As Bonhoeffer, write a homily about 2 Corinthians 4:7 using hohlraums, on the eve of WWII.
ChatGPT Prompt
Max Planck Institute, Berlin – Autumn, 1939
Dear colleagues, scientists, and seekers of truth,
I come to you this evening not as a physicist, though I deeply respect the vocation you pursue. I come not even as a theologian, though that is what the papers call me. I come—as I imagine many of you do in this hour—as a human being on the edge of a precipice, where thought trembles before action, and silence weighs heavier than words.
We stand at a moment where all that is fragile in us begins to show its seams. I need not name what draws close. You feel it. I feel it. We see the contours of a storm that may engulf everything we have built—our nations, our disciplines, our selves.
But in that spirit, allow me to share something strange. A word, not of politics or protest, but of mystery.
It comes, surprisingly, from your world.
The Hohlraum
In recent weeks I have read with fascination about your work in nuclear physics—particularly the use of the hohlraum. You know better than I that it is a small, hollow chamber, crafted with extraordinary precision, designed not to generate energy, but to contain it.
It serves one great purpose: to receive light, reflect it, and concentrate it—until the conditions are right for something new to ignite.
And then?
It is destroyed.
Instantly. Irrevocably.
Its death is not failure. It is fulfillment.
“Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.”
— John 12:24
Jars of Clay
The Apostle Paul once wrote to the church in Corinth:
“We have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us.”
— 2 Corinthians 4:7
You and I—we are such jars. Or if I may say so tonight:
We are hohlraums of clay.
Formed not to endure forever, but to host something greater than ourselves:
a light, a presence, a fire that is not our own.
We are fragile. Some of us will be broken by history.
Some of us will be used up by the very purposes we were made for.
And yet—this is not defeat.
In the Kingdom of God, to be broken is not to be discarded.
To be consumed in service is not to be forgotten.
To die in truth is to live in glory.
Christ in You: The Core
Paul calls it the mystery now revealed:
“Christ in you, the hope of glory.”
— Colossians 1:27
In every human heart that yields to this mystery, Christ becomes the radiant core.
He is not merely a moral ideal, nor a cultural inheritance.
He is a power greater than empire, deeper than ideology, more enduring than even the atom.
But to host that power—
we must be willing to be undone.
The Crisis of the Self
Much of our modern age is spent building the self:
stronger, smarter, more efficient.
But the gospel dares to say:
Each self we construct must die.
Each hohlraum-self we engineer—carefully shaped by education, politics, reputation—must, at some point, yield to the fire of Christ.
“I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live…”
— Galatians 2:20
This is not passivity. This is not despair.
This is kenosis—self-emptying.
It is the posture not of resignation, but of transformation.
Build to Burn
To those of you who are scientists: continue to build with care.
To those of you who are thinkers: continue to seek with rigor.
But let me plead with you—
Do not build your life as if it were meant to last forever.
Build it like a hohlraum.
With purpose.
With precision.
With the understanding that it will be spent for something greater.
Let every structure in your soul be aligned toward Christ.
Let every theory, every word, every silence
be offered to the God who alone can ignite what is truly eternal.
A Final Word
In this time—this darkening time—we may be asked to give more than we thought we had.
Our institutions may crack.
Our ideals may be tested.
Our bodies, even, may fall.
But if Christ is in us,
then even in our breaking, we bear light.
Even in death, we may ignite something no empire can extinguish.
So let us be hohlraums of clay.
Let us burn with what is not our own.
And let our lives disappear—
so that His life might shine all the brighter.
Amen.
— Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Berlin, 1939
Radically Happy 
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