Christ liberates—therefore, the church for others

Ecumenical Review, The, April, 2004 by Heino Falcke

Introduction

In 1969, the eight Protestant regional churches in East Germany separated from the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD), which until then covered both German states, to form their own church federation. It was argued that the building of the Berlin Wall in 1961, the refusal of the East German authorities to deal with the EKD and provision in a new GDR constitution had made it impossible to maintain German Protestantism's organizational unity. The leaders of the newly-formed church federation sought to define the task of the church in the GDR by adopting from a WCC study of the 1960s the ideas of the "missionary structure of the congregation "and the "church for others" (a reference to Bonhoeffer's prison reflections on the role of a church in "a world that has come of age"). According to the WCC study, the local congregation must play a key role in a secular world of rapid social change. The church in the GDR was to be a "church for others", a church "not alongside, not against, but within" the secular, Marxist society of the GDR. Heino Falcke was invited to give the main address at a synod meeting in Dresden in 1972, analyzing what this miqht mean in practice. His response was that the church should offer neither all-oat opposition nor total and uncritical support to the agenda of the Communist Party, bat neither should it seek merely a form of pragmatic accommodation with the authorities. The church would be a "church for others" in that it would take the side of the oppressed and offer a space for critical debate and free speech. "In the promise of Christ," Falcke stated in a phrase that angered the Community authorities, "we will tirelessly remind our society of our committed hope for a socialism that can be changed for the better."

The liberation of human beings through Christ

Christ deals with human bondage at its roots

The cause of freedom concerns all peoples and all nations today. But what freedom actually means is controversial. Freedom is endangered by political repression, economic exploitation and dependency. Our age has seen incredible strides towards freedom, but even revolutions for freedom do not themselves create human beings who are free, and they also pro duce new bondage. The scientific-technical revolution has opened unimaginable possibilities for freedom yet at the same time, through technocracy, manipulation of human beings and the nightmare of possible self-destruction, it threatens freedom to an extent never previously known. The cause of freedom invokes both fascination and resignation, inspiring commitment on the one hand, but on the other a fatalistic retreat to the islands of private freedom. The world is constantly in flight from bondage without really finding its way to the realm of freedom. (1)

In his great chapter on freedom in Romans, Paul writes of how this world struggles in bondage and longs for nothing more than the breakthrough of the freedom of the children of God for all people (Romans 8:19f). We are thus challenged to understand that the gospel is a message of liberation and to bring this understanding to the world's present day struggles for freedom. (2)

Christ does not offer a special kind of religious or spiritual freedom. He reaches down to the hidden roots of human bondage because he himself has endured them to their utmost. He not only became a brother to those who are marginalized and poor, to the victims of political, religious or social oppression, but, in the deepest bondage to sin and death, he hung on the cross for us. For us and with us, God broke through this bondage from which no human being could escape, bringing back to life the one who had been crucified. This exodus leads to that realm of freedom which seeks to destroy the powers of sin and death, and all bondage in the world. We have not yet arrived. The freedom of Christ still takes the form of the cross, though through the power of a great hope. This hope transcends all human movements for freedom, but precisely for this reason intervenes in them, sets up signs of liberation and offers a confidence that we cannot give up.

Christ liberates us to live from the love that we have received

Through Christ freedom is received as love. In him we encounter a love that accepts us unconditionally and which is there for us without any qualification. When we receive this word of love we are brought out of the prison of self-centredness into the freedom of a new confidence. We are free because we have received this love and are supported by it. This is the freedom of the children of God who, though they were God's enemies, are accepted and adopted by God as the brothers and sisters of God's son. (3)

Christ thus revolutionizes our understanding of freedom. We like to think of freedom as independence. To be free means having the ability to decide for ourselves what is important. The key word here is autonomy. (4)

The primary root of this autonomy, however, remains the self, even when this is expanded to include the collective (nation, class, race etc.). When we speak of freedom we mean our own freedom, but our individual freedoms collide with and limit each other. The second root of autonomy lies in the law of achievement: I have to do something with myself, to give my life meaning and value through what I can achieve. Our world is dominated by thoughts of success and the mentality of achievement, pushed forward by the deep hunger each person has to be accepted by others. The problem is not only that those who are too weak to keep up will fall by the wayside. The hunger for acceptance from others cannot be satisfied through our achievements. To be accepted and loved for our own sake is not something that we can work to achieve, it is something that can be received only as a gift. It is not surprising that in a world which is dominated by achievement and by what is useful, we find ourselves asking questions about the meaning of life and the question of the "gracious neighbour". (5) There is a widespread fear of not being needed, of being supplanted and ultimately ending up alone.