Theological Journal – February 8 What Dietrich Bonhoeffer Would Say to the North American Church (4)

4.       Bonhoeffer’s fourth word for the church is “The Jesus-Likeness of God.” Here we get to the heart of things for him. The question that tormented him was “Who is Jesus Christ for us today?” He finds the heart of all things genuinely Christian in the biblical insistence that Jesus Christ is our baseline for understanding the character and will of God. We don’t come to Jesus already knowing who or what God is and see if Jesus fits that mold. No! We come to Jesus to find out who God is and any views of God that don’t pass the Jesus sniff-test are to be rejected!

DB’s not talking about theories about Jesus here. He knows and accepts the church’s teaching in its leading creeds and formulas to be sure. He mines them for what all this teaching about Jesus means for faithfully following him. His book Christ the Center offers plenty of evidence for that. In his later Letters and Paper from Prison DB assesses the impact of our changed world on following and understanding Jesus. In his prison thoughts he offers fresh insight on Jesus (and the church):

“The experience that a transformation of all human life is given in the fact that ‘Jesus is there only for others.’ His ‘being there for others’ is the experience of transcendence. It is only this ‘being there for others,’ maintained till death, that is the ground of his omnipotence, omniscience, and omnipresence. Faith is participation in this being of Jesus (incarnation, cross, resurrection)” (DBWE 8:14332).

Do you hear what DB is saying here?

-Jesus’ “being there for others,” his unconditional availability and unlimited liability for us, is what transforms “all human life,” and

-this is so because his “being there for others” is the way God himself (“transcendence”) is present with and for his creatures and creation. This what Jesus being fully human and fully divine (to the classical language of the creeds) is all about.  

Jesus’ being-there-for-others was the last and most profound distillation of the meaning of Jesus for today DB was to offer. We’re all still working on living in to the reality of this Jesus to this very day.

In 1995 Joan Osborne sang a hit song “One of Us.” If God had a name and a face, she sings, what would we call him and what would God look like? Here’s the corollary to this third word DB would press on us. God’s name is Jesus and God looks like that first century Jewish peasant. What if this is true? For Bonhoeffer the incarnation of the Son of God as Jesus of Nazareth, fully human and fully divine, meant that in this one human life we truly meet God. Jesus is what God looks like as a human being! What God is we find in him in a human key. In Jesus we find God, “the beyond in the midst of our lives” (DBWE 8:10293-10294). And we find this especially in Jesus’ weakness, poverty, lack of status, poor relations and socially unacceptable friends and followers, and mostly his cross. The Presbyterian Church (USA)’s A Declaration of Faith puts this well:

“We recognize the work of God in Jesus' power and authority.                                                      He did what only God can do.                                                                                                       We also recognize the work of God in Jesus'                                                                      lowliness. When he lived as a servant and went                                                                    humbly to his death the greatness that belongs only to                                                               God was manifest.                                                                                                                            In both his majesty and lowliness                                                                                                      Jesus is the eternal Son of God,                                                                                                                      God himself with us."[1]

DB’s view of Jesus can save us Americans in particular from the faulty views about him that so severely distorts both our understanding and practice of the way of life to which he calls us. Bad Religion’s “American Jesus” powerfully voices these distortions.

I don't need to be a global citizen
Because I'm blessed by nationality
I'm member of a growing populace
We enforce our popularity
There are things that seem to pull us under
And there are things that drag us down
But there's a power and a vital presence
That's lurking all around

We've got the American Jesus
See him on the interstate
We've got the American Jesus
He helped build the president's estate

I feel sorry for the earth's population
'Cause so few live in the U.S.A.
At least the foreigners can copy our morality
They can visit but they cannot stay
Only precious few can garner the prosperity
It makes us walk with renewed confidence
We've got a place to go when we die
And the architect resides right here

We've got the American Jesus
Fostering their shame on… 

He's the farmers barren fields
The force the army wields
The expression in the faces of the starving millions
The power of the man he's the fuel that drives the clan
He's the motive and conscience of the murderer
He's the preacher on t.v., the false sincerity
The form letter that's written by the big computers
The nuclear bombs and the kids with no moms
And I'm fearful that he's inside me

We've got the American Jesus
See him on the interstate
We've got the American Jesus
Exercising his authority

We've got the American Jesus
Fostering their shame on faith
We've got the American Jesus
Overwhelming millions every day, eah

One nation, under god

Jesus the “man for others” is a perfect segue into DB’s next word for us.

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[1] Ch.4, par.3.