Advent Course - Exploring 'Life Together'

Discussion by Milton Avery, 1944 (Mount Holyoake College Art Museum)

Our Advent Course at St Giles-in-the-Fields this year was based on Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s book ‘Life Together’. We held three sessions in church around our Sunday services and a separate half-day retreat on a Saturday at the Royal Foundation of St Katherine in Limehouse, which was also attended by parishioners from St George’s Bloomsbury. 

We selected ‘Life Together’ as the basis for our study group for a number of reasons. With the restrictions of the Covid pandemic behind us and a growing congregation at St Giles, it felt like a good time to consider what it means to be a Christian community. Bonhoeffer’s book offers practical advice on how to live together as Christians not only in times when we gather for worship but also when life means engaging in the world outside of the church (which for most of us is most of the time!) The book is profound but also short, which we felt made it a manageable study text over a few sessions during the busy season of Advent. 

Rather than explore the book chapter by chapter in sequence, we designed the course around four themes. Apart from the retreat day, we limited each session to a maximum of one hour and offered either a light lunch of soup and bread or tea and cakes depending on the time of day.

A copy of the poster and flier is below, followed by a brief summary of the structure of each session and a synopsis of the discussion that ensued.

Life Together as a Blessing – Session 1

We were joined for this introductory session by Bonhoeffer scholar Dr Guido de Graaff (author of “Politics in Friendship: A Theological Account” – a commentary on Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s friendship with Bishop George Bell amid the hostilities of the Second World War). Having Guido with us significantly enhanced the experience – in no way a comparable alternative but churches lacking access to such a learned guest might find the use of an online video introduction to the life of Bonhoeffer, of which a number are available on YouTube! We suggested that attendees read Chapter 1 of ‘Life Together’ beforehand. In this session we aimed to cover the following: 

- Who was Bonhoeffer and why did he write ‘Life Together’?
- How did Bonhoeffer suggest we can live together gracefully? 
- How is Jesus central to our relationships?
- How does community rooted in Jesus relate to the messy realities of life together? 

We sat in a circle in the chancel. I began with a sentence from scripture – the first verse of Psalm 133, with which Bonhoeffer begins his book. Then Guido asked us what we knew of Bonhoeffer. For many people he was known mainly, if at all, as a martyr – someone who died in the concentration camps of Nazi Germany. Guido gave us a brief biography of Bonhoeffer’s life. It was interesting to learn that Bonhoeffer came to the church through his interest in theology (rather than the other way around). We also learnt about the context in which ‘Life Together’ was written – how it is the product of Bonhoeffer’s experience as head of a seminary of the ‘Confessing Church’. 

After a break for some lunch, we selected passages from Chapter 1 of the text and discussed these in more detail to explore how Bonhoeffer understood Christ as being central to our relationships. Perhaps not surprising given the time of year, but many of the passages we selected seemed to have an ‘Advent’ connection in terms of words or imagery. Our discussion covered the following points: 

Bonhoeffer’s exploration of Christians as a scattered people but one who find great strength in meeting one another; and Bonhoeffer’s explanation that what connects us on this continuum between dispersed and gathered states is Christ and “a gracious anticipation of the last things.”

We explored what Bonhoeffer describes as the difference between human and divine love and his image of the incarnation as the beginning of our instruction in that divine love. We considered how Advent is a time to prepare to receive that instruction anew. “When God revealed himself to us in Christ as our brother, when he won our hearts by his love, this was the beginning of our instruction of divine love.” 

Attendees asked insightful questions. Several related to Bonhoeffer’s conception of interfaith relations. Whether his insistence that we can only truly be united to each other through Christ meant that it is not possible for us to live in unity with people from other faiths? We discussed how Bonhoeffer was advocating a ‘religionless faith’ – a faith in God, revealed through the person of Christ, which transcended traditional “religious” boundaries. Our need to know each other ‘through Christ’ should be understood in that way – rather than as a barrier to knowing non-Christians.

Another interesting topic that was raised was Bonhoeffer’s suggestion that we need to meet others face to face because it is only through them that we can hear the Good News of our salvation. We need our “brother” (or sister) to speak to us - to see them face to face is to see the face of Christ in them. 

I was very grateful to Guido for being with us to introduce us to Bonhoeffer, his life and work and answer so many questions.

 

Life Together in Church  - Session 2

This session was led by my colleague Wil James who designed the format and activities, which drew on material from Chapter 2 of ‘Life Together’. In this session we set out to explore what it means to be a member of a worshipping Christian community. Wil cleverly based this session around preparing and performing an act of worship. In this session we set out to answer the question:

- How do patterns of prayer, worship and study bring us closer together? 

We sat around a table in the Vestry House. Wil began by explaining how Bonhoeffer considered that daily prayer and study (within families or small groups, outside of the church) was the key to meeting Christ – through whom we can only truly live together. Wil explained there were four aspects to Bonhoeffers pattern of prayer, which he envisaged taking place early in the morning, before the beginning of the working day:

 

1) The psalms – we say Christ’s prayers “through the mouth of the church” through which we learn to pray in fellowship. 

2) Scripture – we read the Bible where we find our commission to act as Christians and find ourselves in the enactment of God’s saving work recorded in the text. 

