LIFE TOGETHER

Dear Friends in Christ,

As Adolph Hitler came to power and the German government began preparing for what would come to be called World War II, German Protestants were facing a crisis. After being elected Chancellor in 1933, Hitler had sought to consolidate support for Nazi policies by bringing about the merger of regional churches into one national German church. Protestants who were opposed to the new national church’s support of Nazi ideology formed the Confessing Church. One of the pastors of the Confessing Church was Dietrich Bonhoeffer. In 1935, after two years as the pastor of German-speaking churches in London, Bonhoeffer returned to Germany to head a seminary for pastors of the Confessing Church. Although the seminary was forced to move and was finally closed at the beginning of the war, Bonhoeffer’s experience during those years resulted in one of the books that was most important to me during my studies at what is now the Episcopal Divinity School.

Life Together is in some ways an odd book for Bonhoeffer to have written. One might have expected books or tracts that were critical of the national church’s support of Hitler. Instead, he wrote a book about the importance of Christian community. There is, of course, a good reason for this. It is in our life together, in the community we share together in Christ, that we find both the direction and the strength we need to face the challenges of living faithfully. As Deacon Polly often tells me, I can be a believer by myself, but I need a community in order to be a Christian.

Life Together continues to shape my thinking about the church and about its sharing in God’s mission of reconciliation. We are living in difficult times and how we live in these times, either faithfully or fearfully, will depend in large measure on how we live together in this parish community. In the First Letter of John we read a clear assertion about the importance of community: “we declare to you what we have seen and heard so that you also may have fellowship with us; and truly our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ.”(1:3) While I dare not put limits on where God’s grace can be experienced, I trust that grace can always be found where God has promised, in our life together in this parish. It is in community that we have the hope of experiencing some measure of the perfect love that casts out fear (1 John 4:18). It is in our life together that, through Word and Sacrament, we are given power to live faithfully in the world, sharing in God’s mission of reconciliation.

Your elder brother, 
 Daniel