Bonhoeffer calls the time
between our gatherings as believers “times of testing” (italics his).
He writes that our time away from the Christian community is “the proving
ground” of our personal time of meditation as well as of our community. He
then asks what he terms “serious questions”:
“Has the community served to
make individuals free, strong, and mature, or has it made them insecure and
dependent? Has it taken them by the hand for a while so that they would learn
again to walk by themselves, or has it made them anxious and unsure?” Dietrich
Bonhoeffer, Life Together, Fortress
Press, 2015 (Reader’s Edition), pages 65 - 66.
Bonhoeffer is asking whether
our Christian gatherings and meditations are more flights of fancy than
substance, and whether or not they prepare us for the world around us, the
world in which most people live and the world in which most of us practice our
vocations.
“Has it transported them for a
few moments into a spiritual ecstasy that vanishes when everyday life returns,
or has it planted the Word of God so soberly and so deeply in their heart that
it holds and sustains them all day long, leading them to active love, to
obedience, to good works? (page 66).”
If the measure of our
gatherings, of our Sunday worship services, of our Bible studies, of our small
groups – if the measure of these things is the way we live in the world then
what does the yardstick tell us? Is the invisible presence of the Christian
community with us? Are we with the community? Do we live with an awareness of
the Body of Christ? Does the Word of God pulsate in our hearts and minds and
souls throughout the day? Are our decisions and actions and ponderings animated
by the Holy Spirit and the Word of God?
Do we live in insecurity when
we are physically away from the Body of Christ? Are we displaying a “free,
strong, and secure” witness to the world?
Bonhoeffer is not interested
in us gathering together so that we can all feel good and then go out into the
world incognito; he insists that we encounter the Word of God in our gatherings
and in our personal meditations, and that we then take that Word into the world
in the form of our lives. If the Word is not forming our lives in the world
then we must ask whether it is forming our lives when we gather – and the
answer must be a frank “no” – the Word does not form us one minute and then dissipate
within us the next. To “taste” the powers of the age to come (Hebrews 6:5) is
not the same as living in the powers of the age to come. Just as there can be a
cheap confession that does not lead to salvation because it is devoid of
repentance and the Cross of Christ, so can there be a cheap religious experience
that does not entail the Cross of Christ and submission to the Word of God.
Perhaps we have come to the
place where the church is either an amusement park or a group therapy session.
Bonhoeffer writes to a church
in the midst of political, social, and military upheaval. He writes to a church
which is selling its soul to the enemy amid pragmatic justifications. Today we
live in political, social, and military upheaval – but we think we are
different. Such thinking is a mistake.
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