Bonhoeffer — wealth is for sharing

This summer an International Bonhoeffer Congress is being held in Prague. Scholars from around the world are gathering to review the writings, the life and the death of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. I hold that Bonhoeffer was the greatest of all martyrs of the 20th century.

Bonhoeffer was born in 1906 in Breslau, Germany, the son of a university professor. His brothers chose to be scientists. Dietrich, at 14, chose to study theology. At 21 he had earned his Ph.D. in theology. He decided that his calling was to be a pastor rather than a university professor. He was ordained at 25.

His adult life was interwoven with the rise to power of Adolph Hitler. He was an outspoken critic of Hitler from the very beginning of Hitler’s reign over Germany. He constantly critiqued Hitler in the light of the Gospel of Christ. On April 9, 1945, a few days before the surrender of Germany to the Allied Forces, Dietrich Bonhoeffer was hanged by order of Himmler, Hitler’s long-time chief aide.

Bonhoeffer’s lasting legacy was his call to Christian discipleship. Although he wrote many notable works, he is best know for “The Cost of Discipleship,” a commentary on Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount as presented in the Matthew gospel.

At a time when Christian pulpits are plagued with messages obsessed with personal salvation and feel-good psychology, it is a good time to reread Bonhoeffer and to look again at what it means to follow Jesus. For Bonhoeffer the call of Jesus was not a call to personal salvation but to discipleship.

“When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.” This is probably Bonhoeffer’s most memorable quote. For Bonhoeffer, dying to self and dying to every one of life’s idols is a daily event.

About the time of his ordination Bonhoeffer delivered a sermon that was quite typical of his challenges to professing Christians.

In 1931 Germany was, as was the United States, mired in a horrible economic depression. Prospects for the German nation were bleak. Seven million people were unemployed. German farmers had crop failures. Germany could not produce enough food to feed its people even at a subsistence level. It was projected that 15-20 million people would be going hungry during the coming winter.

The occasion of the sermon was the Harvest Festival. Not surprising, the meager harvest was in the hands of the elite. Young Pastor Bonhoeffer was expected to give a sermon of thanksgiving that would thank God for their tables of plenty at a time of suffering of millions. The congregation did not get the expected thanksgiving sermon.

Bonhoeffer challenged his parishoners to visualize those who were going hungry. He asked, “Why should they be the ones who benefit from God’s largesse and not their hungry brothers and sisters, who were near by?”

In the typical American church, people regularly express thanksgiving for the worldly goods that they possess. The amount of this world’s wealth that is held by a Christian is considered an indication of God’s blessing. Bonhoeffer would not have anything to do with that kind of thinking. A person’s wealth, rather than an occasion for thanksgiving, was an occasion for seeking God’s wisdom about how the wealth was to be shared. The blessing of God was not in a person’s wealth. Rather the blessing of God was found in the giving away of the wealth.

According to Bonhoeffer, and I agree with him wholeheartedly, the only reason for a follower of Jesus to have wealth is to give it away.

Jesus indicated that it was impossible for people of wealth to escape worship of their wealth. No matter how one defines salvation, according to Jesus, it is impossible for people of wealth to attain that blissful state.

When a man of wealth approached Jesus about the way to salvation, Jesus told him to sell all his possessions and come and follow him. What makes people of wealth think that Jesus would tell them something different?

America is not a good place for Bonhoeffer-type preaching. America is addicted to measuring its greatness by wealth and power.

America and Americans will never be great because of wealth. The only way for America to be a truly great nation is for America to be an outrageously generous nation.

The Rev. Howard Bess is pastor emeritus of Church of the Covenant, an American Baptist church in Palmer. His email address is hdbss@mtaonline.net.