Essential Community, Part 2Continuation of Essential Community...
Community in Mission None of Bonhoeffer’s works focus exclusively on the church’s mission to the world, perhaps because Bonhoeffer’s sight was fixed on the German church’s disunity during WWII. However, his theological insights on community and Christ necessitates a discussion of what Christian missions might look like from a christocentric viewpoint. This mission of the church is the “missio Dei (God’s mission), that is, God’s self-revelation as the One who loves the world, God’s involvement in and with the world, and in which the church is privileged to participate” (Bosch 10). Bosch argues in Transforming Mission that mission is at the heart of God and should thus be “put in the context of the doctrine of the Trinity” (390). Traditionally missio Dei is conceived in terms of the relationship between the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit: “God the Father sending the Son, and God the Father and the Son sending the Spirit” (390). However, theologians have expanded this image to include the sending of the church into the world by the Son and Spirit through the Father. Perhaps from Bonhoeffer’s theological standpoint, since we are truly the body of Christ we are also included in the life of God. Part of God’s nature is his love of the world and his desire to reconcile fallen humanity to himself which is accomplished by the sending of his Son into the world. The church only exists as a body of believers who respond to God’s call, and for this reason “our missionary activities are only authentic insofar as they reflect participation in the mission of God” (Bosch 391). The church stands as a continual witness of God’s missionary activity in the world. Another missiological aspect in Bonhoeffer’s writings is his careful preservation of our identity as individuals. Our particular talents, personality, opinions, and so on are not lost to the multitude (Discipleship 220). This church community is not Hitler’s vision of synchronized Germany in which the individual is lost to the greater body of those who follow the Führer’s will. According to 1 Corinthians 12:12 and following, we are one body yet many parts. Each part of the body does not lose its uniqueness but all parts come together to serve the other. The individual is provided an identity in the community and the community is given a part of its identity through each individual (221). Bonhoeffer visualizes this in terms of each individual human beings. But what if we expanded this picture of “parts” to include different nations? Paul says, “For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body--Jews or Greeks, slaves or free--and all were made to drink of one Spirit.” (1 Cor. 12:13 ESV). Through baptism we are indeed inaugurated as individuals into a community of believers, but this one body transcends our social status and even our national and cultural identity. No culture is left untouched but all are molded into the body of Christ. It is also important to note that this new unity does not destroy the diversity of the body--“Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it” (1 Cor. 12:27). There are still separate parts such as the foot or hand, but each are vital members to the make-up of the whole. There would be no body without the arm. There would be no body without the foot. It is only the unity in diversity that Christ is truly bodily present in the church. Andrew Walls makes a helpful distinction between converts and proselytes. In Ephesians 2, Paul resists the belief that Gentile Christians must abandon their Hellenistic culture and embrace the Jewish culture. They are not proselytes who divest themselves of their cultural heritage in order to enter the Christian community. We are in fact called to be converts who turn all of our cultural institutions toward the person of Christ. This is a turning of what is already there, not an adoption of an entirely new lifestyle (Walls 32). In the New Testament this meant that both Jews and Gentiles were “brought into the same structure: a new Temple that existed for God’s worship, the abode of the Spirit, who in each case led the process of confession” (31). Together the nations are “part of a single functioning body with Christ as the head” (31). Paul’s theology was more than a recognition that Jewish and Gentile expressions of faith are equally valid, as if they were alternatives (32). Both were vital and only in their union was there the one body of Christ. Walls claims we will not know the full stature of Christ until all the nations are gathered in the eschaton as one community in praise of God (27). Until then, Christian community should be “Ephesians 2 on the way towards Revelation 21” (37). Another missiologist with insight into the meaning of Christian community is Fr. Vincent Donovan, a Catholic priest who evangelized the Masai of Tanzania in the 1960s. Donovan’s main missiological theme is that the “gospel is the affair of the missionary and the interpretation of the gospel is the affair of the people who hear that gospel” (122). He arrives at this conclusion through his study of Paul’s missionary journeys as recorded in the New Testament. Throughout one hundred years of missions in Africa, the Christian church had made little progress in the way of evangelization. The most they had done was brought huge educational and medical centers in