A Living Hope: Easter Music Inspired by Bonhoeffer’s Last Sunday

Today you are not to be given fear of life but courage;
and so today we shall speak more than ever of hope,
the hope that we have and which no one can take from you.

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Confirmation Sermon, March 13, 1932
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On Sunday, April 8, 1945, in an abandoned schoolhouse in the village of Schönberg, the Lutheran pastor and prisoner, Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945), celebrated the first Sunday after Easter (hereafter “Easter I”) with a short service of preaching, prayer, and praise. Bonhoeffer had been imprisoned since April 5, 1943, charged with collaboration in a failed plot to assassinate Hitler. Hitler, whose army was reduced to young boys and old men, was handing out death sentences aplenty. On this solemn occasion, Bonhoeffer read from a devotional book known in German as the Losungen (“watchword”), which appointed Isaiah 53:3 as the Old Testament watchword for the day and I Peter 1:3 as the New Testament counterpart (Eric Metaxas, Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Prophet, Martyr, Spy, pp. 527-529). The traditional Communion propers for this Sunday, especially the Introit and the Gospel Lesson, were certainly on his mind, if not included in his sermon. Inspired by these events, this issue of “Lifted Voice” will focus on musical settings of the aforementioned devotional readings and appointed propers for Easter I. 
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The Introit for this Sunday consists of I Peter 2:2 and Psalm 80:2, plus the Alleluia’s which are so vital to the Easter season. The opening phrase, Quasimodogeniti, usually translated “as newborn babes,” was made famous by Victor Hugo’s novel, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, in which an abandoned baby is found on the steps of the great cathedral of Notre Dame. Since the baby was found on Easter I, he was named Quasimodo, following the appointed Introit for the day. Although the Latin “titles” for the Sunday of Easter have faded in recent decades, they were well known in Bonhoeffer’s day. The text, sung in plain chant in this video, is especially fitting for a preacher who regularly and faithfully fed the “milk” of the Word of God to His fellow inmates during his two-year imprisonment.

Antiphon: As newborn babes, Alleluia! Desire the sincere milk of the Word. Alleluia!
Hear, O My people, and I will testify unto thee; O Israel, if thou wilt hearken unto me.
Alleluia! Alleluia!
Psalm: Sing aloud unto God, our Strength; make a joyful noise to the God of Jacob.
[Repeat Antiphon]

The first reading for the non-Communion service for Easter I was also fitting for a group of men who had been stripped of all earthly wealth and were left to trust in Christ, the Suffering Servant of Isaiah 53. Bonhoeffer was a music lover, who embraced a wide range of musical styles, from the German chorale to the African-American spirituals that he heard in Harlem during his first trip to America (1930-1931). As he read Isaiah 53:3, George Frideric Handel’s (1685-1759) setting might have resonated in his mind: 

                                  And with his stripes we are healed. (Isaiah 53:3)

But perhaps the most fitting text for what turned out to be the last complete day of Bonhoeffer’s life is the reading from I Peter 1:3, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which according to his abundant mercy hath begotten us again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.” Although his sermon was understandably not recorded, one eyewitness describes how Bonhoeffer “spoke to us in a manner which reached the hearts of all, finding just the right words to express the spirit of our imprisonment and the thoughts and resolutions which it had brought” (Metaxas, p. 528). Bonhoeffer, who spent two years ministering in London, might have been familiar with the following musical setting of several verses of I Peter 1 by the prominent English composer, Samuel Sebastian Wesley (1810-1876), whose music was well known in London. Especially striking in the first minute or so of music (please see the italicized text below for the words Bonhoeffer read and preached on) and the dynamic climax at the words, “resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.”
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Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,
which according to his abundant mercy
hath begotten us again unto a lively hope
by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead

To an inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled,
that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for you,
who are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation
ready to be revealed at the last time.

But as he which hath called you is holy,
so be ye holy in all manner of conversation.
Pass the time of your sojourning here in fear.

Love one another with a pure heart fervently.
See that ye love one another.
Love one another with a pure heart fervently:
Being born again,
not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible,
by the word of God.

For all flesh is as grass,
and all the glory of man as the flower of grass.
The grass withereth, and the flower thereof falleth away.
But the word of the Lord endureth forever. Amen.

(1 Peter 1:3–5, 15, 17, 22b, 23a, 24 [Authorized Version, slightly altered], plus "Amen")
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The Gospel lesson appointed almost universally for Easter I is St. John 20:19-31, Jesus’ resurrection appearances in the upper room. The following setting of the first verse of this Gospel by Paul J. Christiansen (1914-1997), well known in Lutheran circles as conductor of the Concordia Choir (Moorhead, MN), was not known to Bonhoeffer, but it is especially fitting for any parish choir today, for reasons that you will discover as you listen to the following performance, recorded at the campus where the composer taught and conducted for nearly 50 years. It could even be sung by the choir as part of the reading of the Holy Gospel, with the pastor continuing to read the Gospel from verse 20.
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Mary came and told the disciples that she had seen the Lord. Then the same day at evening as they all were assembled came Jesus and stood in the midst of them. Then said Jesus unto them, “Peace be unto you.” (St. John 20:19)
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Not long after Bonhoeffer concluded his last service, two guards arrived and said, “Prisoner Bonhoeffer, get ready and come with us!” He was taken to the concentration camp at Flossenbürg, a death camp in the upper region of Bavaria. On the night of April 8, an SS judge arraigned, convicted, and condemned Bonhoeffer, with no witnesses and no defense counsel. The next morning–Monday, April 9th, 1945—Bonhoeffer and five others were forced to undress and were led naked down the short steps from the detention barracks to the gallows that were erected against a high brick wall. Bonhoeffer might have thought of the second stanza of Paul Gerhardt’s (1607-1676) hymn, “Why Should Sorrow Ever Grieve Me,” which was last published in an English hymnal in 1918:
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​Naked was I and unswathèd
When on earth / At my birth
My first breath I breathed.
Naked hence shall I betake me
When I go / From earth’s woe,
And my breath forsake me.

(Evangelical Lutheran Hymn Book 501.2)
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The attending physician said that he saw Bonhoeffer “bow to his knees and pray fervently to God” before falling asleep in the living hope of the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting. (Chronology adapted from Charles Marsh, Strange Glory: A Life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, pp. 389-390.)

In a letter written from his prison cell the previous July, Bonhoeffer summarized the Christian theology of death in the fourth and final portion of his poem, “Stations on the Road to Freedom”:

Death

Come now, thou greatest of feasts on the journey to freedom eternal, death, cast aside all the burdensome chains, and demolish the walls of our temporal body, the walls of our souls that are blinded, so that at least we may see that which here remains hidden. Freedom, how long we have sought thee in discipline, action, and suffering; dying, we now may behold thee revealed in the Lord.

(Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison, p. 371)
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Similarly, the final stanza of Paul Gerhardt’s Easter hymn, “Awake, My Heart, with Gladness,” embodies the living hope that all believers attain through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead:
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​[Christ] brings me to the portal / That leads to bliss untold,
Whereon this rhyme immortal / Is found in script of gold:
“Who there My cross has shared / Finds here a crown prepared;
Who there with Me has died / Shall here be glorified.”

(Lutheran Service Book 467.7)