How a Prisoner Waits for His Release
How a Prisoner Waits for His Release
Author: Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Source: Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Christmas Sermons, ed. Edwin Robertson (Harper Collins, 2005), 21
Advent placement: 2025-12-02 (paired with [[02-the-glenlivet-12]])
Theme: Advent as deliverance - “Look up; raise your heads. Be fearless and strong, because Christ comes.”
Verbatim source text
Reproduced from calendar/2025-12-02.qmd (Whisk(e)y Advent 2025).
How a Prisoner Waits for His Release! 1
Do you want to be delivered? That is the only really important and decisive question which Advent poses for us. Does there burn within us some lingering longing to know what deliverance really means?
If not, what would Advent then mean to us? A bit of sentimentality. A little lifting of the spirit within us? A little kinder mood? But, if there is something in this word Advent which we have not yet known, that strangely warms our heart; if we suspect that it could, once more, mean a turning point in our life, a turning to God, to Christ—why then are we not simply obedient, listening and hearing in our ears the clear call: Your deliverance draws nigh! Wait, just one moment, wait, the knocking will grow louder, hour by hour, day by day, becoming ever more clear. And when Christmas comes and we are ready, God comes to us, to you and to me. Christ the Savior is here!
Perhaps you say: all this has been said in the church so many times before but it has never happened! Why is it that nothing has happened? Because we did not want it to. Because we would neither listen, nor believe. Because we said: It could be that here or there, perhaps one or another trapped person was rescued, but as for us, we are too deep down, so far away from these things, that the deliverer will not get through. We are not pious people. We are not particularly religious. It’s all very well, but don’t give us all this once again. We are lost with all these words and excuses, we might eventually give our time, we might eventually begin to pray. Then this Advent would not pass us by unmoved. Don’t deceive yourselves, the Savior comes near whether we know it or not. And the question is only: Shall we let this deliverance come to us or shall we refuse it? Shall we join with this movement which comes from heaven to earth or shall we oppose it? Christmas will come in this way, whether we are part of this movement or not.
Our text makes two powerful demands clear, helping us to understand the true nature of the Advent event. It is not the miserable, weak, anxious Advent of popular “Christian” celebration, which we are so often contented with and which Christ deplores. The two demands are clear: “Look up. Raise your head.” Advent makes people whole: new people. We can also become new people in Advent. Stand up, look up, your view is too much down towards the earth, fixed upon the superficial changes and happenings of this earth. Look up, you who have turned away disappointed from heaven, see this Advent word. Look up, you whose eyes are heavy with tears and who mourn that the earth has snatched everything from you. Look up, you who are so heavy laden with guilt that you feel you cannot look up. Look up, your salvation draws near. When you look up, things look quite different from what you have seen day by day, more real, far greater, and more powerful. If only it were true. Be patient. Wait for a little while longer. Wait and something quite new will come over you. God will come. Jesus comes and takes up his abode with you and you become a redeemed people. Look up, stand, and watch. Keep your eyes open, waiting for the approaching deliverance. Lift up your heads—you army of men and women, bowed down with sorrow, demoralized, without hope, you defeated army of drooping heads. The battle is not yet lost. Lift up your heads. Yours is the victory. Take courage. Have no fear, no anxiety, no sorrow. Courage! Make the victory sure. Be strong, be able. Here there is no reason to droop your head, no more doubts, no uncertainty of the way. Freedom, salvation, and deliverance come. Look up; raise your heads. Be fearless and strong! Because Christ comes.”
Footnotes
Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Christmas Sermons. Ed. Edwin Robertson. (New York: Harper Collins, 2005). 21.↩︎