Life Together: Community

Hello friends and welcome back to the Pastor Talk podcast.
We are overjoyed to get to spend
some time with you again.
Hopefully you got an opportunity to tune into last week’s episode
where we dealt with the introduction to our topic for today.
So today we begin with the four
chapters that we have in Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s book,
Life Together.
And it’s worth noting again
that though we are going to be studying each chapter,
we’ll be going through this book
together.
You don’t need to have the book to join the conversation.
The themes,
the ideas that Dietrich Bonhoeffer presents are certainly deep enough and rich enough for this book to
stand alone on its own,
for the conversation it generates to be interesting in its own right.
That said,
if you would like to have the book and join along with us,
this is an eminently
approachable theological book of all of the deep theological things written in the 20th century.
This is among one of the most accessible to read.
And if you would like to get it yourself,
just go to the description of this video or the description of the podcast, wherever you’re listening.
You will find a link to where you can pick up the book.
If you don’t want to get it through there,
you know, it should be easy to get secondhand.
It’s very widely published and
definitely want to just invite you to sort of join us as we take these next steps in life together.
You certainly don’t need to read this book to follow this podcast,
but having said that,
I am struck by the fact that I picked up an old copy,
one that I had read before.
And so in my
second time through the first chapter on community,
I did not have a single page on which I did not
underline or highlight something that I hadn’t done the first time.
So in two readings of this,
I found something on every single page,
both times, that I thought spoke to me or that I should
remember or bring up.
So having said that you don’t need the book,
this is a wonderful book to own.
And each and every time you go back to it,
you may find, as I have,
that you missed some things, the previous reading.
So to dig right into the content of this first chapter,
you know, we shared some conversation before hitting the record button here.
There’s a sense in which this first chapter
provides for us a foundation of how we should understand Christian community.
And I think right
from the start, it’s worth noting that when Bonhoeffer talks about Christian community,
he is certainly including in that image the idea of church,
of what we think of as church,
the group of people who we seek to journey along with as disciples,
we worship with them,
we study with them,
we support them in times of both joy and a great struggle.
And he certainly does have in mind that thing and that reality.
But when he talks about Christian community,
he also has in mind something much bigger than that behind the scenes.
He’s going to lay out
that ultimately, Christian community is only truly experienced behind the curtain,
not just in the sanctuaries where we gather,
but rather in the presence of the Most High,
that God creates community, that we are only in the faith together when we’re in Christ.
And so there’s a kind of
spiritual reality to Christian community that Bonhoeffer starts with as he begins to lay out
this definition of community that I find really, really engaging.
Yeah, I think that we need to
stop there for a minute because we have such varied ideas and experiences of community.
Maybe we’re golfers, maybe we’re quilters, maybe we’re in a reading group.
And so we have on a regular
basis, probably most of us,
this idea where our experiences and interests overlap other peoples.
And that brings us together.
That both is and isn’t what we see when Dietrich Bonhoeffer talks about Christian community.
And the important word in that is Christian,
that he is describing
something that is only present in Jesus Christ.
It is a connection, the word community,
common unity, common oneness,
our oneness in Jesus Christ.
It is both a physical reality if we’re fortunate,
meaning that we have a place that we interact with other believers,
but it is always a spiritual
reality.
And so I think in terms of language,
it helps to understand that when Bonhoeffer talks
community, he’s not talking about something that we create by our own preferences,
by our own, what style of worship do we like,
or how old are our kids?
Do they have a youth group
here?
He’s talking about the fact that we proclaim Jesus Christ.
And that connects us with everyone
else who proclaims Jesus Christ,
though he may say who follows Jesus Christ because he lives in
a time where proclaiming and following may not have been identically understood.
And so the first
thing we understand, I think the first thing we encounter about community through Bonhoeffer’s
eyes is that it is not a creation,
it’s a gift.
It’s not something we build.
We don’t go to church and become community.
Christ makes us community,
and we go to church to both discover that, to practice that,
and to live that out.
And I think that is vitally important because it’s
so easy to understand community as something we do rather than something that has already
been done on our behalf.
That is such an innate human temptation.
And in some ways it varies
depending upon demographics and what generation you’re in,
you know, a lot of ink has been spilled
in the last 20 years about how younger generations are anti-institution.
And so, you know, lots of Christian writers have talked about how,
you know, the church needs to focus on being less institutional,
you know, less about our fellowships and our groups and our mission committees,
and we should focus more on teams and having affiliations and these sorts of things.
