Bonhoeffer on the Psalms, part III: the Enemies

I still vividly recall the time I began to learn Jesus' command to "love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you." I was fifteen, and my brother Jordan thirteen. We were riding our bikes on the "wrong side of the river" in Saginaw, and Jordan was pushed off his bike and strangled by two teens. His bike ended up getting stolen. The bruising on his throat was hideous--and what can one say about any emotional scars the event left until this day? And yet my mother, aside from giving me one hell of a stern scolding for letting it happen, taught me a much stronger lesson: "Drew, we must pray for these boys. They obviously have neither a loving home nor nice bikes. Their lives cannot be right, or else they wouldn't have done such a thing." What? I thought.

Having our friends and brothers in Christ Necati, Uğur, and Tilmann coldly tortured and slaughtered last week in Malatya, forgiving our enemies becomes the challenge directly in our faces. How can their wives, children, fiancee, and family of these men forgive and live outside of fear? How can we as the church in Turkey, all eyes upon us, point in all things to the living hope into which we've been born (1 Peter 1:3)? Again I find it instructive to turn to the words of pastor Bonhoeffer, a man who knew not only the great evils of the National Socialist (Nazi) regime, but eventually was hanged by them as an enemy of the state.

No section of the Psalter causes us greater difficulty today than the so-called imprecatory psalms. . . . Every attempt to pray these psalms seems doomed to failure. They seem to be an example of what people think of as the religious first stage toward the New Testament. Christ on the cross prays for his enemies and teaches us to do the same. How can we still, with these Psalms, call for the wrath of God against our enemies? . . .

The enemies referred to here are the enemies of the cause of God. It is therefore nowhere a matter of personal conflict. Nowhere does the one who prays these psalms want to take revenge into his own hands. He calls for the wrath of God alone (cf. Romans 12:19). Therefore he must dismiss from his own mind all thought of personal revenge; he must be free from his own thirst for revenge. Otherwise, the vengeance would not be seriously commanded from [that is, prayed for from] God. . . .

God's vengeance did not strike the sinners, but the one sinless man who stood in the sinners' place, namely God's own Son. Jesus Christ bore the wrath of God, for the execution of which the psalm prays. He stilled God's wrath toward sin and prayed in the hour of the execution of the divine judgment: "Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do!" No other than he, who himself bore the wrath of God, could pray in this way. That was the end of all phony thoughts about the love of God which do not take sin seriously. God hates and redirects his enemies to the only righteous one, and this one asks forgiveness for them. Only in the cross of Jesus Christ is the love of God to be found.

Thus the imprecatory psalm leads to the cross of Jesus and to the love of God which forgives enemies. I cannot forgive the enemies of God out of my own resources. Only the crucified Christ can do that, and I through him. Thus the carrying out of vengeance becomes grace for all men in Jesus Christ. . . .

Even today I can believe the love of God and forgive my enemies only by going back to the cross of Christ, to the carrying out of the wrath of God. The cross of Jesus is valid for all men. Whoever opposes him, whoever corrupts the word of the cross of Jesus on which God's wrath must be executed, must bear the curse of God some time or another. . . .*

It is in the knowledge that God's judgment is faithful and just that we can pray for his avenging of our enemies' sin. For their evils will either be mercifully transferred upon the sacrificial Lamb of God and punished there in him upon Golgotha, or they will be brought to nothing in the eternal torments of the hereafter. But it is in light of the former that we must pray, for God does not wish "for any to perish but all to come to repentance" (2 Peter 3:9)--and as recipients of his undeserved favor must likewise have the same desire. Perhaps it was also in this light that the wives of both Necati and Tilmann chose to forgive their husbands' murderers. I am especially proud of Necati's wife Şemsa, who declared that she is staying put in Malatya. After all, her daughter recently planted some flowers there, and she wishes to stay to see them grow--bringing the life and beauty of God's grace with them.
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*Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Psalms: The Prayer Book of the Bible (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 1970), pp. 56-60.

Bonhoeffer on the Psalms, part II: Suffering

One Web site I frequent is PostSecret, a site allowing people to mail in self-made postcards revealing their deep and shameful secrets. It's a beautiful thing, and it sometimes affects me deeply. I found this postcard to speak what is on the hearts of many:


Even this person has an innate sense that the pains and woes of this world, evils both of human and natural cause, are beyond human control. Tragedies remind us, as much as we live and act to the contrary, we aren't sovereign. Lest we drown in a flood of existentialist Angst, we think, Somebody else must be running this planet--right? Someone else has to be able to restore order, peace, health, life--right? But this also brings the sticky problem that this Someone, if he's in control over it all and can cure our ills, must also have been able to prevent the calamity. And we then cry, Why, God? Are you not loving? Do you not care? With Luther our hearts cry, "Bless us, Lord, even curse us! But don't remain silent!"

