What about the poor beautiful butterflies?
Anchored and free. Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Paul show the beauty of spiritual discipline.
I've been kindly lent from my mentor and friend Rev. Stephen, Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Letter's and Papers from Prison. They have been quite unsettling.
I have taken much confidence from reading Paul’s letters (some of which were written when in prison), and there is a series of contrasts and similarities with Bonhoeffer. One of the biggest contrasts, is that Paul wrote 2,000 years ago and Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote in 1943.
When I read Paul's letters, I’ve always felt an energy and a confidence. A clear assurance, like his detention was merely an inconvenience interrupting his missionary travel plans. Philippians, Ephesians, Colossians all have dominant positivity.
He writes in Philippians:
What has happened to me has actually served to advance the gospel.
It has become a pattern of my sermons and one I have previously reflected upon:
Matt
Bonhoeffer feels different. He writes in a more fragile and gentle state, yet I'm almost certain that no Bonhoeffer specialist would describe him as sentimental. But he's contemplative and attuned to the fine, delicate threads of life but just as hopeful.
As I read the letters I commented to Margie that I find them harder to read than Pauls. There was something very tangible, relatable and present about his writing. There was also an unfiltered, purity about the writing. There hadn't been any interpretation or lost words. It was a 'simple' translation from one language to the next. What he wrote, is what I read.
Bonhoeffer was arrested in 1943 for his involvement in resistance against the Nazi regime. This young(ish) minister, theologian, and teacher found himself in a cell in Tegel Prison. Cut off from his church, community, fiancée and any really sense of comfort. He makes a point of writing about how he created a pattern and a discipline: A rhythm of prayer, scripture reading, worship, theological reflection, and exercise.
He wrote to his parents:
“I read, meditate, and pray every day… that is my only real way of keeping myself together.”
It's a spiritual instinct mirrored in Paul:
But the word of God is not chained.
Both were locked up and both men refused to live inwardly imprisoned. Where as I have taken much comfort, direction and encouragement from Paul’s writings, and almost ironically sometimes read them with a Churchill-like (inner) voice, I’ve found Bonhoeffer’s so much more challenging because of the contemporary closeness.
There is one passage in Bonhoeffer’s letters hidden away in a reflection, and I’ve never heard it quoted before, and Bonhoeffer’s quoted a lot. He describes hearing of an island that had been bombed, so thoroughly that everything on it was destroyed including the good people and the bad people. His reflection:
What about the poor beautiful butterflies?
It hits so hard because he illustrates the ability to notice delicate beauty in the middle of a world tearing itself apart at the peak of war but it still reminded me instantly of Paul, who from prison writes:
Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is honourable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.
I think only someone who has cultivated a deep pattern of prayer still sees butterflies in a world of bombs.
I did a bit of research having read Bonhoeffer’s Advent reflection in one of his letters to see if he had preached an Advent sermon whilst a free man. He had.
On 2nd December 1928 in a sermon Bonhoeffer preached:
“The celebration of Advent is possible only for those who are troubled in soul, who know themselves to be poor and imperfect, and who look forward to something greater to come.”
Perhaps lacking the Christmas joy this is Bonhoeffer as a young minister, among people, standing in a pulpit, urging us to recognise our longing and our need for Jesus and for those who wait.
Fifteen years later, behind bars, reflecting from his narrow room in Tegel:
A prison cell, in which one waits, hopes, and is completely dependent on the fact that the door of freedom has to be opened from the outside, is not a bad picture of Advent
The person who once told a congregation that Advent is for "the troubled in soul” now experiences trouble at a depth he could never have imagined, and yet, still finds hope. Advent, for him, becomes a reality.
And then there is Paul, who writes during his own imprisonment:
Not that I am referring to being in need, for I have learned to be content with whatever I have.
And:
Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice.
And again:
...so that it has become known throughout the whole imperial guard and to everyone else that my imprisonment is for Christ,
Both Paul and Bonhoeffer share a spiritual truth that freedom is not the absence of walls but belonging to Jesus, even within them. And those 'walls', for us, may be (read: probably are) metaphorical.
Both Paul and Bonhoeffer show us that this spiritual discipline can lead to freedom; a patterned spiritual life of prayer, scripture, stillness, reflection...none of this restricts us, it anchors us and frees us.
It prepares us to notice the butterflies.
Bonhoeffer waited for a door to open. Paul waited for a release and we, in Advent, wait for Jesus.
