by Elizabeth | Oct 15, 2010 | Learning Story
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?
by Elizabeth | Oct 14, 2010 | Learning Story
Looking back at it, I jumped the gun yesterday when I brought the question of sin into what does it mean to bear one another’s freedom. In that section, Bonhoeffer was talking about a holy freedom that emphasizes our God-written differences and calls us to walk different paths of holiness and to celebrate one another rather than to compare and compete.
In today’s section, he talks about bearing one another’s freedom t osin. By this, I think he means that we can’t force people out of their sinful choices. But not being able to control other people doesn’t mean we stand idly by as fellow Christians commit murder (yes, sadly, according to Jesus, hating your neighbor because she was mean to your son when he was out selling candy for school counts), gossip (telling stories that are not yours to tell to people who have no need of hearing it), adultery (loving anyone or anything more than our Bride Christ)…and so on — any sin that destroys community. I’d love to hear more comments about how you’ve seen this practically work out in your community. What can it look like for a Christian to bear another’s freedom in sin?
Then, along with the other’s freedom comes the abuse of that freedom in sin, which becomes a burden for Christians in their relationship to one another. The sins of the other are even harder to bear than is their freedom; for in sin, community with God and with each other is broken. Here, because of the other, Christians suffer the breaking of the community with the other established in Jesus Christ.
But here, too, it is only in bearing with the other that the great grace of God becomes fully apparent. Not despising sinners, but being privileged to bear with them, means not having to give them up for lost, being able to accept them and able to preserve community with them through forgiveness. “My friends, if anyone is detected in a transgression, you who have received the Spirit should restore such a one in a spirit of gentleness” (Gal. 6:1).
As Christ bore with us and accepted us as sinners, so we in his community may bear with sinners and accept them into the community of Jesus Christ through the forgiveness of sins. We may suffer the sins of one another; we do not need to judge. That is grace for Christians. For what sin ever occurs in the community that does not lead Christians to examine themselves and condemn themselves for their own lack of faithfulness in prayer and in intercession, for their lack of service to one another in mutual admonition and comforting, indeed, for their own personal sin and lack of spiritual discipline by which they have harmed themselves, the community, and one another?
Because each individual’s sin burdens the whole community and indicts it, the community of faith rejoices amid all the pain inflicted on it by the sin of the other and, in spite of the burden placed on it, rejoices in being deemed worthy of bearing with and forgiving sin. “Behold, you bear with them all and likewise all of them bear with you, and all things are in common, both the good and the bad” (Luther).157 The service of forgiveness is done by one to the other on a daily basis. It occurs without words in intercessory prayer for one another. Bonhoeffer, Life Together
A warning about taking this out of context: Bonhoeffer is not encouraging us to stand idly by when sin breaks community. There is a call to action he discusses. I have known too many Christians who felt it was their duty to suffer stoically because Christ suffered. We will suffer because of our own sin and others’, but we also have a call to move toward restoration and reconciliation. It requires prayers, and when the time is right, words. We’ll look at that tomorrow.
by Elizabeth | Oct 13, 2010 | Learning Story
Today we are back to a topic we have discussed several times in recent months: what does it mean to bear one another’s burdens? I was totally unprepared for how Bonhoeffer explains this. He says to bear another’s burden is to bear their “freedom” given to them by God.
“…it is the freedom of the other, mentioned earlier, that is a burden to Christians.155 The freedom of the other goes against Christians’ high opinions of themselves, and yet they must recognize it. Christians could rid themselves of this burden by not giving other persons their freedom, thus doing violence to the personhood of others and stamping their own image on others. But when Christians allow God to create God’s own image in others, they allow others their own freedom.
Thereby Christians themselves bear the burden of the freedom enjoyed by these other creatures of God. All that we mean by human nature, individuality, and talent is part of the other person’s freedom—as are the other’s weaknesses and peculiarities that so sorely try our patience, and everything that produces the plethora of clashes, differences, and arguments between me and the other. Here, bearing the burden of the other means tolerating the reality of the other’s creation by God—affirming it, and in bearing with it, breaking through to delight in it.” Bonhoeffer, Life Together
This thought forces us to think and pray. What does it mean, Lord, for us to give others their freedom? How does that work when it comes to someone who is sinning and doing harm to themselves, their family, and/or us? I encourage you to think about this as you walk through this day. Think about a person with whom you clash. What would it look like to bear their freedom?
p.s. I’d love to hear your thoughts here!
by Elizabeth | Oct 12, 2010 | Learning Story
Back to service…Bonhoeffer speaks of what it means to “bear with others.” This section is fascinating. Not what I have often thought of when I’ve thought of bearing one another’s burdens. If you’ve never read Life Together, I urge you to read at the very least the chapter on “Service.” I have highlighted almost all of it in my Kindle. Listen to what DB says and think about it. Who is a burden to you? What does it look like to bear with him or her? A few more thoughts tomorrow…
“Third, we speak of the service involved in bearing with others. “Bear one another’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ” (Gal. 6:2). Thus the law of Christ is a law of forbearance. Forbearance means enduring and suffering. The other person is a burden to the Christian, in fact for the Christian most of all. The other person never becomes a burden at all for the pagans. They simply stay clear of every burden the other person may create for them. However, Christians must bear the burden of one another. They must suffer and endure one another. Only as a burden is the other really a brother or sister and not just an object to be controlled. The burden of human beings was even for God so heavy that God had to go to the cross suffering under it.” Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together
by Elizabeth | Oct 11, 2010 | Learning Story
Okay, I admit, that’s a cheesy title, especially given the depth of Bonhoeffer’s words about Christ in community, but I’m a little — shall-we- say — challenged at the moment. I promise to get back to the third piece of service, but today we need this word:
“Christ is depicted as the embodiment both of God and Christians, who are moved to do what, without Christ, they would be unable to accomplish: to live together, sharing faith, hope, and self-giving love in a prayerful, compassionate, caring community. Christ is present in the community as representative of God’s graced outreach to God’s children and the incarnate embodiment of all those who crave in their faith for community with God. The Christ of Life Together is the binding force of that community in its “togetherness,” gracing Christians to go beyond the superficial, often self-centered, relationships of their everyday associations toward a more intimate sense of what it means to be Christ to others, to love others as Christ has loved them.”
Think about it. How does being in Christ and Christ being in you make a difference in the way you relate to community?
by Elizabeth | Oct 9, 2010 | Learning Story
Bonhoeffer’s second essential service:
“The other service one should perform for another person in a Christian community is active helpfulness. To begin with, we have in mind simple assistance in minor, external matters. There are many such things wherever people live together. Nobody is too good for the lowest service. Those who worry about the loss of time entailed by such small, external acts of helpfulness are usually taking their own work too seriously. We must be ready to allow ourselves to be interrupted by God, who will thwart our plans and frustrate our ways time and again, even daily, by sending people across our path with their demands and requests.”
What about you? How do you feel about God’s interruptions? Bonhoeffer wrote in a community of many theologians who often found their “work” in God’s service too important to be interrupted with the daily tasks of life. Some of us need to take note of that.
Others of us may need to look at our service in the smaller tasks and see if we are doing all of them in a way that makes no room for others to serve.
God calls us to serve. Let us look at what it means to serve one another and how we can do that more and more out of love for God.
