The Beams Are Creaking
08 04 11 21:24 Filed in: Reflections | My Life
Good drama should make you think. Last night I witnessed good drama at Taproot Theater. The Beams Are Creaking is a play based on the life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Though I’ve never particularly considered myself a Bonhoeffer fan, the evening was undeniably well spent, and the play was powerfully thought-provoking. If you’re in the Seattle area, it’s worth seeing.
Bonhoeffer was a pastor in 1930s Germany who chose truth in the face of the rampant self-deception of the Nazis who attempted to silence him. I’m not sure I would have carried that choice as far as he did, to the point of participating in a plot to assassinate Hitler. But I left the play wondering what kind of pastor I might have been if God had placed me in a different time and place.
“Being a Christian,” Bonhoeffer said, “is less about cautiously avoiding sin than about courageously and actively doing God’s will.” I suppose it is much easier to affirm that statement when the times call for neither caution nor courage than when evil is so readily visible.
The play closes with imprisoned Bonhoeffer and others singing Luther’s hymn, A Mighty Fortress Is Our God, as he is about to be taken to Flossenburg concentration camp. There, four short weeks before V-E Day, Bonhoeffer was executed.
Bonhoeffer was a pastor in 1930s Germany who chose truth in the face of the rampant self-deception of the Nazis who attempted to silence him. I’m not sure I would have carried that choice as far as he did, to the point of participating in a plot to assassinate Hitler. But I left the play wondering what kind of pastor I might have been if God had placed me in a different time and place.
“Being a Christian,” Bonhoeffer said, “is less about cautiously avoiding sin than about courageously and actively doing God’s will.” I suppose it is much easier to affirm that statement when the times call for neither caution nor courage than when evil is so readily visible.
The play closes with imprisoned Bonhoeffer and others singing Luther’s hymn, A Mighty Fortress Is Our God, as he is about to be taken to Flossenburg concentration camp. There, four short weeks before V-E Day, Bonhoeffer was executed.
And though this world with devils filled should threaten to undo us,
we will not fear, for God hath willed his truth to triumph through us.
The Prince of Darkness grim, we tremble not for him,
his rage we can endure, for lo, his doom is sure;
one little word shall fell him.
That word above all earthly powers, no thanks to them, abideth;
the Spirit and the gifts are ours, through him who with us sideth.
Let goods and kindred go, this mortal life also;
the body they may kill; God’s truth abideth still;
his kingdom is forever.
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