The Christian Bubble?

“Jesus Christ lived in the midst of his enemies…For this cause he had come, to bring peace to the enemies of God.  So the Christian, too, belongs not in the seclusion of a cloistered life, but in the thick of foes.” 

--Dietrich Bonhoeffer (German minister and theologian imprisoned and killed by Nazi’s during World War II)

These are challenging words for the modern Church as we too often think that our faith requires us to withdraw from the world and all things secular or “un-Christian”.  We create “bubbles” where people talk Christian, act Christian, and if we are lucky we never have to experience anything that challenges these.  I am not just talking about monasteries and convents, either.  In fact often monasteries and convents are located in and even connected with hurting and broken communities…sometimes better than the local churches.  We try to build bubbles with the communities we live in, the schools we send our children to, the places we go to eat and shop.  We seek environments that are safe, predictable, comfortable, and really don’t challenge us.

Riding through downtown Johannesburg, South Africa, I asked Jack Schultz, a former Methodist Bishop there, if he came to this deteriorating, urban and dangerous area often.  He said, “my wife and I do it every couple of weeks, just to remind ourselves.”  His words woke me up to the radical call of the Gospel.  Jesus didn’t play it safe, Jesus went where the hurting, broken, profane, scared and hungry people were.  He didn’t go where everyone had the faith that he did, or saw the world as he did, or had life safely figured out.  He did not isolate himself.   In fact he spent more time breaking bubbles.  How did we as his Church today forget this about him?  How did I forget? 

When Jesus taught us to pray, “lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil”, I think it was a prayer for strength and courage.  As Jesus followers we will be sent into places and situations where there is temptation, where evil is close by, and that is right where God would have us.  We are called to love the people we meet there and genuinely love them as “brothers and sisters”.  We need God’s strength to be in the world, but not of the world. 

I don’t minimize the importance of intentional Christian community to grow and develop we just can’t stay there.  Christian community is meant to send us into the world, not keep us from it.  It is time for us Christians today to stop trying to re-build the bubbles that Jesus has already broken and to trust that though it is scary, God will lead us gracefully one step at a time into an uncomfortable new world.

Together we are the hands and the feet of Jesus,

Brett