Hello friends, welcome back to the Pastor Talk podcast.
We are now well into the
midst of our series on life together,
reading together, exploring together D-trick Bonhoeffer’s small,
but yet very influential and deeply packed book.
Of course, if you continue to want to do that study with us,
if you’re just joining us, you’ll find a link to pick up that book in the description of the
video, but you don’t need to read it to be part of the conversation.
Every chapter focuses on a different aspect of life together, of Christian community,
and you know the chapter that we’re looking at this week is called The Day
Alone, which is in Bonhoeffer’s unique voice,
a beautiful and unexpected
term, because when you think about Christian community,
you think of being
with others, but now as we turn to this third chapter,
Bonhoeffer is going to
focus on what it means to not be with others,
and how it’s actually important
to recognize that time away exists for the purpose to be with,
and so we’re going to explore a little bit of what he lays out for us in that,
and why that’s significant.
It’s interesting, this is the shortest chapter in the book in some ways,
maybe the most challenging,
and perhaps that’s a measure of one’s
personality, but I think they’re in this chapter,
just even in this first
couple pages, there are some profound quotes,
some profound ideas that challenge us,
and the idea is,
you know, that even community,
even the act of
community can be false,
it can be something that we make about us,
we’ve seen that in other chapters,
we’ve seen that throughout this book,
but that here
we are being warned that we can,
if we’re not careful,
use community as a
protection, as a barrier against self-reflection,
against self-assessment,
against personal growth, if we are inclined not to do those things,
we can hide from them in the what looks like relationship with other people,
but is false by its very nature,
because it is a misuse of community and not an actual
practice of true community.
I think this is a very compelling chapter.
I agree with you that I think that this chapter is maybe even more
difficult than the ones that have come before,
and I think part of that is
because how quickly it moves to application,
how easy it is to see ourselves in it,
and this exists in the Christian community writ large.
There is this ongoing temptation to bring an image of ourselves to community
that is not actually who we are,
or that doesn’t take the community itself for
granted.
I think some examples of that are folks who find it really easy to
help others, you know, we ask for meals,
those people sign up every time.
When it’s time for them to receive a meal,
their family’s in need,
they have a hard time receiving it.
There’s other people who sort of exist in the social circle
of the church, they’re always sort of pulling or pushing or all those sorts of
things, but there are sometimes in the Christian community when the social
aspect is not the most important,
when there’s other aspects of the life
together, and in those moments sometimes the socially inclined miss the more
important thing for the thing that comes more naturally.
I think that’s especially
true for extroverts.
There’s a sense in which the aloneness of Christian life
enables us to evaluate and see the greater purpose of togetherness,
and the thing that makes that so difficult is it does require both a humble,
and I think even more than humble,
I think the brave and courageous ability to ask ourselves
some deeper questions of motivations,
and if we are going to take seriously,
as Bonhoeffer does, the reality of original sin,
how deep our inward turdness really is,
then we’re going to have to grapple with the fact that we are not only
tempted to make community something other than what it was,
that would be last week’s chapter,
but we’re also tempted to make ourselves more or less
important in that community,
to let our motivations become twisted,
and the only way to ferret that out is to intentionally and carefully use our time
away from community so that we are prepared to enter into the real
community that exists in Christ when we have that opportunity.
I think that he
gives us some very helpful directions right on the front end of this chapter
by pointing us to the idea that whatever makes us uncomfortable is probably where
our challenge and therefore our growth lies,
and so he has these twin sentences,
“Let him who cannot be alone beware of community,
let him who is not in
community beware of being alone,” and so if I am by nature distant from the community,
I need to be suspicious of my aloneness because I’m probably using it
to hide.
I may be using it because it is a comfort to me to avoid real
relationships with people, to avoid real risks,
to avoid stepping out and
actually partnering with another person,
a brother or sister in Christ,
in,
as the book is titled, life together.
However,
if I am that person who seeks those connections,
then I have to be aware that I may use community,
I may use busyness
and the lives of others to keep me from addressing the loneliness in my own
heart, and what I appreciate about Bonhoeffer is the picture he paints,
that true Christian life lives through whichever valley is most difficult to travel.
