Life Together Chapter 1

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."

Lyrics from track 3 on my new cd

(Thanks, Dad, for the Amazon gift card.)

Revival
By Robin Mark

As sure as gold is precious and the honey sweet
So You love this city and You love these streets
Every child out playing by their own front door
Every baby laying on the bedroom floor
Every dreamer dreaming in their dead-end job
Every driver driving through the rush hour mob
I feel it in my spirit feel it in my bones
You're going to send revival, bring them all back home

I can hear that thunder in the distance
It's like a train on the edge of the town
I can feel the brooding of Your spirit
Lay your burdens down
Lay your burdens down

From the preacher preaching when the well is dry
To the lost soul reaching for a higher high
From the young man working through his hopes and fears
To the widow walking through the veil of tears
Every man and woman, every old and young
Every father's daughter every mother's son
I feel it in my spirit feel it in my bones
You're going to send revival, bring them all back home

Finally...

After only 1 month, I have the internet. I can now post.

So here's what I'm reading from which to draw my unoriginality:
Wanderings: History of the Jews by Chaim Potok
Exodus
Acts

As I read these three books together, I can't help but be overwhelmed by the history of the Jews-- "a kingdom of priests and a holy nation." (Exodus 19:6) You never really hear much about Moses' father, but that doesn't stop Moses from saying, "My father's God was my helper; he saved me from the sword of Pharoah." (18:2) Peter says in Acts, "The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God of our fathers, has glorified his servant Jesus." (3:13) I am reminded of Walter Bruggeman, who says, "In listening, moreover, Israel knows it must cease to listen to the voice of Pharaoh that defined reality in terms of brick quotas. In listening, Israel comes to the startling, dangerous conviction that its life consists not in bricks for the empire, but in acts of neighborliness whereby Israel replicates Exodus for its neighbors." (The Church as Counterculture, p. 45)

Chaim Potok says of this history, "It was a history rich with ideas, hallowed by martyrs, characterized by a familial intimacy with God and a tenacious fixing of the eyes upon the promised future." (p. 2) My prayer devotional Bible says of Acts 1:14, "Waiting is not passively allowing time to pass until the promise comes; it is a vigorous laying hold of what is promised, a living into the future."

The Israelites live continually with one eye upon the past and the other upon the future. They are a people who know where they've come from and where they're going. They live into that future. As Peter says to the crippled beggar, "Silver or gold I do not have, but what I have I give you. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, walk." (Acts 3:6) Walk into the future. Walk with one eye upon the risen man Jesus and one eye upon the promise of new life to come. Walk into a future that is already but not yet. Walter Wink says, "Prayer infuses the air of a time yet to be into the suffocating atmosphere of the present." (The Powers that Be, p. 185)

May we learn from the Jews to be ever aware of our history...our history of a God who says, "Do not be afraid. Stand firm and you will see the deliverance the Lord will bring you today. The Egyptians you see today you will never see again. The Lord will fight for you; you need only to be still." (Exodus 13:13-14) A God who, as Tim Green says, promises a child to a barren woman and land to a nomad. With this God behind us, we can walk with faith as he breaks into the future before us.

Devotions, Schmevotions...or Schdevotions...Schevotions?

With respect to devotions, maybe what we should be telling our children today is something about the story that they're a part of. As they grow in the story, they have a responsibility internalize it. Just as the storyteller of a tribe has a responsibility to learn all the stories correctly to pass them on to the next generation, so the members of the Church have a responsibility to learn their story in order to pass it on. Not only is the responsibility to younger members, but also to older members. My generation has a responsibility to learn the story in the language of my generation--to communicate it to other members of my generation, to younger generations, and also to older generations. We all learn about each other by learning each other's vocabulary. But more importantly the story is reiterated again and again, and so we all learn about the story's main character.

Walter Bruggeman in "Always in the Shadow of the Empire" in The Church as Counterculture explains how the Jews kept their unique identity in the face of oppressive empires at every turn: they told and retold their story. He says of the Exodus account, "there is prescribed wording designed to inculcate the young and to socialize them into this perception of reality" (44). Bruggeman says, "Along with litrugical reiteration, this community accepted rigorous disciplines for the sake of alternative ocmmunity. These disciplines we regularly call commandments or even laws...In listening [to God at Mt. Sinai], Israel comes to the startling, dangerous conviction that its life consists not in bricks for the empire, but in acts of neighborliness whereby Israel replicates Exodus for its neighbors" (44, 45). In telling and retelling their story, the Israelites created a radical alternative community within a society that repressed all such insurrections. In our own society, we are similarly called to see a different reality than the one we are presented with daily, and this is done by allowing ourselves to be transformed by the renewing of our minds.

One way that this story is internalized, is by daily repetition--daily discipline. Or, one could even say, "daily devotions." But not in a "I do this for personal betterment" sense. No, rather in a sense of "I do this as a responsibility to the community that is relying on me to continue the story and also for a community that is enriched by my perspective and experiences." So we begin our own quest to know God through our own life, in the context of a teaching, listening, learning, growing community, which suffers without our input. This way of knowing God is not simply the acquisition of words and facts about God; it is knowledge in the Biblical sense. It is intimacy--an intimacy that changes who we are. For in knowing God and being known by God, we are changed.

Waiting to Exhale

This morning in church we learned that trying to keep the Holy Spirit in is like trying to not exhale after smoking. "The church has waited too long to exhale." This brought to my mind all kinds of images of the implications of verses like "Jesus breathed on them." Really, Jesus let out a puff of smoke on then. Maybe sometimes the Holy Spirit comes out in smoke rings. Pretty funny.

There's more of substance, though. 1 Corinthians 12:7 says "to each is given the manifestation of the spirit for the common good." In Loyalty to God: The Apostles' Creed in Life and Liturgy,Theodore Jennings says, "It is not in our devotions, nor in our worship that we are promised the presence of Jesus, but rather in the carrying on of his mission."

Our pastor told a story of a Dutch preacher and his family who were taken prisoner during WWII. They were transported on cattle cars to what they assumed would be a Nazi death camp. When the car stopped and the doors were opened, before them was not a death camp, but the mountains of Switzerland. Someone had switched the lines and saved their lives. Their lives had moved from constant fear to certain death and then to freedom. As they stood there, the Dutch preacher asked, "What do you do with such a gift?"

You exhale, I guess. You breathe on everyone around you. Dan Boone writes, "We never receive the Spirit for ourselves alone, to be our private possession. The Holy Spirit is always the Spirit of mission. The Spirit is making all things new, and by the gift of the Spirit we participate in this newness. The Spirit is not for private, interior experience, but for energy to be sent into the world on the mission of God."

So we go, with our manifestation of the Spirit for the common good, and we do. That's where Jesus is present.