Behold the Man

There are few pastors, living or dead, whom I revere more than the German Lutheran theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer. His anti-Nazi activism inspired me as I am a member of a genocide-created diaspora, but once I began to read his works and get to know his mind, I saw a devoted, pietistic faith that both complements and challenges my own more works-centered theology.

On Easter Sunday, I borrowed from him heavily in my message that Easter was not really just about life conquering death, or love conquering hate, but of reconciliation and right relationship conquering estrangement and revenge. That message was as much for the benefit of my own ears as for the benefit of my audience’s—I still, even sixteen years after being baptized, struggle to comprehend the reality that I cannot work my way into salvation, and that it is only by reconciling myself with God that I can find peace.

Because (and especially now, as a pastor), I worry that my relationship with God was and is oftentimes like one with a demanding, love-withholding parent—if I only raise another X amount of dollars or aid for the Emergency Support Shelter, or for Kessler Elementary School, God will finally approve of me. If only I bring another household to Christ and into the church, God will love me more.

Taken to its logical extreme, this mentality is one of the most powerful drawbacks to my own theology that good works are an essential ingredient to creating right relationship with God. It can cause me to doubt the saving power of God’s grace, and of my own capacity to seek the reconciliation with God that I long for. I rely on pastors like Bonhoeffer to talk me down from that extreme.

My daily devotional book since midway through my time in seminary has been I Want to Live These Days With You, a book which separates some of Bonhoeffer’s writings into 365 short reflections. Reading it this morning, the one for today, April 26, is one that I feel needs to be shared:

“Those who look at Jesus Christ in actuality see God and the world in one. From now on, they can no longer see God without seeing the world, nor the world without seeing God. Ecce homo—see what a human being! In him the reconciliation of the world with God took place. The world is conquered not through smashing it but through reconciliation…It is not a general idea of love, but the love of God really lived in Jesus Christ that accomplishes that. This love of God for the world does not withdraw from reality back into noble souls transported away from the world, but rather experiences and suffers the reality of the world in the severest way. The world amuses itself with the body of Jesus Christ, but the martyred One forgives the world this sin. This is how reconciliation takes place. Ecce homo, indeed.” 

"Ecce homo" is Latin for “behold the man,” the exclamation of the Roman Governor Pontius Pilate to the crowd in the Gospel of John, just before Pilate passes sentence upon Jesus. It is a simple but profound statement that is fundamental to my own theology because the ironic thing about Pilate is that as much as he tries to deride Jesus—by mockingly referring to him as either man or king—he still ends up speaking the truth about who Jesus is.

Pilate commands us to behold the broken and shattered man about to be killed by a broken and shattered world.

Grace so powerful that it could reconcile us to one another, and to Heaven, after a tragedy such as this could only come from God.

Even if on some level I know this, it is good to be reminded of it.

Yours in Christ, Eric