Bonhoeffer begins his
penultimate chapter, titled Service, in Life
Together by quoting Luke 9:46, “An argument started among the disciples as
to which of them would be the greatest.” He then writes, “We know who sows this
dissension in the Christian community. But perhaps we do not think enough about
the fact that no Christian community ever comes together without this argument
appearing as a seed of discord. No sooner are people together than they begin
to observe, judge, and classify each other.” Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together, Fortress Press, 2015
(Reader’s Edition), page 69.
Bonhoeffer calls the above a “life
and death struggle” (page 69).
As I look back over my own
life I have much to repent of regarding the above; and I am certain that I have
only seen the tip of the iceberg – thank Jesus for His mercy and forgiveness.
Frankly I could not bear the full unveiling of my pride and vanity and envy and
jealousy – frail as I am, I would turn to dust and the wind would blow my
particles away. It is truly of the Lord’s mercies that I am not consumed.
But His mercies are not only
manifested in His forbearance, they are also glorious in His teaching – for our
Father reveals to build up and form us into the image of His Son. He wounds
that He may heal.
The disciples’ argument about
who would be the greatest was not settled in Luke Chapter 9, we see it again in
Luke 22:24, “And there arose also a dispute among them as to which one of them
was regarded to be greatest.” The tragedy and warning surrounding this
statement is that it arises in the Upper Room during the Passover, when Jesus
institutes the Lord’s Supper and speaks of His death. As Jesus speaks of His
impending holy sacrifice the disciples are caught up in themselves. If we ask, “How
can this be?” we need only look at ourselves – or at any rate, I need only look
at myself.
As Bonhoeffer writes, “We know
who sows this dissension in the Christian community.” Yet, it is I who succumb
to the temptation. The enemy can only offer, the enemy cannot force me to
accept and participate.
This is a life and death
struggle, for while the congregation may continue as an entity, it may be a
divisive entity, or a mediocre entity, or a hardened entity, or a people living
in delusion in order to avoid unpleasantness. The New Testament has much to say
about our unity in Christ, about the way we think about one another, the way
that we treat one another, the role we are to play in one another’s lives. We
are called not just to know others, we are called to allow others to know us –
ah…that can be a problem. We are called not just to serve others, we are called
to allow others to serve us.
There are those who only want
to be served, and there are those who only want to serve and who will not allow
others to wash their feet and refresh their souls. Neither is healthy.
Bonhoeffer thinks that “…from
the first moment two people meet, one begins looking for a competitive position
to assume and hold against the other” (page 69). I’d like to ask Bonhoeffer to
reread this and tell me if he thinks this is true. Yes, I realize he wrote it
but sometimes we write things without thinking them through, sometimes thoughts
are not fully filtered and tested. Sometimes we write things to make a point
and engage in hyperbole – but if the hyperbole isn’t apparent then we do the
reader a disservice for the reader is left asking, “Does he really believe
this?”
While I can’t imagine what
lies beneath the tip of the iceberg in my own life in terms of vanity, I also
can’t imagine living like Bonhoeffer describes in the above sentence. This is
not to say that I haven’t met people and succumbed to competitiveness; it is to
say that if this were the norm in my life that I think life would be miserable
and dark and without meaningful relationships. Thankfully Bonhoeffer will
balance this statement about “the first moment” with an exploration of the
dynamics of service in our life together.
Bonhoeffer points out that in
community we have the strong and weak, the sociable and the loner, the talented
and those without obvious talents, the simple and difficult, the devout and
less devout. He terms arguments concerning who is the greatest as “…the
struggle of natural human beings for self-justification” (page 70). Bonhoeffer
writes that we find our self-justification by comparing ourselves with others
and judging others (page 70).
Because Bonhoeffer treats this
problem in detail we’ll be pondering it in the next few posts. For now let’s
remember that the disciples were arguing about who would be the greatest even
as Jesus prepared to walk to Gethsemane, even as He prepared for the Cross –
let us not deceive ourselves into thinking we are exempt from this temptation,
and let us not think that we are immune from falling into the temptation.
“Do nothing from selfishness
or empty conceit, but with humility of mind regard one another as more important
than yourselves…” Philippians 2:3
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