Helmut Thielicke: Preaching Amidst the Rubble

During the last days the Third Reich, as the Nazi terror struggled in its final throes and allied bombs rained down on Stuttgart, Helmut Thielicke preached a remarkable series of sermons based on the Lord’s Prayer. These were days of uncertainty and death. On more than one occasion the shriek of air raid sirens interrupted the sermon.

Thielicke writes that during this period there were times when he felt utterly stricken: “My work in Stuttgart seemed to have gone to pieces; and my listeners were scattered to the four winds; the churches lay in rubble and ashes.”

In one of the messages from this series, based upon the petition “Thy Kingdom come,” Thielicke describes an encounter with a woman from his congregation. It happened as he was standing in the street looking down into the pit of a cellar­–all that remained from a building that an allied bomb had shattered. The woman approached him and declared, “My husband died down there. His place was right under the hole. The clean-up squad was unable to find a trace of him; all that was left was his cap.”

What does a pastor say in a moment like this? “I’m sorry,” hardly seems adequate. But the woman had not come to Thielicke for sympathy. She wanted to express her gratitude. “We were there the last time you preached in the cathedral church” she continued. “And here before this pit I want to thank you for preparing him for eternity.”

This is as good a definition of preaching as I have heard. Better, perhaps, than many, because of its stark realism. Preaching is preparing others for eternity. Preaching is having the last word. To preach is to take your stand before the pit and bear witness to the rubble of this ash heap world that the Kingdom of God is at hand.