Presented by Thomas R. Yoder Neufeld to the MWC Executive Committee at their meeting in Curitiba, Brazil, in April 2024.
- I. Following Jesus – “Who do you say that I am?”
- II. Living out unity – the heart of discipleship
- III. Building Peace – ‘My Peace I give you, not as the world gives’
I. Following Jesus – “Who do you say that I am?”
Introduction
A year ago, at Camp Squeah in British Columbia, Canada, the EC developed a new tagline for the MWC: “Following Jesus, living out unity, building peace.” Developing a tagline is a kind of branding exercise. A tagline is also aspirational. It is how we want to be known; it is also what and how we want to be. It is intended to be both description and goal, a test of whether we know where we’re going, whether we’re still on track with who we believe God has called us to be.
I’m sure it is no coincidence that the “new” MWC tagline has connections to what is already in our collective imagination. It surely has a strong family resemblance to Palmer Becker’s three-part distillation of what he sees as characteristic of an Anabaptist exercise of Christian faith:
- Jesus is the centre of our faith.
- Community is the centre of our lives.
- Reconciliation is the centre of our work.
Do you see the resemblance? Jesus=the one we follow, community=unity, reconciliation=peace. That in turn owes much to Harold S. Bender’s 1944 influential “Anabaptist vision.” He found three characteristics of Anabaptism: discipleship, church as a brotherhood, and an “ethic of love and nonresistance.” So, our tagline has an important family history.
First, I will focus on the first part of the tagline, “Following Jesus,” and probe what we might mean when we use it.
1. Who is the Jesus we follow?
Let me begin with a story of Jesus and his disciples, those who followed him as his students. It is found in all three of the Synoptic gospels (Matt 16; Mark 8; Luke 9). Following an intense time of teaching, healing, exorcism and giving food to hungry crowds, with lots of excited followers and scores of suspicious religious leaders following them around, Jesus decides to take his closest band of followers away by themselves, up into the region of Caesarea Philippi. Luke makes a point of saying that Jesus wanted to get away to pray.
We can imagine them trudging through the mountain villages, when, suddenly, Jesus asks his small band of disciples: “So, what are people saying? Who do they say I am?” Having followed Jesus over the past while, they have witnessed a lot; and they’ve heard a lot: “Some think you’re John the Baptist come back to life! Some think you’re a prophet, like Jeremiah, perhaps even Elijah!
And then Jesus asks them perhaps the hardest question they will ever be asked: “And who do YOU say I am?” We can feel the nervous tension in the air, yes? We are not surprised that it is the rather impetuous Peter who answers: “You are the Messiah!” And he gets the exam question exactly right. In fact, Matthew suggests he had a bit of divine help with that answer:
“Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven. On this rock I will build my church. […] I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.” (Matthew 16:17-19)
So, Peter gets the right answer. Or does he? When Jesus now tells his followers that the Messiah, the Christ, will suffer and die and rise in three days, Peter shockingly scolds (!) Jesus for saying that. In effect: “That’s not what I meant, Jesus! I said you are the Messiah – the victor, not the victim. I meant you are God’s warrior and liberator, come to end our suffering, to defeat our enemies, give us food, heal our diseases, chase away the demons. You surely did not come to suffer and die like one of countless victims at the hands of powerful religious and imperial brutes!” At that Jesus turns toward Peter with an even stronger scolding: “Get behind me, Satan!”
Imagine the scene! I imagine everyone is deeply shocked. The shock deepens when Jesus then turns to his followers and says: “If you want to follow me you must take up your own cross! Anyone who wishes to hang on to life will lose it!”
Remarkably, even with this unforgettable exchange between Jesus and Peter, Jesus’ words just don’t stick. Shortly after, in Mark 10, as they’re heading for Jerusalem, Jesus reminds his closest followers yet another time that the “Son of man” (a favorite way Jesus has of referring to himself) must suffer, die and be raised. James and John, the sons of Zebedee, approach him immediately:
“Jesus, do for us what we ask!”
“What is it that you want me to do for you?”
“When you come into your kingdom, we want you to appoint one of us at your right and one at your left.”
They both see him as the Messiah, but understand no better than Peter did what that means. Jesus responds to James and John and the rest of his followers, perhaps this time less with anger than sadness:
“You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?” They replied, “We are able.” Then Jesus said to them, “The cup that I drink you will drink; and with the baptism with which I am baptized, you will be baptized.” (Mark 10:38, 39)
It should be clear to us by now that nothing is easy or simple about following Jesus, especially if it leads not to a picnic with 5 000, the healing of the blind or the lame, but to the cross. As I was reading this, John 6:66 came to mind. There we read that after Jesus has some difficult words for his followers “… many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked with him.”
What about us? Who is the Jesus we say we follow in our tagline?
2. Laurelville “Journeys with Jesus”
In 2008, about twenty Mennonite professors, pastors, and missionaries were invited to Laurelville Retreat Center in Pennsylvania, USA, for a several-day-long event called “Our Journeys with Jesus.” We were each to share our personal experience of following Jesus. Instructions were very clear: no arguing or criticizing, just sharing and listening carefully. That was hard – especially if you’re a professor!
But we did listen. I listened to persons whose ideas I knew well, and sometimes strongly disagreed with, hearing them talk about their faith journey with Jesus. As we sat together at the conclusion of these moving days, the story from the Gospels that we have just reflected on came to mind, and we agreed that each of us would try to answer Jesus’ question, “Who do you say that I am?” And we would give our answer directly to Jesus, with the rest of us listening in. Most did work up the courage and respond as if Jesus was right there in that empty chair we had set up in the middle of the circle.
Interestingly, the answers were quite diverse, perhaps like Peter’s, both right and wrong at the same time. But what was important is that we were expressing our deepest convictions (however profound or shallow they might have been) with as much honesty as we could dare – not to each other, but to Jesus.
I came away from this experience with an important learning, one that is relevant for us here in the MWC, especially when the questions are hard: it matters that we listen to each other knowing that the chief listener is Jesus. I imagine Jesus listening to what we said in that Laurelville circle. But, more importantly, he listened through the words for the honesty and integrity with which we answered. Most especially I imagine him listening for whether our answers were ones that told him we are willing to keep following him, even if the road ahead gets steep and dangerous and leads to the cross.
