Theological Journal – April 9: Toward the 8th Day (Maundy Thursday)
The 75th Anniversary of the Death of Dietrich
Bonhoeffer
We depart from our pattern of looking at Mark’s account of
the events of each day of Holy Week to reflect on the witness of Dietrich
Bonhoeffer, German pastor and theologian and martyr to the Nazis for his
resistance activities against the Reich. He was hanged at the concentration
camp at Flossenburg on this day 75 years ago. As we celebrate Maundy Thursday
we remember the one who died for us on the Friday of Holy Week. Many will not
be able to observe the Lord’s Supper because of COVID-19 tomorrow but we will
not forget that on this night Jesus washed his disciples’ feet, displaying the
servanthood he would enact even more fully the next day dying on the cross. And
he left this example of servanthood for us, his people to enact in our own
lives and our own time and place. And one of his most famous quotations
reflects deeply on Jesus’ call on our lives.
“The cross is laid on every
Christian. The first Christ-suffering which every man must experience is the
call to abandon the attachments of this world. It is that dying of the old man
which is the result of his encounter with Christ. As we embark upon discipleship
we surrender ourselves to Christ in union with his death—we give over our lives
to death. Thus it begins; the cross is not the terrible end to an otherwise
god-fearing and happy life, but it meets us at the beginning of our communion
with Christ. When Christ calls a man, he
bids him come and die. It may be a death like that of the first
disciples who had to leave home and work to follow him, or it may be a death
like Luther’s, who had to leave the monastery and go out into the world. But it
is the same death every time—death in Jesus Christ, the death of the old man at
his call” (The Cost of Discipleship, 99).
May you have a
blessed Maundy Thursday!
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