Ambassadors for Christ

London, Nineteenth Sunday after Trinity, October 22, 1933

In the summer of 1933, Bonhoeffer exchanged letters with the retiring pastor of St. Paul’s and Sydenham Churches, both congregations for
German-speaking people in London, and made a quick trip there to preach his candidate sermon. In October, in haste amid many other decisions that needed to be made and commitments fulfilled, he moved into two rooms in a building that housed a German school, which served as the parsonage. Bonhoeffer looked forward greatly to this chance to work full-time as a pastor, but he also felt torn about leaving behind the struggle going on in his home church over its true confessional identity. Many good friends were involved in the struggle, including Martin Niemöller and Karl Barth.

Now the day had come for him to stand in each of the two pulpits, face-to-face with the people whose lives he would share for the next year and a half. Could he help these two small churches to be what the church is called to be?

He must certainly give them “bread instead of stones” (a potent biblical image, more so in the Mediterranean world, where a worn, rounded stone may look remarkably like a hand-shaped loaf of bread). He must certainly proclaim the gospel. (Woe to the preacher who does not!) And so he began, reaching out to them with yearning words.

2 Corinthians 5:20: So we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us; we entreat you on behalf of Christ,
be reconciled to God.

Every change of pastors in a congregation is bound up with all sorts of human emotions. If all is well and as it should be in the congregation, it is painful to see the pastor leave who has served there faithfully. There are so many things that bind a good congregation and a good pastor. How could it be otherwise, when he has spoken with his congregation Sunday after Sunday about the ultimate matters of life and death? When he has celebrated the Lord’s Supper with the believers, with those who mourn, the poor in spirit, those who hunger and thirst, the peacemakers, and the long-suffering? [Matt. 5:1–11]. When he has searched day by day in the homes of his parishioners, to find one soul that longs for love, for strength, justice, peace, and freedom, and when he then is able to speak not only about ­people searching for their God but also about God’s seeking out human beings in the midst of their uncertainty, their questions and hesitations and the burdens they carry, in the midst of their loneliness—and when, there in the stillness, such a soul opens and reveals itself to the neighbor soul and to God? How near the pastor comes to his congregation at such times, at least to the part of the congregation that is alive! How much he knows about their hardships and difficulties that no one else will ever know; how much he carries, silently and humbly, with his congregation, and brings it before God in prayer, as the faithful shepherd of his flock.

Yes, when all is well between pastor and congregation, then it is very understandable to be overcome by human sadness when the time comes to part. The church members look toward the future with some reservations and somewhat worriedly, somewhat fearfully. How is it going to be with the new one? Will things feel the same with this new person? Will he or she have the same understanding of ministry or perhaps an entirely different one? For both pastors, of course, the same sort of thoughts and questions arise. So a moment like this is brimming and loaded with feelings of the most personal sort: pain, joy, worry, confidence.

So it would be good if, at a moment like this, we let ourselves be lifted up above the very personal level and take a broader, larger-scale view of things. A change of pastors is a situation in which we get stuck in our very personal feelings, but we should be encouraged to see something much larger, which does not concern persons at all, neither the old one nor the new one, but rather concerns the mission that is entrusted to both of them, no matter who they are. What matters is the one who gives the orders, not the one who carries them out, only the master, rather than the servant. The one thing that is really necessary is that this master’s mission be carried out, whether it causes pastors to break down or not; or whether they are often rather strange people, perhaps because they know more than others about the strange things in life; whether they can win people over easily, or whether they have a hard time with themselves and others. If only the mission is carried out, in preaching and in life, if only the pastor’s sole concern is to devote his or her life to this master and this commission.

For the congregation, however, this means that at this point everything depends on its being led to let go of the issue of the person and to look instead to the Lord of the church; to pay attention to the preaching rather than the preacher; and to have only one question: Is this truly the Gospel of our God that we are hearing? Or is it the kind of arbitrary thinking that human beings invent, which blossoms today and withers away tomorrow like the grass of the field? [Matt. 6:30 (Isa. 40:7)].There is really only one question for a congregation to ask of its pastor: Are you offering us the eternal word of God, the word of life, wherever you can, in the pulpit and in daily life? Or are you giving us stones instead of bread? Are you giving us placebos that are perhaps more pleasant to take but do not satisfy our souls? Give us bread that fills our hungry souls! This should be the daily plea with which the congregation stands before its pastor, just as the pastor should stand before God and pray for this gift for the congregation, as their pastor, their shepherd.

Between you and your pastor there should be only Christ. The one important matter between you and your pastor, wherever we meet, whether in serious or joyful moments, is always Christ.

So then, we are ambassadors for Christ. . . . That means that we do not work under our own authority. We do not send ourselves on mission. Nor are we ourselves the guarantors of what we have to say, for Christ alone guarantees the truth of the Gospel. We preach because we are called and sent by Christ; it is Christ who gives us the mission of delivering his message. And all our words serve but to keep our eyes on one goal, and to point toward it: toward Christ, toward the Lord, toward the Word of God, which is beyond all our words, which God speaks at any time and in any place, touches and enters human hearts and brings fear and comfort to them, whenever and wherever God wants. Not our word, but God’s Word: yet even so, God’s Word speaking through ours.

This is what makes a sermon something unique in all the world, so completely different from any other kind of speech. When a preacher opens the Bible and interprets the word of God, a mystery takes place, a miracle: the grace of God, who comes down from heaven into our midst and speaks to us, knocks on our door, asks questions, warns us, puts pressure on us, alarms us, threatens us, and makes us joyful again and free and sure. When the Holy Scriptures are brought to life in a church, the Holy Spirit comes down from the eternal throne, into our hearts, while the busy world outside sees nothing and knows nothing about it—that God could actually be found here. Out there they are all running after the latest sensations, the excitements of evening in the big city, never knowing that the real sensation, something infinitely more exciting, is happening in here: here, where eternity and time meet, where the immortal God receives mortal human beings, through the holy Word, and cares for them, where human souls can taste the starkest terrors of despair and the ultimate depths of God’s eternity.

