Bonhoeffer and What We Do Next

Mark 15:34

March 29, 2026

Rev. David Collins

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We’re taking a little two week break from the Untitled, Open-Ended Study Bible, but we will get back to it the week after Easter, which is next Sunday. Speaking of Easter, we made a little one minute promo video about our little church here because we’ve got a hunch that there are people in your lives who maybe have been staying home on Sundays because of how their pastors endorse what's been happening in our country, or don't talk about it at all, or are all men. (Three out of the five voices on the video are some of the brilliant women in our church…the other two are me and Scott.)

It doesn’t need to be a closely guarded secret that there is a fun progressive church in town where folks can feel safe bringing their families for Easter. So please do share that with people. We’re not looking to convert anyone who is happy where they are, and please don’t feed the trolls either, but I’ll bet every person here knows at least one person who would love to be a part of what we’re doing.

And speaking of that…We sure met a lot of people who see the world the same way that we do yesterday at the third No Kings Protest, even if they don’t share our faith. Eight million people showed up at protests around our nation yesterday, and it felt like there were that many of us down at City Hall.

It’s nice to know that we’re not alone, you know? That other people are seeing the same things we are and coming to the same conclusions. But one thing we need to be careful of after a day like yesterday is feeling like “Well now I’ve done my part!”. Protest needs to be the beginning of activism. A time and place to connect with others who have the same goals and start organizing from there.

One of the dangers of believing in God, especially the way that a lot of us were raised to believe in God with this really simple idea that if God is in control of everything, then whatever is happening must be what God wants to be happening…often leads Christians to be become defenders of the status quo, which is really easy for us to see how “they’ are doing that.

But sometimes we take that assumption about God with us to a protest like we did yesterday and feel like, “I’ve done what I can do. God, you can take it from here. And if you don’t, that’s on you, not on me.”

That’s not all that different from the version of Holy Week and Easter a lot of us were taught…that Jesus came and died and rose again so that we could go to heaven when we die…and whatever happens to this world in the meantime is kind of beside the point.

And as Presbyterians in the historical wake of the Calvinists, we sometimes make it even worse by planting our flag in just how hopelessly lost in sin humanity is that we are suspicious of those who are trying to make the world a better place.

There are so many things about religion, ours in particular, that prop up the evil in the world and make us complacent in the face of it.

So today we’re going to follow the Gospel of Mark, starting with Palm Sunday, then unpack some key points of Holy Week, and end up with a quote from Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who took his responsibility as a Christian about as seriously as anyone ever has, so we can see where we’ve gotten it wrong along the way and how getting it right can actually make a difference in the world right now.

Holy Week

Holy Week starts on Palm Sunday, which commemorates that about a week before Jesus died, he made this grand entrance into Jerusalem on the back of a donkey, which attracting this enormous crowd, partly because he was famous, but also because he was enacting a Hebrew prophecy about the Messiah, a grand leader who would come and rescue the people and put the world to rights. The crowd starting laying down their cloaks for him to ride on, and they were waving palm branches, which were both things that were done for kings only,

Jesus was being intentionally provocative…causing good trouble to show what a true king was like. And forcing the hands of the collaborators and boot-lickers among his own people to react against him with violence. And they did.

You see, non-violent protest is often meant to provoke evil into violence. Martin Luther King Jr. and John Lewis lead their own version of the Palm Sunday parade across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma…where they were met by lines of state troopers knowing full well that they would respond with billy clubs and fire hoses. The goal was to change the hearts and minds of people reading about it in the newspaper the next day, and if some of the men who beat them saw themselves clearly and repented, that was good too.

Jesus went from there, according to Mark 11:15–17 into the Temple and started flipping the tables of the money changers, and John says he even made a whip and started chasing people around with it.

Jesus said, “Has it not been written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations’? But you have made it a den of robbers.”. Mark 11:17

And the religious leaders decided then and there that he deserved to die. (Mark 11:18)

The funny thing about that is that those money-changers hadn’t just set up shop that week. They had been there Jesus’ whole life.

You couldn’t use Roman coins in the Temple because they had Caesar’s face on them…so you had to exchange your money for Temple currency. And that because someone’s livelihood. So naturally they would add a fee here and there. Cover their costs. They were providing an essential service after all!

And if you’re the one adjusting the rates, it probably doesn’t feel like much. Just a small increase here or there. But it doesn’t feel small if you’re the one paying it. And eventually…enough is enough.

Jesus had been to Jerusalem before. He had seen this before and walked past it before.

But this time…he didn’t.

At some point, knowing something is wrong has to turn into doing something about it. And the only person who can decide when it’s the right time…is you. But only if, like Jesus, you are willing to suffer for what you believe.

From there, it’s all set in motion. The Temple is disrupted. The leaders decide he has to die. And every step Jesus takes after that leads him closer to the cross.

But before it all unfolds, he shares one last meal with his friends…

Where he does something unexpected…he kneels down and washes their feet.

He shows them, and us, that the kind of power that actually changes the world serves others, instead of trying to control them.

That service doesn’t always change people right away though. Right after Jesus washed their feet, one of his friends, a man who had been his disciple for three years, betrayed him, and the rest abandoned him in his time of need. Which would have been reason enough for someone like me or you to say, “Forget it! If you’re not committed why should I be?”