But that’s a little bit
of the pot calling the kettle black,
because if you get rid of institution,
you say that the
institution is the thing that we all gather around,
you know, the committees and the work of the group,
and you say, “Well, now we’re going to have affiliations.
We’re going to try and get people
who are interested in their photography club or the yoga class,
the things that they like,
and we’re going to try to build Christian community around it.” The problem is,
once again, the community is serving the people,
as opposed to the people serving the one who calls them out.
There’s this fundamental worldview shift that Bonhoeffer is calling us to,
and, you know, it is within really a page and a half that he moves from sort of laying out a scriptural case
for how God calls people unto God’s own communal life to this idea that one can be,
and in fact, there are Christians who do not have the benefit,
the privilege, of sharing physical communion with one another.
And, you know, it’s almost like he could have written this in the year 2020.
He writes, “The imprisoned,
the sick, the scattered lonely, the proclaimers of the gospel in heathen lands stand alone.
They know that visible fellowship is a blessing.” You know,
we would only add
the church in pandemic times, right?
That the questions or assumptions that we made about what
it meant to be a Christian community previous to that time of separation are now called into
question.
We’re reminded, once again, that community exists outside of the visible fellowship
and exists in the spiritual and eternal fellowship of God who calls us out.
It is a completely
different kind of understanding of community from those more sort of traditional understandings
that we have in our cultural milieu.
Yeah, here on page 20,
it is easily forgotten that the
fellowship of Christian brethren,
sisters, is a gift of grace.
It is a grace,
nothing but grace, that we are allowed to live in community with Christian brothers and sisters.
And so, this idea, again, that the community,
the experience of community is a gift we’ve been given.
We talk, and as pastors, we talk a lot about how do we build community in the church.
What we really mean
is how do we uncover community in the church.
How do we get out of the way and not hinder
this thing that God is already doing and has already done,
uniting us in Christ and the
foundation of that community is that we are connected in our experience of God’s grace
through Jesus Christ.
Many years ago, I was on a mission trip.
I think it was New York City,
but we were walking across an intersection,
and there was a woman there handing out Bibles.
And she tried to hand me a Bible,
and I said, “No, I’m good, ma’am.
I have one.” And she said,
“Have you read it?” And I said,
“Yeah.” And she said,
“And?” And I said,
“I think I said,
‘God is good.'” And she looked at me and said,
“Amen.
God is good.” And we didn’t know each other.
I suspect
this side of the kingdom will never speak again.
And there was this moment of interaction,
there was this moment of two believers acknowledging a single truth,
that in Jesus Christ,
we know the goodness of God.
And she went about her day,
and I went about my day.
But it was a communal moment in the sense that I think Bonhoeffer paints for us, this idea
of connection, that in that connection, we find joy,
we find humility,
we find strength,
and we find a gift,
a grace of God whenever we experience it.
Right.
And that gift is thoroughgoingly physical.
And so while Bonhoeffer names that there are
those who long for the visible representation of community,
they desire that, that it is, as Christians,
a beautiful gift to have the physical,
visible presence of one another.
In fact, he goes so far as to say that it is an incomparable joy and strength to the believer.
And I once again,
I’d say following our experience of last year,
we have learned the joy and strength
that comes in being together.
That is a thing that we should not take for granted
for the rest of our lives.
Bonhoeffer mentioned some scripture passages here,
but then he goes on
and he makes the connection between the physical connection of the believers,
the body gathered
to the sacramental reality of worship.
He’s going to turn to that very image that we have in worship of Jesus,
calling the disciples to look beyond that moment to all moments.
And then we find that
in our own taking of the Lord’s Supper,
responding to Jesus’s invitation again and again,
we find ourselves bound together in physical reality in communion.
In fact, Clint, we’ve talked quite a
bit about how the Lord’s table has been one of the most difficult parts of the season of separation
is because there is something intrinsic in that observance, the being together,
the taking the food together, the same food to see it all together to be in that moment together is incomparably
joyful.
It celebrates the thing beyond even in the moment and the thing that we do together.
There’s some deep wisdom in the reminder that human life is never lived separate from other life
that our physical bodies are not just a boundary between us and others,
but their connection point
between us and others.
And that is seen in the incarnation of Jesus Christ,
the invitation to a
table that he says gives us his body and blood, physical realities.