What answer do each of us give to Jesus’ question? It is a question we will be answering again and again as Jesus’ followers.
3. New Testament answers to Jesus’ question
Let me get back to the Bible and shift the focus to the New Testament. In many ways the New Testament is a collection of answers to Jesus’ question “Who do you say I am?” After all, we have four Gospels, and we have apostolic letters that have the names of great leaders like Paul, Peter, James and John, an anonymous sermon we know as the Letter to the Hebrews, and, finally, the Apocalypse or Revelation of John of Patmos. Each of them contains many claims being made about Jesus. Moreover, the New Testament documents were written over many decades – time for the early followers of Jesus to grow in understanding, to learn from fellow followers, to engage and perhaps argue with each other, to listen to each other’s answers to Jesus’ question.
Importantly, the New Testament is not, however, simply a collection of the followers’ words to Jesus, so to speak, but God’s word to us. I’m always amazed at how human the words are in which the divine Word speaks to us. This is nothing less than a miracle. The Bible is Emmanuel-like – God-with-us-in-our own words.
Let me illustrate with a few examples:
Peter
The New Testament depicts Peter as a major leader of the church far beyond Palestine. In fact, early tradition tells us that he was likely martyred in Rome, much like Paul. Isn’t it fascinating that despite his being one of the greatest leaders of the early church how honestly the Gospel writers recall both his correct answer – You are the Christ! You are the Messiah! – as well as his failure to grasp what he was saying? That alone should give us courage to answer Jesus’ question ourselves.
Thomas
Or recall Thomas, who is usually remembered for his doubt at the news of Jesus’ resurrection. Isn’t it interesting, then, that when Jesus encounters Thomas who is doubting his resurrection, offering to have him put his hand in Jesus’ wound, Thomas responds with the most breathtaking exclamation: “My Lord and my God!” It is impossible to give a loftier answer.
John
The unknown follower who wrote the Gospel we know as Gospel of John begins his account with an equally lofty answer:
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God! He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.
And then, in verse 14, the astonishing words:
And the Word became flesh and lived (literally “tented”) among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.
Not surprisingly, it is the Gospel of John that we encounter the Lord and Master who washes feet like a servant or a slave (John 13).
Paul
In his letters Paul offers us a treasure box of answers to Jesus’ question: Son of God; Icon of God; creator of all things, including the powers; Wisdom of God; Messiah or Christ, crucified and risen; one “in whom” and “through whom” we are connected to him and to each other as members of his body; the Name above every name; our Peace. Much like in the Gospel of John, this Jesus empties himself, taking on the form of a slave, to the point of death on the cross, becoming a model for those who wish to follow him (Philippians 2).
Hebrews
Sounding much like the Gospel of John, the unnamed author of the Letter to the Hebrews speaks of Jesus as “the Son,” the heir of all things, seated at God’s right hand, creating and sustaining all things through his word. Where John speaks poetically of the Word becoming flesh, Hebrews speaks of Jesus as being “just like us,” not ashamed to call us brothers and sisters, the pioneer of our faith, the one clearing the path for us to follow. Both see Jesus in the highest of heights and the lowest of lows.
John of Patmos
And then, as a final example, there is the prophet John of Patmos, who in his Apocalypse or Revelation identifies Jesus as both Son of Man and Son of God, and, at the same time, as the vulnerable “Lamb that was slain” and then raised to power.
This is only a small sample of the rich chorus of answers to Jesus’ question in the New Testament. No doubt we could add to this gallery of portraits.
4. What do we do with this diverse collection of answers to Jesus’ question?
What do we do with such diverse biblical answers? Is this amazing christological diversity we see in the Scriptures like a supermarket where we can buy the Jesus we like? “I like Jesus the prophet; I’ll follow him. I prefer the storyteller. I follow the saviour who died for me. I follow the Jesus who showers me with everything I can wish for. I like Jesus the hugger! The one who likes a good party! The healer! The exorcist! I like the Jesus who’s just like me! Do you have an Anabaptist Jesus?”
Or is this a craft show in which artists of the imagination are showing off their creations? Where we then indulge our theological tastes by picking and choosing which ones we like?
Or might all of these – together! – be the artistry of God at work in revealing to us who it is we are following, doing so in terms, images and vocabulary that grow out of our human experience? Remember that in Matthew 16 Peter gets help from his “Father in heaven” answering Jesus’ question.
It makes a big difference how we view this diversity. Yes, there is indeed a great deal of human imagination and creativity in the way Jesus and his significance is expressed. That goes together with incarnation, with the Word becoming flesh – in this case, the Word become words, human words. That goes together with the divine decision that Jesus was essentially handed over to the memory of his followers. Their testimony to him, in turn, is born of the Spirit and expressed in the creativity and an imaginative exuberance of worship.
We must keep in mind that every early follower of Jesus knew that she or he had as their first obligation to love God and God alone. To put anyone else in that place was understood to be idolatry, the worst betrayal of our relationship to God there is. So, when early followers began to follow Jesus as one “just like them” (as Hebrews puts it), but also as “one with the Father” (as in the Gospel of John), as “Lord and God”, as Thomas confesses, then they knew they were in the presence of none other than God, Emmanuel.
This means that these early followers could trust that in all their frailty they were understood and loved by one who understands, one just like them. But they understood that they had no option but to heed the actions, teachings, and deeds of Jesus as God speaking and acting. After all, the one they were following on the way turned out to be none other than the Word, the word that was of God, with God, and, indeed, God. Listen to Thomas:
“Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you know me, you will know my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him.” (John 14:5-7)
Every Jew understood that with the emphatic “I AM” Jesus was claiming nothing less than divine status. Small wonder, then, that, as we read in John 6:66, “many no longer followed him.”
The New Testament makes it impossible to separate the divine and the human in Jesus. He is God with us, walking out ahead as the pioneer of our faith, as Hebrews puts it. Jesus did not just live the kind of life that got him into trouble, he was God getting into trouble, going to the uttermost by giving his very self on the cross for our liberation. Jesus didn’t just collect a group of likeminded students who liked his values. He picked a diverse group of sometimes slowwitted folks and demanded they follow him into his baptism, into drinking his cup, but also into his resurrection, indeed to become part of his body.
Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. (Romans 6:3, 4)
5. Why is this important for us in MWC?
Let’s pretend we as members and leaders of the MWC are on a hike with Jesus. If Jesus would ask each of us here: “Who do Anabaptists say I am?” How would we answer? Would it be: “Anabaptists say you are the saviour, the healer, the exorcist, the crucified one.” Or would we say: “Anabaptist say you are the advocate for the poor, the sick, and the hungry, the justice and peace activist.” And then one of us would say: “But Anabaptists say you are the Lord, the Word, God!” Are any of these answers more Anabaptist than others? Should they be?
MWC is a body, a communion, that, much like the church from its birth, brings many histories together, and with them traditions and perspectives that have shaped the particular lenses through which we see Jesus.
Some of us bring historic Mennonite traditions with long pedigrees, shaped along the way by persecution, both forced and chosen separation from the rest of society, arriving at a kind of tribal identity that in some parts of family can lead to placing pedigree above fidelity to the gospel. Some of us have reacted to those histories by wanting to distance ourselves from the constraints of separatism, nonconformity and conservatism, entering the world with enthusiasm in education, culture, politics and business. That will be reflected on how we talk to and about Jesus.
Others of us have histories growing out of renewal movements marked by a lively evangelicalism, often putting strains on relationships with fellow Mennonites. Yet others have experienced their faith enriched and shaped by what we call the charismatic or Pentecostal winds blowing through the global church, especially in the Global South. We too will answer Jesus’ question out of that experience. Still others among us were called into being by sometimes wise and patient, sometimes culturally insensitive missionary efforts. That has sometimes meant relearning how to answer Jesus’ question in our own language. Yet others have been drawn into the Anabaptist communion because the call to peacemaking and reconciliation is very strong. That too shapes which of these various answers sound like one they would give.
So, when Jesus asks, “Who do Anabaptists say they are following?”, the answers would likely reflect much of the rich variety we see in the New Testament, and more. It thus becomes critically important, in my view, that when we use the tagline “following Jesus” we hear it calling us to embrace the whole of the biblical witness, that “multi-varied wisdom of God” (Ephesians 3:10). It calls us also to listen to and learn from the wisdom of those fellow Anabaptists we are walking with as we follow Jesus. That is one way we live out our unity. That is, in God’s wisdom, why we have the kind of Bible we do. Just as we take it all in as God speaking to us individually, but also corporately, so we take in the diversity of answers among us, knowing that they are first and foremost answers given to Jesus, not to us. We are privileged to hear and learn from each other, to expand and correct our own answers in the light of that. That is a gift of the unity we have in Christ.
This is also important for our relationships with the wider body of Christ. In our ecumenical engagement we find that our emphases as Anabaptists differ at times from that of other communions. And, yes, we can say to each other and to our fellow communions in the global church: “You’re not paying sufficient attention to Jesus’ peace teachings!” That might be true. It is also true that we then must listen to other communions in the body of Christ for what’s missing or lacking in our own various understandings.
Jesus will always be bigger than our conceptions, than any of our answers to his question. With a wide and deep appreciation for who Christ is, the one who lives within us and in whom we live (Ephesians 3:14-19), we can both share this with other communions not as “Anabaptism” but as an essential aspect of who Jesus is for everyone who calls him Lord. But, precisely because Jesus is more than what we see from our vantage point, we can – we must! – listen to our sisters and brothers, both within (!) our diverse family, where I believe our biggest “ecumenical challenges” lie, and in other traditions and communions. We dare not get over-confident or self-satisfied with our particular take on Jesus, individually or corporately.
6. Conclusion
Let me conclude this section by imagining Jesus’ words to us as MWC:
“I want you to understand that I AM God drawing all people into God’s family, forgiving sins, restoring relationship with God, teaching peace and justice, restoring relationships between those estranged from and hostile to each other.
I am working in the Spirit, using your energies in the process, to create humanity into the one God intended from the very outset. Follow me on the way, my brothers and sisters, as those who’ve got the cross and the resurrection on their minds and in their imaginations. Proclaim the gospel by living out my teachings and my example. And do it together!
I’ll be walking with you right to the end through thick and thin. You are my followers, yes. But you’re more: you’re my friends; more, you’re my brothers and sisters; more yet, you’re my body. As I once said: ‘I am in you and you are in me, just as I am in my Father, and your Father’ (John 17).
Remember, I’m as close as a sibling, regardless of your language, culture, race or sex. I look like every one of you, and all of you together. So look at each other, and see me. And listen to each other. At times you will hear me!”
II. Living out unity – the heart of discipleship
The second element in the MWC tagline is “living out unity.” What do we mean by unity? What is the basis of the unity we wish to live out? In the following I wish to probe that from a theological and biblical perspective.
1. Various words for “unity”
There are many words for “unity” in the Bible. One meaning is to become “one,” with each other and with God (Ephesians 4:1-6; John 17). We often use the term “koinonia,” which carries many shades of meaning, all of which we use a great deal. We thus find many translations of the term in the Bible, in English as no doubt in the many languages used in our Bibles: “sharing,” “partnership,” “participation,” “fellowship,” “community” and “communion.”
2. MWC and unity
At its core, the very existence of the 100-year-old MWC is testimony to a long effort to realize the unity we have in Christ as an Anabaptist communion of churches and persons. The effort to both recognize and strengthen unity at the first meeting of the MWC in 1925 brought together Mennonites in Basel who were quite different from each other in how they expressed their faith in practice and theology. Moreover, World War I had only just ended, a war that had seen Mennonites taking up arms on both sides of that terrible war. As it had been at the beginnings of the Anabaptist movement, unity was from the beginning of the MWC both a fragile and vulnerable reality and an urgently desired goal. It would be that again following WWII, when the MWC met in 1952 in Chrischona, just outside of Basel. You will recall that the GC and the Commissions met there again in 2012.