We’re here today because Jesus didn’t do that, of course. Guided by his faith, and committed to his mission, Jesus does it alone instead.

In one week, he went from incredible crowds who adored him, to being all alone yet surrounded by enemies who mocked him, dressed him up like a king and beat him for it, and then there was an enormous crowd again but this time they shouted “Crucify him!”

Which they did.

We don’t hear much from Jesus on the cross in the gospel of Mark. Scholars say that’s probably because the original audience was so familiar with the proceedings, that they were suffering in the same way, that details would have been overkill.

What would have resonated with them the most, and always will for so many, was his cry of dereliction.

Jesus’ provocative non-violence on Palm Sunday, his disruptive protest in the Temple, and his many sharp words against those who had gone along with it all, led to this moment where he is dying in agony, and he cries out his final words in Mark

“My God! My God! Why have you forsaken me?’ Mark 15:34

Maybe you’ve prayed that prayer.

And you may have felt guilty after you said it. But you didn’t need to. Jesus was speaking honestly in that moment, and so were you.

Whether God has actually turned away isn’t the point. Sometimes it really does feel like that.

Which means our faith…our obedience…our refusal to go along with what we know is wrong…doesn’t depend on everything making sense…or even on feeling like God is close.

Sometimes it means continuing on…even when everyone else has walked away… and God feels nowhere to be found.

That’s what happens when someone actually lives a free and faithful life in a world that isn’t ready for it. It doesn’t always lead to a cross like it did for Jesus, but sometimes it does.

And that’s not just something that happened back then. It still happens.

And yet…all over the world this week, this story will get told, and then summed up by someone saying, “Jesus died for you so you better be grateful. Now go do what you’re told.”

Not that I’m so great. I’m not. I hope that if and when my time comes to stand alone like Jesus did that I will carry my cross and follow him. Not to die necessarily, but just to even suffer for what I believe. But the fact is…that time hasn’t come for me yet. And I sure hope it never does.

But it did come for Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

He was a pastor in Germany…who watched his country drift into something dark…

and like Jesus…there came a point where seeing it, and calling it wrong, wasn’t enough anymore.

He took action, and those actions came with a cost that he willingly paid.

And as he wrestled with what that meant…sitting in a prison cell…

he came to see that this cry from the cross doesn’t just show us what discipleship can cost…

it reveals something essential about who God is. Bonhoeffer wrote many books, and gave hundreds of sermons, so I hate to reduce anything about him down to a few sentences, but theses words, sent to a friend and colleague, are just too perfect not to share, thought they are especially challenging.

He writes,

“God would have us know that we must live as those who manage our lives without him. The God who is with us is the God who forsakes us… Before God and with God, we live without God. God lets himself be pushed out of the world on to the cross. He is weak and powerless in the world, and that is precisely the way, the only way, in which he is with us and helps us."

I’ve been thinking about Bonhoeffer a lot recently. Wondering what he would do if he were here with us, watching what happened in his country, happen again.

And I don’t think he would be waiting around, praying for a miracle.

I think he would take Jesus seriously.

I think he would account for Godforsakenness…

That no one is coming to save us. There is no shortcut. No clean way out.

The only thing left…is what we choose to do next.

Because there are moments in our lives, and in the life of a nation, where there are no last-minute miracles waiting at the end of the third act.

Where the story turns…or it doesn’t…based on whether people choose to live differently.

Inch by inch. Choice by choice.

Before God…and with God…we live without God.

And that’s a scary sentence to hear a pastor say on Palm Sunday, but hear me out. Maybe God won’t help us, because God must not. Because God knows the only way forward for us to to do it ourselves and know that we can do it ourselves.

God won’t do for us what we have to do ourselves.

Because there are some things…that cannot be handed to you.


They have to be chosen. They have to be worked out…from the inside.

Any of you who have ever been through rehab know what I mean.

Whether it was learning how to walk again…
or fighting your way back from addiction…

No one can do that for you.

People can support you, guide you, and tell you what to do. Belief in God gives you the hope to take that first step, but you have to do the work.

The only way through it…is through it.

And I know how close this sounds…to that saying, “God helps those who help themselves.”

That’s not what I’m saying.

This isn’t about independence from God, or proving that we can do this on our own.

It’s about faithfulness.

Because maybe you will feel God’s presence when you do the right thing…and maybe you won’t.

Maybe it will feel meaningful and clear…and maybe it will feel uncertain…like you’re out there on your own. But we don’t base our lives on that.

We base them on Jesus. And we trust that the God revealed in him is not waiting somewhere else…but is already here in the middle of it.


So this week…don’t rush past it. Don’t try to skip ahead to the part where everything makes sense again. Stay with Jesus in the uncertainty.…in the places where you honestly don’t know what happens next.

Pay attention to where you’ve been seeing something for a while now…and maybe just walking past it. Where you know in your gut that something isn’t right…and you keep hoping somebody else will be the one to deal with it.

But at some point…
seeing it has to turn into doing something about it.

Inch by inch.
Choice by choice.

Before God…and with God…even when it feels like we’ve been left to figure it out on our own...

this is the life we’ve been given…

and what we do next might be what defines it.

Amen.