Why do they not know this? How is it possible that thousands upon thousands of people are bored with the church and pass it by? Why did it come about that the cinema really is often more interesting, more exciting, more human and gripping than the church? Can that really be only the fault of others and not ours as well? The church was different once. It used to be that the questions of life and death were resolved and decided here. Why is this no longer so?

It is because we ourselves have made the church, and keep on making it, into something which it is not. It is because we talk too much about false, trivial human things and ideas in the church and too little about God. It is because we make the church into a playground for all sorts of feelings of ours, instead of a place where God’s word is obediently received and believed. It is because we prefer quiet and edification to the holy restlessness of the powerful Lord God, because we keep thinking we have God in our power instead of allowing God to have power over us, instead of recognizing that God is truth and that over against God the whole world is in the wrong. It is because we like too much to talk and think about a cozy, comfortable God instead of letting ourselves be disturbed and disquieted by the presence of God—because in the end we ourselves do not want to believe that God is really here among us, right now, demanding that we hand ourselves over, in life and death, in heart and soul and body. And finally, it is because we pastors keep talking too much about passing things, perhaps about whatever we ourselves have thought out or experienced, instead of knowing that we are no more than the messengers of the great truth of the eternal Christ.

Every empire in this world sends out its ambassadors. Their job is to give visible expression throughout the world to the will and the might of their empire. They are not meant to be anything other than representatives, in this way, of their home empire and their ruler. The German ambassador or the French ambassador is supposed to be the quintessential German or French person. This has nothing to do with him or her as a person, but concerns only the person’s mission. And in order to carry out their mission, ambassadors are vested with all the authority of their empire. They speak and act on behalf of their ruler.

And so the unseen Lord of the eternal kingdom and of the church sends out ambassadors into this world, giving them a mission that is greater than that of any other, just as heaven is greater than earth, and eternity is greater than time. And the authority that this Lord gives these ambassadors is that much greater than all the authorities in this world. God’s eternal Word, God’s eternal judgment, God’s justice and God’s grace, God’s anger and God’s mercy, salvation and damnation, reconciliation through Christ—these words are placed in the hands of the ambassadors of Christ as the most sacred and precious of goods, which they are called to administer through the grace of God. They will be required to give a full account to Christ their Lord, the Shepherd of shepherds, for every word they have spoken in his name in his church; as the shepherds of the flock, they will have to carry the blame and the responsibility. This is the ultimate meaning of the pastoral ministry!

But, we ask, what human being can do this? Who can fulfill this commission? Who can carry this burden without breaking down under it? No human being can, not even the most devout. Nobody would presume to demand such a commission. But because it is a commission, because Christ must be preached, and woe to us if we do not preach his Gospel [1 Cor. 9:16], we are carried by this obligation, this commission. We cannot do otherwise, even when we do it badly and not as we should, even when we keep breaking down under this burden and making mistakes. But then we need to know that the congregation is shouldering the burden with us, helping us, standing by us, pointing out our mistakes and praying for us, and forgiving us our sins. No pastor can do such a job properly if it is not given to him or her to know this. Many a pastor has failed because he or she wanted to carry the congregation, but the congregation did not carry the pastor. A congregation that does not pray for the ministry of its pastor is no longer a congregation. A pastor who does not pray daily for the congregation is no longer a pastor.

Our text sums up in one brief sentence the message that we are to convey: “We entreat you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.” What that means we cannot describe fully today. For every sermon is basically an interpretation of that sentence. That one short sentence will only be revealed in its full meaning when the end of the world is near and the last sermons are being preached, and when Christ himself comes to lead us into all truth.

“We entreat you on behalf of Christ.” Christ asks through us. He does not bark orders at us, he who is the Lord of all the world. He who has all power and authority does not force us. Christ, who could make anyone do anything, comes to us as one who asks, as a poor beggar, as if he needed something from us. That he comes to us in this way is the sign of his love. He does not want to make us contrary, but rather wants to open our hearts so that he can enter. It is a strange glory, the glory of this God who comes to us as one who is poor, in order to win our hearts.

And what Christ asks of us, too, is so strange that we cannot get over our astonishment: “Be reconciled to God.” This means nothing less than let a king give you his kingdom, take heaven as a gift. Let the Lord of lords of all the world give you his love, and be his friends, his children, those whom he protects. Come, surrender yourselves to him and to his will, and you will be free from every evil, from all guilt, and from all bondage. You will be free from your own selves, you will have found your way home, you will be at home with your Father.

We are unreconciled persons—that is our secret, which only Christ knows. We are persons who are not reconciled, which is why we are so worried, self-centered, unfriendly, distrustful, why we are untruthful and cowardly, why we are lonely, and why we are guilty. Be reconciled to God—give God the right to rule over you, and in finding God you will also find your brother and sister and neighbor again; be reconciled to God, and you will also be reconciled with each of them. Look into the abyss of your soul. Let Christ ask you whether you are reconciled with God or whether you have fallen away and are not at peace with God, and then look up, see and return to your God. Give God your unreconciled and irreconcilable heart. And God will give you a new heart.

O Lord, give all of us new hearts, open and obedient to you: hearts that love our neighbor and pray to you for our church. Lord, give us a good beginning; open your fatherly heart to us and lead us, one day, home to your kingdom of eternal reconciliation, through Christ the Lord! Amen.