3) Song – we sing together creating the voice of the church and unified prayer, which widens our spiritual horizons and places us within the whole company of the faithful throughout the world 

4) Prayer – our intercessions prayed together are the ordered prayer of the family or fellowship, speaking collectively to God in its own voice.

 

After his introduction, Wil gave us each three options for each of the four elements of Bonhoeffer’s approach to worship. Three psalms (70, 100 and 133), three passages from scripture (Colossians 3.1-17, 1 Thessalonians 4.9-12, Romans 15.1-9), three hymns and three approaches to prayer; including a ‘five finger prayer’ approach which I had not come across before. He divided the group into four and asked each to select one of the three options. The selected psalm, reading from scripture, hymn and prayer then formed an act of worship. 

We chose not to discuss the reasons as to why we had made a particular selection a to let the liturgy speak for itself.

Many attendees remarked how similar Bonhoeffer’s approach to worship was to the form of Morning Prayer we know from the Prayer Book. It is interesting how different people from different churches all seemed to find something in common in Bonhoeffer’s text. Perhaps evidence that he knew what he was talking about when it comes to unity! 

Life Alone – Day Retreat  

We booked space at the Royal Foundation of St Katherine in Limehouse for a half-day retreat. I gave two reflections and a short homily during Communion. Chapter 3 of ‘Life Together’ formed the basis for the two reflections in which we explored Bonhoeffer’s strategies for private prayer and meditation on the word. My notes from the retreat and a copy of the material handed out is in a separate post at this link.


Life Together in the World – Session 3

In this session we sought to explore how we can live as a member of a Christian community when we can’t spend all our time praying and studying the scriptures? Drawing on Chapter 4 of ‘Life Together’ we explored Bonhoeffers strategies for authentic Christian living in the workplace and in public life; how to listen without judgement and how to bear another’s burdens. 

We sat around a table, next to the church kitchen/servery, sharing lunch as we chatted. Bonhoeffer described such moments as ‘daily table fellowship’ in which God grants us a holiday from the working day. As a man growing up in a well-off family we were not sure how much manual work he ever did - but we appreciated the sentiment and the poetic description. We discussed Bonhoeffer’s other similar phrases - such as describing meeting another Christian as “an occasion for joy”. 

 

This session focussed on the seven ‘ministries’ that Bonhoeffer explores in Chapter 4 of the text. I printed out the name of each one on a piece of paper and placed these in the centre of the table. The group was asked to choose three ministries to explore in detail. 

The Ministry of Meekness
The Ministry of Authority
The Ministry of Helpfulness
The Ministry of Bearing
The Ministry of Proclaiming
The Ministry of Listening
The Ministry of Holding One’s Tongue

The group chose “Meekness”, “Bearing” and “Proclaiming” to explore in more detail. We began our exploration by asking what we thought was meant by the title of each ministry. Then we consulted the relevant section of Bonhoeffer’s text and discussed what we thought about it. 

Our discussion on the ministry of meekness centred on the difficulty of ‘authentic’ humility. Bonhoeffer urges us always to think highly of others but not think highly of ourselves. If we think we are less sinful than others then we put ourselves above them – we are seeking to control them. To do so is to attempt to limit the God-given freedom of the other person. But many in the group felt the concept of humility can be used in the same way – inauthentic humility in which a person seeks to somehow gain the upper hand by setting themselves as more humble than another person.

This led to a discussion about Bearing. Bonhoeffer talks about the difficulty of bearing one anothers burdens. The burden of accepting another persons God-given freedom is perhaps the most difficult burden of them all – but doing so means engaging with the divine reality that is our life in Christ. We discussed how difficult it can be to worship alongside someone who we haven’t forgiven or who hasn’t forgiven us and what happens when two people cannot be reconciled. We recognised that it is here that Christ as mediator is vital.  

We found the ministry of proclaiming hard to define so we soon turned to the book for help. Bonhoeffer explains that by ‘proclaiming’ he does not mean preaching. Here he is talking about the ministry of proclaiming the message of salvation from one person to another. Sometimes this might be in the form of only one word. We discussed how difficult it can be to know what words to say at certain times – such as when a friend or family member has been bereaved. We also acknowledged the value of a single word or sentence in a card or a phone call at such times. To remain silent is to fail to share God’s loving Word with another.

 

 

Studying Life Together during Advent has been a wonderful learning experience. I think we offered a range of different types of experience across the four sessions, from the more didactic but engaging introductory session, the practical and hands-on second session, the semi-silent retreat and the discursive approach in the third and final session. With its practical focus and Bonhoeffer’s knack for conveying profound truths in an every-day context means I am sure we will be returning to the text. I would be interested to hear from anyone else who has run a similar course to compare the experiences and approaches. 

Image: ‘Discussion’ by Milton Avery, 1944 (Mount Holyoke College Art Museum)

Links
Script and resources from our Day Retreat – “Life Alone”

A number of my recent sermons have been heavily influenced by reading Life Together, including:

‘An unattainable ideal or a living reality? - 17th September 2023
‘Freedom and Judgement’ – 17th September 2023
‘What did you come here to see?’ – 17th December 2023

This post about Bonhoeffer’s “New Year Prayer” may also be of interest.