You know, Bonhoeffer points out that it is a gift when we get to share that physicality together.
Yeah. And I think in this season,
we have both in some ways learned that as we’ve been able to remain,
to some extent, feeling connected with other believers through online ministry and online outreach and scripture
and Zoom calls and whatever.
On the other hand,
because we have walked through a season of deep division,
we have also seen how quickly community erodes when it is based on things other than the cross.
When we base it on our political views or our racial views or whatever,
fill in the blank,
it doesn’t matter what you put there.
When we try to frame community as an extension of what we
believe instead of fundamentally who we belong to,
we are always tempted to divide it and make
it smaller rather than larger.
And the humility of acknowledging on the front end that community
is the work of grace,
not my experience of it, not my opinion,
not my agenda,
but it is a work of
grace and that I am therefore connected in Jesus Christ in a way that is beyond opinion,
that is beyond similarity.
And so that we can experience community with other Christians with whom we have
almost nothing in common.
People of different countries,
different cultures, different experiences, different ages can meet at the cross.
And as you said,
Michael, meet at the table and
experience that oneness.
And probably there is no better symbol of that than the act of communion,
the one bread that is offered to all who profess their faith in Jesus Christ and the cup that we
share, the body and blood that has redeemed each of us.
And as we move into the exploration of community,
I think not to not to overdo this language,
but it just it has to be understood
that for Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s understanding of what it means for us to be connected in Christ,
in Christ is the indispensable.
The community by itself is not the important part.
Community is the extension of being claimed by Jesus Christ and his grace and that’s what sets it apart.
Right.
And you said it and I think it just bears repeating that if we are here,
if we’re on one
side and Jesus Christ is on the other,
the other,
the bridge that connects us is grace.
It is gift.
It is an extension from the Savior.
And Bonhoeffer says this is an exact quote.
It is grace,
nothing but grace that we are allowed to live in community with Christian brethren.
And he’s going to tease out in a few pages here in chapter one a little bit about the costliness of that grace,
that the difficulties of living in Christian community.
He’s not a naive person.
He doesn’t live with rose colored glasses when he reflects on Christian community.
He knows that there’s struggles,
that there’s conflict, that there’s all of the things that happen in church.
And there’s a sense in which this is a convicting theological reality.
In fact, I maybe put myself in the center
of this circle if you find yourself convicted is that sometimes we find ourselves struggling with
church.
We have differing opinions or we prefer we go a different way or we think worship should
be done differently or programs should go a different way or the church is emphasized a different thing.
It can be a struggle to remember that our participation in Christian community, not just church,
but also church, that it’s great.
It’s gift.
It’s been given to us freely by
grace through Jesus Christ.
And so therefore it’s really not for ours to throw away.
It’s not for ours to despise.
The thing that we’ve been given is in itself the thing that Christ intended to give us.
And so therefore our only appropriate response is gratitude is Thanksgiving and humility.
And you know, so there’s even as that is encouraging and inspiring,
it’s also convicting how often we find ourselves on the other line,
other side of that line really despising the
grace that we’ve been given.
Yeah. And I think that is an interesting aspect of this first chapter
that we hear the word community and almost universally think of it as something positive.
Right.
We think of it as a great experience.
The idea that we get to go to church,
we see our friends, we’re connected, we have coffee together.
We have this sense of belonging.
All of that is
legitimately part of community.
But I think it’s important to also understand that for Bonhoeffer,
community is also the crucible in which we’re formed through adversity.
In other words, when we enter Christian community,
that’s also the place where we struggle to love one another,
where we meet people who are different,
where we have our own sinfulness that gets in the way
and is a barrier to relationship.
So community is not only this warm and wonderful thing,
it is also by its nature, a struggle.
We bring our sin to the gift of community that God has given us.
And in that arena,
we wrestle to learn what God wants us to know about how to be rightly
related, both to him and to others.
And I think this is an aspect of community, Michael, that I
don’t think gets much attention in the way that we typically think about it.
No, we tend to not think of Christian community as a responsibility.
We tend to think of it as
a gift given to us.
It is, of course, a gift.
But we tend to emphasize the appreciation of gifts,
and we tend to undervalue the responsibility that comes with them.
And every gift comes
with its own version of responsibility to relationship,
to steward the thing that we’ve been given,
whether that’s physical or relational,
you know,
and what Bonhoeffer does so well is look
with clear eyes, a really sort of concise gaze at the reality of Christian community to say
that it is populated solely by human people and therefore broken people that the community is, by definition,
one that embodies both our best and our worst.
