One in Death and Life

By Bill Wylie-Kellermann

Because of ingenious market timing, many pastors and churchfolk will be reading the holy week lections through the lens of Mel Gibson's Passion . Fortunately, in the providence of liturgy and history, there are alternative timings afoot. Passion Sunday falls on the anniversary of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s assassination; and Good Friday coincides with the day Dietrich Bonhoeffer was executed by the Nazis.

All of us rejoice to celebrate the birthday of Dr. King, to have it recognized officially by our people, to occasion it with teaching and prayer and action. But in the church, it is the day of his death, the day of his crossing over into God, the day of his martyrdom, which is his feast of remembrance.

All of us rejoice to celebrate the birthday of Dr. King, to have it recognized officially by our people, to occasion it with teaching and prayer and action. But in the church, it is the day of his death, the day of his crossing over into God, the day of his martyrdom, which is his feast of remembrance.

It is a further coincidence, near perfect, that April 4 is also the anniversary of his notorious speech at Riverside Church exactly a year prior to which – over the advice of friends, allies, and people in power – he came out against the war in Southeast Asia. He was, in effect, bringing two movements long divided, together in his own life and person. It can be argued that this was the very reason he was killed. Which is to say it is impossible to separate his own “passion” from the way he lived, from the reason he was killed. And that is a great light on the events of holy week.

Likewise, Bonhoeffer's death, by hanging with piano wire in the Flossenburg concentration camp April 9, 1945, is inseparable from his confession of faith (and thereby resistance) with others at Barmen in 1934. It is inseparable from the Underground Seminary that he organized at Finkenwalde.   It is inseparable from his ecumenical and international work – imagining and laying groundwork for a future without National Socialism. It is inseparable from his yearning (and frustrated arrangements) to get to India and sit with Gandhi. And it is inseparable from his famous “costly grace” discipleship meditation from the Sermon on the Mount in which he averred that when Christ calls someone, he bids them come and die. All this too is light in our darkness.

What then shall we say? By joining their deaths and their lives to Christ's, Martin King and Dietrich Bonhoeffer share also Christ's glory. Truly. But their gift to us in the present moment, may be to remind us that how Jesus died and how he lived are indeed one.

Bill Wylie-Kellermann is a program director for the Seminary Consortium for Urban Pastoral Education (SCUPE) in Chicago, Ill. He is also on the steering committee of Word and World: A People's School. He lives in Detroit, Mich., with his partner, Jeanie (who served as editor of The Witness from 1989-98), and their daughters, Lydia and Lucy. Bill write a regular column, Keeping the Word, for A Globe of Witnesses, and may be reached by email at bill@scupe.com.