Archbishop on Bonhoeffer - what it means to be free

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945)

Sunday 26th February 2012

Speaking on the first Sunday in Lent at King’s School Canterbury, Dr Williams drew on the life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, describing the letters which Bonhoeffer wrote to his family and close friends while in prison in Nazi Germany as ‘one of the greatest treasures of modern Christianity’ and focusing on his thoughts on freedom which are so prevalent in his writings:

“But freedom was one of the things he most often wrote about.  In a famous poem [Bonhoeffer] wrote in July 1944, he sketched out what he thought was involved in real freedom – discipline, action, suffering and death.  Not quite what we associate with the word – but with these reflections, he takes us into the heart of what it is for someone to be lastingly free”.

The Archbishop went on to speak about Bonhoeffer’s exploration of the freedom of doing ‘what you know you have to do’ in the face of numerous distractions, and his belief in dedicating some time each day to silent meditation on the Bible as a way to find the space to consider this freedom:

“It takes time.  Bonhoeffer wrote a little guide for students when he ran his college for pastors in which he explains why they need to give time each day to silent meditation on the Bible.  ‘God claims our time for this service’, he wrote; ‘God needed time before he came to us in Christ.  He needs time to come into my heart for my salvation.’  Each day we try to open ourselves up to being transformed by this meditation: ‘we want to rise from meditation different from what we were when we sat down to it.’ 

Rather than a means of escapism, the Archbishop argued that silent reflection allows us to be more receptive to God’s activity:

“Some religious people talk about letting the surface of our minds settle so that it can truly reflect God, like a still pool.  As Bonhoeffer’s life and death make clear, this is not some sort of refusal of the world; it is rather the only way we can ever act in the world so as to change it effectively because we open the way to God’s own activity – through us, but not just through us.”

And in conclusion, Dr Williams illustrated how quiet observation can facilitate freedom by providing an opportunity to be more truthful:

“Looking quietly at all the clutter that prevents us from seeing ourselves honestly, looking quietly at the ways in which the world we live in muffles the truth and so frustrates the search for justice and love – this isn’t a luxury.  This is how the truth makes us free. Not free to do what we fancy at any given moment, but free to be real, to be truthful, to be ‘in the truth’, as the New Testament puts it.  After all, what other sort of freedom is finally worth having?”

The full text of the Archbishop's sermon follows, and an audio file is available here.  More information about Sunday Worship is available at the BBC Radio 4 website. 

Sermon by the Archbishop of Canterbury 

Sunday Worship, The King's School, Canterbury. 

In 1939, the young German theologian, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, was in New York, exploring whether he should stay there as pastor to the German emigrants in the city and considering a string of invitations to lecture in the United States.  He had made himself deeply unpopular with the German regime, making broadcasts critical of Hitler and running a secret training institution for pastors in Germany who could not accept the way that the Nazi state was trying to control the Church. 

But, after a draining inner struggle, he decided to sail back to Germany.  In July 1939, after just over a month in New York, he left – knowing that he was returning to a situation of extreme danger.  Six years later, he was dead, executed for treason in a concentration camp, leaving behind him one of the greatest treasure of modern Christianity in the shape of the letters he wrote to family and close friends from prison.  He had left behind the chance of freedom as most of us would understand it and plunged into a complex and risky world, getting involved in the plot to assassinate Hitler, living as a double agent, daily facing the prospect of arrest, torture and death.

But freedom was one of the things he most often wrote about.  In a famous poem he wrote in July 1944, he sketched out what he thought was involved in real freedom – discipline, action, suffering and death.  Not quite what we associate with the word – but with these reflections, he takes us into the heart of what it is for someone to be lastingly free.

The freedom he is interested in is the freedom to do what you know you have to do.  The society you live in will give you all sorts of messages about what you should be doing, and, far more difficult, your own longings and preferences will push you in various directions.  You have to watch your own passions and feelings and test them carefully, and then you have to have the courage to act.  When you act, you take risks.  You seemingly become less free.  But what is really happening is that you are handing over your freedom to God and saying, ‘I’ve done what I had to; now it’s over to you.’  Freedom, he says, is ‘perfected in glory’ when it’s handed over to God.  And this finds its climax in the moment of death, when we step forward to discover what has been hidden all along – the eternal freedom of God, underlying everything we have thought and done.

It’s a tough and uncompromising picture.  But at the end of Bonhoeffer’s journey as he sketches it in this poem is a vision of the joy that can only come when you discover that you are at last in tune with reality, God’s reality.  Everything else, the stories you tell yourself, the pictures of yourself that you enjoy thinking about, the efforts to make yourself acceptable – all this falls short of reality.  ‘The truth will make you free’, says Jesus; and that is what sustains Bonhoeffer in his prison.  It’s really very like what Jesus talks about in the Beatitudes – ‘Blessed are the poor, those who are hungry for justice, those who make peace’; these are the people who have got in touch with what eternally matters, with God’s reality.  These are the free people, because they have been liberated from all the fictions, great and small, that keep us locked into our anxieties and ambitions.  These are people who are not afraid to die because they have discovered what supremely matters and are willing to hand over everything to God.

There is no forcing of others to accept your vision.  It’s simply about being detached enough from what makes you comfortable to be able to live out what it takes to show the kind of God that God is, to live in tune with God’s freedom, which is always a freedom that makes other people free and gives them joy in the reality, the truth, that is God’s life.

It takes time.  Bonhoeffer wrote a little guide for students when he ran his college for pastors in which he explains why they need to give time each day to silent meditation on the Bible.  ‘God claims our time for this service’, he wrote; ‘God needed time before he came to us in Christ.  He needs time to come into my heart for my salvation.’  Each day we try to open ourselves up to being transformed by this meditation: ‘we want to rise from meditation different from what we were when we sat down to it.’ 

Some religious people talk about letting the surface of our minds settle so that it can truly reflect God, like a still pool.  As Bonhoeffer’s life and death make clear, this is not some sort of refusal of the world; it is rather the only way we can ever act in the world so as to change it effectively because we open the way to God’s own activity – through us, but not just through us.  Looking quietly at all the clutter that prevents us from seeing ourselves honestly, looking quietly at the ways in which the world we live in muffles the truth and so frustrates the search for justice and love – this isn’t a luxury.  This is how the truth makes us free.  Not free to do what we fancy at any given moment, but free to be real, to be truthful, to be ‘in the truth’, as the New Testament puts it.  After all, what other sort of freedom is finally worth having?  It may cost us everything we thought we needed to hang on to; but – as the history of Christ’s journey to the cross and the resurrection makes clear – the end of the story is a fulfilment, a homecoming, for which we can never find adequate words.  It’s the freedom to be what we most deeply are.

© Rowan Williams 2012

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