And that’s by design.
You know, I’ve got to confess that,
you know, growing up a Christian,
I very much did have this
image of the Christian community that was very idealized.
I like to think that there could be
somewhere a Christian community that was the A team for Jesus,
you know, sort of the special
operations team that that would,
you know, always be on the right side of the gospel and always
treat each other well.
And I lived with this very naive image of what it even meant to be human.
And as I’ve aged, as I’ve had the privilege to also serve within a Christian community,
you know, I’ve learned that Jesus doesn’t despise who we are.
In fact, he came to die for us.
It’s his grace given to us that enables us to participate in this community that extends beyond just our friend group.
Right. But what that means is that we are each given a responsibility to respond in an
interest and our own preferences.
And that may seem like a small distinction, theologically.
But when lived out,
I mean, it is everything.
It changes everything because the ground shifts
beneath you.
You are no longer the subject of your own life.
You are now a character in God’s story.
You’ve been invited into God’s community.
Well, the rules are now different.
And now the question
is not what do I want,
but God,
show me your will.
Show me the way.
Show me what you call ask of me.
And that’s an entirely different conversation.
Yeah, Bonhoeffer has this wonderful
section in this chapter about community that’s built on a dream or a wish.
And let me just read
a couple of these quotes.
Surely we must be overwhelmed by a great disillusionment with others,
with Christians in general.
And if we’re fortunate, also with ourselves,
by sheer grace, God will not permit us to live even for a brief period in a dream world.
Only the fellowship that faces such disillusionment with all its unhappy and ugly aspects begin to be what it
should be in God’s sight and begins to grasp in faith the promise that is given to it.
Every human wish dream that is injected into Christian community is a hindrance to genuine community
and must be banished if genuine community is to survive.
So when we idealize the church,
when we idealize the family of faith,
we do it a disservice because we are then living in a fantasy world.
When we go to church and then we get offended that someone has said or done something and we leave,
we go, we pick up our stuff and we go to some other church until it happens again,
Bonhoeffer says we’re dealing with our fantasy church,
a fantasy community, but it’s not the real thing.
It is this wish that we have,
but it isn’t reality.
I don’t know how long I’ll get mileage out of this,
maybe the rest of my life,
but my daughter, my oldest daughter recently had their first baby, our first grandchild,
and I couldn’t help but be remembered as I watched them what the shattering of parenting dreams look like.
When you bring your first baby home and you’re going to do everything right and the baby’s going to sleep
and you think, “Oh, it’ll cry a little,
but it’s going to be fun,” and then five days later,
your eyes hurt because they haven’t closed and the baby’s screaming and your ears hurt and you
think, “I had this beautiful image of what parenting was going to be and oh yeah,
it might be a little difficult and I had no idea.” And that’s what Bonhoeffer says,
we have to lose that.
We have to have that taken from us.
We have to be
confronted with our disillusionment so that we can actually be in real community
with real people facing real life together.
And I think that’s inspiring and insightful.
It’s an incredible piece of this chapter.
It very much is.
This is a section in particular
that really grabbed my attention this time through.
And I’ve been looking for the right
word for it and I don’t think that this is it,
so I apologize that I wasn’t able to pinpoint it.
But there’s a kind of scientific mentality that Bonhoeffer is utilizing in his exploration of
Christian community.
Let me explain what I mean by that.
He is very much a hundred percent committed
to the idea that the community is what it is.
It’s not a platonic fictionalized idea of what it
should be or could be.
Those are dreams.
That is something that we’ve latched onto,
but it isn’t.
When Bonhoeffer looks at a community,
he sees all of the people and therefore he sees the good.
He sees this person is a real prayer warrior.
This person has a gift of encouragement.
This person is unbelievably generous with their finances and their gifts.
This person is faithful.
All of those things.
He sees that.
He also sees this person struggles with anger.
This person is addicted.
This person is trying to advance their career at the cost of their family.
All of these different mixed motives,
difficult relationships,
fights over both substantial matters and
non-substantial matters.
All of this is held in view.
When Bonhoeffer sees community,
he’s looking at all of it and he’s not anxious about what it is because he trusts that it is
what it is in Christ and that to whatever extent we are trying to grab it and wrestle it into a
of our own making.
