Who Needs Who?

Who Needs Who?

Author Eric Metaxas tells the story of one of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s first students, a man named Wolf-Dieter Zimmermann. Zimmerman was present at Bonhoeffer’s first lecture at Berlin University in 1932 and recalled hearing the following words, “…we often ask ourselves whether we still need the Church, whether we still need God. But this question, he said, is wrong. We are the ones who are questioned. The Church exists and God exists, and we are asked whether we are willing to be of service, for God needs us.” (Metaxas 125)

In this opening lecture, Bonhoeffer makes a provocative statement that has great relevance today. For the last century, and more, modern society has questioned the relevance of the church. Often, the basis of these questions center on the ability of the church to meet our needs. We treat the church with a consumer mentality—assessing the church in the way we would a health club, a restaurant, or a department store.

Bonhoeffer calls on us to see something greater. Not the church with a little “c”, but the Church with a capital “C”--the proper noun Church. Not the church on the corner that is a beautiful building where people gather once a week, but the Church as something created by God, united in Christ, called together by God’s Holy Spirit.

The Church as the body of Christ, active in the world.

Bonhoeffer teaches that the Church exists, because God exists. The role of this Church is to discern how it can be about God’s work in the world, for, as Bonhoeffer says, God needs us.

Why does God need us?

We have often heard that we need God as the means by which we receive forgiveness, hope, comfort, and salvation.

But why would an all-powerful, all-present, all-loving God need fragile and broken people like us?

I believe it is because God has chosen to use us as a means of grace. Think of the Risen Christ, standing on the lakeshore, making Peter breakfast, and asking “If you love me, feed my sheep.” (John 21)

God needs us to be a light in the darkness, a hope in a troubled world, a hand that offers a cup of cold water to the thirsty.

God needs us—and when we are about God’s work—that is the fullest meaning of Church.

So the question we need to ask ourselves is whether we are willing to be more than a member of the church, but to fully be the Church—alive, active, and about God’s work in the world.