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in his little book Psalms: The Prayer Book of the Bible, shows us how the laments of the Bible also bring us into the heart of this paradox, this conundrum that seems unreconcilable this side of eternity:

. . . [The Psalms] do not deny [suffering] or try to deceive us about it with pious words. They allow it to stand as a severe attack on the faith. Occasionally they no longer focus on suffering (Psalm 88), but they all complain to God. No individual can repeat the lamentation Psalms out of his own experience; it is the distress of the entire Christian community at all times, as only Jesus Christ has experienced it entirely alone, which is here unfolded. Because it happens with God's will, indeed because God knows it completely and knows it better than ourselves, only God himself can help. But therefore also must all our questions again and again assault God himself.

There is in the Psalms no quick and easy resignation to suffering. There is always struggle, anxiety, doubt. God's righteousness iwhich allows the pious to be met by misfortune but the godless to escape free, even God's good and gracious will, is undermined (Psalm 44:24). His behavior is too difficult to grasp. But even in the deepest hopelessness God alone remains the one addressed. Neither is help expected from men, nor does the distressed one in self-pity lose sight of the origin and goal of all distress, namely God. He sets out to do battle against God for God. The wrathful God is confronted countless times with his promise, his previous blessings, the honor of his name among men.

. . . There are no theoretical answers in the Psalms to all these questions [about God's justice and motives], as there are none in the New Testament. The only real answer is Jesus Christ. But this answer is already sought in the Psalms. It is common to all of them that they cast every difficulty and agony on God: "We can no longer bear it, take it from us and bear it yourself, you alone can handle suffering." That is the goal of all of the lamentation Psalms. They pray concerning the one who took upon himself our diseases and bore our infirmities, Jesus Christ. They proclaim Jesus Christ to be the only help in suffering, for in him God is with us.

. . . But not only is Jesus Christ the goal of our prayer; he himself also accompanies us in our prayer. He, who has suffered every want and has brought it before God, has prayed for our sake in God's name: "Not my will, but thine be done." For our sake he cried on the cross: "My God, my God, why has thou forsaken me?" Now we know that there is no longer any suffering on earth in which Christ will not be with us, suffering with us and praying with us--Christ the only helper.

On this basis the great Psalms of trust develop. Trust in God without Christ is empty and without certainty; it is only another form of self-trust. But whoever knows that God has entered into our suffering in Jesus Christ himself may say with great confidence: "Thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me" (Psalms 23, 37, 63, 73, 91, 121).*
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*Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Psalms: The Prayer Book of the Bible (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 1970), pp. 46-9.

Bonhoeffer on the Psalms, part I: the Body of Christ

Something I've found over the past few years is that my prayers become expanded and transcendant when I stop focusing only on the wants and troubles of my own life and begin to intercede for others. I spent many times in the summer of 2004 praying with a copy of Voice of the Martyrs magazine and Hebrews 13:3: "Remember those in prison as if you were their fellow prisoners, and those who are mistreated as if you yourselves were suffering." In those times, the church became more important and God more mighty as I thought of others and the ways God was manifesting his power veiled in weakness throughout the world (2 Corinthians 12:9; 13:4).

Then over the past few years, I've read Dietrich Bonhoeffer's writings about the book of Psalms. We often find it difficult to pray many psalms, finding their joy too high, their pains too sharp, their sufferings too distant. And how easily do we balk at the psalms of deep lament, let alone those "imprecatory psalms" calling for divine retribution upon the enemies of the righteous? Yet Dr. Bonhoeffer gives us such clues as to unlock these difficult prayers:

A psalm that we cannot utter as a prayer, that makes us falter and horrifies us, is a hint to us that here Someone else is praying, not we; that the One who is here protesting his innocence, who is invoking God's judgment, who has come to such infinite depths of suffering, is none other than Jesus Christ himself. He it is who is praying here, and not only here but in the whole Psalter. . . . He prayed the Psalter and now it has become his prayer for all time? . . . Jesus Christ prays the Psalter through his congregation. . . .

