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In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
In 1935 the great German Theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a minister in
London in two German-speaking churches, one in south London, in Sydenham, and one in Whitechapel. And the reason that Bonhoeffer was in London was that he had had to leave Germany in
1933 after losing his campaign to oppose Nazification of the protestant
churches. And in London Bonhoeffer was working to mobilise aninternational network in support of his
anti-Nazi Confessing Church.

And on the screen the right hand photo is one
which much prized by the church in Sydenham: this is two young people about to be confirmed, after being prepared for confirmation by Bonhoeffer. I can’t quite imagine what Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s
Confirmation classes were like: they would certainly have been very interesting.
But that year Bonhoeffer left London and went back to Germany. And the
reason was, that he has been asked to lead an underground seminary, an underground
training college for pastors, at Finkenwalde – Stettin on the Baltic, according to
Churchill’s famous speech but the German name is Finkenwalde – near the Polish
border where he was going to train additional pastors for the Confessing Church. And,
despite all the risks, Bonhoeffer agreed to do this.
So for the next 4 years Bonhoeffer was, in modern English terms, the head of a
Theological College; but it was a very unusual situation. He would teach the students,
sometimes gathered, if they could find a safe house or estate where they could meet.
And sometimes he operated a a ‘seminary on the run’, where the students were
ministered illegally in different towns and villages and he would go to teach them one
by one.

Together. The book contains his reflections on Christian community, written both out of his theological reflective ability, which was a genius level of ability; but also of course this extraordinary experience of
developing a group of trainee pastors under Nazi persecution. And it has become one of the most
influential reflections on Christian Community ever written.

Bonhoeffer’s aim in the book is to challenge all Christian communities to live up
to their high calling. And in the next few minutes I am going to offer just three of
Bonhoeffer’s challenges to you, both as a way to reflect on today’s readings, but also as
an input on this, the Cathedral’s Community day.
The first challenge Bonhoeffer offers is not to lose our joy in Christian
fellowship. ‘It is only by a gracious anticipation of the last day, when Christ will gather
all to him, that Christians are privileged to live in visible fellowship with other Christians
now. It is by the grace of God that a congregation is permitted to gather visibly in this
world to share God’s Word and sacrament.’ [LT, p7]

In other words, this is not just a church service. The visible fellowship of the
church – and today we would understand this as both physical fellowship, meeting
together in the Cathedral, and also our online fellowship through those who join us in online
community and sharing – this fellowship is a foretaste of heaven.

There are many who yearn for this visible fellowship, but for all kinds of
reasons cannot share in it. It is an infinitely precious thing. Let’s not take it for granted, but give thanks joyfully to God for it, as we sing our psalms and hymns together and reflect on the
Scriptures! Inspired by the Psalmist: Praise the Lord, O my soul; yea, as long as I have
any being, I will sing praises unto my God – as the choir sang. Inspired by St Cecilia –
that image of her in the Philpot window in the South Nave Aisle.

A second challenge Bonhoeffer offers to be shaped by truthfulness – for a
community not to let itself be based on human fantasy or comforting illusion or
sentimental dreaming, but instead on divine reality.

Bonhoeffer is a very unsentimental thinker. If you’ve read anything he writes, you
will have been brought up sharply by that. And he says: ‘The serious Christian, set down
for the first time in a Christian community, is likely to bring with him a very definite
idea of what Christian life together should be and try to realize it. But God’s grace
speedily shatters such dreams…. God is not a God of the emotions but the God of
truth. Only that fellowship which faces… disillusionment… begins to be what it should
be in God’s sight, begins to grasp in faith the promise given to it.’ [LT pp. 14-15]

In other words,
Bonhoeffer is saying, we go
wrong if we come into
Christian community with a
fixed idea about how it
should be, about how it
should go, some idea which
makes us feel secure, and
then we try to stick to it, as if
we value that, more than
what God has to show us.

I mean, we do all come
into Christian community
with ideas; we have to be prepared to test them, to re-form them, to integrate them with
other ideas, as we wrestle to discover together God’s will.
And the third challenge Bonhoeffer offers is that a Christian community must
understand itself to be part of the universal Church.
Bonhoffer says: ‘Life together under the Word will remain sound and healthy
only where it does not form itself into an [isolated group], but rather where it
understands itself as being a part of the one, holy, catholic, Christian Church, sharing…
in the sufferings and struggles and promise of the whole Church…. The exclusion of
the weak and insignificant, the seemingly useless people, from a Christian community
may actually mean the exclusion of Christ; in the poor brother Christ is knocking at the
door.’ [p.23-24]

So he is warning any Christian community about trying to separate itself off from the rest of the church. He is saying, in your external relationships, do not say, we are the ones who have theright path, who know the right answer, and all these other churches have missed the point. And in internal relationships, do not centre the community on the rich and the powerful. Centre it on Christ, and recognise you are most likely to see Christ in the poor and the marginalised.

And as that earlier parts of the Epistle passage from 1 Timothy 6 says, there is
room in the church for the rich and for the poor. For the rich there is the command to
‘be generous, and ready to share’. What there is no room for is the love of money –
which will get in the way of the love of God and of neighbour.

So the Christian community in Winchester needs to be continue to be the
community which runs night shelters, and day shelters, and Basics Banks, which gives
much more than crumbs from its table, to the Lazarus-es in our city.
And the Cathedral needs to continue in its ministry and witness in partnership
with other churches in the city and the diocese – that ministry and witness which has
been so valued by the city, and the county and the diocese over the last 17 days.
So, Winchester Cathedral community, as we build up our Life Together – in
community in Christ – let us pray that we may live with joyfulness, with truthfulness,
with openness to the whole of God’s church, and be able to take hold of the life which
really is life.

Come, my Way, my Truth, my Life:
such a Way as gives us breath;
such a Truth as ends all strife;
such a Life as killeth death.
Amen.