Church: Fighting For the World

How will we save the world if we do not embrace it first as it is?  Religious discourse focuses away from Christ and to the immorality of the “other” that needs to be saved.  But this is the opposite of the way of Christ who “truly and bodily took on, out of pure grace, our being, our nature, ourselves.  This was the eternal counsel of the triune God.  Now we are in him.” (Life Together, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 24.)  Christ embraced the world as is, even to death. (Philippians 2:5-8)  Christ did not fight against the world he fought for the world…and overcame the world by doing so.

The “culture wars” are debilitating our witness.  Changing cultural needs are making us very afraid.  But we need not fear, Christ is with us.  Instead of clenched fists we must offer open hands.  The deep depravity of the world has always been among us.  Will we embrace the world as it is that we might be the Body of Christ to it?  Will we fight against the world or fight for it?

Church: Scattered to the Winds

“I will sow them among the people:  and they shall remember me in far countries.”  (Zech. 10:9).  According to God’s will Christendom is a scattered people, scattered like seed “into all the kingdoms of the earth.” (Deuteronomy 28:25).  That is its curse and its promise.  God’s people must dwell in far countries among the unbelievers, but it will be the seed of the Kingdom of God for all the world.”  -  Life Together, Diectrich Bonhoeffer pg 18

Consumer religion is religion that feels good.  Religion that pushes our buttons based on felt need.  But the Body of Christ is a community marked primarily by the willingness to sacrifice; to embrace scoundrels; to recognize its members by radical inclusion; to  live in missional fidelity to all; to preach the Word of God in Christ in every shadow of culture.  Evil fails when the Body of Christ stays focused in unified action.  Satan offers demonic division, self-service religion; simplistic uniformity; moralism without wisdom; forms and shadows of community…anything to keep focus off the Bread and the Wine binding the scattered people of God in missional fidelity.  When the Christ offers the bread and wine to the Body of Christ on the move in the world, we can be assured that “Satan falls like lightning.”

Church: Sleeping with the Enemy

“It is not simply to be taken for granted that the Christian has the privilege of living among other Christians.  Jesus Christ lived in the midst of his enemies.  At the end all his disciples deserted him.  On the Cross he was utterly alone surrounded by evildoers and mockers.  For this cause he had come, to bring peace to the enemies of God.  So the Christian, too, belongs not in the seclusion of a cloistered life but in the thick of foes.  There is his commission, his work…”  “And he who will not suffer this does not want to be of the Kingdom of Christ; he wants to be among friends, to sit among roses and lilies, not with the bad people but the devout people.  If Christ had done what you are doing who would ever have been spared? (Luther)  – From Life Together, Dietrich Bonhoeffer

When we live in christian community we are “sleeping with the enemy”.  We are in communion with people who WILL betray and WILL desert us along the journey.  All notions of designing a new religion or a new Christian Version of Religion are doomed to frustration.  They are usually utopian not Spirit driven.  Rather, Christ gives us communion with our enemies.  As Jesus offers his bread dipped in wine to Judas, as Jesus washed the feet of his deserters, the gift of communion transcended their betrayal of him.  (John 13:1-17; 26-27).  Sacred Communion was proved by such betrayal.   We must resist notions of a utopian Church and live the real life dynamics of risky faith in a post-Christendom culture.

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Hello world!

This blog is mainly designed for my flock and friends who are interested in building and experiencing Christian Community aka Church.  I will post readings from many writers but will focus a lot on Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s “Life Together” at least at the beginning.  I believe churches are very strong on understanding  the “content” of the gospel but suffer in understanding how gospel works in relationships.  I hope I will learn a lot in posting.