When I left Wagga to come to Gungahlin I was given a number of books, one of which is a collection of poems written by Dietrich Bonheoffer; the German Lutheran pastor and theologian. During the Second World War Bonhoffer was arrested in Germany in 1943 and spent two years in jail awaiting his execution; he was hanged just before the end of the war in 1945. During this time he did a great deal of writing and I’m going to read one of his poems written during his imprisonment.
In German the poem is called “Gluck und Ungluck” – which has been translated as “Success and Failure”. In many ways it reminds me of Jesus, arriving at Jerusalem on the donkey.
Success and failure
Suddenly strike and overpower us,
Both the same at first,
Like the touch of burning heat and freezing cold,
Indistinguishable.
Like meteors
Flung from distant heavens,
Blazing and threatening,
Over our heads.
Those visited stand bemused
Amidst the ruins
Of their dull, daily lives.Proud and exalted,
Destroying, subduing,
Success and failure,
Invited or uninvited,
Hold festival with
These shattered people.
Dressed and decorated,
The visited
Prepare for the sacrificial feast.Success is full of foreboding,
Failure has its sweetness.
Without distinction they appear to come,
The one or the other,
From the unknown.
Both are proud and terrible.People come from far and wide,
Walk by and look,
Pausing to stare,
Half envious, half afraid,
At the outrage,
Where the supernatural,
Blessings and curing at the same time,
Entangling and disentangling,
Sets forth the drama of human life.
What is success and what is failure?Time alone distinguishes.
When the incomprehensible, exciting,
Sudden event
Lapses into wearisome waiting,
When the creeping hours of the day
First reveal the true outlines of failure,
Then most give up,
Weary of the monotony
Or oft-repeated failure,
Disappointed and bored with themselves.That is the hour of steadfast love,
The hour of the mother and the beloved,
The hour of the friend and the brother.
Steadfast love transforms all failure,
And gently cradles itIn the soft radiance of heavenly light.
Bonhoffer Prison Poems pp. 35-36
As I said, in German the poem is called “Gluck und UnGluck” and has been translated “Success and failure”. The Word Gluck is the root of our word luck, so it could have been translated “Luck and Unlucky”. Apparently Bonhoffer thought deeply about Gluck and UnGluck in his own life, and used the words as a pair throughout some of his writing.
In some ways the short film dramatisation of the life of Jesus that I show in worship from time to time is a bit tacky, but in other ways it fills out the Gospel passages in a fairly literal way. In today’s story of Jesus arriving at Jerusalem, in the film there is one point when Jesus is on the donkey and the actor has this huge grin, a smile, all over his face. It’s almost like he got on the donkey for the first time in the whole movie and thought.. “wow.. this is fun.” “Giddy up Eeyore”. And all the people are placing their palm branches and cloaks on the path in front of the donkey in a very orderly way. It seems so merry, except in the back of all our minds is the fact that this passage is a precursor to the lament of Jesus over Jerusalem, his entry into Jerusalem, his arrest, and his crucifixion. This is probably the only passage in the gospels, where Jesus is welcomed, celebrated and hailed by many people, without the expectation of healing or feeding, and yet as always, when something wonderful is taking place, there are always the dark voices, “Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, order your disciples to stop.”
This is a confusing passage in many ways. It’s triumphant, and yet only a week before Jesus death; it Gluck und Ungluck. It is both success and failure.
Success and failure
Suddenly strike and overpower us,
Both the same at first,
Like the touch of burning heat and freezing cold,
Indistinguishable.Proud and exalted,
Destroying, subduing,
Success and failure,
Invited or uninvited,
Hold festival with
These shattered people.
This is a passage where a “whole multitude” of people, as Luke puts it, surround Jesus on the donkey and shout out in praise. “”Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven, and glory in the highest heaven!” But it is the passage where Jesus laments over Jerusalem, and how the people “did not recognise the time of their visitation from God”, and in that passage of prophecy, Jesus foretells the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans only decades later.
It is Gluck und UnGluck. Success and failure. And it is as Bonoffer’s poem says, there is something “indistinguishable” between the two.
Some of you I’m sure will know the ABC audience interactive show Q & A. It’s on once a week, hosted by Tony Jones, and the audience, including viewers, ask questions for comment by the panel of mostly politicians and notable members of society. I have almost given up watching this show because I think the questions asked are often of more value than the answers they are given particularly by the politicians.
About 3 weeks ago on this show, 8th. March, the subject was “God, science and sanity”, [you can still watch it online] and one of the star guests was the Fundamentalist Atheist Richard Dawkins. I would say that fundamentalism of any kind, religious or non religious, is dangerous. Interestingly, throughout the show, the person who received the most applause was Dawkins. About half way through the show, an audience member asked if they found God offensive to which Dawkins eventually replied… “The New Testament – you believe, if you believe in the New Testament, that God, the all powerful creator of the universe couldn’t think of a better way to forgive humanity’s sins than to have himself put on earth, tortured and executed in atonement for the sins of humanity? What kind of a horrible, depraved notion is that?”
As I have been thinking about this comment, I firstly feel that it is arrogant for a middle upper class white man from Oxford in the UK who has probably never put his life on the line for any other person, to diminish the act of dying by one person for another. Even humans, will at times, give their lives, in order to save others. History, and our present world, is full of accounts of men and women who have given their lives, in order that others may live. Is it really a horrible and depraved notion? And here is the confusion; is such an act, success, or failure?
And secondly, Dawkins is saying, either there is no way for humanity to be saved, or that the only way for God to save humanity is by might and power, or supernatural intervention, or some other painless act. There is no release from the fact that sin brings pain, and the act of God in Jesus, is not a horrible or depraved notion, but an act that confronts both. I am at a loss to see how God could enter history, our lives, and transform life in any other way. But of course, there is confusion, is this success or failure, is it weakness or strength, is it terrible, or life giving? It is as Bonheoffer wrote:
Success is full of foreboding,
Failure has its sweetness.
Without distinction they appear to come,
The one or the other,
From the unknown.
Both are proud and terrible.
It is at times easy to see in our own lives the tension between success and failure, good and evil, blessing and cursing, and at times it is subtly hidden. But the way of God in our lives and our world is not in the way of success as we so often long for and cling to.
And the way of God in Christ, as in our reading today where Jesus enters Jerusalem, has all the elements of the way we understand success, and the way we understand failure, but the entry of Jesus into Jerusalem, his arrest and beating, his crucifixion, is not failure, horrible, or depraved, but in this act is life as only God can give.
It is as Jesus says, (in my words)….
“If you, even you, had only recognized on this day the things that make for peace! If only you could recognize the time of your visitation from God.”
Amen.