It is clear from reading Alfred Neufeld’s Becoming a Global Communion, that unity was very much on everyone’s mind at the 1972 MWC Assembly here in Curitiba. The assembly theme was “Reconciliation in Jesus Christ.” However, deep differences and tensions surfaced. The Brazilian military dictatorship was in power, and Mennonites struggled with whether and how to respond. Quoting from the conference message, this created “dissent between those in our brotherhood whose priority lies in the area of personal salvation and those who see it as their primary duty to promote an active program for the liberation of mankind from all forms of oppression and injustice.” We can sense the concern for unity when the conference message goes on to say that “both are aspects of the reconciling work of Christ. Nevertheless, there is dissension which calls for further repentance and reconciliation. The emphasis upon the total witness should lead us as a people to talk to each other understandably and not to avoid each other.” (Neufeld, 353).
Unity has not lost its edge as an urgent concern, as shown, for example, in Limuru and our failure at finding consensus on the controversial issues policy, which was subsequently withdrawn from further consideration. We could not come to a consensus on how to engage with each other on issues on which there is not consensus among us.
Following the Assembly in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, USA, in 2015, the Faith and Life Commission was asked to propose a name change. It grew out of a desire to include more visibly those whose name does not include “Mennonite,” and secondly, to testify more fully to the koinonia, the communion, we claim we share. That effort too is testing our ability to live out unity.
Precisely because our togetherness in the MWC both testifies to and tests koinonia, unity thus has ever greater importance. This is reflected in our vision and mission statement, adopted in Bulawayo in 2003:
Mennonite World Conference is called to be a communion (Koinonia) of Anabaptist-related churches linked to one another in a worldwide community of faith for fellowship, worship, service, and witness.
“Communion,” “community,” “fellowship,” are all renderings of the same New Testament term “koinonia.” And all of them together are captured by the term “unity.”
3. Jesus’ prayer that we might be “One”
We are familiar with the great prayer by Jesus at the end of his last supper with his followers. It is often referred to as his “High Priestly Prayer.” It is, in essence, a prayer for unity.
As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me. (John 17:21-23)
It closely echoes Jesus’ words in his conversation with the disciples preceding his prayer.
I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” (John 13:34-35)
Every time I read Jesus’ prayer I am overwhelmed by the nature of the “oneness” he speaks of. The “interpenetration,” so to speak, that characterizes the relationship between Divine Parent and Divine Offspring, which we name and celebrate in the trinity as Father, Son and Spirit, is at the very core of the oneness, the unity, we are to share. Jesus prays that we – we together as an MWC family of diverse churches, and we together with sisters and brothers of other members of Christ’s global body – might be drawn into the very oneness that characterizes God; more, that the unity we have with each other might be of the kind that characterizes unity of the triune God.
Jesus meant for us to overhear his prayer, so that we can know the true character of unity we are called to maintain, where this “oneness” is anchored, more precisely, where it comes from.
4. Where is unity anchored? From where does it emerge?
a. Unity comes from God – Father, Son and Spirit
The fact that Jesus’ prayer in John 17 is directed to his Father makes crystal clear that unity is a reality God grants. We do not create unity. We receive it. This bears repeating over and over again: our unity is not our accomplishment; it is a gift God grants in Christ through the Spirit. John 17 is frequently paired with Ephesians 4:1-6. Verse 3 speaks of sparing no effort to “maintain” the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace (v. 3). Notice, we are not asked to create unity; we are asked to maintain what God has given us in the bond of peace. The term “bond” is literally “co-chain.” Peace becomes the chain that binds us together. It is God who supplies the chain of peace. Seven “ones” now follow, which we might see as the links in the chain holding us together:
There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all. (Ephesians 4:4-6)
That means that as much as unity is God’s gift, we are to do everything we possibly can to “maintain” it, “keep” it, nurture it, to make that unity real in our experience, to let it shape our relations with each other. We both “live it out” and we “live into it.”
We are surely aware that we are going a bit against the Anabaptist grain with all this emphasis on unity. After all, we have nonconformity deeply embedded in our DNA, even if not often lived out. Our emphasis on being different from the world, and too often from each other, has predisposed us to see schism, division, distancing ourselves from not only the world but each other, not as failure but as proof of our faithfulness. We then suspect that unity too easily comes at the cost of biblical, doctrinal and ethical faithfulness, papering over or trivializing what are serious matters of faith and discipleship. While there truly is at times good reason for such suspicion, it is also the case that we have not made the urgent and eager work for unity central to discipleship. We run the risk of self-righteously turning our backs on Jesus’ prayer.
b. Our unity is anchored in Jesus
I expect we will all agree that our unity is anchored in Jesus. After all, it is Jesus we together follow, as our tag line has it. It is Jesus who is the centre, as Palmer Becker has reminded us. I find it then very instructive to pay attention to whom Jesus draws into the unity of which he is the centre, whom he invites to follow him.
I have found it very illuminating in reading the New Testament to take note of the people Jesus drew into his koinonia of discipleship. Recall with me the kinds of folks Jesus called into his circle:
- Fisherfolk (mostly illiterate labourers)
- Tax collectors (greed or desperation made them collaborators with the imperial overlords)
- “Sinners” (among whom were prostitutes)
- The sick in body and spirit; lepers, blind folks, possessed.
- Judeans, Galileans, Samaritans, Syrians, “Greeks” (groups deeply suspicious and sometimes rejecting of each other)
- Many women, some poor and afflicted, others wealthy and well connected to the ruling class.
- Pharisees (even if timid, like Nicodemus); they are present when the early church meets in conference in Jerusalem in Acts 15, as is Paul, a Pharisee to the end of his life.
- Revolutionaries like the sons of thunder, James and John, or, quite possibly Judas.
After Easter leaders among them fanned out throughout much of the Roman empire, calling together congregations made up of diverse Jews and even more diverse Gentiles. Corinth is an excellent example:
- Jews and Gentiles struggling live and worship alongside each other
- Rich and poor, struggling to eat with each other
- Seasoned believers and novice members who needed to be reminded not to take each other to court, or to sleep with their stepmother
- Self-styled “spiritual” ones looking down on those they disdained as “fleshly”
- And, relevant to our theme of unity, inventing an embryonic form of denominationalism: “Each of you says, “I belong to Paul,” or “I belong to Apollos,” or “I belong to Cephas,” or “I belong to Christ.” (1 Cor 1:12)
This is the “unity of the Spirit?” Remarkably, Paul insists it is. Let me paraphrase 1 Corinthians 1:26-30:
Take a look at this photo, brothers and sisters: not many of you were wise by human standards [lit according to the flesh], not many were powerful. You are clearly not of the elite. But God chose what is foolish, weak, low and despised in the world, so that we’re aware that our unity is not our achievement. God is the source of your shared life in Christ Jesus!
c. A very messy unity
What happened within this unity? Did they fight with each other? Did they have “controversial issues” that threatened their unity in Christ? Yes!
