Nan Watson died just over 10 years ago. She was a diminutive septuagenarian when I met her, and osteoporosis had reduced her height further. But size and height are no guarantee of presence, and capacity to influence those around. Her dry crackly voice was always a blessing to hear, not least because of the wisdom and counsel it conveyed. She had an instinctive kindness held in check by hard won commonsense and a rather ruthless conviction that independence was one of the fruits of the spirit Paul never got round to mentioning, and some Christians needed to pursue!
Her sharp mind probed into the hard to negotiate regions of life, and coming from a generation when educational opportunities were sacrificed for the sake of putting bread on the family table, she never was able to realise her potential in any formally recognisable way. Which for all practical purposes didn’t matter – because she was also of that generation that did lifelong learning and personal development before it was all new discovered, and formalised, and reduced to programmes and processes.
So no surprise when after an evening service she asked if I could recommend any books that would help her get a handle on Bonhoeffer. For the next few months I had conversations with her about Finkenwalde, the Confessing Church in Germany, even the nature of Christian ethics as freedom acting in love and centred on the Word made flesh. I quoted Bonhoeffer when I took her funeral – and I wish Sabine Dramm’s book, Dietrich Bonhoeffer. An Introduction to His Thought had been available to give her those years before. It isn’t a popular book, yet it is accessible and written by an enthusiastic scholar whose enthusiasm doesn’t get in the way of clear exposition and fair critique. Now and then over the next few weeks I’d like to post a few reflections on Bonhoeffer in the course of reading this book and some of Bonhoeffer’s key texts. Stuart has lent me the new critically acclaimed DVD which I’ve slotted into a couple of hours of peace during my holidays.
For now, here is Bonhoeffer’s classic statement on what it means to live with the realities of the world and in the reality of Jesus Christ:
Ecce homo – Behold, what a man! In Him, reconciliation of the world with God was made perfect. The world is not overcome through demolition but through reconciliation. Not ideals, programs of action, not conscience, duty, responsibility, virtue, but simply and only the consummate love of God is capable of encountering reality and overcoming it. Nor is it a generalised idea of love, but God’s love truly lived in Jesus Christ, which accomplishes this. This – God’s love for the world – does not withdraw itself from reality in a rapture of noble souls foreign to the world, but instead experiences and suffers the reality of the world in all its harshness. The world does its worst to the body of Jesus Christ. But he who was martyred forgives the world its sins. This brings about reconciliation. Ecce homo.
(Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Ethics. Edited Clifford Green, Works, Vol. 6, (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2005)
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