The Collected Sermons of Dietrich Bonhoeffer

by Dietrich Bonhoeffer

To young children, Jesus’ word is already proclaiming how God’s grace comes before all human actions; it then speaks to children of the sanctity of their parents’ love. To older children at play it speaks about God’s truthfulness, about God’s seriousness and goodness, about service as Christ’s followers, about heroic deeds and knightly deeds. To the young adult it speaks about the sanctity of the divine commission and about eternal goals, opening that person’s eyes to the glory of the world, to a yearning to roam beyond the temporal; and the word tells of the purity of God and of the heart. To young people it speaks about much joy and cheerfulness, though also about what they owe to the prospect of marriage and parenthood. To mature adults the word speaks about the seriousness of work, about fate and guilt, about responsibility and loyalty and about God’s will that each of us might take hold of our own life and shape it. The word also tells how God has sanctified motherhood and fatherhood. To the elderly it speaks about that world from which death separates us and about the last things.