expectations that the people would come to them in search of the gospel: “It is no exaggeration to say that the school became the missionary method of East Africa” (6). But for all the focus on education there was little to show in the way of strong African Christian communities, so Donovan scrapped this model and returned to the scriptures for inspiration. In his studies he discovered that “modern missionary methods had strayed far from the missionary methods of the early church, far from the apostolic method” (25). Paul’s mission to the Gentiles began in 47 CE and ten years later in 57 CE he had spread the gospel to Galatia, Macedonia, Achaia, and Asia (27). Donovan observes that “not only were the churches established there. St. Paul was satisfied that his work was completed there” (28). Yet after one hundred years in East Africa, missionaries are still working. Additionally, Paul never set up permanently in one mission location but was constantly moving. This is a far cry from East Africa’s permanent Christian medical and educational institutions. Donovan concludes that missions work should be a finishable work that brings the gospel to communities and leaves these young churches to work out their response to that message (30). Central to Donovan’s work is the assumption that cultures must be approached through communities, not through individuals. Converting individuals only succeeds in destroying the unity of a tribe and creates resentment towards the missionary (66). Donovan challenges missionaries to “divest himself of his very culture, so that he can be a naked instrument of the gospel to the culture of the world” (144). This means the missionary is the first one to convert to an entirely different way of looking at the world. If missionaries refuse to allow the gospel message to be embraced and clothed in another culture, then they will end up attacking the unity of foreign communities and offer little in return. Essentially, pagan communities when converted become a new Christian community or young church that should be allowed to express their faith through their particular way of life. As Walls would say, this is the turning of an entire pagan community towards the reality of Christ. This is the enactment of Christ’s incarnation in the midst of the Masai. Like Bonhoeffer, Donovan believes an important part of conversion is baptism because it baptizes the community into the fullness of Christian community which reaches across age, sex, and cultural lines. The Masai practice circumcision as an important ritual which initiates young boys into manhood and young girls into womanhood. Every male circumcised within a seven year timespan become brothers in the same age group (orporor) (15). Baptism like circumcision became an important cultural expression which initiated both men and women into the Orporor L’Engai, “the first universal brotherhood...of the last age, the final age of the word, reaching to the kingdom” (71). They became more than just Masai but also the Orporor L’Engai or the body of Christ. As such, the chief refused to allow only a few to be baptized at one time. He insisted that either the community believes as one and are baptized as one community or they will not believe at all. This is communal faith at its best:
This is the essence of Bonhoeffer’s visible community of grace. This is “the physical presence of other Christians” which is “a source of incomparable joy and strength to the believer” (Life Together 29). The Masai commit to a Christian community in which the “nearness of a fellow Christian” is a “physical sign of the gracious presence of the triune God” (29). As Bonhoeffer says, they do not discriminate between “strong and weak, wise or foolish, talented or untalented, pious or less pious” (95). Each person “is an indispensable link in a chain” which reminds the Christian community “that not only do the weak need the strong, but also that the strong cannot exist without the weak” (96). God has come to the Masai in the flesh of Jesus Christ, in the Orporor L’Engai. The Masai becomes a community that is fully immersed in the life, death, and resurrection of Christ. Donovan observes:
As Western Christians we must recognize these Masai as part of the whole body of Christ. We cannot approach other cultures with what Bonhoeffer calls “self-centered” love. In other words, we must leave the other “in their freedom from me...to be loved for who they are, as those for whom Christ became a human being, died, and rose again, as those for whom Christ won the forgiveness of sins and prepared eternal life” (44). We cannot construct an ideal Christian image which includes our Western notions and forces foreign cultures and God to conform to our Western vision. We must face what Bonhoeffer calls the “great disillusionment” so that genuine community can grow out of native soils and add to the diversity, beauty, and complexity of God’s self-revelation to humankind. Community in the Postmodern World According to Lesslie Newbigin, one of the toughest missionary fields today is the modern Western culture which has been shaped by the Enlightenment. The Western world’s plausibility structure is built on the schism between “the public world of what our culture calls facts” and “the private world of beliefs, opinions, and values” (14). Christianity has been tested within the realm of scientific investigation and reason, but has been unable