The Collected Sermons of Dietrich Bonhoeffer:

Repent and Do Not Judge

127 Repent and Do Not Judge London, sixth sunday after trinity, July 8, 1934 z The first incident to which this passage in Luke refers was very much the news of the day, in the context of revolutionary activity in Palestine during Jesus’ ministry. Pilate particularly feared Galileans as the worst rebels and, on this occasion, had slaughtered a group of them who had come to worship in the temple in Jerusalem. Those who died at Siloam belonged to another rebel group, perhaps Zealots. Bonhoeffer preached this sermon only a week after news from Germany that spread shock and horror in Britain: Hitler’s powerful SS troops, claiming that a Putsch (coup) was imminent, had massacred many of Hitler’s rivals in the Nazi party. Bonhoeffer ’s brother-in-law Hans von Dohnanyi reported that more than two hundred people had been killed. In the face of this horror, Bonhoeffer surprised his hearers by urging them not to judge but to repent, saying with Jesus (see Matt. 7:1), that we all share in the guilt of those responsible. As he later wrote to his friend Erwin Sutz, “We are the ones to be converted, not Hitler.” 128 • tHe CoLLeCted serMons oF dietriCH BonHoeFFer The “great man” whom he quotes is Gandhi. Bonhoeffer hoped at the time to visit Gandhi’s ashram in India and did indeed receive a personal invitation, but instead he had to return urgently to Germany in 1935 to help train pastors for the Confessing Church. z Luke 13:1–5: At that very time there were some present who told him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. He asked them, “Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were worse sinners than all other Galileans? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish as they did. Or those eighteen who were killed when the tower of Siloam fell on them— do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others living in Jerusalem? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish just as they did.” z Perhaps this text frightens you, and you think it sounds only too much like the news of the day—too dangerous for a worship service. In church we would rather get completely away from the world of the newspapers and the latest sensations. That’s right, that is what we are doing here, really getting away from this world. But we want to do it in such a way that it cannot jump on us again almost as soon as we are out the church door and take us captive and oppress us; instead, we want to leave the worship service having overcome it. So it cannot really be our purpose to “get away” from these things by closing our eyes to them or forgetting them as quickly as possible, even for a little while; but rather to know the position we should take on them as Christians. What matters is not that we get away from these things but rather how we get away from them. There are people who cannot bear to go to a funeral—or rather, do not want to go. Why not? Because they are afraid of the shock of being that close to a dead person. They don’t want to see this side of human life, and they think that if they don’t look at it, they have managed to get rid of the thing itself altogether. rePent And do not JudGe • 129 There are even people who think themselves particularly devout if they do not see the dark side of life, if they close themselves off from the catastrophes of this world and just lead their own tranquil, pious lives in peaceful optimism. But it can never do any good to fool oneself into ignoring the truth, for in deceiving oneself about the truth of one’s own life, one is certainly deceiving oneself about God’s truth as well. And it is certainly never pious to close the eyes that God gave us to see our neighbor and his or her need, simply to avoid seeing whatever is sad or dreadful. So it can certainly never be the right way to try to get rid of the things that frighten and depress us. There is also another way...