by Pastor Dan Baumgartner

Bertolt Brecht wrote in his play “Galileo,” “It is an unhappy country that has no heroes.” We must be unhappy. In 2007 it’s tougher than ever to be in the hero business. In a culture looking for perfection, we find faults easily. Heroes fall hard and frequently.

Most of us respond by just giving up on the idea altogether, to protect ourselves from disappointment. That’s unfortunate. Perhaps we would be better off to hone our definition of “hero.” Scratch “perfect in every way.” That pretty much went out when Eve and Adam bit the apple. Insert Felix Adler’s definition, “The hero is one who kindles a great light in the world, who sets up blazing torches in the dark streets of life for (us) to see by.” Under that lens, I want to hold up two heroes for you: Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Martin Luther King Jr.

Bonhoeffer was a German Lutheran pastor who is most well-known for his participation in a failed plot to assassinate Hitler in 1942. His decision to use violent means for a noble cause has created 60 years of controversy over whether a Christian (and pastor) should ever be involved in such things.

Bonhoeffer’s profound writings on ethics, theology and scripture have assured him a place in history. However, what I think might be the most significant part of his “blazing torch” seems far more humble. Dietrich Bonhoeffer made a difference. Personally.

Following his arrest after the assassination attempt, he spent two years in prison. Many prisoners later remarked on Bonhoeffer’s remarkable ability to minister to those around him. He was calm, and reminded them of God’s prevailing love in the face of overwhelming evil and death.

Martin Luther King Jr. kindled a light in a different time and place, a light which is not yet finished doing its work in our country. Beginning in a family centered at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, and later at Morehead College, Crozier Seminary and Dexter Avenue Baptist in Montgomery, King gradually found his voice.

It was a voice miraculously timed to speak in the dark streets of a United States racked by racial injustice, Vietnam and drugs in the 1960’s. In the face of fire hoses, dogs and burning Ku Klux Klan crosses he chose a different way, sticking resolutely to his calling to respect people and oppose evil through nonviolence.

In many ways, Bonhoeffer and King could not be more different. A white, bespeckled German pastor hanged in 1945 and an African American preacher gunned down in 1968 seem worlds apart. One taught personal care for those close at hand, and showed us how to die. The other taught the value of all human life, and called us to a better way to live. In both cases, their strength to live and die came from their faith in Jesus. Their intensely difficult decisions weren’t grounded in some altruistic feeling. Rather, having experienced an intimate sense of God’s presence, they were convinced that living justly was worth dying for.

When King told his own story, he would recount the ugly threats he and his family received in Montgomery at the very beginning of the civil rights movement. He sat one late night at the kitchen table, despairing, praying and realizing that religion wasn’t going to get him anywhere. He needed God.

“…it seemed to me at that moment that I could hear an inner voice saying to me, ‘Martin Luther, stand up for righteousness. Stand up for justice. Stand up for truth. And lo I will be with you, even until the end of the world.’ … I heard the voice of Jesus saying still to fight on. He promised never to leave me, never to leave me alone. No never alone. No never alone.”

Bonhoeffer spent two years comforting others in the horror of a Nazi prison, leading worship, praying and pointing fellow prisoners towards hope, always under threat of death himself. He preached his last sermon on the resurrection of Christ to his compatriots the day before he died. An eyewitness reported Bonhoeffer’s steadfast final words at the gallows: “This is the end – but for me, the beginning of life.”

Surely Martin Luther King Jr. and Dietrich Bonhoeffer set up blazing torches in dark streets for us to live by. And die by. They weren’t perfect people – call them what you want. But I’ll call them heroes.