‘Like offering an apple to a child’: Bonhoeffer on preaching

An email asking if I would present at a symposium to mark the 70th anniversary of Bonhoeffer's murder took me by surprise. Like every social justice oriented young Christian in the 1970s, I knew of his activism and demise, and had read and reread Life Together (1954). I maintained a nodding acquaintance with Bonhoeffer, reading his Ethics (1966), found Act and Being (1962) heavy going, and was aware at a distance of some of the other elements
of his life and work. When I was attending a preaching workshop in New York and was invited to worship at the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem, my excitement was as much because it was the church where Bonhoeffer chose to worship when at Union Seminary as for its civil rights and social justice history and orientation. The conference organisers asked me 'to do something on
Bonhoeffer and preaching'. Accepting the invitation has taken me on an interesting journey. This article shares that journey, including the road-blocks and detours.