By Martin Davis
"Waiting is an art which our impatient age has forgotten."
These are the words a then-relatively unknown German theologian delivered 94 years ago this month in Barcelona, Spain, in a sermon for Advent ― the four-week period before Christmas when Christians await the birth of their messiah.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer was just 22 in 1928, freshly minted from the University of Berlin, and serving as an assistant pastor in his first congregation. He could not know it then, but more than half his life was already over. Just 17 years later, he would be executed at Flossenburg concentration camp for his purported role in the Valkyrie Plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler.
From 1928 to 1945, however, Bonhoeffer would be among the most-prolific and -profound writers of the age. Post-execution, his writings would continue to shape everything from the Death of God controversy in the 1960s, to evangelicalism today. Beyond the church, Bonhoeffer influenced ethicists and, arguably, the nonviolence movement.
His burst of work makes clear that his waiting was no passive act. It was instead a gift born of thinking deeply about the unanswerable questions we all face.
"Not all can wait," he wrote. "Certainly not those who are satisfied, contented.... Those who learn to wait are uneasy about their way of life, but yet have seen a vision of greatness in the world of the future and are patiently expecting its fulfillment."
For Bonhoeffer, what made him uneasy was the Christian message and the role he was to play in this life while waiting "patiently expecting its fulfillment."
I return often this time of year to what Bonhoeffer said that Advent Sunday in Barcelona, because I share his sense of uneasiness. My unease is driven not by Bonhoeffer's eternal questions, however, but by the "vision of greatness" represented in the Constitution.
While many of us sing its praises, we don't think very deeply about the document ― myself included for too many years. Consequently, we've become too impatient to be unsettled by its words.
Akhil Reed Amar captured well our vacuous understanding of this cornerstone of democracy in the preface to his 2005 book, "America's Constitution: A Biography."
"America's Constitution beckons," he began. "The document's style ... invites us to explore its substance, to visit and regularly revisit America's legal city on a hill. Most citizens," he concludes, "have declined the invitation."
Rather than wrestle with the document's substance, we take the words literally, believing that a simple reading and "common sense" makes plain what the document means. Such an approach leaves us satisfied, contented.
It also leads us to misunderstand what the document says, and to not challenge ourselves to constantly reevaluate our own role in helping bring about the Constitution's ideals. By definition, these will never be fully met. That awareness, and the need for us to constantly strive to bring our society closer to those ideals, is what generates both unease and growth.
Two examples Amir offers of how we gloss over the document should make us all stop and ponder how little we really know. Do we truly wrestle, for example, with what's meant by the promise of a "more perfect union"? Or think about how early bans on titles of nobility inform the Fourteenth Amendment?
"Without background materials placing the Constitution in context," Amir writes, "a modern reader may miss much of its meaning and richness."
Our impatience has consequences. A reading of the Second Amendment that focuses on "shall not be infringed," but not the correlation between democracy and the military, has led to a moment where many see no limits on firearm possession, and are willing to accept an unacceptable murder rate as collateral damage.
Collateral damage that has played out far too often in our communities.
In this final week before Christmas, let's take some time to exchange impatience and contentment, with unease born of our hope in a shared vision of greatness.
In so doing, we make the world less about ourselves and being right, and more about those around us and doing what is right for all.
All it requires is some patience, and deep thought.
Martin Davis is opinion page editor of the Free Lance ― Star, Fredericksburg, Va. This article was distributed by Tribune Content Agency.
