Life Together

For Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the Christian community that we call "the church", was not just a theoretical organism, providing fodder for his next book. Christian community, the role of fellowship in one's faith, "the church", was alive and real and vital to his everyday existence. It was not something to be taken for granted, but something that was to be committed to and worked upon daily. It was the living out of our faith. It was our "life together".

Bonhoeffer wrote his two most famous works, The Cost of Discipleship and Life Together, while leading a group of 25 young men at a clandestine seminary in Finkenwald. Having rejected the Nazi regime's call for the church and state to merge by signing the famous Barmen Declaration, (which rejected Nazi ideology and proclaimed Christ alone as sovereign of the Christian's life), Bonhoeffer helped establish what was known as the Confessing Church, an illegal and underground church opposed to Hitler and his twisted ideals. While leading these young students for 2 short years (the seminary was closed by the Nazi's in 1937 and Bonhoeffer was forbidden to write or speak publicly following it's discovery and closure - he would eventually be murdered by the SS at the Flossenburg concentration camp where he had been imprisoned for his part in a successful plan to save Jews from the death camps, and his part in a failed plot to assassinate Hitler), the role of the church, of the community, was one of deepest importance, as they tried to stand apart from what was taking place around them by standing together as one. In Life Together, he gives profound and practical advice for the community of faith.

If Life Together was required reading for every Christian church, and for every Christian, we'd surely be in a lot better shape in most of our churches. If we could somehow, someway, capture the passion for the role of true fellowship, and true community that Bonhoeffer had, I believe our churches would better be what Christ intends them to be. Places of healing. Places of welcome. Places of support. Places of strength. Places of inspiration. Places of love. Places of shalom.

But all too often we hear of the pain inflicted by the community of faith on one another. Too often someone leaves the church because of something a brother or sister in Christ said or did. Too often, our congregational meetings are more like secular town meetings or corporate annual meetings, where the individual's objective seems to be solely to win the argument, or at least to make the "other side" look as foolish as possible. Too often sarcasm and biting comments take the place of humility and respect. Too often we neglect Bonhoeffer's reminder that,

Strong and weak, wise and foolish, gifted or ungifted, pious or impious, the diverse individuals in the community, are no longer incentives for talking and judging and condemning, and thus excuses for self-justification. They are rather cause for rejoicing in one another and serving one another.

In a Christian community everything depends upon whether each individual is an indispensible link in a chain. Only when even the smallest link is securely interlocked is the chain unbreakable.