- For example, the Galatians were struggling over the relevance of circumcision and other aspects of the law, while getting buffeted by fierce arguments by leaders like James, Peter and Paul. Read Paul’s letter to the Galatians to get a sense of the severity of the controversy.
- The Letter of James indicates that how faith and works relate to each other was a contentious issue.
- There were other arguments as well over resurrection and eschatology, and eventually over what should be included in the canon of Scripture.
None of the issues we struggle with are any more important or more complicated than ones they faced.
All that, the New Testament tells us, happened within the unity created by God in and through Christ and the Spirit. We might even say that they were allowed to happen because of the unity of the Spirit.
Why do the Gospels, Acts, and Paul consistently depict such an unlikely unity? Why do our Scriptures expose the inner turmoil of God’s work of unity? As a warning? As a model? I suggest that it was precisely so that communities of believers throughout the Mediterranean world could see themselves in the Gospels and epistles. Readers from Jerusalem to Rome recognized themselves in the Gospels’ portraits of the disciples and in the troubled congregations to whom Paul’s letters were written. That is why they remembered the stories of Peter, or preserved Paul’s letters, often highly embarrassing. That’s us, they recognized, together in the unity of the Spirit!
I am profoundly grateful that, along with the inspiring depictions of love and reconciliation, the New Testament shows so clearly and honestly how messy the unity of the Spirit is.
All of that is not to say that conflict and disagreement is good, or that everyone’s actions and opinions are right, or equally acceptable. On the contrary. Serious differences are important. Remember Jesus’ retort to Peter: “Get behind me Satan!” Or think of the sometimes fierce clarity of Paul’s critiques of fellow apostles or of his beloved congregations. It does mean, rather, that this is to be expected, given the scandalous hospitality of God’s grace, given whom Jesus calls to follow him. Chains and seatbelts are required!
5. Unity for transformation and new creation
It is the love and grace of God the creator that is at the root of pulling diverse, flawed, broken humanity together into the unity of the Spirit. But that unity has a purpose. It is unity for transformation! For new creation! The church cannot be a “live and let live” kind of community without aborting the transforming and renewing work of the Spirit. For followers of Jesus unity is always centered on the saving and transforming work of God in Christ through the Spirit. Yes, God gathers estranged, flawed and sinful humans, but it is into “Christ’s body,” there together to be created anew into the “new human,” as Ephesians 2:15 puts it. And that process of new creation is not easy.
We see this in the Sermon on the Mount, a favorite part of the Bible for Anabaptists. The Sermon begins with beatitudes, blessings. But notice, as soon as Jesus has blessed his hearers, he outdoes the Torah in the demands he places on his followers. To paraphrase:
Don’t think I’ve come to abolish the Torah! I’ve come to fulfill it! Unless your righteousness, your justice, outdoes that of the experts at righteousness, the Pharisees, you will not see the Kingdom of God. (Matt 5:17-20)
God’s blessing, beatitude, grace is intended to bring about a transformed life (see Eph 2:10).
If transformation is the goal, then we should not be surprised that in the Sermon on the Mount we now encounter the troubling “antitheses” – “You have heard it said, but I say to you…!” – in which Jesus tightens the screws on the Torah regarding anger, lust, divorce, truth-telling, retaliation and love of enemies (Matthew 5:21-48).
Jesus’ unity-circle is both wonderfully accepting of each of us with all our flaws, but also deeply challenging and transforming. Jesus is quite correctly remembered as scandalously eating and drinking with tax collectors and sinners. Remember Zacchaeus in Luke 19. Jesus invites himself to his home to eat with him. Zacchaeus seems to have figured out that things are likely to change dramatically when you eat with Jesus. He does not respond with “Wow! You’re eating with a hated tax farmer like me?! I’ll go and prepare a feast!” Rather:
“Look, half of my possessions, Lord, I will give to the poor; and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I will pay back four times as much.” Then Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house, because he too is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek out and to save the lost.” (Luke 19:8-10)
We pray the prayer Jesus taught us, which we find also in the Sermon on the Mount (6:9-14). But do we notice that we ask God to forgive us as we have forgiven those who have harmed us, that, in effect, we are to hold God to our standards of mercy?
And then, in the last part of the Sermon on the Mount, we find one of the hardest demands Jesus makes of his followers, but one absolutely essential for this strange unity to be maintained and nurtured: “Judge not, lest you be judged!” Or, as Paul puts it, “Welcome each other as Christ has welcomed you!” (Romans 15:7).
This is a challenge for us Anabaptists especially. We try hard to think and act in keeping with what we think is pleasing to God, with what following Jesus looks like – as we should. We know how Christ has welcomed each of us, and us together as a communion, into his sphere of unity, and how costly that was for him! And we are to learn from him how to become welcoming of each other.
I’m reminded of Paul’s letter to the Philippians. Chapter 2 begins: “If there is any koinonia of the Spirit,” …then “think like Christ. Even though he was in the form of God, he emptied himself, taking on the form of a slave, to the point of the cross.” He did that for your sake, Paul is saying. So then, take up your own cross, for each other! Christ welcomed us into his transforming unity so that we might become welcomers of each other into that womb of new creation, of sometimes painful but always life-giving transformation.
That is the mindset that alone can sustain and maintain the unity of the Spirit, one marked by grace, mercy, understanding and forgiveness. It is the mindset of those who together do the hard work of transformation. That is how the “new human” can come to birth in the gracious womb of Christ. “Living out unity” demands the disciplines unity: patience, forbearance, forgiveness, mutual respect.
There is no reason to be suspicious of unity if it is truly the scandalously hospitable and demanding unity of the Spirit, oneness with and in Christ.
