Sincerity, according to the dictionary I use when my ESL students, means that we show outwardly what we really think or feel inwardly.

By extension, many people may think of sincerity as being synonymous with transparency or even predictability. But is that always the case? In the life of one man, I would say both yes and no.

He was a young, brilliant intellectual with a quiet passion for truth. Over the course of his years living, studying, working, and thinking, he developed an ever increasing sense that the truest measure of abstract faith is found in visible obedience. “One act of obedience,” he wrote, “is worth a hundred sermons.”

No one who read his works or heard him preach could doubt his sincerity, that what he observed and taught fell one hundred percent in line with what he believed. And such sincerity would cost him increasingly more, test his faith even more fully, as the years went by.

Yet, as those years went by and his nation descended into further evil and chaos, the young man who had long held a pacifist’s stance began to secretly but actively try to overthrow his nation’s sovereign in a violent way. Were his feelings at that time fully transparent to the world? No. Fully predictable to the world? Absolutely not. But were they nonetheless sincere? I sincerely believe so.

For he would go to his death for his actions, but he would still preach what he knew to be true and show his Master’s love towards those around him in his prison to the very end.

His name was Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and he was executed at the age of 39. One cold spring morning at dawn, he was brought from his cell in a Nazi camp and led to a gallows to be hanged. It was April 9th, 75 years ago this past week. And it was just days after he had led his fellow prisoners in a worship celebration of his Master’s resurrection.

Protestants don’t canonize saints in the sense of the Catholic tradition. But if we started, I imagine this young man would be at the top of our collective list. And I find irony in that. Because he wanted always to mainly point others to the One he followed. As he once prayed, “May God in his mercy lead us through these times; but above all, may he lead us to himself.”

And maybe that’s the most beautiful thing we see reflected in his life: that while it was not always completely transparent or predictable, no one could doubt the depth of its sincerity.

Sounds a lot like the earthly life of his Master.

In Bonhoeffer’s honor and to the praise of the One who was there to lead him home, I offer a short poem:

When I stare into the coral horizon

And breath the last breaths of these lungs,

I will drink deep with anticipation

The marvelous truth of the glories to come.

My neck will snap, my body swing.

But my soul will rise up to meet its King.

Then, robed in white, His praises I’ll sing.

Wiedergeboren. Ruhm.