Now that Christ is with the Father, the new humanity of Christ, the Body of Christ on earth, continues to pray his prayer to the end of time. This prayer belongs, not to the individual member, but to the whole Body of Christ. Only in the whole Christ does the whole Psalter become a reality, a whole which the individual can never fully comprehend and call his own. That is why the prayer of the psalms belongs in the peculiar way to the fellowship. Even if a verse or a psalm is not one's own prayer, it is nevertheless the prayer of another member of the fellowship; so it is quite certainly the prayer of the true Man Jesus Christ and his Body on earth.*

Bonhoeffer says that the prayers written by and for the Davidic kings are most fully taken up on the lips of the Messiah, the David who was to come. Only he met the truest requirements of innocent suffering, of true righteousness, of just kingship, and of inheriting the covenant promises through his obedience. And so the Psalms are ultimately Jesus' prayers. As such, they become the perfect prayers of the New Man to whom we belong and in whom we are found. When we pray the Psalms, we pray as Christ's body and in Christ, that is, our cries and praises come to the Father as if from the Son himself, his Beloved with whom he is well pleased! And when the Son prays, he is never rejected: "Father, I thank you that you have heard me," he prays in John 11:41-42. "I knew that you always hear me."

Additionally, I have found my prayers to be enriched and my love for the church to grow when I realize Bonhoeffer's insight that "[e]ven if a verse or a psalm is not one's own prayer, it is nevertheless the prayer of another member of the fellowship." Offering up petitions of sad lament, praises of glad adoration, pleas for justice have had this sort of transforming effect on me, as I put myself in others' shoes. Even when the Psalms are joyful, I can find myself thanking God for blessings he is shedding that day on others whom he loves--people I don't know, his work in ways I can't even see.

I find it odd that now it's my turn to go through suffering and loss not only alongside other members of the church in Turkey, but I feel it myself. And it's good to know that all along we've been, through the Psalms, praying and preparing and seeking God in this moment together.
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*Life Together (New York: Harper & Row, 1954), pp. 45-7.

The power of a pronoun

By now you may have heard of last Wednesday's (April 18) events in Malatya, a particularly volatile city in southeastern Turkey. Three men at a Turkish Bible publisher--two Turks and a German--were bound hand and foot, had various body parts lacerated with knives, and had their throats slit by a group of ultra-nationalists who perceived them to be a threat to Islam and to the Turkish state. Eleven men have since been arrested and indicted on murder charges. Will earthly justice miscarry? Only time will tell. These deaths mark the first martyrdom of Turkish converts to Christianity. Previously, murders such as January's shooting of Armenian Christian journalist Hrant Dink in Istanbul and last year's shooting of a Catholic priest in Trabzon were attacks on non-Turkish Christians. (Interestingly, all of these "patriotic" slayings have been committed by teenagers. Perhaps the Turkish word for teenager, delikanlı, is fitting after all: it means "crazy-blooded.")

Over the weekend I was traveling to North Cyprus (tell the U.S. to update its maps) to renew my visa and then to visit some friends in Adana, a warm and beautiful city on Turkey's southern coast. As if the murders hadn't hit home already, they sure did on Sunday at church. The German victim was a member of that congregation during the several years he lived in Adana. People cried and wept as they told stories remembering his gentle heart and soft-spoken manner, how he loved to play the violin, and how his chief goal in life was for others to know Jesus Christ more deeply. Through periods of tears, the pastor preached from John 15:18--16:4, and the need for us not to shrink back in fear, but to continue bearing witness to the truth. He spoke about how ludicrous it was for people to see these Christian men and their Bibles as threats: they lived to make known the message of a book that teaches God's people to love their neighbors as themselves, forgive their enemies, pay their taxes, honor those in authority, care for the needy, heal the sick, and conserve the rest of creation. I was glad to hear that the victims' wives publicly said they do not seek revenge, but rather they forgive the killers. Will the nation hear that message?

* * *

A few things especially have hit me over this: I knew about the shooting in Trabzon last year, and I reacted in bitter disgust at the slaying of Hrant Dink. But now it was personal; somehow these shootings felt closer to home. Friends of mine knew the victims well. When I was journaling and praying, something unique happened: I was praying with first-person plural pronouns, "we" and "us" prayers. No longer did I see the church as Turkish versus expatriate. We are all of one family in Christ, members of one another in this trial. "And if one member suffers, all the members suffer with it" (1 Corinthians 12:26). I saw myself and the Turkish church bound up together in one faith, one witness, one travail. Indeed, we are.

Additionally, we hear of deaths in Iraq and Palestine, Sudan and Indonesia, as faceless numbers: "Today seventy-five died in sectarian violence in Baghdad"; "Thirty-two die at Virginia Tech," etc. But these were real men with names, homes, wives and children and fiancees; with hobbies and careers and fiery passion for the Lord Jesus. I was glad to see CNN post a brief biography of each of the VTU victims today.

Please continue to pray for our witness, for the family and friends of the victims, for justice, and for God's forgiving mercy to be shed even upon the killers.