6. Paraklēsis, Catechesis, Discipleship – Training for Unity
a. Paraklēsis
I want to return briefly to Philippians 2. Just before the phrase “koinonia of the Spirit” we read “if there is any paraklēsis in Christ.” Translations of paraklēsis vary significantly, illustrating its range of meaning: “If there is –
- any encouragement in Christ”
- anything in Christ that will move you”
- anything to stir the heart”
- anything that makes you strong”
- anything that brings you comfort”
The context makes clear how closely paraklēsis is connected to unity in Christ, and thus key to what it takes to maintain and nurture it. Let me focus briefly on this term.
The nouns paraklēsis, paraklētos and the verb parakaleō are common in the New Testament. Paul typically uses the verb parakaleō when he begins his exhortation, variously translated as “exhort,” “urge,” even “beg.” The noun paraklēsis is especially important in the Gospel of John. We likely have heard the term “paraclete” for the Holy Spirit. But listen carefully to John 14:16: “I will ask the Father and he will send you another paraklētos.” In short, Jesus presents himself as a paraklētos. Often translated as “comforter,” it is sometimes translated as “advocate.” Think of the paraklētos as like a defence lawyer, as in 1 John 2:1, where Jesus is our advocate before the Father when we sin. In short, the word group carries the meaning of offering comfort, consolation, encouragement, and but no less urgent warning, pleading, even persistent begging.
Relevant particularly for our probing of what it means for us to live out unity, the New Testament makes it clear that it is not only are Jesus or the Spirit “paracletes,” but we too are asked to be parakletes to each other. Here are two examples:
- In 1 Thessalonians 4:18, Paul urges the Thessalonians to “encourage, reassure, comfort each other,” depending on the translation. We might well add, “exhort, urge” to the list.
- Hebrews 3 makes the connection between Christ and us clear: “Exhort (parakaleō; encourage, warn, or urge) one another every day, as long as it is called “today,” so that none of you may be hardened by the lure of sin. For we have become partners of Christ, if only we hold our first confidence firm to the end.” (Heb 3:13-14)
In short, as partners of Christ we owe each other paraklēsis.
b. Catechesis or discipleship
“Living out unity” turns out to ask much of us. My perception is that we need a lot of training to become true paracletes to each other, and to accept the paraklesis from each other. As partners of Christ, we will need to “learn Christ, the truth that is in Jesus,” as Ephesians puts it so well (Ephesians 4:20), to “have the mind of Christ” (Philippians 2:5). The term “to learn” in “learn Christ” is the verb form of “discipleship.” To be a disciple is to be a learner, a student, one in the process of formation. That is what the term means first and foremost. We need discipling in the hard work of unity.
Humility, thinking more highly of each other, listening nonresistantly to those whose opinions and convictions we find inconvenient or even abhorrent takes training, practice (see 1 Corinthians 13:4-8; Ephesians 4:2, 3; Colossians 3:12-15; Philippians 2:1-11). That is why it needs to be urged clearly and often. Learning to speak truth, even hard truth in love (!) takes patient instruction and practice. “Learning Christ,” developing the “mind of Christ,” to be transformed by the renewing of our minds, as Paul has it in Romans 12:2, comprehending and practicing the truth that is in Jesus – all of that requires practice, training, education, in effect catechesis, that ancient church word for education in the faith.
I find in Isaiah 50 a perfect picture of a paraclete:
The Lord God has given me the tongue of a teacher, [or of one who is taught!]
that I may know how to sustain the weary with a word.
Morning by morning he wakens – wakens my ear
to listen as one who is taught.
The Lord God has opened my ear,
and I was not rebellious,
I did not turn backward.
Listening nonresistantly, but also to have a word that sustains the weary, the wandering and the failing, that is what it means to be paracletes to each other.
Do we think of our congregations as training workshops, as discipleship workshops, in learning and practicing the ever-transforming unity that we have in Christ? To “live it out?” Do we think of the MWC as a school of discipleship, “learning Christ” together, learning how to “live out unity,” precisely in how we navigate our differences within the unity of the Spirit? We should know this: we will never graduate from this school. The Spirit will see to it. But we also have the Spirit helping us with our homework.
7. So the world may know
I wish to conclude with the text with which I began, Jesus’ prayer in John 17: “May they be one as you and I are one so that the world may know, so that the world might believe.” (John 17:21, 23)
Know what? Believe what? What is it Jesus wishes to be communicated with our living out unity? That unity is better than division, polarization, and outright hostility? That we are a peace-loving tradition? That is all good. But the good news we are to proclaim with our oneness in Christ is that he, Jesus, was sent by the Father, to use his language, because God loved the world, all of it and its inhabitants.
Our unity, our living it out, is evangelism, good news being proclaimed by our life together in unity. Giving public expression to God’s intentions to save the world asks of us all the wisdom, patience, creativity, and courageous imagination we can muster. There is no higher calling. But we will do so only if together we walk in love as Christ’s body, bonded to each other by the one who is “our Peace.” Our world, riven by violence, conflict, polarization and fear of the future, desperately needs to hear and see a gospel that carries the promise of healing, of reconciliation, of salvation and of transformation.
I close with a doxology:
Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen. (Ephesians 3:20, 21.)
III. Building Peace – ‘My Peace I give you, not as the world gives’
1. Peace versus peace
Today we reflect on the last of the three elements in the tagline. I have read the minutes of the discussions during the formation of the tagline, and it is clear that peace was central to every discussion group’s sense of what characterizes the MWC and its mission. Peace is what we aspire to and what we want to be known for. And we are. I give thanks for this part of our heritage.
For much of our history our public peace, what we called “our peace position,” was mostly refusing to take up arms – nonresistance or defencelessness (Wehrlosigkeit), not so much positive peacemaking. Even so, if we look carefully, the fruit of the gospel of peace or what we might call “peace discipleship” was more than nonresistance. We see it in the deeply instilled virtues of humility (even if we are often proud of our humility), truth telling, deference to others, and simple living (some of that needs some rediscovering, I think we all agree). But for the most part, what was distinct about our tradition as a Historic Peace Church was refusal to bear arms.
