Bonhoeffer names the fourth service Christians offer one another to be “the service of the word.” He brings this last because whenever we speak the Word to one another, it must flow out of the other three acts of service: listening, helpfulness, and bearing with others. Read what he says and imagine offering the Word to a fellow sinner coming from a standpoint of humility and the full knowledge that you (I) am the chief sinner. Do you think the Word can minister to a broken sinner’s heart? If so, how? What dangers do you see?
Wherever the service of listening, active helpfulness, and bearing with others is being faithfully performed, the ultimate and highest ministry can also be offered, the service of the Word of God.
This word is threatened all about by endless dangers. If proper listening does not precede it, how can it really be the right word for the other? If it is contradicted by one’s own lack of active helpfulness, how can it be a credible and truthful word? If it does not flow from the act of bearing with others, but from impatience and the spirit of violence against others, how can it be the liberating and healing word? On the contrary, the person who has really listened, served, and patiently borne with others is the very one who can easily stop talking. A deep distrust of everything that is merely words often stifles a personal word to another Christian. What can a powerless human word accomplish for others? Why add to the empty talk? Are we, like those experienced spiritual “experts,” to talk past the real needs of the other person?
