Sometimes something is so well said that it is folly to try and say it a different way. Such is the case with Bonhoeffer and the life of ministry in the fellowship. I’m going to just let Bonhoeffer speak over the next few weeks with very little comment as we learn about fellowship.
“An argument arose among them as to which of them was the greatest.” (Luke 9:46)
We know who it is that sows this thought in the Christian community. But perhaps we do not bear in mind enough that no Christian community ever comes together without this thought immediately emerging as a seed of discord. Thus at the very beginning of Christian fellowship there is engendered an invisible, often unconscious, life-and-death contest. “An argument arose among them”: this is enough to destroy a fellowship.
Hence it is vitally necessary that every Christian community from the very outset face this dangerous enemy squarely, and eradicate it. There is no time to lose here, for from the first moment when a man meets another person he is looking for a strategic position he can assume and hold over against that person. There are strong persons and weak ones. If a man is not strong, he immediately claims the right of the weak as his own and uses it against the strong. There are gifted and ungifted persons, simple people and difficult people, devout and less devout, the sociable and the solitary. Does not the ungifted person have to take up a position just as well as the gifted person, the difficult one as well as the simple? And if am not gifted, then perhaps I am devout anyhow; or if I am not devout it is only because I do not want to be. May not the sociable individual carry the field before him and put the timid, solitary man to shame? Then may not the solitary person become the undying enemy and ultimate vanquisher of his sociable adversary? Where is there a person who does not with instinctive sureness find the spot where he can stand and defend himself, but which he will never give up to another, for which he will fight with all the drive of his instinct of self-assertion?
All this can occur in the most polite or even pious environment. But the important thing is that a Christian community should know that somewhere in it there will be “an argument among them as to which of them was the greatest”. It is the struggle of the natural man for self-justification. He finds it only in comparing himself with others, in condemning and judging others. Self-justification and judging others go together, as justification by grace and serving others go together.” – Bonhoeffer
In reality, fellowship is not about us but about the other as Christ came not to be served but to serve and give himself as a ransom for many. This is the antithesis of our western culture and one of the reasons fellowship is a most difficult challenge. Do not be controlled by wine but be controlled by the Spirit, Paul said. May this become the norm.
Theology in the Dirt 