When we try to take church and make it into our church,
we’re actually doing harm to it.
He says here,
“He who loves his dream of a community more than the Christian community
itself becomes a destroyer of the latter,
even though his personal intentions may be ever so
honest and earnest and sacrificial.” In other words,
you may have the best intentions at heart.
Bonhoeffer doesn’t question that,
but he says when we try to take,
even with our best intentions,
this idea of church and force real church into it,
we’re actually stealing from church the life
that it has been given by gift in Jesus Christ.
Yeah,
and here again I think is a wonderful
way in which this functions.
I think very few of us imagine that our frustrations with fellow
Christians are the mirror by which we see our own struggles.
And so Bonhoeffer has this
part where he says,
“The very hour of disillusionment with my brother becomes
incomparably salutary because it teaches me that neither of us can ever live by our own words and
deeds.” So in other words,
I think in the Christian circle we’re very used to critiquing others or
being frustrated by others.
I think what Bonhoeffer invites us to do is understand that those moments of frustration,
“Oh, I hated that hymn,” or “Oh,
that sermon wasn’t good,” or “Boy,
they didn’t do a
very good job with dinner today.” Whatever that is in church,
it is not about the thing we criticize,
it is about how that criticism mirrors for us our own brokenness and how the community provides
a map for us to explore our own lack,
our own unfaithfulness, our own struggles,
our own falling short.
The way that community gives us an opportunity to again and again and
again come back to personal confession,
realizing that it is not about those things that
irritate me or that I criticize,
it is about the spirit in me that leads me to do that.
And I think
again,
as Bonhoeffer describes it,
this is immensely challenging.
The idea of this kind of
community where we come together and we humbly interact with one another,
trying to put our own
stuff behind Jesus and let our connection in the cross guide us, this is inordinately
difficult and profoundly beautiful all at the same time.
We tend to think things can be one
or the other and I very much appreciate the way that Bonhoeffer says,
“No, it’s both.” Yeah, that’s beautifully said.
And it is challenging to become disciples committed to
this kind of work without it becoming moralistic.
And he never descends into some kind of,
“Well, you need to be perfect or expect other people to be perfect or you need to hold yourself
to a standard that is untenable as a human.” Bonhoeffer’s eyes are open and we need to return
to the foundation upon which we experience Christian community.
That is grace.
The reason why we get to be a part of this thing is because we were invited in because Jesus Christ enabled us
by his own gift to participate in this thing that is outside of ourselves.
So as is the case,
any time you receive a gift,
what is the only appropriate response?
Thanksgiving. You give thanks.
And on one hand,
that’s easy.
When you’re a kid and it’s Christmas and you get that thing
you’ve wanted all year,
it’s easy to say,
“Thank you.
Thank you all.
This is why I always
wanted.” It’s another thing to be in the midst of a real community with real people going through
real things and to bump up against each other, to find conflict.
He even mentions in one section
here to see a brother or sister in Christ sinning and then to in the midst of that moment give
thanks to God that you both stand in the grace of God,
that you too stand being judged for the sins
that you have both committed and the things that you have left undone.
So Bonhoeffer sees even in
the most pained aspects of Christian community a place where we practiced gratitude and it follows
theologically.
If it was a gift given,
the only appropriate response is to give thanks,
but sometimes that’s hard.
And the hard moments are the moments of discipleship where we are truly
sharpened, where we find the path forward.
Right.
And the difficulty of this endeavor,
the difficulty and the challenge of this kind of community,
if we understand it properly,
should drive us to the question,
“How couldn’t we possibly do it?” And the answer for Bonhoeffer is, “We can’t.”
God has done it in Jesus Christ and we are invited to participate in it.
And how do we participate in
it?
By loving one another,
by extending to one another that which we’ve received from Jesus.
And as we love one another,
we begin to be able to enact this kind of relationship
with others, this kind of connection,
what Bonhoeffer calls community.
But there is a caution
there because Bonhoeffer points out that there are two ways to love.
There is human love,
and human love is dangerous because it looks like love,
but it’s motivated by self.
We probably all have some experience with a person who could easily say,
“I love you.” And yet,
it is always the arrow pointing back to themselves.
It is about what they get.
They use relationships, they use people,
they use love to acquire,
not to give.
And so we have instead seen in Bonhoeffer gratitude,
thanksgiving,
and love.
These things are outward.
