Doing Life Together – Individual and Communal Spiritual Growth – Sermon – Pastor Marlee Page

This time for Bonhoeffer and his students was very much a preparatory time spent prior to the day of work ahead. While there is always some type of burden for us to bear in our work, Bonhoeffer’s counsel was always to let our ‘first word belong to Him to whom our whole life belongs.’

Bonhoeffer then offers a bit of a formula for us to follow for starting the day:

“But every common devotion should include the word of scripture, the hymns of the Church and the prayer of fellowship.”

For him, all of this could be accomplished through the Book of Psalms. Bonhoeffer recognizes its uniqueness.

I’ve no idea who said it, but I’ve heard a quote something along the lines of ‘If you want to be a radical Christian, don’t pick up your phone first thing in the morning, read a psalm instead.’

It is a good thing for the first words you utter each day to be to God.

Have you ever thought about this – The book of Psalms is the only book in the Bible that is actually written to God. From Genesis to Revelation, Scripture is God’s Word to us. It is the Word of God – so it’s God speaking to us.

But there’s one book in the middle – a big book right in the centre of the Bible – that is not only God speaking to us and giving us his Word, but also God giving us a way to speak to him.

Bonhoeffer says:

The Psalter is the prayer book of Jesus Christ in the truest sense of the word.”

It’s the one book in the Bible that includes prayers, and it also includes many songs.

Everywhere else in the Bible you might think, how do I read a chapter in Micah or in the Gospels and turn that into prayer?

In the Psalms, it’s already done for you!

So, the Psalms are especially suited for what Bonhoeffer is encouraging of his students and indirectly of us.

Right about now, you might be thinking ‘Didn’t Jesus give us a short and easy prayer that covers everything?’

I’ve thought about this last question. The disciples, even though they were classed as ”unlearned” men, would have heard the Psalms over and over in the synagogues.  Through Oral repetition- the disciples would’ve been so familiar with the psalms they didn’t need to read them!

So why did they ask Jesus to teach them how to pray? Did Jesus offer them anything new?

He gave them something concise & specific, but I don’t think he didn’t intend this to be the only prayer they should ever pray. I also think that the Disciples, just like us sometimes don’t notice or recognize things that are right in front of them…. They were looking for more clarification or maybe they thought simply that it couldn’t be that simple- they wanted to hear it from Jesus to make sure they were doing it right?!?

The Jewish people had always used the Psalms as part of their prayer life. Not only that, but the Lord’s Prayer has nothing in it that can’t be found in the Psalms, or at the very least, elsewhere in the Old Testament.

Maybe Jesus was getting them to focus on essentials in this short prayer.  Maybe he was just trying to make sure that they were actually praying!

So, do we 21st century people need to use the Psalms as prayers then? YES!

The Psalms give us the means to come to prayer in a fresh state of mind. They enable us to see that we’re not the first to feel God is silent when we pray, nor are we the first to feel immense anguish and bewilderment while praying.

“The more deeply we grow into the psalms and the more often we pray them as our own, the simpler and richer will our prayer become.”

The Psalms offer us ways to rejoice in prayer, to bow in worship, to exalt God for all he does and for all his blessings to us. There’s nothing quite like a Psalm to still your mind in the waking hours of the early morning and focus your time on God before the day sweeps you away.

The Psalms also offer us the realization that we can call out to God in Anger, fear, frustration, and anguish. We see this over & over again in the Psalms. It’s not just sunshine & rainbows. God wants to truly hear from us wherever we are at, good bad or ugly; and the Psalms are a great example.

The other thing that was paramount for Bonhoeffer in this area was song! He, himself was an accomplished musician, Bonhoeffer had been greatly impacted by the churches in Harlem, New York. Songs and hymns remained of vital importance. Bonhoeffer encourages the family to sing daily, to memorize hymns and encouraged separate times in the week for the community to sing and praise God together. Again, the Psalms are filled with Songs by David and then they’ve been turned into lyrics for our Hymns and our contemporary worship music as well.  So many times, when I read the psalms, Ican here the melodies that go along with the words.

“The more we sing, the more joy will we derive from it, but above all, the more devotion and discipline and joy we put into our singing, the richer will be the blessing that will come to the whole life of the fellowship from singing together.”

Singing, for Bonhoeffer, also became an expression of unity, not just within the fellowship but with the global church.

“All singing together that is right must serve to widen our spiritual horizon, make us see our little company as a member of the great Christian Church on earth, and help us willingly and gladly to join our singing, be it feeble or good to the song of the Church.” (p.61)

So many of you tell us repeatedly how worship music, new or old is an important and energizing part of your day – GOOD!!! Let me affirm that in you – Bonhoeffer would! There is nothing more joyful & spirit-filling for me than when we join together in Song- It can set the whole service for me.

Ok – so at the beginning, I said you need both individual and communal spiritual growth for a Christian Community to Thrive.

Here’s another controversial statement that we’ll throw at you during this series:

• “Let him who cannot be alone beware of community.”
• “Let him who is not in community beware of being alone.”

