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February 4
David Barnhart
February 04, 2025
St. Catherine’s Monastery. 2007. Own photo.
On this day in 1555, John Rogers, who helped translate the Bible into common English during the reign of Henry VIII, was executed as a heretic by Mary I. Protestants in England sometimes referred to her as “Bloody Mary,” because she attempted to stamp out Protestantism and restore Roman Catholicism.
On this day in 1859, The Codex Sinaiticus was discovered at Saint Catherine’s monastery in Egypt. This Bible has the oldest known complete New Testament, dating from the 300’s. The monastery where it was found is one of the traditional sites of the story of the burning bush from Exodus.
Today is the birthday, in 1906, of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, an influential German pastor and theologian who was executed for his participation in a plot to overthrow Adolf Hitler. His theology and his resistance work was informed by his time spent at New York’s Abyssinian Baptist Church, where he was heavily influenced by Black preaching and liberation theology. His vision was for "a religionless Christianity in a world come of age."
Reflection
Quoting Martin Luther, Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote:
“Jesus Christ lived in the midst of his enemies. At the end all his disciples deserted him. On the Cross he was utterly alone, surrounded by evildoers and mockers. For this cause he had come, to bring peace to the enemies of God. So the Christian, too, belongs not in the seclusion of a cloistered life but in the thick of foes. There is his commission, his work. 'The kingdom is to be in the midst of your enemies. And he who will not suffer this does not want to be of the Kingdom of Christ; he wants to be among friends, to sit among roses and lilies, not with the bad people but the devout people. O you blasphemers and betrayers of Christ! If Christ had done what you are doing who would ever have been spared?' (Luther).”
He also wrote:
“We are not to simply bandage the wounds of victims beneath the wheels of injustice; we are to drive a spoke into the wheel itself.”