These things flow out.
And so
here he makes a couple of these distinctions.
If you’re following along,
we’re kind of late,
late middle chapter here.
Human love has little regard for the truth.
It continues to desire even when it seems to be serving.
This is the difference between
spiritual and human love.
Human love cannot tolerate the dissolution of a fellowship that
has become false for the sake of a genuine one.
And human love cannot love an enemy.
Both spring from the same source.
Human love is by its very nature desire,
desire for human community.
So as long as it can satisfy the desire in some way,
it will not give it up.
And this is the distinction he makes,
that human love is about what we get out of the community.
Spiritual love is what we bring into the community.
It is outward, other focused instead of self.
This is not new to Bonhoeffer.
This is the historic understanding of sin and love in the Christian tradition.
But to be able to use these words and this language to frame for us the
danger of bringing the wrong intention to community,
the danger of doing the right thing
for the wrong reason,
which makes the community a tool that serves me rather than the community
that serves Christ.
I think this is some of the most difficult part of the chapter and in some
ways maybe the most important.
Yeah, and I do think that there’s a sense in which this insight
has a particular emphasis in modern Christianity,
especially as some of our worshiping traditions
have turned very heavily to very experiential forms of worship,
to very sort of relational
kinds of language, even in some hymns and songs.
We speak very relationally of our connection to
Jesus and then ultimately with the congregation.
And there’s an implication here in that we are,
I think, very tempted to cast the Christian community in the form of the thing that we wish existed.
We wish that there was a utopic kind of paradise where we could go and every week we were
edified, every week we felt good,
every week we were encouraged,
every week we were charged up
and sent out into the world ready to tackle whatever was waiting for us.
The problem is
that is not love for a thing that actually exists.
That’s a love for ourselves and a desire that we
would like to exist,
that we would love for that to be a thing because it would benefit ourselves.
And you know, I don’t want to be unfair.
I mean, I do think that we conceive of it helping other
people too, but that’s the thing with false love is it allows us to convince ourselves it’s in their
best interest when in reality it’s a front for our own.
And so I do think church and Christian
community in the 21st century does need to grapple with what is responsible,
faithful
service to neighbor?
What does it actually look like to go to a place where my expectation
in Christian community is to give more than I receive?
And that’s not just what posts or
responsibilities I volunteer for,
though that’s part of it,
it’s what do I make available to my
brothers and sisters in Christ?
Will I be vulnerable and grow?
Will I offer the gifts
that I have been given?
And there’s a very sort of real and very practical sort of faith devotional
kind of implication to this,
that when you become part of a Christian community,
don’t love it for
what it might be,
but for what it is,
because that is where Jesus Christ is at work in that place.
Yeah,
I think that again,
I think this is one of the deeper sections of this chapter, this idea
of spiritual love that meets others where they are, that loves them,
not even for who they are,
but for who they are in Christ.
They love, we love them because Jesus loves them.
This is spiritual love.
It proves itself in that everything it says and does commends Christ.
Thus,
spiritual love will speak to Christ about a brother more than to a brother about Christ.
And let live.
What he’s saying is that there’s a certain patience and there is this inherent
temptation to try to remake people into what I want them to be,
rather than to trust who they
become to Christ and let him direct them,
even as he also directs me.
And there is this beautiful,
there’s this beautiful summary of this.
Let me read this on page.
In my book, it’s 37.
In other words,
life together under the word will remain sound and healthy only where it
does not form itself into a movement, an order,
a society,
but rather where it understands itself
as being a part of the one holy Catholic Christian church,
where it shares actively and passively in
the sufferings and struggles and promises of the whole church.
So this idea of connectedness
through prayer,
through service,
through gratitude,
and not through uniformity.
And I think that for
Bonhoeffer, this is one of the great gifts he gives us, this challenge,
this exceedingly
difficult,
near impossible idea that to be in the community of Christ is to seek constantly
to be more concerned with others than self,
not to direct them,
not even to direct them toward who
they should be in Christ,
but to love them and release who they become to the Christ who is
guiding all of us to become that right person.
And again, this is probably,
I think,
again, one of the more difficult things to wrap your head around in this chapter,
but Bonhoeffer
paints for us a beautiful and complex picture of what it means to be connected to other Christians.
Yeah, this is, I think,
him saying that in his own words,
within the spiritual community,
there is never nor in any way any immediate relationship of one to another,
where human community expresses a profound elemental human desire for community for immediate contact with other human souls.
