During the1930s this theme of the love of one's enemies became more and more prominent in Bonhoeffer's writings, perhaps nowhere more articulately presented than in his sermon, "On Christ's Love and Our Enemies," preached on January 23, 1938, at Gross-Schlönwitz, taking as his text Romans:12:17-21. "The best wisdom," Bonhoeffer tells his congregation, "is recognizing the cross of Jesus Christ as the insuperable love of God for all people, for us as well as for our enemies." In Discipleship Bonhoeffer had left no room for ambiguity. "This love knows no difference among different kinds of enemies, except that the more animosity the enemy has, the more my love is required.. ... No offering which a lover would bring to a beloved can be too great and too valuable for our enemies. " Now in this sermon Bonhoeffer speaks in moving, and measured words: "Giving up our desire to take revenge," he told his listeners, is "a hard sacrifice, perhaps the hardest, which Christ requires of us." Take heed of the fact, he warns, that "The first person born on this earth to humankind [Cain] murdered his brother [Abel]. . .. ‘Never be conceited' - lest you become murderers of your brothers."

American conceit in the conduct of war, alas, is globally recognized. "Shock and Awe" was not part of Jesus' recipe for the Kingdom. Neither was Abu Graib or Guantanamo prison or extraordinary renditions or waterboarding or other forms of torture for the sake of one group of God's creatures having vengeance against another. And yet we all here have been bystanders to that and more; we know too much and have done too little to claim clean hands.

This is why in his Ethics, Bonhoeffer felt compelled to include an honest examination of the church's "confession of guilt" in the face of its inaction when confronted by the need of its neighbors. Obviously thinking towards the post-war period, Bonhoeffer wrote: "The Church confesses ... its timidity, its evasiveness, its dangerous concessions. ... It has often denied to the outcast and to the despised the compassion which it owes them. It was silent when it should have cried out because the blood of the innocent was crying aloud to heaven. ... The Church confesses that it has taken in vain the name of Jesus Christ, for ... it has stood by while violence and wrong were being committed under cover of this name."

Peace, Bonhoeffer knew, must begin in truth-telling, not about what they did but what we were willing to do, and unwilling to do, things done and things left undone. Peace must begin in the renunciation of both retributive vengeance and proactive violence, as if either of them can ever be put forth as God's desire and a part of the path to having God's kingdom come, God's will being done, here on earth as if this were heaven. Peace must begin the process of a just sharing in the riches of God's creation and the safety and security to enjoy them for all of God's creatures; and this process begins only when we can admit that we are not God's special children, but those no less in need of repentance and forgiveness than those who seek to do us ill.