Reflections on Life Together: The Presence of Christ is Physical, not a Disembodied Spiritual Reality

This the second reflection I'm writing on the wonderful insights I've been able to discover with others through Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Life Together.  In the first, I shared the important insight that to be with other Christians is an incomparable gift of God, a privilege never to be taken for granted, and a holy anticipation of the final day in which we will gather with all of God's saints in the eternal kingdom.

The Bible teaches us that the Church is the Body of Christ.  We very easily take this to be wholly metaphor and have become so used to using this terminology that we fail to take into account how literal and powerful a reality this is.  I remember my seminary professor Dr. Bill Mallard asking the question in a Church history class, "After the ascension, where did the body of Christ go?"  Everyone was a bit puzzled.  He swung his arms toward all of us and said, "Look around.  It's right here."

Jesus came not as a disembodied spiritual presence.  He was not a metaphor.  He truly came in the flesh.  And so, Jesus is experienced in the flesh in the physical presence of his people.  When we look into the eyes of a Christian brother or sister, we are looking into Christ's eyes.  When we embrace a fellow Christian, we are embracing Christ's physical body in a physical way.

Bonhoeffer says that we should never be ashamed to long for the physical presence of other believers.  It's one thing to stay in touch with people we love in the Christian community through electronic means--Facebook, phone calls, emails, text messages are good and important and we need to connect with each other and offer Christ's love through these means.  But they do not take the place of offering each other the physical presence of Jesus Christ through gathering with one another in the flesh.

We live in an electronic age.  Bonhoeffer could never have anticipated a day in which Christians would stay at home and watch church on television, or listen to sermons through podcasts, or sing along with videos on Youtube, and feel as if they had been nourished in the faith.  Jesus is present in the physical presence of other believers in a way we simply cannot find any other way.

For this reason, Bonhoeffer tells us that we should meet one another as we would meet Jesus--with "reverence, humility, and joy"  This is a fantastic spiritual discipline.  It's one that can help us to get over feeling burdened by each other, or becoming dismissive of each other, or subtly communicating arrogance or even contempt of each other.  If we see Jesus in each other in a very physical way, we will honor each other and find time for each other.  We will learn to listen and attend to each other.  This is not an imaginative exercise.  Seeing Jesus in each other is learning to recognize reality.

The other day I was thinking about my bills and got sick of my own thoughts.  I was in my car, and a prayed as a pulled out of a parking lot into traffic, "God, help me not to waste my life thinking about money.  Help me to see Jesus." Just then, a car pulled up beside me driven by a member of my church.  I honked the horn and rolled down my window and said hello.  I knew that God was speaking to me--showing me that the way I see Jesus is to see him in others.

The old fashioned practices of community life are always relevant no matter how technologically savvy we become.  "The Christian in exile"--the homebound, imprisoned, missionary, hospitalized, or wandering Christian--are strengthened by physical presence or whatever we can offer to approximate it as best as we can.  He describes brief visits, prayer with each other, hand written letters, worship together, fellowship at home in a Christian family (Bonhoeffer himself did not have this gift as his family were not practicing believers), and shared life of seminarians as examples of how we offer that presence.  I've experiences all these forms of physical, bodily, shared fellowship and they have been the way Christ has presented himself to me in a manner impossible otherwise.

Once, I was very sick and hospitalized.  My pastor friend, David Warren, drove all the way from Panama City to see me in the hospital.  He could only stay fifteen minutes before he had to return to officiate a wedding.  Recently, I was able to spend a day with him as he is fighting a terrible disease.  I will always treasure that day.  David told his wife Dian in my presence that my visit was "a gift, a wonderful gift."

The gift of our shared presence, our physical, bodily being together, is the gift of the very physical presence of Jesus himself to each other, whether we recognize it or not.  May God grant us grace to recognize this gift and to offer it to each other.

Reflections on Life Together: The Privilege of Being Among Other Christians

Dietrich Bonhoeffer's little book on Christian community, Life Together, has served as a source of inspiration to Christian congregations and leaders for many years.  I have used it as a reflection tool in a number of settings and always found it helpful in creating new life in myself and in others.

Most recently, I have had all the pastors who go through licensing school read the book and then I spend a day of licensing school unpacking and discussing it with them.  Each year, the students seem to struggle with the book, but they come alive when we discuss it.  I've found that the book is rich, profound, and extraordinarily practical.  But it needs some unpacking and applying for many folks.

I've decided to blog about some of the insights that serve to constantly refresh and reorient me.  Life Together is increasingly becoming a constant teacher to me.  I want others to learn what it teaches me.

Let me begin where Bonhoeffer begins: "It is not simply to be taken for granted that the Christian has the privilege of living among other Christians."  We assume that being with other Christians is the norm, something we have always had, something that is a basic part of life, something that we have a duty to participate in.  Not so.

