Saturday, November 28, 2009

Bonhoeffer on 'Truth'

I'm studying in my little office at the bottom of the garden for an Advent series that I want to take the people of X1 through in this season. As part of that study I have been reading a little book called Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Christmas Sermons.s Which is actually my first real induction into the writing's of Bonhoeffer. I have read many a quote by him in a multitude of other books I have read, but this has been truly affecting.
One of his sermons preached with the looming election of Adolf Hitler as Chancellor of Germany in January 1933 in mind is one about truth - God's Truth. It is preached from the text of John 8: 32 and is simply heart-opening. Here is one powerful section:

"The truth will make you free. It is not something we have to do, not our courage, our church, our people, our truth; but God's truth alone that makes us free. Why? Because to become free does not mean becoming great in the world, not becoming free from your brother, nor even free from God, but to become free from oneself, one's lie. It means to become free from thinking only of myself, from being the center of my world, from hate, by which I despise God's creation. It means to be free to be for the other: the person for others. Only God's truth can enable me to see the other as he really is. It tears out the twisted image that I have of the other within me and shows him to me in a new light. And insofar as God's truth does that, it bestows upon me the action, the love, the grace of God. It destroys our lies and creates the truth. It destroys hatred and creates love. God's truth is God's love and God's love makes us free from ourselves for others."


O to be truly freed by and for God's Truth - the one to whom Pilate posed the ironic question, "What is truth?"

Simon

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