they're heading. There's a theory that Heinrich Himmler himself knit this group of people together to use them as bargaining chips. So after the war was ended, he could negotiate his freedom by saying, I have all these people, you can have them if I can go free. So that's what they think was going on. But we can't prove that one way or another. So they put them on this transport and he starts going South. And then the SS discovers this incriminating piece of evidence that more or less implicated Dietrich, and many other friends and relatives in the plot to assassinate Hitler. And so they said, okay, well we have them in prison, so let's go and arrest them and execute them.
And then they realized, Oh wait, we put them in the convoy. Where are they going? And so they started to track them down and they were in the South Eastern corner of Germany, 10 miles away from the Czech border at that time. And they decided to stop for the night.
And so they put all the prisoners in the school. And at that point in time, we're coming to the closing days of the war. And I say that because Germany was hurting for a lot of resources at that time. So they were hurting for gas, especially power vehicles.
So they didn't know what they're going to be able to get these people over the border in time. And so their guards go outside, lock them in and try to track track supplies down for themselves. And so they're gonna spend the night at the school, and the group says, pastor Bonhoeffer, can we have a church service together?
And at first Bonhoeffer says, I will not do it because we have an atheist in our midst. And not because he's an atheist, but I want to make sure that he's comfortable with this, and the relative to Stalin was the atheist and the relative of Stalin says, no, that is fine. Go, have a church service. I'd be more than happy to sit and be in your midst through this. And so he starts to preach and then someone comes in and says, come with us. The SS found him. Down where he was, and they had just enough gas to go down to the village and get them back up to Flossenbürg concentration camp.
They stripped him of all of his clothing. They had a quick kangaroo court, military trial found him guilty, and then they hung him at Flossenbürg concentration camp and burnt him in a mass grave. And I think that the most beautiful thing out of all of this pain and suffering though, where his last words, it is recorded to the edge when he was facing the gallows.
He said these words. So this is the end for me, the beginning of life. And my goodness. All that man did, all that man suffered through for the faith or his personal convictions. And when he's faced with the end, he can do nothing but lean into the promise of the resurrection.
Barbara: I have a couple of sentences from a letter that he wrote on May 29th, 1944. And how can this still be relevant in our lives?
All of this is relevant, but especially this, that's why I picked this one letter. “God wants to be recognized in the midst of our lives, in life and not only in dying, in health and strength and not only in suffering, in action and not only in sin. God is the center of life and doesn't just turn up when we have unsolved problems to be solved.”
And that was really meaningful to me. How can we keep God in the center of our lives? Any thoughts Blake on is it easy to just call on God when you're like, God, God, I need help. How do we remember?
Blake: we can lean into God's promise by leaning into the communities that we find ourselves in. Because we always say at the seminary that God works through creative means. One teacher here would take that further and say, there's no one that you can look at in this world that Christ does not love.
And that Christ has not died for. I think in community, we can lean into God's promises because we hear God's promises proclaimed in community. When we come gathered as a church, we hear the word of God preached and we receive the sacraments. If we are sacramental people and nowhere else have I found in this world can feed people spiritually at like a gathering of people around the word and sacrament can.
Barbara: And we've kind of done community by zoom or other online platforms to the best of our ability during this time of pandemic, which in some places is easing now, not everywhere, but absolutely. We really want to put out an encouraging word for community, especially community of faith for that spiritual journey that we're all on.
Yeah. Thank you. And I'm going to read part of a poem that I had mentioned briefly. I did a podcast episode last year about all the classes that I was taking one semester and I mentioned it and I thought, well, I can't read it because I'm probably going to try probably going to cry. But today I thought, well, I'm already on my way there.
So this poem is so powerful. I'm not going to read the whole thing for the sake of time, but would encourage anyone to look it up again, to talk about it, this was meaningful. Decades ago, and the content is still meaningful now in each of our lives in Bonhoeffer writes:
“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!”
Thoughts on that, Blake?
Blake: So many. He wrote that when he was in prison. Not only that it was prison towards the end of a war, bombing raids happened almost every night, and there would be times - the prison is in the city of Berlin, but it was on the outskirts of the city next to an industrial district.
So there'd be times where bombers would go over. and they would hit the prison instead of the factories. So not only is he suffering in prison, but he's also experiencing the impending doom of this might be the night I die.
And he writes this- I'm still trying to figure out how he mustered up the peace and the serenity to write this. And then I remember. Wait, it wasn't he who mustered up the peace and serenity. It was Christ who strengthened him to muster up the peace and serenity.
Barbara: I think it speaks to his willingness to be human and vulnerable. And it encourages me then in my own humanness. Luther coined the phrase, we're all saints and sinners.
And so we have this different aspects of ourselves, and usually we try to show the best side, but just that we all have these combinations of feelings and experiences inside of us and how people perceive us and how we want to be perceived.
Blake: indeed we do. And they come out elegantly in his writings, especially in letters and papers from prison. And there's some in there where we're never going to know the true feelings about because when he wrote Letters and Papers from Prison, he would lie at times to not tip off the sensors as to what's going on really. And too, he would lie at times because he didn't want his parents to know the suffering that he was going through.
Barbara: some of the academic writing was way over my head. I mean, he was just brilliant. And some of it I could really understand and some of it I'm like, what does this mean?
Blake: I definitely recommend Life Together by Dietrich Bonhoeffer. And I recommend this version that I have here. This is the reader's edition and it comes with an awesome foreword to the book and it lays out what was going on in his world. Why did he write this? And what is it useful for today? And then it has some guiding questions in the back for you to study along with.
If you're looking for a more in depth, theological read, but still palatable, I would recommend Discipleship. It takes the sermon on the Mount from the gospel of Matthew and the beatitudes and it frames it in a missional frame. So he looks at the beatitudes as a way for us to live by. So that is another great one.
If you are looking to learn about his life and if you want the definitive work. This is a biography written by Eberhard Bethge. His best friend. After the war, Bethge was the one that collected all of Bonhoeffer's writings and put together writings and papers. He took all of his unfinished writings and published Bonhoeffer's ethics.
And then he came out with this biography and this is the definitive biography of his life. What better biographer to have, than your best friend?
Barbara: we've talked about some thorny ethical issues and barely even scratch the surface today when it comes to war, assassination of a dictator. And even the Bible verses could be way more dug into in terms of government and police and citizenship.
And what does that mean and how are we both good citizens as well as then? What do we expect of the government and police, prison ministry? There's so many more things to talk about.
Blake: read Bonhoeffer as much as you can. He'll give you a lens into theology that is refreshing. It is a lens that is lived amongst people. And Bonhoeffer is not only a theologian of the head but also a theologian of the heart. And he understands how important it is to connect both of those together and live with them in community.
Barbara: I don't mind admitting, even though it's embarrassing, I often thought, well, what does this history have to do with our lives today? Why is this important? And I don't think that anymore- there's incredible relevancy in the writings and beliefs and prayers that we've been talking about today.
Well, thank you so much for your time today, Blake.
Resources:
Romans 13:1-5
http://www.dbonhoeffer.org/who-was-db2.htm
The Bonhoeffer Reader, edited by Green and DeJonge
Life Together by Dietrich Bonhoeffer (Reader’s Edition)
Discipleship by Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Dietrich Bonhoeffer: A Biography by Eberhard Bethge
Letters and Papers from Prison by Dietrich Bonhoeffer
