IX.
“WHICH SIDE ARE YOU ON?”
LETTER TO RUDOLF BULTMANN FROM AMERICA,
FEBRUARY 6, 2025
PART ONE
Forgetting and losing ourselves, we too pass through the Red Sea,
through the desert, across the Jordan…
“February 6”: A Year With Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Daily Meditations from His Letters,
Writings, and Sermons, Carla Barnhill, Ed.
How many of our compatriots still allow themselves to be summoned by the bells
to enter the house of God?
Rudolf Bultmann, 22 June 1941, St. Luke 14: 16-24, This World and the Beyond
Somewhere Bonnhoeffer says,
I used to think Bultmann
went too far, now I wonder
if he went far enough--some-
thing like that. In his new existence
in America, more trouble for the beloved
martyr. After worship one Sunday
I mention to a man,
I’m reading Bonhoeffer, to which he says,
Which side are you on, be careful.
A man in a Lutheran Church.
Turns out there are sides, and he and I
are on different ones. Just like that
I find myself thrown to the curb.
There’s a new movie, too, Christian Century
asking, Has Bonhoeffer been hijacked?
You know the magazine, Professor Bultmann,
It’s good. However, No one asks me questions
about you, and you’re the one
who opened my eyes to Jesus. Others
carried me to Bonhoeffer. 40 years ago,
when I told my Icelandic pastor about
the man who brought me to Bultmann,
I say, the Iraqi Jesuit Stanley Marrow.
My pastor drives across the mountains to see.
He wants to know how this could be:
Who was this priest who brought
a man back to Lutheran roots? My pastor,
Harald Sigmar, knew his Bonhoeffer,
I was a sergeant in a MedEvac Hospital
in Vietnam when King was killed on May 8th,
listening to Black Gis on bunks, barracked,
asking, We’re fighting for the guys
who killed Dr. King? When I come home,
late 1968, after Tet, Bobby Kennedy also gone,
I’m listening to gospel, Odetta’s deep voice,
thinking King’s Letter from Birmingham Jail
should be bound with Paul’s letters, but I can’t
read the New Testament. That’s how I found
the Catholics and Vatican II. Through Merton.
Mid-70s now. Sigmar, my pastor, knows
what happened to Bonhoeffer in the Bronx.
He knows Tillich and Rollo May.
He doesn’t know poetry, and he’s trying
to write himself away from apology,
and fundamentalism.He loved Stanley Marrow.
He didn’t know what would happen
when I came home loaded with Rudolf Bultmann.
That rejection happened. It’s your great gift. It’s why I’m here.
Sitting alone. Maturity that slow. Nationalists
seeding themselves in power and glory. And
a man in my church asks, which side are you on?
Jim Bodeen
6 February 2025
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