Bonhoeffer’s Discipleship Part II – Reflections (20)

 

 

“Wherever one member happens to be, whatever one member happens to do, it always takes place ‘within the body,’ within the church-community, ‘in Christ’” (page 216).

 

Bonhoeffer follows the above with brief comments on the following Scriptures: Phil. 4:13; 2 Cor. 13:4; Rom. 16:9, 12; 1 Cor. 15:58; Phil. 4:4; 2 Cor. 2:17; Phil. 2:1; Rom. 16:2; 1 Cor. 7:39; Phil. 1:13, 23; 1 Cor. 7:22. (I hope we see how Scripture is embedded in Bonhoeffer and how Bonhoeffer is embedded in Scripture.)

 

Then he writes, “The whole breath of human relationships among Christians is encompassed by Christ, by the church-community” (page 216).

 

(The more I ponder Part 2 of Discipleship, the more convinced I am of the benefit of reading Bonhoeffer’s Life Together alongside it, for in Life Together Bonhoeffer succinctly lays out the foundational principles and actions for sharing daily life in Christ.)

 

On page 216 Bonhoeffer tells us that all members of the Body of Christ ought to participate in all facets of life together, not just in communal worship. He writes that if we limit the participation of others, the sharing of others in our communal life, that we sin against the body of Christ, we sin against our Lord Jesus. We are to share our daily lives with one another, and sharing our daily lives means sharing our resources.

 

“To deny them [those in need] the provisions necessary for this earthly life, or to leave them knowingly in affliction and distress, is to make a mockery of the gift of salvation and to behave like a liar. When the Holy Spirit has spoken, but we still continue to listen to the voice of our race, our nature, or our sympathies and antipathies, we are profaning the sacrament” (pages 216-217, italics mine).

 

How does Bonhoeffer challenge us? How should he challenge us? How should Scripture challenge us?

 

Let me suggest that sharing our resources entails more than simply material goods and money. While money and material goods are an integral part of our resources, there are other critical resources as well, resources which can only be shared through relationships. These are the resources of life experience and knowledge.

 

Some of us have been exposed to areas of life which are foreign to others, I’ll take banking and financial management as an example. Most of you reading this think nothing of walking into a bank to open an account, yet we have many brothers and sisters in our own land who have never been inside a bank, or are intimated by the thought of going to a bank to open an account or deal with a problem. When they need to pay a bill with other than cash, they often go to a convenience store to purchase a money order.

 

We also have brothers and sisters who fall victim to predatory lending practices because they don’t know any better.

 

When I was in property management, I sadly saw instances of predatory landlords who intimated their tenants, employing unlawful and unenforceable policies which the tenants accepted because they didn’t know any better. Had the tenants been acquainted with the world that many of us live in, they would have known that the policies and practices were likely illegal.

 

We ought to all learn from one another, everyone has something to teach the rest of us; walls of separation stifle the glory of the Body of Christ.

 

Biblical church-community is more than a weekly, or twice weekly, gathering. Also, while it ought to certainly be in the context of a local congregation, it must go beyond the local congregation into the town or city, region, country, and world – we ought to be a “church without borders,” a church without national borders, denominational borders, economic and sociological borders, racial and ethnic borders; in Jesus Christ we are One People, One Church, One Temple; Christ has One Body and only One Body. We ought not to accept anything less…and yet we not only accept it, when pressed we justify it.

 

Living in church-community must be more than what we think of as worship gatherings, it must be a shared way of life in Christ. One toxic result of our failure to live in the community which Christ offers us is that we find our identity elsewhere: in political movements, national movements, economic and social movements, and in so much more. The current situation in the United States bears testimony to this, the church has no distinct testimony, no “space” as Bonhoeffer terms it, we cannot be identified with Jesus Christ as a heavenly people, we are not living in communion with one another. Our brothers and sisters come to us for refuge, and we either politically participate in their violent rejection and expulsion, or we quietly acquiesce. Those of us who do attempt to help the “stranger” according to Biblical commands, are overwhelmed with opposition within and without the professing church.

 

Bonhoeffer writes within the milieu of Christian nationalism, let us not forget that. Are we profaning the sacrament?

 

On pages 217 and 218 Bonhoeffer explores in detail Paul’s letter to Philemon. I am not going to work through Bonhoeffer’s thoughtful analysis of Philemon, I hope you will do that on your own. Here is a quote from that section, “We see each other exclusively as members of the body of Christ, that is, as all being one in him,” (page 218).

 

“The church-community can never consent to any restrictions of its service of love and compassion toward other human beings. For wherever there is a brother or sister, there Christ’s own body is present; and wherever Christ’s body is present, his church-community is always present, which means I must also be present there” (pp. 218 – 219).

 

O dear friends, we must be the Body of Christ before we are anything else. We are, after all, citizens of heaven (Phil. 3:20).