to prove its truth claims in terms of scientific reasoning. The Christian faith is therefore a belief relegated to the private world where it ceases to have universal implications. Western culture “is a pagan society, and its paganism, having been born out of the rejection of Christianity, is far more resistant to the gospel than the pre-Christian paganism” (20). Yet scholars are also recognizing an emerging counterbalance which many have termed postmodernism. Bosch traces the emergence of this new paradigm to the field of physics where Albert Einstein’s Theory of Relativity seemingly contradicts Newtonian physics (350). Additionally, the two major world wars challenged the very fabric of liberal theology that was constructed on reason and led to Karl Barth’s “theology of crisis” (350). Emerging voices now question the validity of reason alone and wonder whether rationality should be expanded to include “metaphor, symbol, ritual, sign, and myth” which touches both our mind and spurs us to action (353). The lines between fact and value, public and private, are blurred in an attempt to avoid reductionism. As a result, postmodernity is often associated with relativism and pluralism since these are sources from which individuals are liberated from the absolutes of modernity It is important to recognize that postmodernity has not been fully formed yet, so Christians are thinking and working in terms of both modernity and postmodernity (Bosch 349). Bonhoeffer may have formed his thoughts in criticism of modernity’s concern with reason, scientific investigation, and absolutes, but his criticisms are still relevant to Christians living in the midst of these two paradigms. After all, both modernity and postmodernity run the risk of placing something other than Christ at the center of human existence. The former worships reason as the source of all meaning; the latter dethrones the universal message of the gospel with its all-roads-lead-to-truth mentality. In the twenty-first century, the emerging church movement has gained traction as a Christian response to postmodernity. The term “emerging church” evokes an image of something new resurrecting itself from something old. One might say the church in the 21st century is challenged to emerge from the boundaries of what some see as oppressive tradition to once again become like the dynamic first generation of believers. As a movement it is notoriously hard to define it in terms of set theological assumptions. Emerging communities elude setting hard boundaries between what is and is not orthodoxy but instead choose to focus on church orthopraxis. Andy Rowell says “emerging church proponents lament program-oriented and preacher-centered approaches to church ministry.” They “seek to emphasize: the kingdom of God, ministry to the poor, the revival of artistic expression, and lay participation” (4). Because of this, emerging church communities are characterized by an idealization of the first group of disciples, as if the first community’s nearness to the historical Jesus provided them with a superior knowledge of what Christian life should look like. Through their study of Jesus’ ministry and the activities of the apostles in Acts, they believe Christians are called to live missionally in communities. Mark Scandrette, a leader of a emerging church community in San Francisco, believes that “the command to love God was a centering vision” that leads to greater wholeness in our own lives and the lives of those around us (150). This means we are invited to ground ourselves in the world God created, embrace our neighbors (which includes our enemies) with radical love, and live daily seeking God. But this is not just an individual activity since emerging churches, like Bonhoeffer, want to combat modernity’s tendency to isolate individuals by emphasizing the importance of communal life to Christians. We are the body of Christ who live and suffer for the world. Followers of the ‘Way’ are “invited to step up from the crowd of the curious to join the team of the committed” (Scandrette 32). Overall, many like Scandrette take a literalist viewpoint on the sayings of Jesus: “I wasn’t satisfied with the explanation that the radical teachings of Jesus on money, material possessions, reconciliation, and community weren’t intended to be taken literally” (33). In this we can see an echo of Bonhoeffer’s call to action. Christian communities do not live by an invisible spiritual reality alone but it is also called to be a visible sign of Christ. For Bonhoeffer, “only the believers obey, and only the obedient believe” (63). Part of this obedience is a concrete action, a “simple, literal obedience” which takes serious Jesus‘ commands (79). We should not instantly spiritualize and internalize Christ’s command as something that leads to only an inward change. Faith is also something that manifests itself in a visible way, so when Christ calls us to sell all our belongings then he may really mean that. Emerging church individuals like Shane Claiborne do literally sell all their belongings and create communities where they can “be lovers of God and people and to take the gospel way of life seriously” (122). Unlike Bonhoeffer, Emerging leaders spend little time dwelling on the the biblical story as a whole. Instead they focus a great deal of their theological teaching on the gospels and Acts. Many emerging church communities attempt to replicate the first century church by pooling their resources and living in a neo-monastic, utopian-like society. Rather than attending traditional churches on Sunday, they gather together to discuss biblical passages or work on projects within the community. Taking as inspiration the apostles in Acts, they attempt to not only live within their small Christian communities but also to engage with the secular community around them. On a whole, they feel disillusioned by the materialistic, money-oriented worldview of the United States and they develop their theological standpoints in reaction to this dissatisfaction. For example, Shane Claiborne created a small community in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania called The Simple Way which he describes in his book The Irresistible Revolution as:
