London, First Sunday in Advent,
December 3, 1933
As Bonhoeffer stood up to preach on Advent Sunday 1933, people in churches throughout England were grieving a disaster. The News Chronicle had been reporting daily on a gas explosion and roof collapse at a mine in Derbyshire, on November 19: “Bands of rescuers in gas masks descended the pit immediately, some in their ‘Sunday’ clothes, and worked three hours with pick and shovel before the first body was reached.” In all, fourteen men, imprisoned a mile underground, died waiting to be freed.
Ten years later, Bonhoeffer wrote from Tegel Prison to his friend Eberhard Bethge: “Life in a prison cell may well be compared to Advent; one waits, hopes . . . the door is shut, and can be opened only from the outside.” Thus Bonhoeffer’s theme this Advent Sunday: “Look up and wait. Be strong and without fear!—for Christ is coming.”
Luke 21:28 rsv: Now when these things begin to take place, look up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.
You all know about accidents in mines. In the last few weeks we have had to read over and over in the papers about such an accident. The men who have to go down every day into the mine shafts, deep into the earth, to do their work are constantly in danger that some day one of the tunnels will collapse or that they will be buried alive by an underground explosion. Then they are down there in the earth, where it is dark as night, left all alone. Their fate has caught up with them.
This is the moment that even the bravest miner has dreaded all his life. Shouting can do no good, no more than raving and running head-on into the wall. Neither will it help to exhaust his strength in efforts to get out. But the more a human being realizes that he is totally helpless, the more he rages, while around him all remains silent. He knows that up above people have come running, that women and children are crying—but the way is blocked; he cannot reach them. Nothing is left for him but his final moments. He knows that people are working feverishly up there. His mates are digging with dogged energy through the rock toward the ones who are trapped. Perhaps here and there some will still be found and rescued, but down here in the depths of the farthest shaft there is no hope anymore. All that remains now is torment, waiting for death.
But then, suppose he should suddenly hear a faint sound, as if of knocking, of hammering, of rocks breaking, and then of faraway voices calling, calling into the emptiness and darkness; and this banging and digging gradually gets louder, until suddenly, with a mighty blow, the hammering comes close by, echoing back, and at last a friend’s deep voice, one of his mates, shouts his name: “Where are you? Help is coming!”
Then all at once the despairing man leaps up, his heart almost bursting with excitement and waiting, and screams with all his might: “I’m here, here, help me!—I can’t get through, I can’t help, but I’m waiting, I’m waiting, I can hold on till you come. Just come soon . . .” And he listens, beside himself with concentration, as each blow comes nearer. Each passing second seems like an hour. He can’t see anything at all, but he can hear the voices of his helpers. Then a last, wild, desperate hammer blow rings in his ear. Rescue is at hand, only one more step and he will be free . . .
You know, don’t you, why I am talking about this on this first of Advent? What we have been talking about here is Advent itself. This is the way it is; this is God coming near to humankind, the coming of salvation, the arrival of Christ . . . look up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.
To whom might these words be spoken? Who would be interested in hearing them? Who would get excited on hearing something like this? Think of a prison. For many years, the prisoners have borne the humiliation and punishment of being in prison. They have endured the misery of heavy forced labor, until they have become a burden to themselves. Often one or another of them has tried to escape, but was either caught and dragged back again, and then it was even harder, or was hunted down and shot. The rest bear their fate and their chains with sighing and tears. Then suddenly a message penetrates into the prison: Very soon you will all be free, your chains will be taken away, and those who have enslaved you will be bound in chains while you are redeemed. Then all the prisoners look up, in chorus, with a heartbreaking cry: Yes, come, O Savior!
Think of the sick. Think of someone who is tormented by an incurable disease, dying slowly, slowly in unspeakable pain, longing only for the end of this misery. And then comes the day when the doctor can say to him or her, quietly and firmly: “Today you will be released.” Then the mortally ill person lifts his or her head joyfully, looking toward this release.
And now think of the people who are oppressed, not by outward imprisonment or physical disease, but by a heaviness in their souls. Think of the people with secrets, of whom we were speaking on Repentance Day, people living with guilt that has never been forgiven, for whom the meaning of life has been lost and with it all the joy of life. Think of us ourselves, trying to live in obedience to Christ and failing again and again. Think of the son who can no longer look his father in the eye, the husband who cannot face his wife; think of the deep brokenness and hopelessness that grows out of all these situations. Then let us hear the words again: Look up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near. You shall be free from all that, the anguish and fear in your souls will come to an end. Salvation is near. (As a father says to his child: Look up here, not down at the ground; look at me, I’m your father . . . this is what it says in the Gospel: look up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.)
So then, whom is this text actually addressing? People who know that they are unredeemed people, that they are in bondage and in chains, that they are in the power of a slave driver, so that they have to work without wages—people like the man trapped underground, like the prisoners, who are still watching and waiting for freedom, for true redemption—those people who would like to be redeemed people. Those to whom it is not addressed are all those who have become so used to their condition that they no longer even notice that they are prisoners, who, for so many practical reasons, have settled for being unredeemed—who have become so indifferent and dull that they don’t even react if someone calls to them: Your salvation is near!
