BONHOEFFER AND GENTRY
Monday, April 9, 1945. Seventy years ago this very day. 6:00 a.m. local time at Flossenbürg Concentration Camp in Nazi Germany. The German theologian and Lutheran pastor, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, was ordered to strip and walk naked to the gallows where he and six other collaborators were hanged for treason at the direct order of Adolph Hitler. In all likelihood their deaths were slow and tortured. Bonhoeffer was thirty-nine years old when he was executed. There is no grave with a headstone; only a memorial plaque honoring the seven Nazi resisters who were murdered that day.
Salvation history over the past seventy years confirms the undeniable impact that Bonhoeffer has had on Christianity in the modern era. His life continues to be an inspiration for an untold number of souls and will until the end of this present age. His relentless stance against Hitler’s Third Reich and the evil it embodied is inexpressible. He was the model Christian resister. All who have studied him are intrigued by his devotion to Christ and his challenge to consider the cost of discipleship and actually live the life outlined in the Sermon on the Mount as recorded in Matthew 5-7 and pay the price – even the price of martyrdom, if need be.
So why the title of this Thursday Extra: “Bonhoeffer and Gentry”? I’m sure you are thinking what I thought when I wrote this: “Gentry is no Bonhoeffer!” And I know that better than anyone!
Sunday, April 9, 1978. Thirty-seven years ago this very day. 6:30 p.m. local time at the Cadiz Baptist Church in Cadiz, Kentucky. I was ordained to the Gospel Ministry. I had been pastoring a small church for nearly two years in Bowling Green, Kentucky where I was a student at Western Kentucky University. It was a “transfiguration” moment for me. I was engulfed by the Presence of the Holy One, especially as hands were placed on my head and words of encouragement and blessing were uttered in my hearing. That event was one of the high moments in my journey with Christ. I was twenty-one years old when I was ordained. There are no pictures or DVD from that event; only a reel-to-reel tape recording, a certificate, a sermon manuscript by the preacher, Pastor Bill Belva, and a worship guide.
I did not realize until a couple of years later, when I was in my first year of seminary, that I was ordained on the thirty-third anniversary of Pastor Bonhoeffer’s execution. I was speechless – unusual for a preacher! I was overwhelmed with a sense of unworthiness as I thought about Bonhoeffer’s commitment and his death. I was moved to remember something I thought Pastor Belva had said in the sermon he preached at my ordination. Retrieving the manuscript, I began to read those words and, sure enough, there it was. A quote from Bonhoeffer: “Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without repentance, baptism without church discipline, communion without confession, and grace without the cross.” I was awestruck and goose-bumped and humbled.
The day before Dietrich Bonhoeffer died he led a worship service for some prisoners. It was the Second Sunday of Easter, April 8, 1945. One of the texts he used was 1 Peter 1:3. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! By his great mercy he has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead…
While I am no Bonhoeffer I certainly am one who has been touched, motivated, and enlightened by my ancestor in the Faith who, if he were alive, would be 109-years-old. Dietrich, by the way, was given new birth into a living hope because of Easter’s great mercy. And he is very much alive and with Jesus who was resurrected from the dead.
So on this seventieth anniversary of his martyrdom and the thirty-seventh anniversary of my ordination I gladly say, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who called Bonhoeffer and Gentry to the Gospel Ministry. By the way. Jesus also called many others to the same ministry. And He who will continue to call many more in the future. Thanks be to God!”