The Collected Sermons of Dietrich Bonhoeffer:

Risen with Christ

41 Risen with Christ Berlin, Kaiser wilhelm Memorial Church, third sunday after trinity, June 12, 1932 z Bonhoeffer preached on this occasion at the request of his friend Gerhard Jacobi. Jacobi was pastor of a church that was destroyed in the bombing of Berlin and is well-known today for having been rebuilt after World War II amid the ruins of the original church. Many of Bonhoeffer ’s students would have attended the service, but he was also concerned about the members of the congregation who were not studying theology. How could he make this strange text from the apostle Paul about the mystery of the resurrection—a text he had chosen himself—meaningful to all listeners? Bonhoeffer’s reference to the “government [that] issues a proclamation ” is to that of Chancellor Franz von Papen, which had come to power just a few days before, on June 1. The new government hoped to restore a society more in the German tradition, with leadership from the nobility and the clergy, as had been the case under the Kaiser. Chancellor Von Papen had reintroduced the custom of invoking the name of God at the opening of parliament. But quotations such as “the cup of nothingness,” 42 • tHe CoLLeCted serMons oF dietriCH BonHoeFFer from twentieth-century German poet Gottfried Benn, whose work Bonhoeffer had heard performed in an oratorio by his contemporary, German composer Paul Hindemith, show that Bonhoeffer realized that the church’s message was no longer being taken seriously by much of the modern world, and was looking urgently for ways to communicate the gospel in a disillusioned and secularized society. z Colossians 3:1–4: So if you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your mind on things that are above, not on things that are on earth, for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life is revealed, then you also will be revealed with him in glory. z Dear congregation, that is certainly an extremely off-putting way to start a conversation with a person: Since you have been raised with Christ, do this and that. We have been baptized. We have been confirmed. There were times when we felt like opening the Bible. We are interested in various religious questions. Maybe we even stand by our church with loyalty and love. And finally, after all: we live in a world that over the last one and a half to two thousand years under the name of Jesus Christ has developed as a Christian world. And nevertheless: if anyone tried to start a conversation with us by just speaking to us about the fact that we have been raised with Christ, we would probably prefer not to continue to speak with them. We would see that they were moved. We would see that they were excited. We would see how intensely serious they were about what they were still going to say to us. But we would distance ourselves from this assumption that they made and from which they would not let go at any price, from this condition that they think they have to set so that we are even able to hear and understand everything else they would like to share with us; yes, we would distance ourselves from this assumption and this condition that we have been raised with Christ; we would turn away astonished and unfavorably impressed. We would shake our heads about a person like that. risen witH CHrist • 43 Actually, this way of addressing us should come over us like a judgment . Actually, this one word should break in upon us—so powerful, so sublime, so exalted—that we grow pale in fear and trembling before it: for this glow, this glory of being raised with Christ is really not a part of our experience, cannot be seen anywhere in our lives, try as one might and looking as carefully as possible. Instead, we turn aside, astonished and unfavorably impressed. Instead, we shake our heads. Instead, when someone speaks to us like that, it seems to us baptized and confirmed Christians as if a representative of some mysterious secret society were coming up to us with his weird secret password. We must not delude ourselves: this address, “you have been raised with Christ,” goes...