Bonhoeffer: Discipleship and the Brother and Sister

Reading further into The Cost of Discipleship, we see the chapters become shorter and more focused.  Bonhoeffer’s Chapter 9 is simply called The Brother, and he focuses intently on the relationship between followers of Christ and other people.  Bonhoeffer begins this chapter with Matthew 5: 21-26, in which Jesus prohibits not just murder but anger and hatred directed toward other people, and states that we must be reconciled to each other before approaching God’s altar. 

Again, I struggle with Bonhoeffer’s very black-and-white approach.  He hammers a point home—a law-focused point—before letting the gospel message of forgiveness and reconciliation be seen again.  I find this distressing, very judgmental…but this is because it is very convicting, and that is his intent.  In this chapter, Bonhoeffer makes I think 3 main points.  One is the holiness of humanity, human flesh, created in God’s image; the second is the exclusive authority of God over life and death.  The final is the risk to not just each Christian, but to the Church, if we live in unrepentant hatred toward our Brothers.  

(Brothers and Sisters.  I’m not such a feminist that I’m going to use “brothers and sisters” in place of Bonhoeffer’s “brothers” in his quoted material, but I will use it as I write in recognition that it is an inclusive discussion of our relationships with all people.)

“God is the Father, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who became the Brother of us all.  Here is the final reason why God will not be separated from our brothers.  His only-begotten Son bore the shame and insults for his Father’s glory.  But the Father would not be separated from his Son, nor will he now turn his face from those whose likeness the Son took upon him, and for whose sake he bore the shame.  The Incarnation is the ultimate reason why the service of God cannot be divorced from the service of man. He who says he loves God and hates his brother is a liar.”  (emphasis added)

Modern (maybe just American) Christianity seems to forget or minimize the value which God places on matter, on earth and clay, on tangible vs only spiritual things.  God created the world by His spoken Word; He created Adam in clay and by the breath of His mouth.  God made everything—every atom, every dust mote, every ray of light, every drop of water, every grain of sand—and called it good.  He made humankind and called us very good—our arms and hands and legs and feet, our brains and hearts.  Yes, we and all of creation are fallen, broken and enmeshed by sin; but this sinfulness is both a physical and spiritual condition.  The distinction between spiritual (as good and pure) and bodily (as the element of humanity and the world that is sinful and evil) is a Platonic and Gnostic distinction, not authentic to Judeo-Christian heritage.  Creation as a total was declared good; in total it fell with Adam’s fall.  In total, we are redeemed by the death and resurrection of Christ—Christ, who was born as a baby, suffered hunger and disappointment and pain as a human Man, and died a bloody, painful, dirty death on a rough, hard wooden cross.  The Incarnation of Christ reminds us that God desires to redeem all of His creation, the spiritual and the physical.  So any rejection, hatred or neglect of “the Brother” that separates the physical and the spiritual is not of God, not of Christ.  

In the book of James, we are told “What good is it, my brothers, if a man claims to have faith but has no deeds?  Can such faith save him?  Suppose such a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food.  If one of you says to him, “Go, I wish you well; keep warm and well fed,” but does nothing about his physical needs, what good is it?  In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by actions, is dead.”  Christian love, Christian faithfulness, service, mercy and compassion in the name of Christ must impact both the physical and spiritual.  For Bonhoeffer in this current chapter, we are reminded that God is God over both the physical and the spiritual, and that the Incarnation of Christ into human flesh reinforces the value—the “’very good’-ness”—of human bodies.  

Bonhoeffer says “The brother’s life is a divine ordinance, and God alone has power over life and death.”  This also is a reminder of a core Judeo-Christian value, that which I in my own mind describe as a “The-Lord-is-my-Shepherd” worldview:  God created the world, He created Mankind in His divine image and gave humanity authority over the world, but He Himself retains authority over humanity and over each person. He grants some authority to parents, to earthly rulers and governments; parents make life and death decisions for children, governments exercise life and death authority over militaries and in the legal system.  But the life or death authority over a person ultimately belongs exclusively to God—to include the life and death authority we would want to wield over ourselves.  Any time we would take the authority of life and death over another person, we must do so in humility and with reliance upon the wisdom and goodness of God—not in our own human power and willfulness.

This prohibition against anger as belonging to the same continuum with murder essentially is reminding us of the intrinsic value of human life, the authority of God over that life, and the inseparable connection between the spiritual and the physical as both being part of God’s creation and of value.  In the same way that we like to separate the spiritual and the physical such that we neglect the physical good of our brothers and sisters, we like to separate the physical and the spiritual such that spiritual harm—hating and cursing a brother or sister—carries an imagined smaller evil-valence than outright murder.  In the quoted passage from Matthew, Jesus tells His listeners and us as His readers that He makes no distinction between anger toward a brother and murder of that brother—both devalue a child whom He came to save; both damage the loving and serving relationship which must exist between the Christian and the world; and both alienate the Christ-follower from God.