Here's why.  Jesus was on a mission.  He was sent from the Father, alone, to be among those who were hostile to him: "His own received him not."  As Bonhoeffer says, Jesus lived his life among enemies.  So we, his followers, live our lives as Christians "in the thick of foes," for no servant is greater than the master.  Bonhoeffer, who lived much of his later life under Nazi threat, knew that the fellowship of other Christians could be taken away at any time, and in fact, it was taken away when he was arrested and confined and eventually killed.

We, God's people, are the seeds of the Kingdom of God.  We cannot be fruitful as long as we are bunched up together.  We grow the kingdom when we are scattered.  And so, God scatters us.  We wait for the end of all things when he will gather us together and we will be with all the saints with Christ in glory.  But for now, the fall-back position is to be separated from one another.

Many Christians only truly appreciate being with others when they can no longer gather with the fellowship.  This is why we are so grateful when someone visits us and prays with us in the hospital.  It's why people in the nursing home are so grateful when we bring communion to them--they can no longer come to the Lord's table and they feel its preciousness when they can only have it if it is brought to them.  Missionaries, students away from home, many others know what it is to want to be with Christians but to be unable.

Many times we look back on times we were with Christians we love in fellowship long ago with longing and appreciation.  I think often of the great times I've enjoyed serving on fantastic church staffs and miss my friends and the wonderful dynamics of our community of servants.  Once I taught Life Together to a group of forty amazing college students.  I was keenly aware that it was unlikely I would ever have the chance to have a group like that again.  I knew I would never have that particular group of wonderful young people again.  What I would give to visit my high school youth group again, to play some old songs with the guys in the praise team, or to pray in the early morning with the guys who I prayed with when I was in college.  The challenges of each church fellowship I've encountered fade with time, but the memory of being with wonderful saints and friends seems so much more rich in retrospect.

So, why not appreciate it now?  Why not look around at the other Christians with whom we are gathered at any time and say, "Thank you God, for these people who are gathered in this way at this moment.  We will never be together quite like this again, and some of us may never see each other's face again until we gather at the wedding supper of the Lamb.  What a joy it is to be together like this!  Thank you!"

I know the day will come when I will find myself at another church, and I will look back at my time at my current church with longing and fondness.  So I've decided to experience each time I am with the people now with the kind of view I once had only in hindsight.  It's given me amazing joy and sustained me through troubles.  Every Bible study, every cup of coffee with a friend, every staff meeting, every conversation in the hall is a great gift and a divine privilege, an anticipation of our final gathering in heaven.  We might as well get the joy of those moments as they are given to us.

Pastoral Prayer for Mother's Day (also Graduate Recognition Sunday)

God of our mothers and our fathers:

We remember that you said that you would love us like your own children.  Your Son, Jesus Christ, said that he longed to gather his people under his wings as a hen gathers its chicks.  The prophets told us that you loved your people as a mother who gives birth to her children, nourishes them, helps them to grow, and looks to them with incomparable affection.

And so, we ask that you would let these mothers know that you know how profound a price they have paid for their love for their children.  As Mary learned from the angel who announced she would bear the Savior that “a sword will pierce your heart,” the mothers who we celebrate know what it means to have their hearts pierced.  They know what it means to worry after the safety of their children, they know sleepless nights due to feedings and sicknesses and nights out, they know private joys and concerns that words cannot describe.  Let these mothers know that you understand, that you who are our Father also have the heart of a mother.  May these mothers know that they are loved, honored, cherished, appreciated by us, and that you share a deep and abiding bond and understanding with them.

We ask also for your mercy and comfort upon all who find this day difficult for any reason.  Someone is celebrating Mother’s Day today and painfully feeling the loss of a mother.  Someone else is yearning to conceive and has been unable. Someone else always wanted children and life turned out in such a way that biological children were not possible.  Someone is estranged from a mother or a child and this day opens up a wound afresh.  Someone has lost a child and is remembering that she is still a mother to the child who is now with you.  O God, who knows our griefs, comfort these.

You have loved us with a perfect mother’s love, and so you have shown us that all the love we received from our mothers is a reflection of your perfect love; any grief we have felt can be perfectly soothed through your perfect love.  

So we ask you to bless all the mothers in the flesh, and all the mothers in the faith.  Give back to them many fold the blessing they have given us.  May they be truly honored, appreciated, celebrated this day. May they feel your embrace and may you fill their hearts to overflowing.  

And may we go from this day committed to parent the parentless, to honor those who have cared for us, to go in the strength of your love and the affirmation of the love of our mothers in family and in faith, offering that eternal love of you who made us so that all people may find themselves in your family and enfolded in your grace.

We ask also that these graduates and all others would be affirmed in the good work they have done, that you would bless them as they seek the next step in their lives, and that you would help them to serve you with the gifts and graces you have given them.  May they always know that no matter where they go and how far they go from us, we are always their family and that this place is always home.

We ask these things through the power of the Spirit who has adopted us into the family of you, our Father, Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who taught us to pray, saying...