As a Mother Comforts
Her Child

London, Remembrance Sunday,
November 26, 1933

A day dedicated to remembrance of those who have died in the past year and in years long past is observed by Christians in many different cultures. In Germany, this “Day of the Dead” comes in late autumn, on the Sunday after the Day of Repentance and Prayer.

In his sermon on Remembrance Day 1933, Bonhoeffer spoke at length about the experience of death—he still carried the vivid childhood memory of his brother’s death—but also of the hope and comfort offered by the church. His text comes from the Apocrypha, several books between the Old and New Testaments that many Protestant churches do not include in their Bibles. Reading from a book called the Wisdom of Solomon, Bonhoeffer offered assurance that these people whom we love are at peace with God. They live now in the “tabernacle of joy” (from a poem by Johann Rist). He also quoted from two familiar hymns by Paul Gerhardt, including a stanza of “I Am a Visitor on Earth” (translated by Catherine Winkworth) and, earlier, from “The Golden Sun,” describing how those who have died now know “joy in fullness and blessed stillness.”

Here Bonhoeffer looks ahead to Advent and Christmas. It was an old German custom during Advent to keep closed one room in which Christmas preparations were made. On Christmas Eve the door was opened, and there were all the gifts and the tree aglow with candles. Likewise, many Christian accounts of death mention the joy of the dying person, who exclaims, “God, that’s beautiful!” when suddenly heaven is opened wide to him or her. Bonhoeffer’s friend, Franz Hildebrandt, who heard this sermon in person, recalled this passage when he spoke at Bonhoeffer’s memorial service in London in 1945.

Wisdom of Solomon 3:3: . . . but they are at peace.

Two questions have brought us to church today, questions about which we human beings are never satisfied. They drive us from one place to another and burn continually within our souls, so that we never find rest on this earth. And now here in church they are seeking the answer, the truth, the solution to the riddle: Where have our dead gone? Where shall we be after our own death?

The church claims to have the answer to this final, most impossible question that people have. Indeed, the only reason the church exists is that it knows the answer to this ultimate question. If it did not know how to speak with all humility, but also with all conviction in this matter, then it would be nothing more than a pathetic society of the hopeless and the desperate, trying to interest one another in their sufferings and being a burden to one another. But that is just what Christ’s church is not. We are here to talk not about our sufferings but about our salvation—not about our skepticism but about our confident hope. Skepticism is of no interest to us—it is never what people do not believe that is interesting, but rather that people do believe and hope, and what they believe—that alone is the important part. Church is the place of unshakeable hope.

Where have our dead gone? Here we are today, remembering their death; in memory we see them again before us—those whom we loved—as we saw them that last time. That image has stayed with us like no other. We can feel again the way in which, at that sight, we totally forgot our own selves, how infinitely vain and empty our own lives appeared to us in that hour; how our gaze was fixed as if spellbound on that dear person, so inexplicably still, who could only remain silent about the mystery that he or she had now discovered. The person has gone over, has set out on the road from which no one comes back, and is now in a hallowed state of knowing and seeing that is given to no living person. He or she has become an earth dweller as never before, sleeping quietly in the earth—but is also so far away from the earth, and marked by another world, as he or she never was in life. Today perhaps we must think of long, tormented hours, of illness and struggle and agitation—until death came, and all was very still and quiet. We remember how we sat dazed and stupefied by the bed, not yet understanding what had really happened, only needing to ask the same question over and over in the same tone: What happened? Where are you? And perhaps we were still asking the same question as we carried the dead person to the grave, and perhaps today it is still the same question that we call after him or her: Where are you? Where are you?

Perhaps we have long since resigned ourselves to the fact that it is all over for these persons, that they have sunk back into the nothingness from which they once came. But still our love cannot stop looking for them, from asking everywhere if anyone knows where our dear one has gone. A cry of pain rises from the depths and echoes through the world: the mother calling her child, the child her mother, the husband his wife; friend calls to friend, brother to brother, love weeps for its lost beloved: Where are you? Where are you, our dead whom we love?

