The Dead Keep Speaking - (reflecting on Dietrich Bonhoeffer)

Sadly Dietrich Bonhoeffer died far too young, and before he could pen all that his hand and mind would have crafted.  But a glorious reality comes to light in all of this.  Only the Gospel allows the dead to keep speaking, because Christ is alive and because of that, it (the gospel) is alive.  So as of late the few little pieces of Bonhoeffer's legacy of writing that I have been able to consume have meant a tremendous meal for me to eat.  In fact, I am finding there is so much that I need to share it.  I may eventually write on all these matters, but for now listen to these powerful words from his work Life Together.  My reflection is for now limited to the header above each.

We Make Far Too Little of Corporate Gatherings

"It is by the grace of God that a congregation is permitted to gather in this world to share God's Word and sacrament.  Not all Christians receive this blessing.  The imprisoned, the sick, the scattered lonely, the proclaimers of the Gospel in heathen lands stand alone." 

Learning to Share in the Gospel Together and Not Just Leaving it to Our Pastor

"God has willed that we should seek and find His living Word in the witness of a brother, in the mouth of a man.  Therefore, the Christian needs another Christian who speaks God's Word to him.  He needs him again and again when he becomes uncertain and discouraged, for by himself he cannot help himself without belying the truth.  He needs his brother solely because of Jesus Christ.  The Christ in his own heart is weaker than the Christ in the word of his brother; his own heart is uncertain, his brother's is sure."

Small Groups Don't Do FOR Us What a Fixation on Jesus Does TO Us

"The more clearly we learn to recognize that the ground and strength and promise of all our fellowship is in Jesus Christ alone, the more serenely shall we think of our fellowship and pray and hope for it." 

I Need to Pray More...a Lot More

"A Christian fellowship lives and exists by the intercession of its members for one another, or it collapses.  His face, that [before] may have been strange and intolerable to me, is transformed in intercession into the countenance of a brother for whom Christ died, the face of a forgiven sinner."

We, the Church, Need to See Our Misrepresentation of the Gospel

"The pious fellowship permits no one to be a sinner.  We dare not be sinners.  Many Christians are unthinkably horrified when a real sinner is suddenly discovered among the righteous.  So we remain alone with our sin, living in lies and hypocrisy.  The fact is that we are sinners!  But it is the grace of the Gospel, which is so hard for the pious to understand, that it confronts us with the truth and says: You are a sinner, a great, desperate sinner; now come, as the sinner that you are, to God who loves you."

Oh For Confession Like This With One Another

"In confession the break-through to community takes place.  Sin demands to have a man by himself.  It withdraws him from community.  In confession the light of the Gospel breaks into the darkness and seclusion of the heart.  The expressed, acknowledged sin has lost all its power.  It has been revealed and judged as sin.  It can no longer tear the fellowship asunder.  Now the fellowship bears the sin of the brother."