“The exclusion of the weak and insignificant,
the seemingly useless people, from a Christian community
may actually mean the exclusion of Christ.”
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together
Bonhoeffer wrote these words during the Nazi era, at a time when entire groups of people were being labelled unworthy of life — useless, burdensome, disposable. Against that deadly logic, he insisted on something profoundly unsettling: that God is revealed not in strength or success, but in lowliness and weakness.
For Bonhoeffer, Christ is found not among the powerful, but among those who suffer — those pushed aside, silenced, or made invisible. Again and again, he warned that when a Christian community excludes the weak, it is not simply failing morally or socially. It is committing a theological act. It is removing the presence of Christ from its own life.
Christian fellowship begins with the last coming first. The church does not bear witness to Christ by appearing strong, efficient, or successful. It bears witness by putting the last first — by elevating the weak, the overlooked, and the forgotten — because that is where Christ has chosen to dwell, and where the kingdom of God is already breaking in.
I wish I’d stumbled across these words in time for last Sunday’s sermon. They say, more simply and more truthfully, what I was reaching for.
Grits and Grains 