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21 November 2014

Put Away the Hand Baskets



During the 1930-31 academic year, Dietrich Bonhoeffer was studying at Union Theological Seminary as a Sloan Fellow. While he wasn’t impressed with the state of American theology at the time, that isn’t to say it wasn’t a profitable year. Life in dormitories probably impacted how the underground seminary at Finkenwalde was developed. Hearing African-American preaching in Harlem convinced him all was not lost in American religion. Negro spirituals had a huge impact on him – and ultimately students at Finkenwalde for whom he would play recordings when he returned to Germany.

His friendship with a French student studying at Union also had profound impact. Jean Lasserre gained Bonhoeffer’s respect, though there were areas in which they disagreed. Among the areas where Lasserre challenged Bonhoeffer was in his understanding of the nature of the church. From Lasserre’s view, the real question was “Do we believe in the Holy Catholic Church, the Communion of Saints, or do we believe in the eternal mission of France?” Lasserre would say to Bonhoeffer, “One can’t be a Christian and a nationalists at the same time.” (See Metaxas, page 111, Roark, page 16, 17)

From Bonhoeffer’s worldview, this question would cause him to think about whether or not the church in Germany was about Germany or the gospel. His subsequent engagement and leadership in the Confessing Church, the seminary at Finklewalde, his role in the ecumenical movement insisting that the “German Church” was not really church, and a host of other issues make it clear that Bonhoeffer came to distinguish “church” from “nation.”

While our current worldview is far less dangerous than was Bonhoeffer’s, I think his life and ministry might provide a place to stop, take a deep breath, and have a conversation about this very topic. Is our faith rooted in the body of Christ, called to renew and restore the universe to its God-intended purposes, or is it in the American political system working exactly like we believe it should?

This is probably too simplistic an explanation, but it seems reasonable to me to observe that as Hitler and his goons began to restore German pride, nationalism, and economy – the German Church became more and more willing to wink at his atrocious actions. To put that in the language of Lasserre’s question, the German Church had more faith in the eternal mission of Germany than it did in the gospel of Jesus Christ. It went to bed with dogs and woke up infested with fleas. 

Bonhoeffer would use the rest of his far too short life fighting against such perversion of the Christian gospel. Despite another opportunity to go back to Union and teach, his conscious wouldn’t let him stay in New York, and in less than two months – in July 1939 – he set sail for home because, as he wrote in a letter to his friend Reinhold Niebuhr, “I shall have no right to participate in the reconstruction of Christian life in Germany after the war if I do not share the trials of this time with my people.” When you read about Bonhoeffer’s life there is no question that his faith was that the church, following the gospel of Jesus Christ, would be the hope for Germany’s reconstruction.

Despite the horrific moments that surrounded him, Bonhoeffer never pulls the old “hell in a hand basket” routine. In Ethics, he says, “The night is not yet over, but already the dawn is breaking.” (page 17)  Later in that same section, he says “Only the form of Jesus Christ confronts the world and defeats it. And it is from this form alone that there comes the formation of a new world, a world which is reconciled with God.”

Smarter people than I will have to make the legal judgments about President Obama’s executive order about immigration. When MSNBC sounds like the Messiah has come and Fox News makes you think of Paul’s man of lawlessness, you can be pretty sure it is probably a little more complicated than either side would have you think!

Here’s what I am smart enough to understand. First, I never discount the privilege of where I was born, politically speaking. To be a citizen of the United States has made my desire to follow Jesus much easier – and quite frankly likely – than had I been born in Iraq, for example. So I’m not some weird leftist who doesn’t get the blessing of the place of my birth. I ought to be thankful for that more often than Thanksgiving week by the way.

Second, my ancestors arrived in Charleston, South Carolina (and other east coast cities) before there was a United States, so I’m not all that fond of having a monarch instead of an elected leader. I am equally interested in having elected officials who understand that the nature of government like the one we have can never succeed when one side or both sides of an issue operate on a “my way or the high way” approach to governance. If the goal is to point fingers of blame at those who have created this immigration nightmare, we don’t have enough fingers!

Third, no matter how this current hullabaloo gets resolved, the nature of the transforming power of the Christian gospel will not be diminished – unless we continue to think the world is going to hell in a hand basket and use that as an excuse to not be Jesus to the world – immigrants and all!

So, please, put the hand baskets away for now. Our faith must be in the mission of Jesus, not the mission of the United States.

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