If that is a struggle to communicate and connect with others,
then that is the challenge we must face in order to understand Christian community.
However,
if the challenge is being alone,
being with self,
then that is the
challenge.
That’s the valley we must navigate so that we can bring our true
Christian self into relationship with others and not be a stranger to them
because ultimately we’re a stranger even to ourselves.
It is very easy and a core
human temptation to make other people paradigms or symbols of our own life.
It is so easy to invest into others and into community,
a meaning that we would
like to have but that we don’t have.
And the only way to really truly ferret that
out is to honestly and courageously do the internal work to ask ourselves
motivation to see where our thoughts and heart and intent drive us.
And you know, I think what Bonhoeffer speaks to very on in this chapter with these dual ideas,
the idea that community and individual,
that these two things are not opposites,
that they hold each other in tension,
that they’re both and even though
they stand with that tension between them.
You know, I think that he’s speaking
to a thing that the church needs to both rediscover and re-communicate because
far too often the Christian church has emphasized either eternal bliss,
heavenly-minded sort of ideas,
or we’ve communicated all moralism and you
need to do this or you need to do that.
Bonhoeffer is essentially making the
point that the only way to be truly human is to live in the midst of these
two things in both community and in the midst of individual relationship with
God, that these two things need to be combined because it is in the
interworking between those two,
this beautiful mysterious kind of dance
between these two things,
that we discover the full richness of God’s
intention for who we should be as God’s beloved.
And that is essential because
it’s not moralism, it’s not just you need to do it because that’s the right thing
to do and if you don’t do it there’s judgment waiting for you on the other side.
No, it’s that if you don’t find yourself in Christian community,
if you’re one of those who identifies with the idea of being a religious but not
Christian or not in an institution,
then you may be fundamentally missing one of
your core needs to be human,
that you may be missing what God intends for you as
creator and that’s what Bonhoeffer speaks to,
that there’s more to this
equation than what we often speak of and we need to find ways to hold them
together or we’re inevitably going to miss part of the richness that awaits us.
I think one of the things that could be missed in this chapter and one of the
things I appreciate about Bonhoeffer’s insight is that it would be easy to read
this through a psychological lens and to think he’s talking about introvert or
extrovert and that is not,
I think that’s not an apt description,
this is spirituality and so what he is describing instead is that a life lived
in Christ must make room for both.
It’s not that we either are this or are this,
it’s that both of those are tools that we must use in order to grow in Christ
and grow in connection in Christ and so I think it’s, you know,
very helpful, this idea and particularly in our culture,
in the American modern world,
post-modern world, however you want to talk about it, we are busy.
We are, our days are filled with noise,
with tweets,
with phone, with Facebook, with stuff, our calendars are stacked.
As we go back into kind of a normal pattern of the world,
we see how quickly all of those things begin to fill up our days again and what what I
think Bonhoeffer offers us is that we need to be able to detach and and the
introvert is not free from this.
The introvert may be at home but they may be reading,
they may be watching TV.
These are all things that in and of
themselves are not bad but they can be used to hide,
they can be used not to
face what we’re truly feeling,
not to face the brokenness of our own souls,
the struggles of our own life or we may use the busyness to do that and so I think
Bonhoeffer shows great wisdom in saying that you may be prone to hide in a
different place but all of us are prone to hide from the reality of self and the
reality of self is essential if we want to be able to have a real experience of
community and if we want to bring ourselves into real relationship with others.
So you mentioned that looking at this through the lens of introvert and
extrovert may not be the most helpful frame.
I think evidence to your point
comes in the sort of second page,
third page of this chapter.
He moves from talking about the idea of individual and community which would fit that sort of
idea then he begins talking about speech and silence and this is evidence that
he’s pointing us towards a more spiritual understanding of the matter
because now we’re moving our posture into very deep Reformed theological
heritage.
The idea of speech and the idea of silence both you know lives very
deeply in that Christian idea of Jesus Christ being the word capital W and the
idea of proclamation and the idea of what the Christian both reads and says
and then also what the Christian hears in the midst of silence and that
distinction that he makes to say that the distinction we see between individual
and community is the same that we find in silence in speech I think is very
instructive because what it asks us is to what extent do we intentionally live
with both of those in our lives.
