The Collected Sermons of Dietrich Bonhoeffer:

Waiting at the Door

7 Waiting at the Door Barcelona, First sunday in Advent, december 2, 1928 z We know from a letter Bonhoeffer wrote to his family at this time that he was still having to work hard all the preceding week on his sermons. But he had become popular as a preacher. Attendance at Sunday services increased, and the senior pastor stopped announcing ahead of time which of them would be preaching. On this occasion, he was absent, and Bonhoeffer was responsible for the entire service. Bonhoeffer begins with words about waiting, a traditional Advent theme, before speaking of the struggle against evil in the world. Here he was thinking back to his recent sermon on the Day of Remembrance for the dead, when his text was “Love is as strong as death,” from Song of Solomon 8:6b. That sermon is not included in this book, but two sermons for later Remembrance Days are (see 101 and 207). He also returns to the motif of his sermon on April 15 of Jesus as a wanderer on the road (see 1). His hearers would have been familiar with this theme from German Christmas legends and carols, with the Christ Child calling, “Let me in, children, the winter is so cold, open your doors to me! Don’t let me freeze.” 8 • tHe CoLLeCted serMons oF dietriCH BonHoeFFer Bonhoeffer also quotes from two well-loved Advent hymns, including “Lift Up Your Heads, O Gates,” based on Psalm 24. At the end, he returns to the theme of waiting, and concludes with the traditional Advent refrain “Come soon, Lord Jesus” (Revelation 22:20). z Revelation 3:20 rsv: Behold, I stand at the door, and knock. z Celebrating Advent means being able to wait. Waiting, however, is an art our impatient age has forgotten. It wants to pick the ripe fruit even though it has hardly finished planting the seedling. But greedy eyes are all too often deceived because the apparently precious fruit is still green on the inside, and disrespectful hands ungratefully throw aside that which has disappointed them so. Those unfamiliar with the bitter bliss of waiting, of doing without while maintaining hope, will never experience the full blessing of fulfillment. Those who do not know what it feels like to wrestle anxiously with the most profound questions of life, of one’s own life, and then to keep watch in anticipation and yearning until the truth is unveiled— cannot imagine how glorious is the moment when clarity emerges; and for those who do not know what it is like to court the friendship, the love of another person, to open up one’s soul to the soul of that other person until it comes, till it arrives—for those people the profound blessing of the life of two intertwined souls will remain eternally concealed. We must wait for the greatest, most profound, most gentle things in life; nothing happens in a rush, but only according to the divine laws of germinating, growing, and becoming. Of course, not everyone can wait, especially those who are sated, satisfied , and disrespectful. Only people who carry a certain restlessness around with them can wait, and people who look up reverently to the One who is great in the world. Hence only those whose souls give them no peace are able to celebrate Advent, who feel poor and incomplete and who sense something of the greatness of what is coming, before which one can only bow in humble timidity, in anticipation till God inclines toward us—the Holy One, God in the child in the manger. God is coming, the Lord Jesus wAitinG At tHe door • 9 is coming, Christmas is coming, rejoice, O Christendom! This is what we hear today again for the first time. And already we want to hear in the distance the song of angels about God’s glory and about peace on earth; but it is not yet time, we must still learn to wait, and to wait properly. Make this time of waiting into a blessed time of preparation. When Advent comes again and we hear and sing the traditional Christmas carols, a peculiar feeling secretly comes over us, and even the hardest hearts are softened; we sense something we felt as children when we were away from our mother, something like homesickness for past times, distant places, and yet such a blissful homesickness, without hardness, without grimness...