I wrote back in November 2011 that German martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer came to understand that the Christian’s real experience of faith comes as one interacts with society. He was arguing against a German church that shrank from the evil in its land, preferring to not get too involved.
Yet, Bonhoeffer also saw the need, the critical understanding, for the committed, intentional community of faith. His view of the church was not merely of the Universal, Invisible Church to which all Christians belong, nor just some social agency existing to only provide goods or services for those in need. Living at that time when many Germans spied on another, he understood the call for a people to be devoted to one another in a way that demanded trust. Writing in 1943, Bonhoeffer reflected back on the previous 10 years since Hitler had been elected to lead the nation.
There is hardly one of us who has not known what it is to be betrayed. The figure of Judas, which we used to find so difficult to understand, is now fairly familiar to us. The air that we breathe is so polluted by mistrust that it almost chokes us. But where we have broken through the layer of mistrust, we have been able to discover a confidence hitherto undreamed of. Where we trust, we have learnt to put our very lives into the hands of others; in the face of all the different interpretations that have been put on our lives and actions, we have learnt to trust unreservedly. We now know that only such confidence, which is always a venture, though a glad and positive venture, enables us really to live and work. We know that it is most reprehensible to sow and encourage mistrust, and that our duty is rather to foster and strengthen confidence wherever we can. Trust will always be one of the greatest, rarest, and happiest blessings of our life in community, though it can emerge only on the dark background of a necessary mistrust. We have learnt to never trust a scoundrel an inch, but to give ourselves to the trustworthy without reserve.
Immediately after putting Bonhoeffer’s Prison Letters down, I read Paul’s words to the small church in Thessalonica. The connection between Bonhoeffer’s call for devotion and trust, and then Paul’s words about how the local community of faith must live, should be easy to see. I have quoted Eugene Peterson’s paraphrase from The Message because I love some of his phrasings (highlighted below). Take a moment and drink in the Word of God written to a specific church in a specific place.
What would be an adequate thanksgiving to offer God for all the joy we experience before him because of you? We do what we can, praying away, night and day, asking for the bonus of seeing your faces again and doing what we can to help when your faith falters.
May God our Father himself and our Master Jesus clear the road to you! And may the Master pour on the love so it fills your lives and splashes over on everyone around you, just as it does from us to you. May you be infused with strength and purity, filled with confidence in the presence of God our Father when our Master Jesus arrives with all his followers.
One final word, friends. We ask you – urge is more like it – that you keep on doing what we told you to do to please God, not in a dogged religious plod, but in a living, spirited dance.
You know the guidelines we laid out for you from the Master Jesus:
- God wants you to live a pure life. Keep yourselves from sexual promiscuity.
- Learn to appreciate and give dignity to your body, not abusing it, as is so common among those who know nothing of God.
- Don’t run roughshod over the concerns of your brothers and sisters. Their concerns are God’s concerns, and he will take care of them.
- Just love one another! You’re already good at it…keep it up; get better and better at it.
- Stay calm; mind your own business; do your own job.
- We want you living in a way that will command the respect of outsiders, not lying around sponging off your friends.
You’re sons of Light, daughters of Day. We live under wide open skies and know where we stand. So let’s not sleepwalk through life like those others. Let’s keep our eyes open and be smart. People sleep at night and get drunk at night. But not us! Since we’re creatures of Day, let’s act like it. Walk out into the daylight sober, dressed up in faith, love, and the hope of salvation.
So speak encouraging words to one another. Build up hope so you’ll all be together in this, no one left out, no one left behind. I know you’re already doing this; just keep on doing it.
And now, friends, we ask you to honor those leaders who work so hard for you, who have been given the responsibility of urging and guiding you along in your obedience. Overwhelm them with appreciation and love!
- Our counsel is that you warn the freeloaders to get a move on.
- Gently encourage the stragglers, and reach out for the exhausted, pulling them to their feet
- Be patient with each person, attentive to individual needs.
- And be careful that when you get on each other’s nerves you don’t snap at each other.
- Look for the best in each other, and always do your best to bring it out.
- Be cheerful no matter what;
- Pray all the time;
- Thank God no matter what happens. This is the way God wants you who belong to Christ Jesus to live.
- Don’t suppress the Spirit,
- Don’t stifle those who have a word from the Master.
- On the other hand, don’t be gullible. Check out everything, and keep only what’s good. Throw out anything tainted with evil.
Do you see both ideas? Bonhoeffer reminds us that as believers, we have been saved, we have been changed through the love of God. That change allows us to offer a cup of cold water to anyone in need. Christians are meant to be God’s representatives to the world.
And, to accomplish that, we push deeper as Paul urged, to a unity that isn’t drudgery, but rather a “living, spirited dance.” That dance, that love, works itself out into a place where we experience a trust that most people never know.
My prayer for you this day is that God will bring both ideas more firmly into focus in your eyes, that you live your life in a way that others can see You, and builds up the body of Christ in your local church.