In silence you went away from us, left us alone, and went into a strange land that no one knows. Why don’t you speak to us? Where are you? Do you have to wander now, eternally, from one life to another? Are you all alone in the cold night of the grave, or are you forced to wander about in torment, finding no rest? Are you close by, around us? Do you have to suffer as we do, or perhaps much more dreadfully than we do? Are you longing for home, for warmth, for love, for us? Or is death like sleep for you, eternally dreaming and dozing, a weary sleep? Speak to us, why are you so far away?

But they do not speak. And when people think they have been able to call up the spirits of the dead in occult seances, there may well be all sorts of things going on between heaven and earth that we cannot know or comprehend, but one thing is certain: it is not our dead who appear here. They have been taken away from us—they are in the hand of God, and no torment will ever touch them [Wisdom 3:1]. We cannot torment them with our tears and pleas and conjuring. They do not speak. They are forever silent.

But who will answer our question? Who has an answer to love’s questioning? Not even the church can make the dead speak or can call up their spirits. But what is the church to say to the mother who comes to it for refuge, asking about her child? What can it tell the child about his or her mother? What does it tell the wife, or the dear friend? It does not point to where the dead are, it does not say this or that about them. It does not point toward the world of the occult or show us the way into the world of the dead. It points only toward God. The world of the occult is still a human world that we can reach; it is accessible through all sorts of magic. But the realm of God is beyond all human worlds. No one can tell us about it but God and the one whom God sent, Christ. This is the world in which we must look for our dead.

So when someone comes to the church with the burning question, where are my loved ones who have died? he or she is told first of all to turn to God. There is no way to know anything about the dead without believing in God. God is the Lord of the dead; their fate is in God’s hands. Only those who know about God will know anything about their dead loved ones. But this then also means that questions about the dead should not be asked selfishly. It is not we who are the lords of the dead. Whoever wants to ask about them and really get an answer, whoever is not to be satisfied with small comfort, must dare to approach God and ask directly. And God will answer. For it is God’s will to be revealed to human beings who come and ask, who are longing for the word, the answer, the truth of God, who believe it when they receive it. To them, God will speak of this mystery.

Now, today, the God of peace and everlasting love is telling this mystery anew to the congregation that is God’s own, and only to the congregation. It is for those who believe in God, and God tells it to the congregation as an ultimate certainty: Those whom you seek are with me, and they are at peace. The realm of God is peace, the final peace after the final struggle. God’s peace means rest for those whom life has made weary; it means safety and security for those who have wandered without anyone to care for and watch over them; home for the homeless, calm for those who are worn out with struggling, relief for tormented and wounded hearts, consolation for those who are distressed and weeping, the chance to sleep for those trembling with exhaustion . . . God’s peace is like a mother’s hand consolingly stroking the forehead of her sobbing child. As a mother comforts her child, so I will comfort you [Isa. 66:13]. Your dead are comforted with God’s own comfort: it is God who has wiped away their tears and put an end to their restless pursuits—they are at peace.

Above the beds of the dying, where strong and restless lives are fighting fearfully toward death, until with a heavy sigh it is all over . . . the word is clearly heard: “But they are at peace.”

At the last moments of those who have sinned greatly, for whom death seems to hold the awful horrors of damnation, who are in despair with remorse and repentance, Christ himself appears and closes their eyes as they die, and says: “But they are at peace.”

Over the coffins of children and the elderly, over the coffins of the devout, who in simple faith in their last hour placed their hope only in Christ, the angels sing: “But they are at peace.”

While we who are left behind see only suffering and fear and anguish and self-reproach and remorse, where we see only hopelessness and nothingness, God says: “But they are at peace.”

God’s “But . . .” is set over against all our thinking and seeking. It is God’s “But . . .” that does not leave the dead to die but awakens them and draws them close. It is God’s “But . . .” that makes death into a sleep from which we awaken into a new world. It is God’s “But . . .” that brings the dead into paradise. “Truly, I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise,” says Christ to the thief who hangs next to him on the cross and repents [Luke 23:43]. “But” they are at peace—this truly means, not something that is self-evident, but rather something completely new, the ultimate of ultimates, and it is God who makes it happen. Not our peace, but God’s peace.

