Dietrich Bonhoeffer arrived in New York in 1930 having written a great deal about the church as Christ’s body in the world, without a congregation that looked like what he had described. He found one in Harlem, and the preaching there kept returning to one idea: faithfulness to God happens in contact with real people. The question here is how faith in Christ and love of a neighbor can grow into one life instead of two compartments. The practice is a week of learning to see a neighbor you have stopped noticing, guided by the Scripture Harlem preached while Bonhoeffer was there.
By the end of seven days you should be able to name one person in your ordinary path whom you had overlooked, and you should have practiced meeting a concrete need of theirs. You can work through it alone, one section a day, or with a group that meets twice: once after Day 3 and once after Day 7. Nothing in it requires you to share anything personal with anyone.
Before you begin: draw a map of who you pass
On a sheet of paper, sketch the places you move through in a normal week: home, work or school, the store, the commute, church, your street. Next to each place, write the people you regularly see there. Use names where you know them and descriptions where you do not, such as the man who sweeps the lot or the new family two doors down.
Then mark the map honestly. Put a small circle next to anyone whose actual circumstances you could describe in a sentence. Put a question mark next to anyone you see often but know nothing about. Keep the sheet. You will come back to it on the last day. In a group, people should do this privately. The map exists to show the gap between being near someone and paying attention to them.
Day 1: read the scene where nobody saw
Dr. Reggie L. Williams, associate professor of Christian Ethics at McCormick Theological Seminary, explains that while Bonhoeffer was in Harlem, the pastor of Abyssinian Baptist Church, Adam Clayton Powell Sr., preached two sermons from Matthew 25, the Hungry God and the Naked God. So begin where Powell began.
Read Matthew 25:31-46 slowly, twice. It is a judgment scene in Jesus’s teaching, so read its imagery as imagery and attend to what it plainly asserts. Two KJV words may need a gloss: “an hungred” means hungry, and “meat” means food. The King’s list begins in Matthew 25:35: “For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in:”
Now compare the two responses. The righteous ask in Matthew 25:37, “Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink?” The others ask in Matthew 25:44, “Then shall they also answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, or athirst, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not minister unto thee?”
Write down what the two groups have in common. Both are surprised. Neither knew it had met the King. The difference between them is whether they acted toward the hungry person in front of them. That observation shapes the whole week: the practice is not a hunt for spiritual moments but attention to people.
Then read the King’s answer in Matthew 25:40: “And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.”
Christians read “my brethren” in more than one way. Many take it to include anyone in need. Others read it more narrowly as Jesus’s followers, especially those suffering for his sake. Write one sentence stating each reading fairly. Then note what holds under either one: the passage places faithfulness in concrete acts toward real people.
Day 2: the servants at Cana
Williams reports that a second Powell sermon, on saving faith, was reprinted while Bonhoeffer was in Harlem. Powell drew his clearest picture of saving faith from the wedding at Cana. Read John 2:1-11. The key line is John 2:5: “His mother saith unto the servants, Whatsoever he saith unto you, do it.”
Notice what the servants actually do next. They fill jars with water. It is ordinary, heavy work, done before anyone sees a miracle. Powell’s point, as Williams relays it, was that saving faith is a faith of deeds, a faith that knows there is something to be done.
Make a short list titled What he has already said. Include only instructions you are confident come from Jesus in the Gospels, such as the commands to love your neighbor or to feed the hungry. Next to each, write one place in your actual week where it could apply.
Day 3: sort the evidence
Today’s material comes from Williams’s account of the Harlem year. As you read, sort it. Draw three columns headed Bonhoeffer, the congregation, and Powell’s preaching, and place each claim below in the column it describes.
Williams says Bonhoeffer arrived at 24, the author of two dissertations about the church as the visible presence of Christ’s body, yet unable to find a German congregation that matched them. Williams says he went to America “looking for a cloud of witnesses.” Compare Hebrews 12:1, where believers are “compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses.” Williams says Bonhoeffer taught Sunday school at Abyssinian and led a midweek Bible study for women. He says the congregation had moved to Harlem in 1923 because of the Great Migration, placing itself where the needs were. Of that church at work in a neighborhood hit by poverty and racism, Williams says, “This is what the church should be doing.”
Williams retells the Hungry God sermon’s message: “we feed God when we feed our hungry neighbor.” Then he adds his own conclusion: “That’s the focus of Christianity, contact with human life.” In his words, the “very location where you’re supposed to be faithful to God is in human contact.”
