Reflecting on our Gospel text, Mark 8:31-36, alongside the life of pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer, offers a profound understanding of what it truly means to follow Christ, especially when that path leads into conflict with the powers of the world. As discussed last Wednesday, he is the first in our contemporary Holy Disruptor series who died as a result of how he lived as a Christian. He will not be the last.
In Mark 8, Jesus plainly tells his disciples that he must suffer, be rejected, and killed, and then rise again. Peter, scandalized by this, rebukes Jesus, and Jesus, in turn, rebukes Peter: “You are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.” Then Jesus continues: “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me... For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life?”
These words don't comfort; They demand transformation and sacrifice. Bonhoeffer spoke extensively about "cheap grace" and "expensive grace.", In this week's Wednesday discussion, Pastor Emillie asked, "What would you do with Hitler if he were standing here now?" Our answers, such as they were, did not come easily.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer lived Jesus' gospel in real time. He did not merely preach faith in the safety of the pulpit; he took up the cross in the face of one of the most dangerous regimes in history. His was not a hypothetical discipleship; it was costly. He left the safety of the United States to return to Germany, knowing what that might mean. He refused to stay silent when the church was being co-opted by nationalism and racial hatred. He chose, at great risk, to protect the persecuted and resist tyranny, not just with words but with action.
Bonhoeffer’s belief in “faith in action” is the embodiment of Mark 8: faith that does not conform to the world’s desire for comfort, safety, or victory, but is instead willing to suffer for the sake of truth, justice, and love.
Jesus’ question echoes over Bonhoeffer’s life and over ours: What good is it to gain the whole world and forfeit your soul? Bonhoeffer could have chosen comfort, recognition, or professional success. Instead, he chose the way of the cross, and it cost him his life.
Bonhoeffer was a pacifist theologian, shaped by Jesus' Sermon on the Mount and committed to nonviolence. Yet, he eventually joined the German resistance and supported a group's plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler.
He later reflected that this involvement was a sin, albeit a necessary one, and that as a Christian, he had to take responsibility and accept guilt for participating in a moral compromise to prevent massive evil.
He knew, as Jesus said, that losing one’s life for the sake of the gospel is the way to truly find it.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s final words, “This is for me the end, the beginning of life,” are a testimony to that. They were spoken on the morning of April 9, 1945, just before Bonhoeffer was executed by hanging at the Flossenbürg concentration camp. Those words were recorded by Captain Payne Best, a British army officer, who provided a firsthand account. Bonhoeffer was 39 years old.
This German pastor often wrote and dreamed about "Religionless Christianity." Richard Rohr observed,
“Religionless Christianity might just be what Jesus had in mind all along. Not belief systems, but transformed lives.”
Bonhoeffer’s legacy is a challenge to every Christian: the call of discipleship is not cheap. It is not passive. It demands courage, sacrifice, and solidarity with those who suffer. And in an age when many still face injustice and hate, his life presses the question: Will we speak? Will we act?
Or, as Bonhoeffer put it:
“Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.”
To follow Christ, we must set our minds on divine things. We must act from love, justice, and mercy, and be willing to bear the inevitable cost of that action.
That is the cost of discipleship. And that is the way that leads to life. I pray for the courage to accept whatever cost of discipleship that life leads us to.
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