Just as in the flesh,
there’s the urge for physical merger with the other flesh,
such desire the human soul seeks a complete fusion of I and thou.
Let’s process that for a second.
So what he’s saying is in Christian community,
we are not bound together immediately,
you and I, it’s not that we are connected to one another directly,
and that we’ve become friends and that
our relationship is the thing that holds us together know that that each of us has an I thou
relationship with the Savior,
Jesus Christ, we’re called by Christ.
Remember that, that thing that we start with that foundational building block,
each of us is given the gift of grace,
and that is given to us directly from Jesus Christ.
So then the measure of one’s love is what do you
want for your neighbor?
Do you want them to be more advantageously related to you?
Do you want them to be warmer or want them to want what you want?
Do you want to even share in some beautiful
sort of commonalities, right?
Is that the goal?
Or is your goal for that person to have the most rich,
the most full and immediate connection that they can have with their Savior,
right?
That is what Bonhoeffer is pointing to is that our prayers shouldn’t be that all of our connections across
the line are strong across the chain,
but rather that each member is connected to the source,
who is Jesus Christ,
that every one of their relationships grows,
so that as we see a fellow
believer growing in their own walk of discipleship,
our prayer for them is,
Lord, may they grow into
you, not that they would go down the path that we think is right,
or that we would hope to see them
take, but rather it’s about their direct connection with the only eye that matters.
And then it’s in
that eye, and this is essential,
he’s not saying it’s sort of all individualized,
it’s that in Christ,
we truly find spiritual fellowship,
a reality which exists outside of us.
When you enter into Christian community, in other words,
it’s not this spiritualized kumbaya kind of idea,
it’s not feel-good feelings.
You are truly transported,
in the spiritual sense,
into a new way of being in relationship with these others,
and the connection that you have to them
is in Jesus Christ.
Let me try to give an example that I think might be helpful,
and hopefully common, in regard to worship.
And I’m not substituting worship for community here,
but I think it’s maybe an easier way to access it.
I would hope at some point,
all of us have had a
moment in worship where we felt particularly inspired.
Maybe it was a beautiful piece of music,
maybe it was an incredible sermon,
but some moment where the kind of awe of what we were doing
and the presence of God felt large to us,
and we were sort of experientially moved.
And I suspect most of us leave those experiences thinking,
“I just wish church could be like that all the time.”
“I wish they had that kind of music.” “I wish that preaching was that way.” “I just wish I could get
that feeling more often.” Conversely,
what we probably haven’t thought is,
“I wish I could learn
to bring that to worship every week.” “I wish I could be that attentive to other parts of worship
the way that I was for that particular moment.” And it is the same here as Bonhoeffer describes community.
It is easy to think,
when he talks about the experience of community,
that it is that moment we get out of it.
And he says, late in the chapter,
“We’ve all had those experiences,
and they are wonderful, they are blessing,
but they are the tip of the iceberg.” Far more often,
the communal life of Christians is a struggle.
It is a process.
It is trying to make one small gain
after another as we learn to live with one another,
as we learn to be gracious to one another,
as we compensate for one another’s various struggles and intricacies and sinfulness.
And as we do that together,
we begin to uncover this precious gift that we’ve already been given.
And yes,
sometimes it is big,
and it is bright,
and it is wonderful.
But far more often,
it is a challenge for us because we keep getting in its way.
Yeah, and I don’t want to underestimate how great of a challenge this is.
I think reading someone like Bonhoeffer,
if you have chosen to get this book and you read it,
his writing ability is astonishing.
And he’s a beautiful writer.
And the temptation is to get
wrapped up in words that are both deep and in their own ways poetic.
But the reality is,
that when we come into Christian community with others,
we’re going to experience the full range
of human life with them.
That’s what Bonhoeffer takes from the idea of incarnation,
the idea of being in Christ, that we will suffer as he did,
that that is to be in Christian community.
We will see the best and worst of ourselves and of others.
And we should spend no time or as little time as
possible dreaming that we could be in a place or that we ourselves could be some idealized
Hollywood version that cannot and will never exist.
But rather,
to show up honestly,
that that’s what we mean by confession,
to tell the truth about ourselves,
that this is who we are right now,
and submit ourselves to the work of Christ leading us forward.
And, you know,
that is
maybe the classic easier said than done.
It is cheap and easy to talk like this.