Admittedly, even that was quite marginal in our missionary efforts. Reasons for this vary. Such work was often in settings where conscientious objection was not even legally possible, as is the case often today. Secondly, refusal to bear arms had been abandoned in large parts of the Mennonite world, especially in Europe. Even where it was practiced, it was not always seen as core to the gospel we were proclaiming in our missionary endeavours. It was treated, rather, as a distinctive tradition, like an ethnic characteristic, important but not core to the gospel. “Peace” more likely referred to having “peace with God.”
It is clear that in many parts of our Mennonite family things have changed dramatically over the past century. Where once our habit was to remain aloof from society, we have come to see peace as calling for active, sometimes radical, engagement with society. “Peace” has become central to Anabaptist identity, but now as peacemaking or, as in our tagline, peacebuilding. Nonresistance has in many parts of our communion given way to nonviolent resistance to injustice.
2. MWC and peace
I have very much enjoyed reading the history of the MWC by John Lapp and Ed van Straten, “Mennonite World Conference 1925-2000: From Euro-American Conference to Worldwide Communion,” as well as Alfred Neufeld’s Becoming a Global Communion, published shortly before his untimely passing.
The very first meeting of the MWC in 1925 was an effort to bring together Mennonites estranged from each other by war and all the scars it left on Mennonites on opposing sides, but also by suspicions of each other’s theology, piety and ethics. Peace seems initially to have been chiefly focused on inter-Mennonite relations and on providing assistance to those in need.
The second meeting in 1930 in Danzig was called “The World-Aid-Conference.” Immediately after the following meeting in Amsterdam/Elspeet in 1936, European and North American Mennonite Peace Committees organized the International Mennonite Peace Committee to channel support to Mennonites who suffered for refusing to do military service.
After the devastation of WWII tensions began to emerge. A shift from peace as nonresistance and relief to peace as actively addressing the violence and injustice in the world was affecting the MWC community. The assembly in Curitiba in 1972 brought these to the surface, as I indicated yesterday, putting serious stress on efforts at unity. How and even whether to respond to the military dictatorship in Brazil was a major flash point. The Dutch remembered from the previous assembly in the Netherlands the strong challenge of Vincent Harding, an African American Mennonite and close collaborator of Martin Luther King.
“This much we know, the revolutionary beggars will wait no longer. Christ has promised to be with all beggars and His promises are sure. . . . March out, saints, and be counted!”
To the consternation of the Brazilian Mennonites, the Dutch, in response to the Brazilian military dictatorship, decided not to attend the Curitiba Assembly, although they did send a small delegation to show ties to the larger global body. In addition, some young Latin Americans distributed a statement to those attending the Assembly, calling for a “new infusion of the Holy Spirit that will show us that to keep silent before these injustices means to accept them” and called for the recovery of “the Anabaptist conscience of the people of God as a redemptive community.” “Redemptive” in this instance meant engagement in social and political change. Clearly, they were more in tune with the Brazilian bishop Dom Elder Camara than their fellow Mennonites. Those, in turn, insisted on the priority of a reconciliation with God, and the importance of not losing sight of the central task of the church being evangelism.
The theme for Curitiba assembly was “Jesus Christ reconciles.” As Alfred Neufeld’s summary indicates, talk was less of peace than reconciliation. And the most immediate agenda was reconciliation between these passionately held perspectives. “Peace” was quite evidently a “controversial issue.”
As this shift from nonresistance to active peacemaking was taking place, Jeremiah’s famous letter to Jewish exiles in Babylon took on ever greater significance. He calls on them to “seek the peace – the shalom – of the city” (Jeremiah 29:7). This became a kind of rallying cry for active peacemaking for the sake of the world, nothing less than a missionary stance with respect to peace. Refusal to bear arms gave way to active peacemaking, and then peacebuilding. It is no exaggeration to say that nonresistance gave way to resistance. “Peace” and “justice” embrace, as the often quoted Psalm 85:10 puts it.
“Justice” is understood, to be sure, not as retributive but as restorative justice, actively addressing violence and oppression, including systemic and structural dimensions, from the domestic to the public realm. We recall Fernando Enns’ pivotal involvement as Mennonite representative at the Harare, Zimbabwe Assembly of the World Council of Churches in 1998, bringing the WCC to commit itself to the “Decade to Overcome Violence.” The vocabulary of “just peace” or “peace and justice” fits perfectly to describe this shift.
Staying out of trouble gave way to getting into trouble. At the instigation of Ron Sider in his famous Mennonite World Conference address in 1984 at the Assembly in Strasbourg, Mennonites have been “getting in the way” of hostilities and standing in solidarity with victims, such as Christian Peacemaker Teams (now Community Peacemaker Teams).
Or think of the pioneering efforts of Mennonites in restorative justice, mediation, alternative conflict resolution and prison reform. In our part of the family in North America, commitment to peace has increasingly focused its attention on sexual abuse, indigenous/settler relationships, the legacy of colonialism, the wars in Gaza and Ukraine, and increasingly on the environmental crisis. We have peace studies programs in most of Mennonite colleges, universities and seminaries, and we teach seminars and workshops in many parts of the world, both within and outside the church.
In short, we have become very effective in “seeking the peace of the city.” Whereas nonresistance fits well with separation from the world, our present focus on understanding peace as active, even aggressive, engagement is very much “in the world” and “for the world.”
This has had an impact on what we mean with “Anabaptism.” For some it has come to be identified with an active peace stance and orientation, often set over against an evangelical or evangelistic agenda, and too often with only a weak link to participation in the church. The concerns of Curitiba in 1972 are very much alive a half century later. Not surprisingly, many feel increasingly estranged from making peace central to the church’s calling, especially when that is understood in social, systemic or political terms that leaves the church itself outside the frame of peacemaking. More accurately, in their view “peace” is related to the spiritual or relational dimensions, which they sense are being sidelined in the focus on peace. I can hear Jesus’ lament: “O that you would know what makes for peace!”
What are we announcing with this third item in our tagline – “building peace”? Or what are we aspiring to? Is one end of the spectrum of the meanings of “peace” more Anabaptist than the other? Is one or the other is more faithful to the Scriptures?