We sometimes think of some being great with
words and others not being so great with words.
That’s not what Bonhoeffer is
talking about.
It’s not about whether you like talking or not.
It’s do you
personally and intentionally practice moments of silence and do you personally
and practically practice moments of speech, of prayer,
of encouragement, of upbuilding.
You know that there are intentional practices that Christians
have encouraged and have taught for hundreds thousands of years that we
could avail ourselves of and I think if we’re honest most of us are going to
find one or two of these practices lacking.
I think it is telling that the
great spiritualists of the past are our fathers and mothers in the faith who we
think of as particularly good at navigating the spiritual life all have
something to say about silence and the way that we speak about not saying
something until we have something to say about measuring our words about not
filling up empty spaces with empty words and empty sounds and that that
ability to withdraw from speech to withdraw even from the world that there
is that sense of spirituality that is a stepping back both internally and
externally as we turn instead to God and as we turn from the noise around us
and the noise within us and we seek that quiet place however having found that
quiet place we come back with a word to say a word of gratitude a word of prayer
a word of encouragement I think most of us are tempted with the idea that we can
get the word before we get the withdrawal the silence we’re tempted to
rush ahead with words without having done that harder thing of pausing and
stopping and being still stillness is the the quality most often associated I
think with with silence and again Bonhoeffer is no different in that regard
than most of the great spiritualists that there is a time to speak but that
time is the fruit of meditation that that speech is the fruit that is
nurtured in silence and in solitude and in reflection and that both matter but
one tends to produce the other and and it is I join I think most people in
getting that wrong often well let’s maybe be honest about the severity of
the temptation right we have always had temptations for our time I mean in fact
you know throughout history there’s been all of the sort of Christian lessons
even about the things that clamor for our attention and what’s fascinating is
if you look at the rise of modernity and the continued sort of march of
technology into our lives silence is the thing that technology has worked most
effectively to get rid of there’s really no place that exists in which
silence is necessary anymore how many of us it used to be you just maybe turn on
the radio in your car which is fine but now you can be listening to podcasts
literally when you’re walking into work you can be watching YouTube videos while
you’re doing your expense reports you can be watching TV while you cook your
food because there’s a TV in your kitchen that we have allowed noise to
fill our lives in almost every corner and one of the reasons I think why
that’s so tempting is because it’s in the midst of silence that we do face
that much deeper and stronger and in some ways maybe even a little scary
presence of a God who’s beyond us silence can be scary and you know Bonhoeffer
makes it clear that silence is an important part of hearing the Word of
God though you might not be speaking and though you might not even be hearing the
word read encountering God in the moment of silence is a way in which we
as humans practice the awareness that there’s more in the world than just the
things that we hear and I think that’s a beautiful idea but if you’re going to
allow that idea to translate it into practice in your life if you’re gonna
allow that idea to shape you which Bonhoeffer intends for it to do it’s
gonna require both commitment and practice he says here the silence of the
Christian is a listening and humble stillness a listening silence and a
humble stillness and and again I think there’s great wisdom that in that as a
person who on regular occasion tries to preach the preaching life is an
interesting experiment in this kind of waiting this ability to be patient to
listen one encounters a text on say Monday of the week that you’re going to
preach and there’s nothing in it and and you can’t make something be in it so you
sit with it you read it you pray over it you wait to see if a word comes out of
it you do the same thing on Tuesday you do you can’t make it happen one has to
simply wait until a word is given and that ability and that willness even that
desire to sit in the discomfort of waiting is is foreign to most of us it
is a struggle to most of us and yet I think Bonhoeffer again shows us in this
book in in his words it is a necessary skill to learn if one is going to seek
to grow spiritually you cannot make God speak you can only humbly wait on that
and that is often best done in silence and solitude not exclusively there are
words that you hear in service there are words that you hear in prayer there are
words that you hear in singing but more often than not perhaps the deepest words
that we need to hear we hear in those moments that we set apart and wait for
them and so as he goes he wants to lay out for us some of the practices that
should be a part of our day alone the the things that we intentionally pursue
on our own so that we can be formed and ready for participation in the community
