ecce homo by Honoré Daumier, via Wikimedia Commons
God, we understand the gospel
to be an incomprehensible reversal
of all righteous and pious thinking.
You declare yourself to be guilty to the world
and thereby extinguish the guilt of the world.
You yourself take the humiliating path of reconciliation
and thereby set the world free.
You want to be guilty of our guilt
and take upon yourself the punishment and suffering
that this guilt brought to us.
You stand in for godlessness, love stands in for hate,
the Holy One for the sinner.
Now there is no longer any godlessness, any hate,
that you have not taken upon yourself,
suffered and atoned for.
Now there is no more reality and no more world
that is not reconciled with you and in peace.
That is what you did in your beloved Son Jesus Christ.
“Behold the man!”
See the incarnate God,
the unfathomable mystery of your love for the world.
You love human beings.
You love the world –
not ideal human beings, but people as they are,
not an ideal world, but the real world.
after Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 1906 – 1945, German theologian and martyr
__________________________
For this is how God loved the world:
He gave his one and only Son,
so that everyone who believes in him
will not perish but have eternal life.
prayer & verse 