The first statement recognizes that God calls us as individuals, and it is us alone who must respond to the call of Jesus, and it is us alone who will give account to God when we die.

The second statement recognizes that while we were called alone, we weren’t called to be alone. We were called into community so that in life, we would not be alone.

So, a healthy community has people who can be alone and people who can be together.  

Bonhoeffer claims that many misuse community because they cannot stand to be alone.  So, they seek fellowship to provide a distraction from the solitude.  Bonhoeffer would push back against that reasoning. We as individuals need time alone to grow closer to Christ. It can’t all be a group lesson or experience.

God wants to build a personal, one-on-one relationship with us.

Matthew 6:6

But when you pray, go into your room, close the door, and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.

We need to have solitude with God to draw strength from Him, so that we can bless the Christian community.

There are three things that the individual believer should engage in while in the stillness.  

First, there should be a time of meditation on the scriptures, followed by a time of prayer and concluding with intercession for the community.  

Bonhoeffer concludes that the time the individual spends in solitude impacts their interactions on the community.

1. Meditation on the Scriptures:

Here’s Bonhoeffer’s challenge concerning scripture meditation: we need to read God’s word for YOU.

Here’s a helpful quote,

“In our meditation we ponder the text under the promise that it has something utterly personal to say to us this day and for our Christian life, that it is not only God’s word for the church, but also God’s word for us- Individually.  We expose ourselves to the specific word until it addresses us personally, and when we do this, we are doing no more than the simplest untutored Christian does every day. We read God’s word as God’s word for us, we do not ask what this text has to say to other people (P. 82).”

2. Prayer: We read that scripture meditation should lead directly to prayer.

Here is my favourite quote from that section.

“Prayer means nothing else but the readiness and willingness to receive and appropriate the word, and what is more, to accept it in one’s personal situation (P. 84).”

I think this explanation calls us to adopt verses of scripture as our prayers during all circumstances. We all have those verses that our imbedded in our hearts and minds. In times of great joy and abundance, we praise the Lord for his goodness. In times of trial and pain, we praise the Lord because we know he is faithful.

3. Intercession for the Community: The last of these is the intercession, that is the lifting up of our brothers and sisters in prayer.

I had never thought about it this way, but Bonhoeffer suggests that intercession helps us to see our brother or sister as a fellow sinner, to picture them at the cross, and to then feel their pain and suffering as our own. Bonhoeffer’s humble approach led him to say on page 86 that we can no longer hate and condemn one another when we fully understand that we each have crosses to bear just like our neighbours do.

I think when we can look at each other through this lens or reference point- not from a judgement point- It changes how we see each other. I believe this gives us a truer sense of how God sees each of us as well.  And when we honestly look upon each other as children of the Most High God- as our adopted Brothers & Sisters through Christ, how can we not do so with love and real care for each other?  I encourage you to intentionally add some time for intercession in your daily time with God and ask that he help you to be sincere and honest in that time so that when you pray, “Lord, have mercy on my brother or sister,” you really mean it out of compassion for them.

Conclusion:  

This balance of aloneness with God and fellowship with others in the presence of God is rooted in the fact that we are a body. You are as much a member of the body of Christ when you are on your own as when you are with others. You do not start being a member when you join a meeting or stop being one when you go home.

We are members of the body of Christ. It is who we are all the time. So, the whole is strengthened by our time alone, just as the whole is strengthened by time together. A healthy fellowship relies on both.

From the first pages of Life Together, Bonhoeffer bluntly states that

“it is not simply to be taken for granted that the Christian has the privilege of living among other Christians.”

After all, many believers must live in isolation – as Bonhoeffer would experience firsthand years later.

What Bonhoeffer worked so hard to show his students and what we can gain from this book today is understanding how important it is to Integrate your faith into your everyday life.

The lifestyle Dietrich Bonhoeffer promotes is completely centered on faith in Christ.

• Christ is your first thought in the morning and the last thought at night.
• Devotions and times of prayer fill your day. Even work is a cause for “praying without ceasing.”

This Christ-centered lifestyle is completely different than what most of us are used to. At best, we tend to relegate faith to a brief morning devotion and occasional prayer before a meal. Bonhoeffer challenges us to reconsider our individual & personal life priorities and to centre our life on the most important thing – Christ.

Christian community, despite its warts and imperfections, is a beautiful gift of God’s grace. It should be a joy and cause for celebration.

Yet too often we do take the church for granted. We are tempted to speak of the church with pessimism, disgust and dissatisfaction. We get fed up with the church’s hypocrisy, legalism and judgment. And while we may have legitimate critiques, Bonhoeffer pointedly reminds us that the ability to live in Christian community should not be taken for granted.

When we add the two together and really do life together with Christ and with an authentic Christian community- Life is Better together!

In closing before we sing our closing Hymn, I’d like you to pray with me this prayer written by Dietrich himself reminding us that we can’t do anything all by ourselves.