and one of them that he mentions right off the bat is meditation and what
makes meditation as he describes it so interesting at least I found it
interesting was how in many ways this is the thing that we probably think of as
devotion that we have become so accustomed to the idea that when we open
the Bible we should do so with the idea that God has something to say to us that
that’s really maybe even exclusively what we think of studying the scriptures
maybe we think of it sometimes to learn new things but most often we’re thinking
what does God have to say to me when Bonhoeffer talks about meditation he
wants to make it clear that not only in the day together when we’re reading
scripture when we’re studying together when we’re praying the prayers that
others are praying that that is a form of inclusion in the community that we
should also have time set aside when we come to the scriptures when we
participate in prayer that is for the sole purpose of asking God what do you
have to say to me what formation do you have for me what challenge do you have
for me and the temptation then in turning to that might be that we bring
our assumptions as to what that means and I think if we can try to put some of
those assumptions away Bonhoeffer is some very interesting things in here to
encourage us to reframe our understanding of what means to meditate
on God’s word yes really interesting on one hand you see Bonhoeffer’s work as a
pastor his role as a pastor come through you know this this short section on
meditation has a word to pastors for the preacher this means not asking how this
text could be taught or preached and again as a person who lives under the
schedule of occasionally or regularly preaching it is a monumental struggle
to read the scripture as scripture itself and not part of an extension of
the work that I have to do or that we have to do this is a monstrous
temptation for the pastor who is always somewhat desperately looking for a
sermon and anytime one opens the Bible wondering is this a sermon and so
Bonhoeffer’s word to those who preach regularly that they should treat the
text just simply as the text and listen in it not for a sermon but for a
personal word that’s outstanding the other thing I appreciate about this
section which permeates all three of these conversations he has for us in this
chapter is the kind of discipline that he presents he says here we shouldn’t
come to the scripture that with the idea that we’re going to find something new
nor should we come with the idea that it’s going to say something unexpected
and extraordinary that there is a kind of there is a kind of slogging it out at
times in the spiritual life and I think Bonhoeffer’s very conscious of that I
think he not only gives permission for that but he he warns us that it’s going
to happen and yes often is the time we’re going to hear a word directly from
scripture and in our meditation it’s going to speak to us it’s he says it
here there there will be words that are made large upon our heart but there will
also be moments where we read and we don’t feel that and yet Bonhoeffer says
it is important that we continue in those moments to pursue the discipline
of meditation because ultimately it’s not about what we get out of it is about
what we bring to it and building that pattern into our life which gives us
more opportunity to hear what God would would have us know so Bonhoeffer can
sometimes hide just unbelievably challenging sentences in what is
otherwise just well-written prose and here’s an example we’re looking at this
challenge that we sometimes have an encountering God in our meditation in
scripture sometimes it is just hard the text is hard you know it is ancient or
it feels difficult to understand sometimes the idea just doesn’t speak to
our meditation is to say I’m struggling to do this meditation it’s hard because
it’s older because it’s not easily applicable or there’s something about it
that is difficult listen to this this is what he writes it’s here that our old
vanity and our our illicit claims upon God may creep in by a pious detour as if
it were our right to have nothing but elevating and fruitful experiences and
if the discovery of our own inner poverty were quite below our dignity
this is beautiful prose but if you hear what he’s saying he’s saying maybe the
problem isn’t that it’s hard to read the text or that it isn’t directly
applicable to you maybe the problem is that you have come under the unfortunate
assumption that God owes you uplifting experiences every time you come to the
text or maybe you’ve come to believe that God in some way is responsible to
make it interesting for you and that you shouldn’t instead be discovering your own
human lack of concentration your own human lack of will and willingness to go
through difficult seasons of the text not making sense or not feeling
applicable or not having a spiritual high I don’t want to sound too
challenging but I do want to make it clear Bonhoeffer is making a
challenging statement we shouldn’t miss that there are times when we come to
devotion that we want God to serve us and not for us to serve God and when
that equation gets flipped as Bonhoeffer’s pointing to here then we
need some correction there’s a real simplicity and a real honesty here you
know we should read the scripture as people of faith we should turn regularly
to scripture and there are times that’s going to be a great deep spiritual
blessing and there are times it is not and we should do it anyway and Bonhoeffer