Community is where the proclamation of the good news, the love of God for all people, takes place. Heather Kirk-Davidoff describes the emerging shift perfectly when she says, “It is a change in the reason we engage in evangelism, shifting the focus from recruitment to the cultivation of relationships that are an end in themselves, indispensable to our spiritual journey” (36). It is through human relationships that we can catch a glimpse of the divine because it gives us “insight into who God is and where God is leading us” (38). Mark Scandrette uses the term “generative friendship” to describe a “community of people yearning for wholeness and completion” (49) who come together on a deeper level and “resonate with our highest aspirations” (52). To them it is important to lose the American individualistic, consumeristic model and embrace what they see as the call of Jesus, to enter into community with others and travel together on a spiritual journey. The emerging movement’s vision of community and communal action is sometimes corresponded to Bonhoeffer’s communal experience at Finkenwalde and his stance against social and political injustices. Throughout Claiborne’s book he identifies Bonhoeffer as a fellow radical who lived his life from the center of a small community. Andy Rowell points out that Bonhoeffer “did not advocate innovation simply because it was new” (14). Bonhoeffer introduced “ecclesiological innovation” because he felt the church’s “ethical integrity” was threatened by its involvement in its involvement in Nazi Germany (15). The church in essence sold-out to the prevailing social institutions by adopting them as their own. German Christians lost their autonomy and therefore their ability to criticize the government. As previously mentioned, Bonhoeffer adamantly called the church community to action against not only the German Christians’ synchronization but against the government itself. His many discussions of community are an attempt to recall German Christians to center themselves around Christ, not Hitler. Thus, the emerging church should be careful when identifying themselves with the “radical” nature of Bonhoeffer’s writings less they identify today’s mainline churches as compromised to the point of apostasy. Additionally, emerging churches should not take a stand against social injustices for purely humanitarian reasons; instead it should result from their own centering around Christ. They do center themselves around Jesus’ command to love God and love our neighbors but that can easily evolve into loving for love’s sake. While Christ does call us to love God and our neighbors, he also calls us to be a visible community set-apart from them. Bonhoeffer says in Life Together:
One only has to read the story of Ananias and Sapphira in Acts to know that God’s judgement still falls on Christian communities. To put Ananias and Sapphira in context, the passage immediately prior to this story is one many emerging church communities have appealed to as the basis of their ideal community. Acts 4:32-37 records that the first Christian community “were of one heart and soul, and no one said that any of the things that belonged to him was his own, but they had everything in common.” No one in the community was needy because the rich sold their possessions and gave their wealth to the apostles who “distributed to each as any had need.” Likewise, Ananias and his wife Sapphira as members of this community sell their land but decide to secretly withhold some of their proceeds. Peter immediately asks, “Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit and to keep back for yourself part of the proceeds of the land?...You have not lied to men but to God” (Acts 5:4). Amazingly, “when Ananias heard these words, he fell down and breathed his last” (v. 5). The story then repeats itself when Sapphira comes to Peter about three hours later. She likewise lies and instantly dies upon hearing words of judgement. It would be tempting from the emerging church standpoint to take this pericope as a condemnation of withholding wealth from brothers and sisters in need. However, I believe that there is deeper layer to this story. Fundamental to Peter’s judgement is that they have lied to God, not that they withheld some of their possessions from the community. Peter does not even take issue with the fact that both their unsold property and their earnings from a sale were their own--“While it remained unsold, did it not remain your own? And after it was sold, was it not at your disposal?” (Acts 5:4). They were under no obligation to hold everything in common