God Is in the Manger: Reflections on Advent and Christmas

By Dietrich Bonhoeffer

These forty stirring devotions will guide and inspire readers as they move thematically through the weeks of Advent and Christmas, from waiting and mystery to redemption, incarnation, and joy. Supplemented by an informative introduction, short excerpts from Bonhoeffer's letters, and passages from Bonhoeffer's Christmas sermons, these daily reflections are timeless and moving reminders of the true meaning of Christmas. Now repackaged in a beautiful hardback edition, it makes the perfect holiday gift.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Westminster John Knox Press
• Release date: Sep 3, 2012
• ISBN: 9781611640717

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was born in Breslau in 1906. The son of a famous German psychiatrist, he studied in Berlin and New York City. He left the safety of America to return to Germany and continue his public repudiation of the Nazis, which led to his arrest in 1943. Linked to the group of conspirators whose attempted assassination of Hitler failed, he was hanged in April 1945.

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Copyright © 2010 Westminster John Knox press

First edition

published by Westminster John Knox press

Louisville, Kentucky

10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 — 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

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Scripture quotations from the New Revised standard Version of the bible are copyright © 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A. and are used by permission.

Scripture quotations from the Revised standard Version of the bible are copyright © 1946, 1952, 1971, and 1973 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A. and are used by permission.

Devotional text herein originally appeared in

Dietrich Bonhoeffer’sI Want to Live These Days with You: A Year of Daily Devotion (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox press, 2007).

Book design by Drew Stevens

Cover design by designpointinc.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Bonhoeffer, Dietrich, 1906–1945.

   [selections. English. 2010]

   God is in the manger : reflections on Advent and Christmas / by Dietrich Bonhoeffer; translated by O. C. Dean Jr.; compiled and edited by Jana Riess.

— 1st ed.

      p.cm.

   Includes bibliographical references and index.

   ISBN 978-0-664-23429-4 (alk. paper)

  1. Advent—Meditations. 2. Christmas—Meditations I. Riess, Jana. II. Title.

   BV40.B665132010

   242’.33—dc22

2010003667

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National standard for Information sciences—permanence of paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.

Westminster John Knox press advocates the responsible use of our natural resources. The text paper of this book is made from at least 30% post-consumer waste.

CONTENTS

TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE

EDITOR’S PREFACE

ADVENT WEEK ONE

WAITING

ADVENT WEEK TWO

MYSTERY

ADVENT WEEK THREE

REDEMPTION

ADVENT WEEK FOUR

INCARNATION

THE TWELVE DAYS

OF CHRISTMAS

AND EPIPHANY

NOTES

SCRIPTURE INDEX

TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE

Since Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote before the days of inclusive gender, his works reflect a male-oriented world in which, for example, the German words for human being and God are masculine, and male gender was understood as common gender. In this respect, his language has, for the most part, been updated in accordance with the practices of the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible (NRSV); that is, most references to human beings have become gender-inclusive, whereas references to the Deity have remained masculine.

While scriptural quotations are mostly from the NRSV, it was necessary at times to substitute the King James Version (KJV), the Revised Standard Version (RSV), or a literal translation of Luther’s German version, as quoted by Bonhoeffer, in order to allow the author to make his point. In a few other cases, the translation was adjusted to reflect the wording of the NRSV.

O. C. Dean Jr.

EDITOR’S PREFACE

This devotional brings together daily reflections from one of the twentieth century’s most beloved theologians, Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906—1945). These reflections have been chosen especially for the seasons of Advent and Christmas, a time when the liturgical calendar highlights several themes of Bonhoeffer’s beliefs and teachings: that Christ expresses strength best through weakness, that faith is more important than the beguiling trappings of religion, and that God is often heard most clearly by those in poverty and distress.¹

Although he came from a well-to-do family, by the time he wrote most of the content in this book, Bonhoeffer was well acquainted with both poverty and distress. Just two days after Adolf Hitler had seized control of Germany in early 1933, Bonhoeffer delivered a radio sermon in which he criticized the new regime and warned Germans that the Führer concept was dangerous and wrong. Leaders of offices which set themselves up as gods mock God, his address concluded. But Germany never got to hear those final statements, because Bonhoeffer’s microphone had been switched off mid-transmission.² This began a twelve-year struggle against Nazism in Germany, with Bonhoeffer running afoul of authorities and being arrested in 1943. Much of the content of this book was written during the two years he spent in prison.

For Bonhoeffer, waiting — one of the central themes of the Advent experience—was a fact of life during the war: waiting to be released from prison; waiting to be able to spend more than an hour a month in the company of his young fiancée, Maria von Wedemeyer; waiting for the end of the war. In his absence, friends and former students were killed in battle and his parents’ home was bombed; there was little he could do about any of this except pray and wield a powerful pen. There was a helplessness in his situation that he recognized as a parallel to Advent, Christians’ time of waiting for redemption in Christ. Life in a prison cell may well be compared to Advent, Bonhoeffer wrote his best friend Eberhard Bethge as the holidays approached in 1943. "One waits, hopes, and does this, that, or the other—things that are really of no consequence—the door is shut, and can only be opened from the outside.".³

But the prison door was never opened for Bonhoeffer, not in life at least. As the Third Reich crumbled in April 1945, Hitler ordered the execution of some political prisoners who had conspired