Bonhoeffer, in his book, Christ the Center, emphasizes that our central question must be “Who is Christ for me?” (Christ the Center, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, trans. by John Bowden, Harper & Row, New York, 1960.) Christianity is not a set of ideas which we accept, modify or reject but an encounter with the risen Christ. Christ comes to us and asks of us a personal response. But this is not the individualistic encounter of pietistic religion divorced from community. Rather, we meet Christ in community in the Body of Christ. As has been amply demonstrated in history, the individual is capable of endless illusions and delusions. It is in our encounter with others that the validity of our thoughts and experiences are tested for reality. The individual believer both receives God’s revelation in community and also needs the community to test the validity of that revelation. The first level of that validation takes place when we meet in Christian community and test our understanding in the hearing of others.
Of course human communities can also experience collective delusions which need to be tested through an encounter with a greater reality. Thus the church encounters God in its relationship with Scripture, Christians from other cultures, and the world outside. In the church, Christ comes to us and asks for a response that requires us to decide who we are in relation to God and neighbor. Through the Scriptures, the creeds, tradition, the needs of others, the diversity of understandings that we bring from our respective cultural experiences, and the movement of the Spirit through worship and the sacraments, we continue to test our faith in an encounter with a reality that is greater than any of us. Often it is only through such contrasting experiences that we can grasp the universal nature of God’s saving truth.
In my next blog, I will try to give you a concrete, though fictional, illustration of this.