with incredible amount of intellect and insight is able to take something as
simple as that and and put it before us in a way that is challenging it is
encouraging it is helpful from meditation you know we turn to prayer
the same kind of things are said that the scripture leads us to prayer prayer
means nothing else but the readiness and willingness to receive and appropriate
the word so in in our prayers having been fed with scripture we now turn
ourselves to listen again for God and notice that it is not primarily getting
our words to God that Bonhoeffer conceives of as the goal of prayer but
to receive and appropriate God’s word to us so prayer is not simply from us to
God it is that mutual street on which our words go to God and God’s word comes
back to us and it is in part it is in service to the larger goals of our
Christian life that we turn to prayer and we do that both corporately and
equally as importantly we do that individually right and this is one of the
smallest sections that we’ve had thus far in the book he quickly turns from
prayer lifting up our own petitions to God to intercession on behalf of others
and as he speaks of intercession he speaks of the idea of bringing others
before the throne of grace in fact he uses this term which I find so helpful
to make intercession means to grant our brother the same right that we have
received namely to stand before Christ and share in his mercy he’s gonna go on
to tease out what that means as it relates to the golden rule and the idea
of having finding grace for others in our own heart even as we’ve received
grace but that idea of holding others before the throne of grace is an
unbelievably deep concept because in some ways Bonhoeffer teases out how the
Christian life is about the communal intercession of the saints that all of
us are responsible for interceding on behalf of those in our circle and so
that if you could zoom out of the Christian community it’s a series of
circles all interceding on each other’s behalf so that if you could see the
prayer life of the church graphically you would understand that every part is
knit together in a complex web a network of those who are upholding one another
and supporting one another not just in the act of prayer the idea of saying the
words on behalf of the other but becoming a kind of community who imagines
who is shaped in our deepest beings to see one another as recipients of the
Christ to imagine one another as as sitting before that throne so that when
we need to engage in community with one another in in the real ways that
community happens and that includes the insult or the gossip or the the sin
committed for or against it’s in that moment that this act of prayer trains us
to see the other as they are which is a beloved child of God yeah and so he says
I can no longer condemn or hate a brother or sister for whom I pray no
matter how much trouble they’ve caused me and interceding on one’s behalf does
have implications for us it does something to us it makes us more
compassionate it makes us less judgmental and I think Bonhoeffer does us
a favor in pointing out that a great deal of our prayer life ought to be
pointed at others ought to be intercessory and when we do that we are
more concerned we are more aware we are more compassionate of the some of the
things that are happening around us the other thing I appreciate about this part
of this passage this chapter is the kind of partnership that Bonhoeffer sees
between corporate worship and private devotion and so he says yes we elevate
people in church when we pray for one another in church corporately that’s a
wonderful thing but we couldn’t begin to cover all of the things that need
expressed and so that is supplemented with all each of our own individual
prayer lives the same would be true of Scripture when we read scripture
together that’s wonderful thing but it must be backed up by this ongoing
attempt this ongoing quest to know the scriptures for ourselves to be familiar
and comfortable with them and to listen in them for God’s Word and so there there
is in this chapter the exact thing that he tries to paint on the first few pages
the the benefit that community and individual have for one another the way
that they work together the book the way that together they complete a life of
faith so that either cannot stand on its own without the other and together
both work not only for the good of the individual but for the good of all of
those within the circle of faith yet we could spend hundreds thousands of hours
we could write books we could have entire series on one sentence here it’s
on my page 87 he’s talking about this daily practice that we’re called to to
prayer to intercession for others and he says this is not legalism it is
orderliness and fidelity as one simple sentence that has unbelievable depth
because we are so tempted to make the practices especially the individual
practices of the faith and we turn them into legal achievements that must be
accomplished in a particular way at a particular time and we completely lose
focus on the whole goal of which we have set out to do these things this idea of
orderliness and fidelity fidelity to whom Jesus Christ orderliness the
building into our lives a consistent repeatable pattern so we can have
fidelity but notice it’s not about the thing itself it’s not about doing it
right or wrong it’s not about fair say fair say call legalism it is about being
