The gospel is always social. It is the tangible intersection of faith and action: of belief and the active living into a life of wholeness and hope.
Walter Rauschenbusch, Washington Gladden, and Jacob Riis
Matthew 7:7-12
I just finished taking a class on Dietrich Bonhoeffer. And the timing of wrestling with his ideas and theology and ethics right now is fascinating.
This man, this theologian, this pastor who was so focused on discipleship, continues to speak to us. Bonhoeffer spent his life trying to figure out how best to love and serve God in this world. And he also happened to be thrust into the greatest existential crisis of the 20th century: the Holocaust.
As a German, seeing the church, not just the German Church, but the church Universal, overwhelmingly welcome the rise of Hitler was unconscionable. The church was enthusiastic in its support of nationalism. And there was something about that enthusiasm that made Bonhoeffer feel the crisis acutely.
He knew the academic nature of what we believe is inseparable from our lived experience.
His personal, emotional, spiritual crisis was overwhelming. And it no doubt shaped every ounce of his theology.
His frustration is familiar.
As we look at this moment we’ve endured in recent days, we know this frustration. For many of us and our neighbors, we are living through an existential crisis of racism. All of its evil is pernicious and persistent. An evil that runs against the very nature of the Gospel.
Today, we celebrate three prophetic witnesses to the Gospel; whose lives represent this struggle between the idea and the action. These three put their thoughts into words and wrestled with the very conscience of the church and our work in making the kin-dom with our lives. In this way, they represent this same anxious concern for the gospel, for the kin-dom, and for the lived experiences of people in the midst of crisis.
What is often missing from our vision of the Gospel in the midst of existential crisis is the idolatry of doing the “right thing” rather than doing good. While every impulse we have compels us to do something we think that means finding the “right thing” to do. Often we obsess over “doing something” to avoid doing the most obvious thing: speaking plainly against evil.
Naming evil
In studying the history of racism, Ibram X. Kendi has come to a startling conclusion. There is no such thing as “racist and not-racist”. There is only racist and anti-racist.
To be racist is to support beliefs and practices which lead to racist outcomes. And therefore there is no way to not be racist, so as to opt-out of the struggle over the racist paradigm, and no way of saying “this isn’t about me.” There is only ever we. Are we supporting racist policies or are we opposing them?
The act of doing something matters more than the what.
This was the same problem that undermined the Confessing Church under the Nazis. Like everyone else, most of the church liked the nationalism of the Third Reich and struggled to speak out fully and strongly in the face of evil.
But we should not take theirs as an example of what to do, but what comes of not doing. The problem facing the wider Church was that all of it supported the nationalistic rise of Hitler and only the Confessing Church in any way opposed it.
As people of faith, we can certainly appreciate the political pressure to be silent. Especially with the rise of nationalism. We understand the desire to go along to get along. And the wider church endorsed Nazism because it endorsed success, endorsed patriotism, endorsed a return to glory.
The gospel is always social
In light of this evil, we must name the injustice in our midst and direct our attention toward the evil that would distort our relationships.
We all speak. Some of us with words. Some with hands and feet. Acting with inspiring oratory or community organizing or spreading the word.
It takes a commitment to justice and goodness and human dignity and the right of all people to be healthy and safe and treated with respect!
At its root, the gospel is about shalom: the presence of Peace. Not the absence of violence.
Shalom — the presence of peace, the presence of Justice, wholeness, and health.
The presence of things that oppose hatred, like love, generosity, and hope.
It is the presence of good, not just the absence of evil.
Ultimately, it requires us to make present what is good.
The kin-dom.
Be the kin-dom, enflesh the gospel. Speak! And make good present here.