I'm reading Life Together by Dietrich Bonhoeffer. If you don't know, the dude was intense. Tons of people wanted him to stay safe, so he could continue his writing, but he chose to return to his home in Nazi Germany because he felt like that's where God was calling him to go. He was put in a concentration camp and shot less than a month before the Germans surrendered to the Allies. So when he talks about Life Together, he's serious. He says some great things I wanted to share with you. Here are some of the highlights of the first chapter.
We have community through and in Jesus Christ.
That's what it's all about. Nothing more than a bunch of people seeking to follow a man who lived in Galilee a long time ago. Nothing less than a bunch of people seeking to give away their lives in service to the creator of the universe, through whom nothing is impossible. Above all, this is what we have in common: lives that have been and are being redeemed. "Not what a man is in himself as a Christian, his spirituality and piety, constitutes the basis of our community. What determines our brotherhood is what that man is by reason of Christ. Our community with one another consists solely in what Christ has done to both of us."
Because this is who we are (nothing more, nothing less), "we thank God for what He has done for us. We thank God for giving us brethren who live by His call, by His forgiveness, and His promise...And is not what has been given us enough: brothers, who will go on living with us through sin and need under the blessing of His grace?...Even when sin and misunderstanding burden the communal life, is not the sinning brother still a brother, with whom I, too, stand under the Word of Christ?"
Our community is not a collection of people who have shared hobbies or habits; it is a community of people who stand under the Word of Christ even when it's hard or uncomfortable - for us or for the people who have to put up with us.
And "If we do not give thanks daily for the Christian fellowship in which we have been placed, even where there is no great experience, no discoverable riches, but much weakness, small faith, and difficulty; if on the contrary, we only keep complaining to God that everything is so paltry and petty, so far from what we expected, then we hinder God from letting our fellowship grow according to the measure and riches which are there for us all in Jesus Christ."
This community is not an ideal but a divine reality.
This isn't something we come up with in our heads. In fact, Bonhoeffer says that is the greatest danger, "the danger of confusing Christian brotherhood with some wishful idea of religious fellowship, of confounding the natural desire of the devout heart for community with the spiritual reality of Christian brotherhood."
He goes on to say, "Innumerable times a whole Christian community has broken down because it had sprung from a wish dream. The serious Christian, set down for the first time in a Christian community, is likely to bring with him a very definite idea of what Christian life together should be and to try to realize it. But God's grace speedily shatters such dreams. Just as surely as God desires to lead us to a knowledge of genuine Christian fellowship, so surely must we be overwhelmed by a great disillusionment with others, with Christians in general, and, if we are fortunate, with ourselves...Only that fellowship which faces such disillusionment, with all its unhappy and ugly aspects, begins to be what it should be in God's sight, begins to grasp in faith the promise that is given to it. The sooner this shock of disillusionment comes to an individual and to a community the better for both."
We're not called to live in a place that is not real. Maybe by its very realness, we learn to live the life that God is calling us to - even when we are outside of the church where selfishness, insincerity, divisiveness, gossip, slander, backstabbing, etc. abound.
The difference between what's happening outside the church and inside is the presence of God. Not to say that God is not present outside the church, but there is something powerful that happens when even two or three people are gathered together seeking God. "Christian brotherhood is not an ideal which we must realize; it is rather a reality created by God in Christ in which we may participate."
This community is not a human but a spiritual reality.
Sometimes that is hard. We - in good faith - really want to help people. But, we in our humanness simply cannot save others:
"As only Christ can speak to me in such a way that I may be saved, so others, too, can be saved only by Christ himself. This means that I must release the other person from every attempt of mine to regulate, coerce, and dominate him with my love. The other person needs to retain his independence of me; to be loved for what he is, as one for whom Christ became man, died, and rose again, for whom Christ bought forgiveness of sins and eternal life...[Spiritual love] will not seek to move others by all too personal, direct influence, by impure interference in the life of another...It will rather meet the other person with the clear Word of God and be reay to leave him alone with this Word for a long time, willing to release him again in order that Christ may deal with him."
And so we are called to pray for one another: "Thus this spiritual love will speak to Christ about a brother more than to a brother about Christ." How difficult is that?
Conclusion
"There is probably no Christian to whom God has not given the uplifting experience of genuine Christian community at least once in his life. But in this world such experiences can be no more than a gracious extra beyond the daily bread of Christian community life. We have no claim upon such experiences, and we do not live with other Christians for the sake of acquiring them. It is not the experience of Christian brotherhood that holds us together, but solid and certain faith in brotherhood that holds us together. That God has acted and wants to act upon us all, this we see in faith as God's greatest gift, this makes us glad and happy, but it also makes us ready to forego all such experiences when God at times does not grant them. We are bound together by faith, not experience."