Lisa Fields observed in the conversation, “it seems like the first time he saw Christianity as a communal endeavor was in the black church.”
Look at your columns. Most of what Bonhoeffer gained sits under the other two headings. He did not learn this as a lone hero doing good deeds. He learned it as a student inside a community already doing the work and a pulpit already preaching it. Write one sentence on what that order, receiving before imitating, might mean for how you approach the coming days. Then put Williams’s phrase “to see your neighbor’s concrete needs” next to your Day 1 notes on the goats. Their failure in Matthew 25 was a failure of contact.
A test before you act
Two misreadings can spoil this practice, so test against both before starting.
The first treats deeds as a way to earn God’s favor. Read Ephesians 2:8-10: “For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them.” The order matters. Grace comes first, and good works follow as the life God prepared. Powell’s sermon on Cana fits that order: the servants act because of a word already spoken to them. Ask whether you are approaching this week as an attempt to prove something or as a response to what Christ has done. If it is the first, read Day 2 again.
The second misreading turns a neighbor into a project. Williams is candid that Bonhoeffer did not arrive at a finished view. Speaking of Bonhoeffer’s struggle with white supremacy in his own outlook, Williams says, “He wrestled with that until he died.” Williams describes the Christ Bonhoeffer met in Harlem, standing with people pressed to the margins, and the effect it had: “Haunted by black Jesus, better put.” A haunting is not a lesson you finish and file away. It keeps returning and keeps unsettling you. So expect that seeing a neighbor clearly may expose something in you that does not resolve by Saturday, and do not treat the person you meet as a stage for your growth.
A group leader can pause here and ask each person which misreading tempts them more. No one needs to answer aloud.
Days 4 through 6: the practice of contact
Go back to your map and choose one person marked with a question mark whom you can see in person this week. Avoid anyone whose situation could put you or them at risk, and anyone who has made clear they do not want your attention.
Day 4: attend. Learn one true thing about this person by asking and listening, not by guessing. Keep it ordinary. Ask how their week is going and wait for the answer. Ask their name if you never learned it. Afterward, write down what you learned and what you had assumed before.
Day 5: receive. Bonhoeffer was first a student of the Harlem church before he was a teacher in it. Look for something this person knows, does or carries that you could learn from. If your church already serves people near you, ask to spend time alongside those who do that work, and come to listen, not to lead.
Day 6: do one concrete thing. Meet a small, real piece of a need you actually learned about. Do not invent one. It might be a ride, a meal, help with a form, or simply showing up again. Keep it private. Do not photograph it, post it, or tell the story in a way the other person would not want told.
If the need is larger than one person can meet, such as housing, abuse or a medical crisis, your job is not to fix it alone. Connect the person with your pastor, a trusted ministry or qualified local help, and keep showing up as a friend.
Day 7: retrace the map
Take out the map from the first day. Without erasing anything, add what has changed. Did a question mark become a circle? Did you notice people who never made the map at all? Write one honest sentence about what you assumed at the start of the week that turned out to be wrong.
Then reread Matthew 25:37 and 25:44. Ask which question sounds more like yours this week: “when saw we thee” spoken in grateful surprise, or the same words spoken in regret. Let the answer be uncertain if it is. One week does not settle a life.
Questions for a group
These work best in the second meeting, after people have tried the practice. Anyone may pass on any question.
- In Matthew 25, both groups are surprised by the King’s answer. What does that surprise suggest about how faithfulness works in ordinary life?
- State the broad and narrow readings of “the least of these my brethren” in Matthew 25:40 as fairly as you can. Does either reading change what you should do this week? Why or why not?
- Has anyone in your life been, for you, what the Harlem congregation was for Bonhoeffer? What did they do that a book could not have done?
- What would it take for your congregation to be a place where an outsider could learn, as Bonhoeffer did, that Christianity is communal?
- Where did the practice feel most awkward: attending, receiving, or acting? What does that awkwardness tell you?
- Was there a moment this week when what you believe and what the person in front of you needed seemed to pull in different directions? What happened, and what did you do with it?
For the person leading: keep the conversation tied to the texts and to the specific neighbors people met, not to arguments about public figures. Some people may carry real hurt from churches that stayed silent about racism or poverty. If that surfaces, let it be heard instead of corrected, and offer a follow-up conversation with a pastor or counselor where it would help.
One question is worth carrying past the week. Lisa Fields said of the Black church’s gift, “that uniqueness brings transformation to people of all races.” Bonhoeffer let a congregation the wider world overlooked teach him what the church is. Whose community, near you, might teach you the same thing, if you came as a student?