are consistent and orderly in our lives such that we can practice fidelity to
the only thing that matters and that is Jesus Christ and our encounter with
Jesus if we could even learn that principle we would be one step closer to
a vibrant and a regular practice of the faith instead of allowing ourselves to
frame it as what we do right or wrong we frame it as consistent practice of the
relationship with the one who matters that changes everything he says it one
sentence we could blow by that but it has a way of reshaping our entire
imaginations as Christians what we do and our time alone right and ultimately
he ends the chapter there that the practice of the faith is the true test
of our meditation of our prayer does it help us live out the life of faith and
so he behind the scenes here sort of the contrast the person who only goes to
church if if you only show up that hour a week and that’s the only prayers that
you experience that’s the only time scripture is open are you going to be
able to face the struggles of life in your personal faith that is not likely
without that foundation of many hours of reflection and prayer and scripture
behind the scenes our couple hours together a week are not likely to make
us strong enough to meet the challenges of living out the faith in a broken
world and that is tested by our own individual faithfulness I you know
there’s this wonderful line near the end blessed is the one who is alone in the
strength of the fellowship and blessed is the one who keeps the fellowship in
in the strength of aloneness that that again these two things feed one another
and that the strength of the church is with us when we’re by ourselves and the
strength of each individual is with us when we gather together and we are
together a body and the body is made up of these individual parts and the
healthier and stronger that each part can be the better off the body is in
turn and so it’s a wonderful picture it’s a wonderful challenge I think in
some ways for me this short chapter is the most compelling certainly the most
challenging though the whole book is challenging but there are many things
here that that I find kind of get me right between the eyes and this there’s
a lot of wisdom in these not very many pages I think part of what makes this
chapter so challenging is it brings the reminder of how easy it is to for us to
participate in Christian life and for it to never really truly transform our
own life the idea that we can be in the Christian community and we can
participate in the worship or the practices of it but that we wouldn’t
allow that faith to transform our own identity and in this chapter Bonhoeffer
makes it clear that’s what’s at stake that God wants to transform who we are
so that each and every day it is tested he uses the word testing I I don’t know
how often we use that language in church the idea that something should make an
impact that we that it could be seen in the practice that we do that day it’s
not for the sake of being seen but it’s the reality that if you have met God in
a substantial way then you must recognize that there will be resources
for you as you seek to test it in your day when you go and and you encounter
problems on the road at work with your finances with your spouse with your kids
you know whatever that whatever the day has for you the measure that we
encounter God and we allow silence to transform us that we in the midst of our
time alone find a relationship with God that transforms us even if that
transformation isn’t a high experience or isn’t in some way novel that if we set
ourselves to that practice with honesty and with courage then that should better
enable us to live our lives and that’s what’s at stake here we forget that it’s
not about doing something going back to that idea of like legalism we don’t do
this because we need to or because we were told to though both of those are
true we do it chiefly because it is the best way for us to live the way that God
made us to be that if we practice these things it fashions us informs us as
individuals as people of faith it transforms our identities and then that
process makes us better knit and prepared to be truly integrated into
Christian community they exist one for the other and we can never let that
proportional tension and that relationship fall apart I think a lot of
this book is a challenge to the the church of our day and age but maybe this
chapter again stands out among all of the chapters it is we simply we often
conceive of this idea that each of us sort of live our own life of faith and
then we get together on Sundays and we all celebrate that and and the kind of
interconnectedness that Bonhoeffer is describing here is I think not how we
typically imagine our role in a congregation or our place in the faith
you know the last paragraph here starts with this sentence one who returns to
the Christian family fellowship after fighting the battle of the day brings
with him the blessing of his aloneness but receives anew the blessing of the
fellowship the idea that it is to the church we return after we face our daily
struggles after we struggle with our aloneness our community mindedness
whether we struggle with sinfulness or meditation or prayer whatever it is that
we have in that the idea that that’s not just good for us but that we bring that
back to the fellowship as a family of faith as if we’ve all been out hunter
hunting and gathering all day and then we together bring our fruits and join
