4. Service

And yet, for all this, Bonhoeffer was a realist, one of the few in the German church of his day. He knew that if we rely on human will then any Christian community will fail. He begins his section on service with Luke’s report of the dissension among the disciples as to who should be greatest in the kingdom of heaven: “no Christian community ever comes together without this argument appearing as a seed of discord”1. As soon as Christians come together they begin to classify and judge and condemn each other2. There is only one solution to this dynamic, which begins so naturally and so inevitably. That solution is service.

Service begins by simply refusing to verbalise the ‘odorous comparisons’: the Epistle of James tells us this (James 3.3ff). Once we refuse to speak the comparison, we begin to refuse to play the harmful game of jockeying for position and status and power3. Then we can begin to see in our brothers and sisters opportunities to serve them, and in serving them, serve God.

The true, humble service of one Christian sinner to another takes three forms. First, be prepared simply to listen to your brother or sister: “We do God’s work for our brothers or sisters when we learn to listen to them”4. Anyone who is not prepared to surrender this time to the other members of the Christian community is not prepared to surrender the time to God. Second, be prepared to live in “active helpfulness… [where] nobody is too good for the lowest service. Those who worry about the loss of time entailed by such small, external acts of helpfulness are usually taking their own work too seriously.”56

Third, Christian service is expressed by forbearance: Galatians tells us “Bear one another’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfil the law of Christ.” (Galatians 6:2). For Bonhoeffer forbearance is an expression of the mutuality of the Christian community, the interconnectedness of the Body of Christ. The strong and the weak, the healthy and the sick, the learned and the ignorant, the dedicated and the slack should all seek ways in which each may help in the building up of the other. Even sinners should be forgiven daily7.

1. Bonhoeffer, Life Together, p. 93. [↩]
2. Rather like George Bernard Shaw’s comment in the preface to Pygmalion (1912): “It is impossible for an Englishman to open his mouth without making some other Englishman hate or despise him.” Which was a fine thing for an Irishman to say. [↩]
3. Bonhoeffer instructed the seminarians of Finkenwalde never to speak of a brother in his absence, or, if they did so, to explain it to him afterwards: “almost as much was learned from the failure to observe this simple rule and from the renewed resolution to keep it as from sermons and exegeses”, Eberhard Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, p. 349. [↩]
4. Bonhoeffer, Life Together, p. 98. [↩]
5. Bonhoeffer, Life Together, p. 99. [↩]
6. I’d like to interject a caveat into this precept (or, in other words, disagree): it will only work when there is a recognition of mutual accountability. Often what happens in parish Christian communities is that the priest’s time is regarded as a public resource available to all, and, if we get him moving tables or unblocking drains, then that is a reminder for him to be humble. [↩]
7. Bonhoeffer, Life Together, p. 95, 100-102. [↩]