Jesus is equally concerned about sins in the body and sins of the heart. In His preaching and teaching, as He pushed back against the Pharisees—those “white washed tombs” (see all of Matthew 23 with the “seven woes” against the Pharisees)—He reminds them and us that “What comes out of a man is what makes him ‘unclean.’  For from within, out of men’s hearts, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly.  All these evils come from inside and make a man ‘unclean.’”  (Mark 7:20-22; see also Matthew 15:11)   Twisted, broken, evil people that we are, we want to not be held accountable for either—for harm against our brothers and sisters, we want to declare the physical sin greater than the sin of the heart, saying it is worse to murder than to hate.  But for good against our brother or sister, we would claim that a non-tangible good—“be warmed and fed, I wish you well!”—is sufficient, that the tangible good of clothing or feeding others is not needed.  We are so slippery, so self-centered!  Jesus will have none of this—He pins down our selfishness with His words, demanding that we love and serve our brothers, and reject sin against them, in both what we do and what we think, say and feel.  

Bonhoeffer uses harsh, judgmental words, the unadulterated words of God’s law, when he says

“When a man gets angry with his brother and swears at him, when he publically insults or slanders him, he is guilty of murder and forfeits his relation to God.  He erects a barrier not only between himself and his brother, but also between himself and God.  He no longer has access to Him:  his sacrifice, worship and prayer are not acceptable in His sight.  For the Christian, the worship cannot be divorced from the service of the brethren, as it was with the rabbis.  If we despise our brother our worship is unreal, and it forfeits every divine promise….Not just the fact that I am angry, but the fact that there is somebody who has been hurt, damaged and disgraced by me, who “has a cause against me,” erects a barrier between me and God.  Let us therefore as a Church examine ourselves, and see whether we have not often enough wronged our fellow men. Let us see whether we have tried to win popularity by falling in with the world’s hatred, its contempt and its contumely.  For if we do that we are murderers.   Let the fellowship of Christ so examine itself day-to-day and ask whether, at the hour of prayer and worship, any accusing voices intervene and make its prayer vain.”

Written and published in 1937, the historical context certainly informed Bonhoeffer’s writing. The Neuremberg Laws were passed in 1935, codifying the discrimination of the Jews and other “undesirables” under the Nazi regime.  Bonhoeffer must have looked around him and asked “who is my brother?”  Literally, his brother-in-law was a Jew; his family was directly impacted by the climate of hatred in Germany, a climate which ultimately moved from codified hatred and contempt to torture, enslavement and mass murder.  How wicked is the human heart; Bonhoeffer was under no illusions and neither can we be.  The same human heart that says “as long as I don’t physically hurt my brother, and as long as I wish him well in my heart, I’m doing OK” can very easily evolve to become “this brother whom I hate in my heart, and whom I have physically been failing to serve—it’s no big deal if he is victimized, robbed and murdered.”   

Bonhoeffer echoes the words of Jesus—we must continually examine our hearts.  Where do I harbor hatred and contempt for God’s children?  Where do I wish harm to others, where do I curse them as an inconvenience, as undesirable, as unworthy, as disgusting and contemptible?  If I hold these thoughts in my heart, I am as good as a murderer.  We as individuals, and we as the corporate Body of Christ, the Church on earth, must examine our hearts.  We cannot be hardened into an attitude of hatred that is as good as murder.  Before we approach the altar of God—before we come to His holy presence in worship and to receive His sacraments, or before we enter into His presence in prayer—we must examine our hearts and repent.  The writer of the book of Hebrews says “If we deliberately keep on sinning after we have received the knowledge of the truth, no sacrifice for sins is left, but only a fearful expectation of judgement and of raging fire that will consume the enemies of God.” (Hebrews 10:26, 27).  If we remain with unrepentant hearts, we are separated from God—and will remain separated from God in eternity.  “How much more severely do you think a man deserves to be punished who has trampled the Son of God under foot, who has treated as an unholy thing the blood of the covenant that sanctified him, and who has insulted the Spirit of grace.” (Hebrews 10: 29) By persevering in unrepentant sins—sins of hatred in the heart and sins of murder and harm in the body—we “trample the Son of God under foot.” 

 The Son of God, born of a woman, Incarnate, calls us to repent of our sins and to reject both sins of body and heart.   He has come to bring salvation through His death on the cross; He has redeemed the world through His blood. How can we trample on Him by hating the very people He came to save?

1)      Examine your heart and attitudes, as well as your actions toward others.  Are there people you hold in contempt, as being less-than-human or of lesser value than you yourself or your family, your social circle, whatever category you are privileged to belong to?  Are you harboring hatred; have you spoken in anger and malice; have you slandered other people?  Recognize these as the very sins against other people which Christ speaks again in Matthew 5, and which Bonhoeffer is warning against in this chapter.  See them as sins which separate you from the love and forgiveness of God.  Repent and pray for forgiveness and for a new heart in Christ.

2)      Who is the brother or sister in need in your life?  Where have you failed to meet the physical needs of others?  Pray for forgiveness for this neglect, this failure to live out your faith.   Pray for continued wisdom to see clearly the people who need your love and service in Jesus’ name.

3)      Read Hebrews 10: 19 – 25.  You can approach the throne of God with confidence, you are a baptized and forgiven child of God.  Your sins no longer separate you from God in Christ.  How will you “hold to this hope” and be spurred on to good works, works of love to others?