Second Weekend of Advent (C/RCL)

Luke 3.1-6

December 5-6, 2009

Holy Trinity Lutheran Church, Manasquan, NJ

            In the year of our Lord 1939, twenty-one years after the signing of the Armistice that ended World War I, in the sixth year of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s presidency of the United States of America, in the sixth year of Adolph Hitler’s chancellorship in Germany, before Winston Churchill even became Prime Minister of Great Britain, during the thirteenth year of Emperor Hirohito’s reign in Japan, the word of God came to Pastor Ernst Friedrich Franz von Bodelschwingh, the son of another Pastor Bodelschwingh, the husband of Frau Julia Bodelschwingh, in an out-of-the-way community called Bethel, near Bielefeld, Germany.  The word of God compelled him to enter the halls of power on behalf of the powerless, to storm the gates of hell waging a holy battle.

            The same day that Germany invaded Poland, September 1, 1939, Hitler wrote a note-to-self saying that he had authorized his personal physician Dr. Karl Brandt and Reichsleiter Phillip Bouhler to grant physicians permission to euthanize (end the lives of) the incurably ill, of adults who couldn’t lead productive lives because of physical/mental illness or senility, of those with epilepsy and of those who had been institutionalized for more than five years.  A short time later an innocent-looking green questionnaire was sent to many a sanitorium and institution, asking for identifying information and diagnoses for all residents.  The reason given was that patients who fell into those categories were going to be moved to centralized locations for more cost-effective and efficient care.  Germany was experiencing terrible economic times, so that kind of made sense to some.

            One man, Pastor Paul Braune, was head of a home for mentally challenged girls.  He filled out the paperwork as requested, believing that relocation wasn’t such a bad thing for them.  His heart just about broke, then, and his mind nearly exploded with the question of what had really happened, when over the next months he saw obituaries for twenty-five of the girls who had previously been under his care.  Their families believed they had died of natural causes.  He doubted it, and took that fear to his friend, Pastor Bodelschwingh, affectionally known as “Pastor Fritz,” the director of a special place called Bethel.  Created by the Lutheran Church back in the 1800’s, Bethel was and still is a huge yet homelike setting for thousands of people with various impairments that make them too handicapped to live at home – or too handicapped for families to want them to live at home.   Pastor Fritz had thankfully had the insight to ignore the paperwork the government had sent him.

            The word of the Lord that came to Pastor Fritz and to Pastor Braune too, was that they were to preach the Gospel to power.  They were to go to government officials in Berlin: a) to be sure they knew about the terrible thing that was being done in their name and on their watch, and b: to stop it.  

            Let’s pause the story for a moment to remember what we heard in today’s Gospel (Luke 3.2): 

…[T]he word of God came to John the son of Zechariah in the wilderness….

Do you remember where the word of God eventually sent John?  To Herod, to tell him he shouldn’t have married the woman who was his wife!  To tell the truth, though, that doesn’t sound any scarier than meeting with officials of the Third Reich, confronting them with genocide….   It’s amazing and sometimes frightening where the word of God sends us.

            Pastor Fritz Bodelschwinge and Pastor Braune wrote letters and marched into governmental offices, without much obvious effect other than Pastor Braune being picked up by the Gestapo and jailed for a month.  Finally Pastor Fritz wrote Field Marshal Goring himself, and got a response.  The Field Marshal promised to send Dr. Brandt to visit Bethel personally, to correct the “misimpression” Pastor Fritz had that something awful was afoot.  He gave his word that no plans for “relocation” of patients would proceed till after he had visited.  His word was wrong.

            One day a team of 18 doctors and 18 secretaries arrived at Bethel to interview the residents.  Dr. Brandt also arrived to speak with Pastor Fritz.  They were shut up for hours together in his study.  Prayers were lifted up all around them, for the doctor’s heart of stone to be turned into a heart of flesh.  At the end of the day, Dr. Brandt and that team of doctors and secretaries left and never returned.  There were lives lost at Bethel, but because of Allied bombing runs gone astray, not because any resident was forcibly “relocated.”  The word of the Lord had come to Pastor Fritz Bodelschwinge, he had obediently walked into the halls of power, he had courageously faced the lion in his den, and the lives of thousands of the most vulnerable children of God in that place were spared. 

            The word of God came to John son of Zechariah two thousand years ago; the word of God came to Pastor Bodelschwingh seventy years ago; the word of God comes to us today.  Do not doubt that in the year of our Lord 2009, in the first year of Barak Obama’s presidency of the United States of America, in the sixth year after the founding of the European Union, in the twenty-first year after the formation of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, in the eighty-third year of the existence of Holy Trinity Evangelical Lutheran Church, the word of the Lord comes to you.

God-with-us, Emmanuel, comes into the war zone of our world and of our lives and walks with us through the danger and pain.   The word of God comes to us that we might enter the halls of power on behalf of the powerless, the hungry, the poor, the mentally and physically infirm.  The word of God comes to us that holy light might shine in the darkness through us and not just for us.  In this ‘tween-time between Jesus’ coming once and Jesus’ coming again, the word of God calls us to be active, not idle.  May God give us insight and courage to act on the word of God spoken to us and on behalf of God’s children everywhere.  Amen

Pastor Mary Virginia Farnham

The story of Pastor Bodelschwinge and Bethel is told in “Bright Valley of Love” by Edna Hong, reprinted in a collection of her works published by Postscript, Inc.: Northfield, Minnesota, 2008.