Let it be said again: there is no room here for selfish questioning. All our knowledge and all our hope come only from looking to God, whom we trust to do everything and whose word we believe: I am the resurrection and the life [John 11:25]. Because I live, you also will live. And we can never hear about this realm of God, which is not our world, about this kingdom of peace into which our loved ones who have died have gone ahead of us, without an immeasurable longing that steals over us, an indescribable homesickness for that world, like children waiting to go into the room where the Christmas tree is—where there will be joy in fullness and blessed stillness. No one has yet believed in God and the kingdom of God, no one has yet heard about the realm of the resurrected, and not been homesick from that hour, waiting and looking forward joyfully to being released from bodily existence.

Whether we are young or old makes no difference. What are twenty or thirty or fifty years in the sight of God? And which of us knows how near he or she may already be to the goal? That life only really begins when it ends here on earth, that all that is here is only the prologue before the curtain goes up—that is for young and old alike to think about. Why are we so afraid when we think about death? Why are we so anxious when we imagine lying on our deathbed? Death is only dreadful for those who live in dread and fear of it. Death is not wild and terrible, if only we can be still and hold fast to God’s Word. Death is not bitter, if we have not become bitter ourselves. Death is grace, the greatest gift of grace that God gives to people who believe. Death is mild, death is sweet and gentle; it beckons to us with heavenly power, if only we realize that it is the gateway to our homeland, the tabernacle of joy, the everlasting kingdom of peace.

Perhaps we say, I am not afraid of death, but I am afraid of dying. How do we know that dying is so dreadful? Who knows whether, in our human fear and anguish, we are only shivering and shuddering at the most glorious, heavenly, blessed event in the world? Whether we are only like a newborn baby, wailing as it first sees the light of this world? What about all the strange things we experience at the bedsides of dying persons—are they not evidence of this? What does it mean when such a person, after long struggling and wrestling and being afraid, at the last moment suddenly opens his or her eyes wide, as if seeing something glorious, and cries out, God, that’s beautiful! We ask, what does this mean?

Yes, death is indeed frightening, bony old Death with his scythe, inviting one person after another to the dance of death, ready or not—if a person does not have faith, if he or she is not among the righteous of whom our Scripture says: But they are at peace.

Death is hell and night and cold, if it is not transformed by our faith. But that is just what is so marvelous, that we can transform death. When the fierce apparition of the death’s head, which frightens us so, is touched by our faith in God, it becomes our friend, God’s messenger; death becomes Christ himself. Yes, these are great mysteries. But we are allowed to know about them, and our life depends on them. Those who believe in God will have peace, death will not frighten them; it can no longer touch them, for they are in the hand of God, and no torment will ever touch them.

Many are those who have tried to make a friend of death; but at the last hour it proved disloyal to them, it became their enemy. There is only one way to have death as a friend, and that is the way of faith. And then, then death becomes our best friend. Then one day, as we lie dying, we will hear the word of God ring out: “They are at peace.” And our eyes will overflow with joy when we see the kingdom and its peace.

Perhaps it sounds childish to you that we speak this way. But in the face of such things as these, can we do otherwise than talk like children? In the face of these things can we be anything other than children, who really have no idea what it is about? And would we really want it otherwise? Would we want to be otherwise when we come into God’s kingdom and are allowed to share in that day of joy? Look at children when they are full of joy and decide for yourself if you want to be better than that, and whether we should be ashamed to be so. “As a mother comforts her child, so I will comfort you.”

Jesus has called us children of the resurrection [Luke 20:36]. Homesick children, that is what we are when all is as it should be with us.

Then through this life of dangers

I onward take my way;

But in this land of strangers

I do not think to stay.

Still forward on the road I fare

That leads me to my home.

My Father’s comfort waits me there,

When I have overcome.

Amen.