A prayer from the Turkish church

Deliver me from my enemies, O my God;
set me securely on high away from those who rise up against me.
Deliver me from those who do iniquity
and save me from men of bloodshed.
For behold, they have set an ambush for my life;
fierce men launch an attach against me,
not for my transgression nor for my sin, O LORD,
for no guilt of mine, they run and set themselves against me.
Arouse Yourself to help me, and see!

They return at evening, the howl like a dog,
and go around the city.
Behold, they belch forth with their mouth;
swords are in their lips,
for, they say, "Who hears?"
But You, O LORD, laugh at them.


O God, shatter the teeth in their mouth;
break out the fangs of the young lions, O LORD.
Let them flow away like water that runs off;
when he aims his arrows, let them be as headless shafts.
Let them be as a snail which melts away as it goes along,
like the miscarriages of a woman which never see the sun.


But as for me, I shall sing of Your strength;
yes, I shall joyfully sing of Your lovingkindness in the morning.
For You have been my stronghold
and a refuge in the day of my distress.
O my strength, I will sing praises to You;
for God is my stronghold, the God who shows me lovingkindness.

The righteous will rejoice when he sees vengeance;
he will wash his feet in the blood of the wicked.
And men will say, "Surely there is a reward for the righteous;
surely there is a God who judges on earth!"

- taken from Psalms 58 and 59

Hell took a body, and discovered God

Diriliş Bayramınız kutlu olsun! İsa Mesih dirildi, ölüm yenildi! (Happy Easter! Jesus is risen and death is conquered!)

As a child, I knew that there was something different about Easter: everyone wore white, flowers abounded, and trumpets accompanied the organ during the singing of "Crown Him With Many Crowns." But I never "got it." But now, when I read the story beginning with that subtly revealing opening line,"And very early on the first day of the week, when the sun [Son? Light of the world?] had risen . . ." I can't help but getting this tingling, indescribable feeling of wonder.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: the painting of the Anastasis inside the Church of St. Savior in Chora in Istanbul is my favorite painting of all time. As in all Anastasis depictions, the Christ stands victorious atop the broken gates of hell (known sometimes as the "Doors of Death"), barring the way for his saints and blocking its powers--do you see Satan bound beneath?-- as he by hand personally lifts Adam and Eve from the grave into life and joy everlasting. At a local Easter celebration last night, the pastor spoke about us hopelessly stuck at the bottom of a deep chasm. Try as we might, we are never able to climb out on our own. But Jesus, the "pioneer [archegos*] of salvation," is the One who by God's power climbed out of the pit, reaching out and towing us along with him out of the danger into sure deliverance, "leading many sons to glory" (Hebrews 2:10).

"On this mountain he will destroy the shroud that enfolds all peoples, the sheet that covers all nations; he will swallow up death forever." (Isaiah 25:7-8)

The great church father and one-time Patriarch of Constantinople (Istanbul!) John Chrysostom once preached about the Anastasis, the defeat of Death and the Devil by the Lord Jesus. Though 1,600 years old, this sermon is still preached in Orthodox churches at Easter. May it be a hymn of praise to our Savior and our song of triumph.

Is there anyone who is a devout lover of God?
Let them enjoy this beautiful bright festival!
Is there anyone who is a grateful servant?
Let them rejoice and enter into the joy of their Lord!

Are there any weary with fasting?
Let them now receive their wages!
If any have toiled from the first hour,
let them receive their due reward;
If any have come after the third hour,
let him with gratitude join in the Feast!
And he that arrived after the sixth hour,
let him not doubt; for he too shall sustain no loss.
And if any delayed until the ninth hour,
let him not hesitate; but let him come too.
And he who arrived only at the eleventh hour,
let him not be afraid by reason of his delay.

For the Lord is gracious and receives the last even as the first.
He gives rest to him that comes at the eleventh hour,
as well as to him that toiled from the first.
To this one He gives, and upon another He bestows.
He accepts the works as He greets the endeavor.
The deed He honors and the intention He commends.

Let us all enter into the joy of the Lord!
First and last alike receive your reward;
rich and poor, rejoice together!
Sober and slothful, celebrate the day!

You that have kept the fast, and you that have not,
rejoice today for the Table is richly laden!
Feast royally on it, the calf is a fatted one.
Let no one go away hungry. Partake, all, of the cup of faith.
Enjoy all the riches of His goodness!

Let no one grieve at his poverty,
for the universal kingdom has been revealed.
Let no one mourn that he has fallen again and again;
for forgiveness has risen from the grave.
Let no one fear death, for the Death of our Savior has set us free.
He has destroyed it by enduring it.

