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.

Being Jesus . . . Our Call From God

People living in the Greater Valley Area, home to both Point University and the Chattahoochee Fuller Center for Housing had the opportunity this past week to witness something pretty amazing. For Point, what we have been calling Impact Day became Impact Week. For the Fuller Center, the largest number of volunteers in its history worked all week in the name of Christ, answering God’s call to His people to be Jesus to the world around us. Spring Road Christian Church also played a major role in Impact Week, providing leadership in ways that made the 400+ volunteers manageable! 

By late Friday afternoon, 61 homes in the Lanett, Alabama mill village had been improved and the place simply looks better. We mowed lawns, trimmed shrubbery and trees, raked up leaves, picked up trash, edged overgrown curbs, painted, repaired, and who knows what else. The long-term impact of Impact Week is known only by God, but the immediate and observable impact is that homes look better and Point students, faculty, and staff had the opportunity to make a difference in a neighborhood long-since left behind by the mills that once were the staple of the Greater Valley Area.

Years ago I read a little book by William Robinson titled The Biblical Doctrine of the Church. Robinson believed that the church is, when all is said and done, truly the body of Christ sent to the world to do for those around us what Jesus did for Israel. John 20:21 – As the Father has sent me, so send I you – was more than just another verse of Scripture.

In describing the nature of the church, Robinson says, “She (the church) is in the world to redeem it. Her position is not one of privilege, but of responsibility. That she is described as ‘leaven’ means that she is a hidden explosive force, for leaven in its operation is both unseen and explosive.” (pages 118, 199) Two places immediately come to mind when I think about where the “leaven” was hidden last week. One is in the lives of people who, at least for some, might have experienced for the first time in their memories what it means to be on the receiving end of “being Jesus to the world.” The other is in the hearts of students, faculty, and staff whose lives might have been changed by being Jesus to others, and they may not even realize it yet. That’s what I think of as “the time bomb” nature of the Christian gospel.

In Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s  Life Together, while writing about what he calls “the ministry of serving,” he says, “Only where hands are not too good for deeds of love and mercy in everyday helpfulness can the mouth joyfully and convincingly proclaim the message of God’s love and mercy.” (page 100) Last week over 400 pairs of hands found a way not to be “too good for deeds of love and mercy.” And again, I remind myself that only God is able to fully know and measure the impact those deeds of love and mercy will have in eternity.

One of the great things I observed last week – in addition to so many people from Point and the Fuller Center, Spring Road Christian, and other places serving – was that you could see people in the neighborhood whose houses weren’t on the list for our service outside doing some clean up kind of work. They were, along with all of us, taking care of creation, the world God Himself declared to be “very good” as He finished His work of creating the universe.

I have no idea how many different faith groups were represented among the volunteers for last week’s Impact Week. But I do know that when people who follow Jesus decide to work together in the name of Jesus, God blesses those endeavors. It seems to me that the less sectarian we are, the more He blesses. That confirms my long-held idea that if you and I believe the truth about Jesus, then everything else in life can be worked out around His name.

Thank God for Impact Week. Thank God for Kasey Bodine, Mary Susan Underwood, Chris Beirne, and Donna Phillips who did a lot of the leg work on the Point side of things. Thank God for Kim Roberts from the Fuller Center – she made it all happen in ways that are remarkable. Thank God for house captains, tool providers, and other leaders, many of whom were from Spring Road Christian Church. Thank God for a part of the world called the Greater Valley Area, where opportunities to be Jesus to the world abound.