with their community. Their individual decision is not somehow consumed into the greater communal thinking. Bonhoeffer says, “Alone you stood before God when God called you. Alone you had to obey God’s voice. Alone you had to take up your cross, struggle, and pray and alone you will die and give an account to God” (Life Together 82). In Ananias and Sapphira’s story, in the midst of love and care for others, they lied to God in their own self-interest. God’s word comes through the mouth of Peter as judgement against their lie. Peter enacts Bonhoeffer’s statement: “God has put God’s own Word in our mouth. God wants it to be spoken through us” (Life Together 106). And this judgement has dire consequences not only morally but also physically, causing “great fear [to come] upon the whole church and upon all who heard of these things” (Acts 5:11). Likewise, our modern church communities should not approach God lightly nor forsake our own responsibility to serve others by speaking God’s Word. Yet we must also hold onto the promise that “God joins together in breaking, creates community in division, confers grace through judgment” (Life Together 106). We see a similar paradox in Revelation 5. As a community we are centered around Jesus Christ who is both paradoxically the Lion of the Tribe of Judah and the Lamb standing as though it had been slain (Rev. 5:5,6). Traditionally the expected messiah was pictured as “The Lion of Judah,” an image born from the blessing of Jacob’s son Judah found in Genesis 49:9-12 (Wenham 71). From Genesis 49: 9-10, the Lion is visualized as a powerful King, a fierce ruler who will conquer and slay his enemies. He will ultimately be without challenge and will have permanent authority over all nations on earth. Under his kingship his citizens will enjoy great abundance and be without want to the point that they can use the “choice vine” to tie their donkey to and lavishly wash their clothes in wine (v. 11; Wenham 71). By introducing the readers to the Lion first, John sets up an image of a permanent physical nation born from Jacob’s blessing, an image of kingship, of military might, judgment of the wicked, and restoration of peace on earth. But John surprises us by reinterpreting the “strongly militaristic and nationalistic image” of the Lion by the actual physical appearance of a vulnerable slaughtered Lamb (Bauckham, 74). In the following chapters of Revelation 5, the Lamb will deal out judgments on his enemies but he already conquered them through his humiliation and vulnerability on the cross. His blood covers our doorposts so that death and destruction will pass over us (Exodus 12:13; Revelation 7:3). Yet the audience would be wrong to assume Christ is weak because he stands as a sacrificed Lamb, since John gives the Lamb seven horns, a symbol of perfect strength (Witherington, 121). Ultimately, the Lamb was worthy to open the scroll not because he was the Lion of Judah but because he was the sacrificial Lamb, a state that carries ultimate, perfect authority and omnipotence (MacLeod, 335). It becomes clear through this paradoxical image that our community is not just founded on a Christ who loves in blindness and erases the consequences of sin through the covering of his blood. He sees our follies, judges them accordingly, but also has conquered them through the ultimate expression of love for others which is the cross. When we enter Christian community, we see others simultaneously through the eyes of the slaughtered Lamb and the Lion of Judah. Thus we must avoid “merely emotional love of neighbor” which “makes the truth relative, since nothing, not even the truth, must come between it and the person loved” (Life Together 42). Emotional self-centered love seeks others “to return its love, but it does not serve them” because “it continues to desire even when it seems to be serving” (42). In a life together we must strive for “spiritual love” that can only come from Christ, only exist for Christ’s sake, and only occur through his mediation (43).
Conclusion Through this investigation of community it becomes clear that Bonhoeffer’s christocentrism and view on creation and fall leads to a high valuation of community. We not only desire relationships with others but we need them since God originally created humanity to live in unity. Our fall destroyed our ability to live in community with God and thus with others. We became divided beings obsessed with the desire to control each other, setting ourselves up as god. Yet God still loved his creation and did not abandon us, so he took on flesh in order to bridge the gap between him and humanity. Through Jesus Christ we are reconciled to God and rediscover our unity with others in the cross. These believers stand as witnesses to the world of the missio Dei revealed in the life, ministry, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. This is a worldwide mission since the body of Christ is not only made of many individuals but also of many nations who will one day be gathered together in Christ in the New Jerusalem (Rev. 21). We are thus called to love God and ours neighbors with Christ’s love which condemns sin but also justifies the sinner. Life in community means embracing a costly discipleship that responds to Christ’s call on the cross and steps into a life together under his word which both judges and gives us life.
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