It is not for the well-satisfied with their full stomachs, this word of Advent, but rather for the hungry and the thirsty. It knocks at their door, powerfully and insistently. And we hear it, just as the miner trapped in the mine heard and followed with all the energy he had left, every hammer blow, every new stage as the rescuer approached. Is it even imaginable that he would have paid attention to anything else, from the moment when he heard the first knocking—anything except his approaching liberation? What the first of Advent says is no different: Your redemption is near! It is knocking at your door now; can you hear it? It wants to make its way through all the rubble and hard stone of your life and of your heart. That will not happen very fast. But he is coming, Christ is clearing his way toward you, toward your heart. He wants to take our hearts, which have become so hard, and soften them in obedience to him. He keeps calling to us during these very weeks of waiting, waiting for Christmas, to tell us that he is coming, that he alone will rescue us from the prison of our existence, out of our fear, our guilt, and our loneliness.
Do you want to be redeemed? That is the one great, decisive question that Advent puts to us. Is there any remnant burning in us of longing, of recognition of what redemption could mean? If not, then what do we want from Advent? What do we want from Christmas? . . . a little sentimentality, a little inward uplifting . . . a nice atmosphere? But if there is something in us that wants to know, that is set on fire by these words, something in us that believes these words—if we feel that once more, once more in our lives, there could be a complete turning to God, to Christ—then why not just be obedient and listen and hear the word that is offered us, called out to us, shouted in our ears? Redemption is near, don’t you hear? Wait, wait just a moment longer, and you will hear the knocking grow louder and more insistent, from hour to hour and from day to day. Then Christmas will come, and we will be ready. God is coming to us, to you and me—Christ the Savior is born.
Perhaps you will say yes, this is what you have always heard in church, and nothing ever really happened. Why didn’t anything happen? Because we didn’t want it to happen, we didn’t want to hear or to believe; because we said: it may be that one or another of those who were trapped are saved, but as for us, so deeply buried, so distant, so out of the habit of these things, surely the Savior will never reach us. We aren’t really devout; we don’t have any gift for religious belief—we’d like to, but this just doesn’t speak to us.
But with all that we are only talking ourselves out of it. How can we tell, if we haven’t ever tried it? If only we really wanted to—if it weren’t all just talk and trying to get out of it—then we would finally, finally begin praying and pray that this Advent would come into our hearts too. Let us not deceive ourselves. Redemption is near, whether we know it or not. The question is only: will we let it come in to us too, or will we refuse it entry? Will we let ourselves be caught up in this movement, which is coming down to earth from heaven, or will we close ourselves off from it? Christmas is coming, with or without us—it is up to each of us to decide.
That such a genuine Advent produces something quite different from a fearful, petty, downtrodden, weak sort of Christianity, such as we often see, and which often tempts us to be scornful of Christianity itself, that is made clear by the two powerful challenges that introduce our text. Look up, lift your heads! Advent makes people human, new human beings. We, too, can become new human beings at Advent time.
Look up, you there who are staring emptily down at the earth, who are transfixed by the little events and changes taking place on the surface of this earth. Look up at these words, you who have turned away from heaven in disappointment. Look up, you whose eyes are heavy with tears, with weeping for that which this world has mercilessly snatched away from us. Look up, you who feel so loaded down with guilt that you cannot raise your eyes—look up, your redemption is drawing near. Something different is happening from what you see every day, something much more important, infinitely greater and mightier—if only you would take it in, be on the watch for it, wait just a moment longer, wait, and something completely new will break into your lives. God will come to you, Jesus is coming to take you for his own, and you will be redeemed people. Look up, be on the watch, keep your eyes open, watch, and wait for your redemption, which is drawing near.
Lift up your heads, the host of you who are bowed down, humiliated, despondent, like a beaten army with heads hanging. The battle is not lost—raise your heads, the victory is yours! Take courage, fear not, do not be worried or anxious. Be of good cheer, be assured of the victory, be strong, be valiant. This is no time to shake your head, to doubt and look away—freedom, salvation, redemption is coming. Look up and wait! Raise your heads! Be strong and without fear!—for Christ is coming.
Again let us ask: Can we hear it now, the knocking, the driving, the struggling forward? Can we feel something in us that wants to leap up, to free itself and open up to the coming of Christ? Do we sense that we are not just talking in images here, but that something is really happening, that human souls are being raised up, shaken, broken open, and healed? That heaven is bending near the earth, that the earth is trembling and people are desperate with fear and apprehension and hope and joy? That God is bending down to humankind, coming to us where we live? Can the trapped miner pay attention to anything but the hammering and knocking of his rescuers? Can anything be as important to us as paying attention to this same hammering and knocking of Jesus Christ in our lives? Can we do anything, amid whatever is happening, other than to stop and listen, to tremble and reach out to him? Something is at work, within us too. So let us not block the way but rather open up to him who wants to come in. Once when Luther was preaching on our text during Advent, in the middle of winter, he announced: “Summer is near, the trees want to burst forth in blossom. It is springtime.” Whoever has ears to hear will hear [Matt. 13:43]. Amen.