them and share them and learn from one another that this is a beautiful way to
see the church and I think a way not instinctive and I think a way not often
emphasized in our very individualistic me and Jesus the faith is a kind of my
own opinion my own business I think there’s a much for us to learn here but
it’s very challenging I occasionally will have someone that I’ll meet in the
grocery store or we’ll be talking after church and they’ll make some comment
about you know a sorry pastor that I haven’t been in church the last few
weeks and then they’ll get a little glint in their eye and then say something
about you know I’ve been out worshiping God on the on the green or I’ve been
out worshiping God on the boat or you know what whatever that is and it’s
interesting because it comes as a kind of a form of confession you know like
sorry I haven’t been in church well I think makes Bonhoeffer’s chapter here
so convicting is that’s not even the first level of critique it’s not that
you miss church because you were alone on the golf course or you miss church
because you were sitting out in nature appreciating
the beauty of what God made
it’s actually one step far far or multiple steps far deeper than that that
we can never conceive of our relationship with God without also
recognizing those who are in God this plays back to chapters one and two right
this idea that as Christians even in our aloneness the purpose for that
aloneness is not for our own sake it’s not motivated by our own pleasure our
own participation by our own desires our own preferences that is what we are
sold in our travel our Western sort of consumerism right what you want what the
customer wants is what the customer gets well we’re the customer but in
Bonhoeffer’s frame it we’re not the customer of faith that we’re ultimately
those called to be servants of the gospel that we are granted the gift of
grace so therefore we are in Christ so therefore everything we do is to serve
Christ and therefore those who we are joined in Christ right and that is the
fundamental transfer so you know if we could have a more extended conversation
when we’re talking about well you know pastor could make it to worship the far
deeper thing that would be interesting to talk about is how could we as
Christians ever grow in the faith without that being for the sake of others
right and and that we should be considering the measure of our faith not
the times that we miss church but the times that we purposely invest in this
meditation prayer intercession so that when it’s tested it is for the sake and
goodness of others and and I think that’s a beautiful image that both
should be encouraging but also should be convicting of the times when we do make
it about ourselves our own preferences and opinions it should drive us into the
lives of others in real service and I think Bonhoeffer says that in a
beautiful and convicting way I think Bonhoeffer does us just a great service
in envisioning these two realities the the personal and the corporate and helps
us understand that neither is complete if all one does is go to church on
Sundays and does not take the opportunity of the daily practice of
seeking to grow in faith of seeking to hear a word from God of seeking to deal
with the struggles of their own life the the church is very unlikely well the
the church cannot pull the rest of that weight the church cannot do that inner
work for us church is the place where we fellowship with one another where we
connect with one another where we live out the faith and the service of the
faith together but it cannot do our inner work for us that has to be done in
these moments of discipline and solitude and aloneness so that we bring a deepened
faith to the fellowship when we gather but the opposite is true as well we go
back to the very beginning of the book if one only does that and one never
combines with the fellowship one never comes to church to share those gifts to
share that learning to share those treasures or to be challenged by the
difficulty at times of loving and accepting and forgiving others then that
too is incomplete and and when we put both of those things together when we
give the right attention at the right time to both challenges it is then that
we find ourselves best able and best fulfilled to live out our faith in
Christ not for us but through our lives into the lives of others and ultimately
into the life of the world and you know it is a it is a beautiful way that
Bonhoeffer has convicted us in just two short chapters already of the need for
both and then the absolute necessity of practicing both types of faithful fellowship
personal and corporate and I think we’re indebted to him for for
those insights if you’ve been reading with us you can tell that we are blessed
by someone with such a deep intellect such a wonderfully read scholar who is
so practical and earthly minded and community minded that the Bonhoeffer is
has written and given us a thing here that is exceptional and thanks be to God
for the gift that we have in it thanks for joining us here today for the third
part of our conversation we’re gonna be finishing with the fourth chapter next
week so we do hope you’ll be joining us do pick up this book if you haven’t been
reading it with us you could easily get caught up it is it is not a long book
it’s a deep book and so we look forward to sharing the next conversation with
you next week but until then be blessed thanks everyone