In the final
movement of his chapter on The Visible Church Community, Bonhoeffer
reminds us that we are strangers in this world on our way to our heavenly Home.
“The Christian community thus lives its own life in the midst of this world,
continually bearing witness in all it is and does that the present form of this
world is passing away (1 Cor. 7:31” (page 232).
“Here on earth,
the church-community lives in a foreign land. It is a colony of strangers far
away from home” (p. 232).
On page 233
Bonhoeffer writes that the church is to be “following only the voice of the one
who has called it.” He says concerning the church, “They look only to their
Lord. He is in heaven, and their life for which they are waiting is in him.”
From the middle
of page 232 through the conclusion of the chapter on page 234, Bonhoeffer cites
no less than twelve Bible verses that speak of our pilgrimage through the world
to heaven, and to how our testimony of Jesus ought to appear.
“Christians are
poor and suffering, hungry and thirsty, gentle, compassionate and peaceable, persecuted
and scorned by the world. Yet it is for their sake alone that the world is
still preserved. They shield the world from God’s judgment of wrath. They
suffer so that the world can still live under God’s forbearance. They are
strangers and sojourners on this earth (Heb. 11:13; 13:14; 1 Peter 1:1).”
Of course, the
question is whether this describes us, the professing church in the United
States, the professing church in the West.
Might we be like
the Laodiceans in thinking, “‘I am rich, and have become wealthy, and have need
of nothing,’ and you do not know that you are wretched and miserable and poor
and blind and naked” (Rev. 3:17)?
Are we a
cruciform people? When the world sees us, does it see a people marked by the
Cross? Carrying the Cross? Suffering with Jesus for others?
Does the world
see us at all? Do we matter? When the world does see us, does it see an
appendage to a political party or a nationalistic agenda? Should the world
notice us, does it see angry people, unmerciful people, people obsessed with
worldviews and economic and political agendas, people aligning themselves with
the economic, political, and religious forces of the antichrist and Babylon
(Rev. chapters 13, 17, 18; 2 Thess. 2:1 – 12)? Are we living as the sheep or
the goats of Matthew 25:31 – 46?
If Jesus is
correct in teaching that out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks, then
what can we say of ourselves? When we gather what do we talk about? If we are
not speaking of Jesus to one another then we ought to tremble and call a fast
and repent (Joel 1:14ff). If we are not serving “the least” of His people (see
Matthew 25:31 – 46), then we ought to confess our sin and change our lives…serving
the disenfranchised, the stranger in the land, the poor, the politically
powerless, the hurting, the fearful, the hungry, the homeless, the sick.
When we stand
before Jesus Christ, none of us will be wearing masks to conceal our identities
– we will not be able to hide who we really are.
Following Jesus
is not easy in the United States. We are bombarded with information, with hype
and spin, with the peer pressure of agendas, with an Imperial Cult of
nationalism, with various cults intent on wrecking our understanding of natural
law, common grace, common sense, and human decency. We have been seduced by pleasure
and comfort and affluence (or the illusion of these things). We worship at the
altars of Wall Street, Hollywood, Nashville, Washington, D.C., Fox News, CNN,
and other media outlets.[1] Our churches have imported
idols into sacred spaces just as ancient Judah brought idols into the Holy
Temple of God; political idols, national idols, economic idols, entertainment
idols, idols of pleasure, religious idols.
It is not easy to
follow Jesus in the United States, it is not easy for a congregation to keep
focused on Jesus, the pressure to entertain, be attractive, to grow
numerically, to grow financially, to measure ourselves by the standards of the
world can be intense. It is difficult for pastors to be faithful when their
churches are more attuned to the above idols than to God’s Word and Jesus
Christ. How hard it is to serve people who have a consumer mentality, or who
have a primarily economic and political mentality. We cannot serve more than
one master (Matthew 6:24) – why do we think we can?
While we ought
not minimize the obstacles to following Jesus as strangers and pilgrims, we should
not fail to confess that if God is for us, who can be against us? (Rom. 8:31).
Let us not
forget that greater is He who is in us, than he who is in the world (1 John 4:4).
Nor that we have been given the Holy Spirit so that we might be Christ’s witnesses
to the end of the age, and that He is always with us (Mt. 28:20; Acts
1:8).
Let us remind
ourselves and one another that we are brothers and sisters in the communion of
saints, joined to those who have gone before us and to one another across the
globe this very day; we are not alone (Hebrews Chapter 11; 12:22 – 24).
Let us also realize
the while all things around us may be shaking, that those things that cannot be
shaken will remain; in fact, the great shaking that we see within and without
the professing church is to reveal the Lord Jesus Christ and the City of God
(Hebrews 11:25 – 29). We ought to soberly realize that “judgment begins with the
house God” (1 Peter 4:17). In Revelation, the Holy City is fully manifested after
great judgments and shakings, after God’s People have proven themselves
faithful to the Lamb through incredible times and judgments and difficulties.
The book of the
prophet Malachi portrays the people of God, the church after returning from
Babylon, as failing to distinguish between the clean and unclean, as offering
to God less than the best, as a covenant-breaking people toward God and in
marriage, with an unfaithful priesthood.
The church was
engaging in sorcery, in sexual promiscuity, they were liars, they did not pay
employees a fair wage, nor did they care for the widow, the orphan, or the
immigrant! They did not fear God. (Malachi 3:5). These people were not faithful
stewards of the resources that God was giving them (Malachi 3:8 – 9).
There were even
those who were saying, “It is vain to serve God; and what profit is it that we
have kept His charge?” (Malachi 3:14). Doesn’t this remind us of our own
approach to church life? We ask, “Where is the profit? Where is the return on
investment? Where is the practical result of this action? What is it in for us?”
We ask these
questions rather than ask, “How shall we follow Jesus? How shall we bear His Cross?
How shall we deny ourselves and serve others?”
Yet we also read
in Malachi:
“Then those who
feared the LORD spoke to one another, and the LORD gave attention and heard it,
and a book of remembrance was written before Him for those who fear the LORD
and esteem His name. ‘They will be Mine,’ says the LORD of hosts, ‘on the day
that I prepare My special treasure [jewels], and I will spare them as a man
spares his own son who serves him’” (Malachi 3:16 – 17).
“But for you who
fear My name, the sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its wings; and
you will go forth and skip about like calves from the stall” (Malachi 4:2).
God has always
had a remnant faithful to Him and committed to each other.
Bonhoeffer wrote
(as quoted above): “Yet it is for their sake alone that the world is still
preserved. They shield the world from God’s judgment of wrath. They suffer so
that the world can still live under God’s forbearance. They are strangers and
sojourners on this earth (Heb. 11:13; 13:14; 1 Peter 1:1).”
Isaiah wrote, “Unless
the LORD of hosts had left us a very small remnant, we would be like Sodom, we
would be like Gomorrah” (Isaiah 1:9).
Shall we live as
a remnant, following the Lamb wherever He goes? Shall our Father prepare us as
His special treasures, His jewels? Shall we live in the Light of the Sun of
Righteousness?
“He who
overcomes will inherit all things, and I will be his God and he will be My son”
(Revelation 21:7).
[1] Lest you misunderstand me,
this is not to say there are not faithful people serving in these centers of
power and influence, but it is to say that the ethos and underlying power in
these centers is opposed to the Lamb (Psalm 2). The powers of this world are
often depicted in the Bible as beasts, even as a combination of beasts, bestial
Frankensteins if you will. They devour those who ride them, who serve them, and
who are in proximity to them.
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