He destroyed Hades when He descended into it.
He put it into an uproar even as it tasted of His flesh.
Isaiah foretold this when he said,
"You, O Hell, have been troubled by encountering Him below."

Hell was in an uproar because it was done away with.
It was in an uproar because it is mocked.
It was in an uproar, for it is destroyed.
It is in an uproar, for it is annihilated.
It is in an uproar, for it is now made captive.
Hell took a body, and discovered God.
It took earth, and encountered Heaven.
It took what it saw, and was overcome by what it did not see.
O death, where is thy sting?
O Hades, where is thy victory?

Christ is Risen, and you, O death, are annihilated!
Christ is Risen, and the evil ones are cast down!
Christ is Risen, and the angels rejoice!
Christ is Risen, and life is liberated!
Christ is Risen, and the tomb is emptied of its dead;
for Christ having risen from the dead,
is become the first-fruits of those who have fallen asleep.

To Him be Glory and Power forever and ever. Amen!

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*According to J. Julius Scott, the Greek term archegos encompasses a wide variety of images, but it generally means someone who pioneers a new path for others to follow (trailblazer, pioneer), conquers a city or land (victor, hero, founder), and oversees his people's life in the new city to ensure their safe and prosperous life (prince, leader).

Good Friday

After singing our 35-minute choral piece, "Colors of Grace: Lessons For Lent," during our Good Friday service at UCI tonight, the lights were dimmed and we shared in Holy Communion, partaking of the true Passover meal in which our Savior Jesus' body and blood are offered to us. As I sat watching the others wait to take the bread and wine, the beautiful thought came to me: Jesus died for him and for her, for each one of his ransomed saints whom he purchased with his blood (Acts 20:28; Revelation 5:9). Jesus' death wasn't just some general atonement for sins to which we join ourselves through the exercise of our faith; as the Good Shepherd he died to bring forgiveness, reconcilation, and life to each of the sheep given him by his Father. "I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. . . . I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me--just as the Father knows me and I know the Father--and I lay down my life for the sheep" (John 10:11, 14-15).

Jesus' death actually saves sinners: "You are to give him the name Jesus ["Yahweh saves"], because he will save his people from their sins" (Matthew 1:21). That means he had each of us who trust him in mind as he bore beatings, mockings, being spit upon, insults, scourging, and the agony of hanging limp and lacerated upon a Roman cross. Already in the eternal plan of God our names were "engraved on the palms of his hands" (Isaiah 49:16) with the nails. He died for Riza from the Phillipines, for Hasan from Iran, for Erin from Canada, for Ramiel from Moldova, for Valerya from Russia, Jutta from Germany--even for Andrew from Saginaw, Michigan. God's love isn't some amorphous malaise. It is a sacrificial, redeeming love fixed upon each of his children, whose names he wrote even before the foundation of the world in "the book of the Lamb who was slain" (Revelation 13:8). Let us believe along with the Apostle Paul that "Jesus loved me and gave himself for me" (Galatians 2:20). Yes, that means he knew each and every one of our hideous, shameful, godless acts that drove him to the Cross--and he chose to endure the pain even still. A "love that surpasses understanding" indeed.

During his final meal with his disciples, Our Lord said that he will not eat the Passover meal again "until it finds fulfillment in the kingdom of God," and he "will not drink again of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes" (Luke 22:14-18). Yet as we, the redeemed from over twenty nations, partook in the Table together, a little slice of the kingdom was true even there in the evening calm. For just as the high priest Caiaphas ignorantly prophesied, Jesus died "not only for [the Jewish] nation but also for the scattered children of God, to bring them together and make them one" (John 11:52)--and so it was tonight.

Buy me some peanuts and Cracker-Jacks

It's Opening Day. Sure, the Mets and Cardinals may have squared off last night already, but the real Major League Baseball season starts today when the Tigers' ace Jeremy Bonderman takes the mound against the Toronto Blue Jays. Are we going to surprise everyone like last year? No--everyone's watching us. But can we repeat as a top contender in the tough American League Central Division? Absolutely. Even without veteran pitcher Kenny Rogers (out three months recovering from surgery to remove a blood clot in his shoulder), we have a solid rotation backed with even more offensive firepower than last year in the form of Gary Sheffield.

Spring is here, folks. Last week, I saw someone mowing a lawn (all fifty square meters of it in this city), and it smelled great. The tulips are blooming all over the place. Cats are in heat and going crazy. But best of all, topping the Vernal Equinox or all pagan rites of spring, it's Opening Day. While the rest of Turkey's 74 million residents care only about futbol--you should see the looks on their faces when we play baseball on the shore--the world's greatest sport takes its reign again. Play ball!