Bonhoeffer's 'Life Together' (3)

Community not an Ideal but a Divine reality (continued).

'Because God has already laid the only foundation of our fellowship, because God has bound us together in one body with other Christians in Jesus Christ, long before we entered into common life with them, we enter into that common life not as demanders but as thankful recipients...A pastor should not complain about his congregation, certainly never to other people, but also not to God. A congregation has not been entrusted to him in order that he should become its accuser before God and men. When a person becomes alienated from a Christian community in which he has been placed and begins to raise complaints about it, he had better examine himself first and see whether the trouble is not due to his wish dream that should be shattered by God.'

Community a Spiritual and not a Psychic (Human) Reality

'Christian community is founded solely on Jesus Christ; it is a spiritual and not a psychic reality, created only by the Holy Spirit not by natural urges, powers and capacities of the human spirit.
'The basis of all spiritual reality is the clear, manifest Word of God in Jesus Christ...In the spiritual realm the Spirit governs; in human community, psychological techniques and methods. In the former naive, unpsychological, unmethodical, helping love is extended towards one's brother; in the latter, psychological analysis and construction.

'...we can meet others only through the mediation of Christ. Spiritual love proves itself in that everything it says and does commends Christ. It will not seek to move others by all too direct personal direct influence, by impure interference in the life of another....Thus this spiritual love will speak to Christ about a brother more than to a brother about Christ.'

On the Psalter:

Discussing the difficulty we feel in uttering as our own the psalms of imprecation, of claimed innocence and the psalms of passion: 'A psalm we cannot utter as a prayer, that makes us falter and horrifies us, is a hint that here Someone else is praying, not we; that the One protesting his innocence, who is invoking God's judgement, who has come to such infinite depths of suffering, is none other than Jesus Christ himself. He it is who is praying here, and not only here but in the whole Psalter. The Man Christ Jesus, to whom no affliction, no ill, no suffering is alien and who yet was the wholly innocent and righteous one, is praying in the Psalter through the mouth of his Church. The Psalter is the prayer book of Jesus Christ in the true sense of the word...Now we understand how the Psalter can be prayer to God and yet God's own Word...The individual prays, in so far as Christ prays within him, not in his own name but in the Name of Jesus Christ; he prays out of the Manhood put on by Christ; he prays on the basis of the prayer of the Man Christ Jesus.
' The Psalter is [also] the vicarious prayer of Christ for His Church.'

On ministry:

The greatest ministry to one another is the ministry of the Word of God, but for this to be real other ministries must be exercised too:
the ministry of holding one's tongue(Ps 50:20-21; James 4:11-12; Eph 4:29);
the ministry of meekness(Rom 12:3,16): 'One who lives by justification by grace is willing and ready to accept even insults and injuries without protest, taking them from God's punishing and gracious hand';
the ministry of listening: 'Just as love to God begins with listening to his Word, so the beginning of love for the brethren is learning to listen to them. It is God's love for us that he not only gives us his Word but lends us his ear';
the ministry of helpfulness; '...in trifling, external matters; nobody is too good for the meanest service'.
the ministry of bearing (Gal 6:2)'The Bible speaks with remarkable frequency of 'bearing'. It is capable of expressing the whole work of Jesus Christ (Isa 53:4,5)'.
And then- the ministry of proclaiming - one to one, warning, encouragement, rebuke. 'Nothing can be more loving than the severe rebuke that calls a brother back from the paths of sin'.
Finally, the ministry of authority:'Whoever will be great among you, shall be your servant / minister' (Mark 10:43).