But then when one is asked today and tomorrow,
and for a week for a month for a year for a lifetime,
to practice what Bonhoeffer is calling us to a community that exists outside of us,
that we’re called to invest
in, when we take that seriously,
as he intends us to, this isn’t metaphor.
He means this as a reality
that should call us out of our present behaviors,
and our present, not ideals,
our present convictions,
and should lead us into a new reality,
that if we take that seriously,
this will be difficult discipleship.
But it is in the process of doing it,
living in Christ, which is the greatest
gift we can be given.
To be church or to be community is something we both are,
and something we are trying to be simultaneously and constantly.
Yes, we come together and we call ourselves
church, we call ourselves community,
but the reality is that is something that we are attempting
to be.
That is a label that describes our goal,
not our current reality.
And as a pastor,
on a fairly regular basis,
I have a conversation with someone who doesn’t have an interest in
church, and they’ll say something like,
“Well, you know,
church just got hypocrites in it,
and there are racist people, and there are selfish people,
and materialist people.” And my answer is usually
along the lines of something like,
“I have been spending 40 to 60 hours a week in church for 30 years.
You don’t know the half of it.
However bad you think we are,
we’re worse.
We’re selfish.
We’re more self-interested.
We can make anything about us.
However frustrating you think the church
can be from the outside,
I promise you,
you don’t know all the story that we know from the inside.”
And yet, the church has these moments where people care for one another,
where people enact Christ to one another,
where we become Jesus to one another,
where we baptize children in the hope
of the gospel promise on their life,
where we serve our community.
We have these moments where
we are constantly inching our way forward to follow Jesus together,
and it is an ugly place at times,
but at other times it is a beautiful place.
And if we understand the nature of it,
the true nature of it,
not the false dream that Bonhoeffer says is really just about what we want,
but the actual reality of people trying to learn to be faithful to Jesus Christ,
then we are in for an incredible experience and a lot of growth.
Yeah, I wonder if you’ve ever had the experience of being reconciled,
that moment of generally
there’s a thing that needs said,
and you come to the person that you need to say it to, and it generally,
at least for me,
it’s always led with,
“I’ve got something I need to confess,
that I’ve done this thing to you,
I’ve said this thing to you,
or about you, or whatever the nature
of the division is.” And it is sheer terror to offer yourself to another person when you say,
“I’m sorry, I legitimately want to express my regret and my apology.” But if you’ve ever done
that, you know that feeling of weight that lifts in the midst of that struggle,
in the midst of
that dark, difficult moment.
And as you just said, Clint,
the beauty in the complicated church
is in the complicated church.
It’s not in the place we’re getting to on the other side of it.
It’s because of practicing reconciliation,
because of practicing grace and humility.
It’s because in the midst of this place,
we’re all broken and imperfect people trying our best to serve
the master.
That because of that relationship,
something beautiful happens in the relationship.
It’s not beautiful because of some wonderful,
idealized version of what we think it should be.
It’s beautiful because of what it is.
That is what Jesus Christ came to create,
is a real human
community in which the spiritual reality is in Christ,
and it’s not based on some affiliation,
or idea, or opinion.
And once again, I just think that that’s a wonderful gift,
but it’s also a call.
It’s also, in some ways,
the
marching orders of the Christian
to show up in community,
willing to give up our assumptions,
and instead be willing to engage it
for what it is.
Yeah, I think during this last year,
hundreds, literally hundreds of times,
we have heard from people that what they missed most was others.
In other words, digital church could provide for them a sense of connectedness,
a sense of remaining in the
community, could provide some sermons and messages and music,
but that simple act of being together
was, I think for most people,
the hardest part to live without,
and the part that is impossible
nearly to substitute without a real sense of connection,
a real sense of community.
And I think Bonhoeffer starts our conversation at a really great place and moves us forward.
I think,
you know,
not surprisingly,
he’s written this book in the perfect order in challenging us
to understand what we mean when we say community before he explores how do we find it and how do we build it.
Friends, thanks for joining us for this conversation.
It is a privilege to get to spend
this time with you.
Hopefully you’ve been encouraged.
Hopefully you’ve learned something,
hopefully maybe even inspired to pick up this book and read along with us.
We’re glad for the
time with you and look forward to our next episode,
which will come out a week from today,
next Wednesday,
and we look forward to seeing you then.
Blessings.
Thanks for listening.