Life Together in Isolation

Beginning next week, we’ll start with chapter one. There’s no rush to get through this in any set number of weeks: recovering a life together is a longer project than what happens after a pandemic.

As you have gone through this period of social isolation, what about the gathered body of the church have you missed? What have you found which cannot be duplicated online?

"Common life under the Word begins in with common worship at the beginning of the day" (42). We can't have the form of life together without a common Scripture in common reading. We learn the world's shape in God by entering into Scripture's world.

To wit: The day together--whether with one's family, monastic group, church, etc.--is framed by the praises of Scripture. This is the habit and shape of the day: the Psalms. His book on the Psalms is exemplary here--the Psalms help us to *see* the day as it is.

Beginning in on Chapter Two: One of the dimensions of Bonhoeffer's theology which is vastly underrated is his narrative theology. By this, I mean that he views Scripture as a world to be inhabited, not a text to be dissected.

Apologies for the strong start to this discussion, but then silence. I've been in the midst of writing up some substantive thoughts on all of this in a long-form format. More on this later! Next week, we'll begin looking at Chapter Two.

This week, look at the remainder of chapter One, in which he draws a contrast between the community which Christ gives (the one we did not seek, but the gift of God), versus the community which we create (the one which desires immediacy, and not mediation by Christ.)

Any community which is not bound together in this way is "psychic", a community bound together by force of personality, by emotivism, by common interests, or by power.

If this time of isolation has also been clarifying for we have neglected from Christian community, it is also an opportunity to recall what has never been our source of unity. Beginning on p. 31, Bonhoeffer distinguishes between the "psychic" and "spiritual" community.

ICYMI: Today marks the 75th anniversary of Dietrich Bonhoeffer's death. I wrote about why he still matters today. stevebezner.com/writings/why-b…

Is your congregation would be interested in doing a series on this, and how Bonhoeffer helps us to both recognize what is happening in our isolation and to prepare for our coming back together? If so, drop me a DM.

@life_isolation The dream/ideal vs reality point struck me especially hard but positively, hopefully. God, acc to DB, prefers the grit, the real. Redefines, perhaps, Beauty. This Easter, then, we embrace the real w new clarity. The grit of crucifixion, the reality of resurrection.

The question is two-fold: What do we receive from this very different Easter, absent from one another and from worship together before God? What ideals about Christian community does this time invite us to let go of? What ideals should we mourn for now and retain for later?

"He who loves his dream of a community more than the Christian community itself becomes a destroyer of the latter, even though his personal intentions may be ever so honest and earnest and sacrificial." (27) The gap between our expectations of an Easter and this year grows.

As we move through this long Holy Saturday, this word from p. 27: "By sheer grace, ,God will not permit us to live even for a brief period in a dream world. He does not abandon us to those rapturous experience and lofty moods that come over us like a dream...

No ways of communication or community can ignore the brute fact of mediated relationship. We never have one another immediately, nor is that for DB a desirable thing. To have one another immediately is to have one another apart from Christ's bringing us together.

IOW, what is true in the gathered church now is true eternally in the divine economy: we are not God, and so, our union with God in eternity does not leave this behind. We are joined, now and eternally, to God, *mediated* to one another and to God.

The three-fold reasons which he gives for Christian community on p.22-24 all depict more than simple a practice of Christian community, but a divine economy within which our practice fits. We do this not because it fulfills needs solely but because of how God has acted toward us.