One In Jesus

Christian community is not an ideal we have to realize, but rather a reality created by God in Christ in which we may participate. The more clearly we learn to recognize that the ground and strength and promise of all our community is in Jesus Christ alone, the more calmly we will learn to think about our community and pray and hope for it.

(p. 38). This is an incredibly powerful observation. We tend to think that unity and community are ideals for which we must strive. In reality, unity and community are accomplished facts — accomplished by the blood of Jesus — and our place is simply to recognize the reality of it. Continue reading →

If we do not give thanks daily for the Christian community in which we have been placed, even when there are no great experiences, no noticeable riches, but much weakness, difficulty, and little faith—and if, on the contrary, we only keep complaining to God that everything is so miserable and so insignificant and does not at all live up to our expectations—then we hinder God from letting our community grow according to the measure and riches that are there for us all in Jesus Christ.

(p. 37). What?! We can’t complain? But complaining is our favorite past time! It’s our right as Americans! Continue reading →

Even when sin and misunderstanding burden the common life, is not the one who sins still a person with whom I too stand under the word of Christ? Will not another Christian’s sin be an occasion for me ever anew to give thanks that both of us may live in the forgiving love of God in Jesus Christ? Therefore, will not the very moment of great disillusionment with my brother or sister be incomparably wholesome for me because it so thoroughly teaches me that both of us can never live by our own words and deeds, but only by that one Word and deed that really binds us together, the forgiveness of sins in Jesus Christ?

(p. 37). Bonhoeffer urges us to celebrate the fact that we are in community with sinners — because sin reminds us that we are all saved by grace — and that we are bound together by a common forgiveness. Continue reading →

On innumerable occasions a whole Christian community has been shattered because it has lived on the basis of a wishful image. Certainly serious Christians who are put in a community for the first time will often bring with them a very definite image of what Christian communal life should be, and they will be anxious to realize it. But God’s grace quickly frustrates all such dreams. … Those who love their dream of a Christian community more than the Christian community itself become destroyers of that Christian community even though their personal intentions may be ever so honest, earnest, and sacrificial.

(p. 35-36). Wiser words have never been penned. We imagine that our churches will be previews of heaven itself, and so when people start acting like, you know, people, we get frustrated. We get angry. Life in God’s household should be much more pleasant! God should make things easy! Continue reading →