Dietrich Bonhoeffer said that the church is the place where our dreams are shattered—and that is a good thing.
This week at Lake Forest Church we learned that to 'believe in the holy catholic church' is every bit as essential for believers of 2,000 years, according to the Apostle's Creed, as is our belief in the Trinity. And honestly its the most offensive part of the Creed for already- or long-time Christians, particularly in our cynical, tongue-in-cheek age. The rest of the Creed is about high theology, things we can't touch or immediately access. But this phrase is about the group of believers we gather to worship with every seven days, in all of its particularity, for better and for worse. Here's one reason why it's essential (you can listen to my sermon from last Sunday to hear 'the rest of the story' if you'd like www.lakeforest.org ):
Everyone comes to church with a certain set of expectations. New believers often enter the church expecting to find a little bit of heaven on earth. We all think and hope and expect that our new family in Christ will treat us better than the people of the world. And we all have certain ideas about music and worship and preaching and about what the church should do and how it should go forward.
But sooner or later we discover that the saints are not always saintly, and the people of God are not always godly. Sometimes they can be mean-spirited, unkind, and sometimes downright cruel.
The church—I mean the local church—routinely disappoints us.
When that happens, for some of us our faith is shattered and sometimes our hope is destroyed. Bonhoeffer teaches this is another work of grace by God. "He who loves his dream of a community more that the Christian community itself becomes a destroyer of the latter, even though his personal intentions may be ever so honest and earnest and sacrificial." - Bonhoeffer
Once our false expectations are shattered on the hard rocks of reality, then (and only then) do we begin to experience the genuine grace of God. It is only in the nitty-gritty of life together with all its disappointments and rude awakenings that we discover the Holy Spirit at work in us. This is often the very means God uses to shape us into the image of Christ.
More from Bonhoeffer (forgive the male-centric language, please):
"Just as surely as God desires to lead us to a knowledge of genuine Christian fellowship, so surely must we be overwhelmed by a great disillusionment with others, with Christians in general, and, if we are fortunate, with ourselves.
By sheer grace, God will not permit us to live even for a brief period in a dream world. He does not abandon us to those rapturous experiences and lofty moods that come over us like a dream. God is not a God of the emotions but the God of truth. Only that fellowship which faces such disillusionment, with all its unhappy and ugly aspects, begins to be what it should be in God's sight, begins to grasp in faith the promise that is given to it.
The sooner this shock of disillusionment comes to an individual and to a community, the better for both. A community which cannot bear and cannot survive such a crisis, which insists upon keeping its illusion when it should be shattered, permanently loses in that moment the promise of Christian community. Sooner or later it will collapse. Every human wish dream that is injected into the Christian community is a hindrance to genuine community and must be banished if genuine community is to survive...
And is not what has been given us enough: brothers, who will go on living with us through sin and need under the blessing of his grace? Is the divine gift of Christian fellowship anything less than this, any day, even the most difficult and distressing day?
Even when sin and misunderstanding burden the communal life, is not the sinning brother still a brother, with whom I, too, stand under the Word of Christ? Will not his sin be a constant occasion for me to give thanks that both of us may live in the forgiving love of God in Christ Jesus? Thus, the very hour of disillusionment with my brother becomes incomparably salutary, because it so thoroughly teaches me that neither of us can ever live by our own words and deeds, but only by the one Word and Deed which really binds us together--the forgiveness of sins in Jesus Christ. When the morning mists of dreams vanish, then dawns the bright day of Christian fellowship . . ."
To read Bonhoeffer's full essay, click here Bonhoeffer: The Church Shatters Dreams
