The association of the name of Christ with the Republican party of Trump has become a scourge of shame for the church. The time has come––indeed, it is long overdue––for the entire church to denounce this association in the strongest possible terms.
We should not make the mistake of seeing this political rally as only a political rally. We saw the political and the theological come together in confusing ways. And this is my main concern as a follower of Jesus Christ. When the symbols of Christianity are melded together with the symbols of political identity, then those who love the name of Christ must attempt to pull them apart. That is the difficult work of warning against a kind of Christian nationalism. It is the loving work of 1 John 5:21 - "Little children, keep yourselves from idols.”
As a Bonhoeffer scholar, I am often asked about how his life experiences can be instructive for us today. The question is usually focused on Bonhoeffer’s actions in the conspiracy to assassinate Hitler, and on the ethical question of whether Bonhoeffer did the right thing in his involvement as a double agent in that conspiracy.
I understand this question and why people ask it, as it is an interesting question to ponder. But I don’t think the focus on “Bonhoeffer as ethical case study” is the most fruitful way to approach his example for us today. Rather, I believe that the most instructive part of Bonhoeffer’s witness is his engagement with the German church in the mid-1930’s, when he challenged the church’s attempts to defend its own power in society.
The point is that the increase of access to knowledge, and it being at our fingertips, has lulled us to sleep in what we actually know and can actually accurately articulate, much like the journey being interrupted by the poppy fields in The Wizard of Oz. The church is not excluded!
I am told that just before dawn,
there is a moment
when it is neither dawn nor night.
It is a blink after the dark
and a flash before the light.
A Christian understanding of the nature and life of the Church is profoundly shaped by consideration of the existence of Jesus Christ, who is both fully God and has a fully human body. We need venture no further than that word – body – to begin to grasp the momentous mystery of the Church, the body and bride of Christ. As we are told in the Holy Scriptures, Christ became one flesh with His Church (Eph. 5: 31-32). Without the great and unparalleled miracle of the Incarnation, the Church cannot be who she actually is: the body of Christ.
Have you ever tried to read the Bible straight through? The story starts out well enough. Genesis is full of engaging and wild stories. Exodus recounts the dramatic tale of God’s deliverance of his people from slavery in Egypt, through the wilderness, and into the promised land.
But then it gets brutal.
Humility is typically understood to concern a modest evaluation of the self or a refusal to assert or aggrandize one’s self. It is the antithesis of a pride which seeks to idolize the self, made evident in the words of 1 Peter 5:5, “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.” The eternal God has no need for humility, as he is incapable of pride, but still he chose to empty and humble himself in his humanity for the sake of the world. There is a great and awesome concern for the other in the triune God.
It is not uncommon for modern Christians to think of the incarnation of our Lord as not much more than a necessary prerequisite, or precondition, for his atoning death. There is no doubt that the crucifixion and death of Christ would have been powerless had He not been truly and fully human. But there is indeed more we can, and should, say about the atoning implications of the incarnation. For, when God became incarnate He began a comprehensively astounding work of reconciliation that healed and saved every last aspect of our fallen humanity, from cradle to grave.
It is a strange and unsettling mystery that God became man. Why would He choose this–this life, this body, this death? There is nothing desirable about the long decay, about being clothed in skin that can be pierced, lungs that can fail, eyes that can become blind. And yet the entire gospel narrative hints and whispers and, ultimately, cries aloud in triumphant chorus that this became so: Immanuel, God with us. He became flesh, to give life, and life more abundantly.
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