3. The Bible and peace
For Anabaptists the Bible has been foundational. Without it we are left with appealing to our Anabaptist tradition. But with respect to “peace,” the current emphasis has not been around long, so how far back in the tradition do we dig to find a foundation?
The Bible is God’s gift, an archive of conversation about and with God, a shared space for us to hear God speak to us, and for us to listen to each other. So, let’s explore together what content the Bible might offer us for this element in the tagline.
a. Comprehensive peace
In the Hebrew Bible or Old Testament the term translated as “peace” is “shalom.” But shalom is properly translated not only as peace but also as health, welfare, security, freedom from enemies and oppression, good crops, truthful administration of justice, attention to the vulnerable, as well as a state harmony, of equilibrium. Most importantly, shalom encompasses the many aspects of our relation to the Creator, and the redeemer and healer and judge – the God of shalom.
The importance of this for MWC is that shalom touches base with all of our concerns – from evangelism, church planting and theology, to solidarity with the suffering, to practical peace and justice building, and to our concerns around the environment. Every one of our Commissions and their related Networks, as well as the Creation Care Taskforce, are drawn into this understanding of peace as wholeness. We are all together a peace commission, so to speak.
When Jews translated the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek in the decades before Jesus, Greek was the most common language of the day. They translated shalom as eirene – from where we get our name Irene. In doing so they took with them the freight of meaning of the Hebrew shalom they knew from the Scriptures into a Roman world in which eirene already enjoyed wide currency, carrying overtones of tranquility and calm, or of pacification by military force. For imperial Rome these were related. The Roman cross was intended as a means of such pacification, the suppression of revolt and resistance, of creating the calm they proudly called the “pax Romana,” the peace of Rome. That represents an enormous collision in the understanding of peace.
We should be alert to this when reading the New Testament. Jewish followers of Jesus were keenly aware of the competing notions of peace. So when they referred to Christ as “our peace” (Ephesians 2:14) who made peace by “killing hostility through the cross” (2:16), they knew it was a provocation to imperial Rome. And when they depicted Jesus as an evangelist of peace (2:17), bringing Jews and Gentiles, men and women, slaves and free together, it was a provocation to themselves in their secure identities. Or when they depicted Jesus as healing, exorcising, providing food to the hungry, and inviting the spiritually starved to address God as their own Abba, they saw the God of shalom at work, bringing about the reign of peace, the kingdom of God.
There is nothing self-explanatory about the term peace. The meanings may overlap, but they are not the same. When we use the tag line “building peace,” let’s not pick the term off the shelf of common usage, but fill it with the rich and diverse treasury the Bible offers us.
b. Peace is God’s gift
The second point I want to highlight is that peace is a gift of God. It is God who initiates shalom. We do not make peace with God so much as God makes peace with us. While we see this all over the psalms and the prophets, the motif of God as initiator of peace finds its fullest expression in the life, teaching, death and resurrection of Jesus. Let me briefly point to three great peace texts that show God as prime mover when it comes to peace.
Romans 5
Vs 1: Therefore, since we have been justified (made just/righteous) through [God’s] faith[fulness], we have peace with our God through Jesus Christ.
Vs 6: While we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly
Vs 8: God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us.
Vs 10: God proves his love for us in that while we were enemies Christ died for us.
John 14:27
Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.
Back to Paul: We are more than familiar in Ephesians 2 with Christ being “our peace,” breaking down walls that divide, bringing hostile groups together in one body, creating a new human and killing hostility through the cross (2:14-16). But the chapter begins with a remarkable “we all” – you and we, you godless Gentiles and us old time believing Jews – we all are the walking dead, zombies, breathing in the toxic air that estranges us from each other and from God. That astonishing environmental image of alienation and death eerily anticipates our time, doesn’t it?
“But God,” verse 4, in his boundless love, has brought us to life, has raised us – you and us – and seated us together with the Messiah so that everyone, including coming ages, will see the immeasurable wealth of God’s grace.
In short, God is on a peace mission in Christ. The reconciliation between us and those we have been estranged from is God’s demonstration of grace. The Messiah who is “our Peace” is God the peacemaker, the peacebuilder, at work. “By grace you have been saved!” Indeed.
c. Seek peace and pursue it!
We are saved not by our peacemaking, we might say, by our peacebuilding, but for our peacebuilding, the good work God has had in mind for us humans since before creation (Ephesians 2:10). As those graced by the God of peace, we are invited to join the Creator in making and building peace. I’m reminded of the phrase from 1 John 4:19: “We love, because he first loved us.” We could restate it: “We make peace because God first made peace with us.” As Ephesians 5:1 says unforgettably: “Imitate God! And love like Jesus!”
New Testament writers loved the phrase from Psalm 34:14: “Seek peace and pursue it.” 1 Peter 3:11 quotes the saying verbatim, Hebrews 12:14 in part. Romans 12 is a rather remarkable adaptation. This is where Paul sounds a lot like the Sermon on the Mount regarding what was known among us as nonresistance:
Don’t avenge yourself, leave vengeance to God. Instead, give your hungry and thirsty enemy food and water. If possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. (a few segments of Rom 12:14-21)
“If possible, as far as it depends on you…” sounds like a bit of realism, not? It may be. But it certainly is not fatalism in the face of evil. It should be read, in my view, as an urgent invitation to look for what we can do in the face of harm and hostility. After all, we are called to “overcome,” as vs 21 has it, to be victorious over evil not be retaliating but by doing good, and that surely includes every bit of alertness for opportunity and every bit of energy we can muster in peacemaking.
Romans 12:13 is often rather blandly translated as “extend hospitality.” A literal translation is much closer to the spirit of vs 21: pursue strangers with love; bless those who are pursuing you! “Pursue” and “persecute” are exactly the same word in Greek: diōkō. We are to “pursue” not only strangers with love, to translate literally, but to bless those who persecute or pursue us. Paul is here talking about persistent, dogged, unrelenting efforts at peace. Perhaps “building peace” should be instead “chasing peace”. That is what those are like, Paul says, who have had God chase them down to make peace.
Romans 14:19 combines “pursue peace” with “build each other up,” which is Paul’s favourite way of referring to our interactions with each other in the body of Christ.
d. Church as God’s peacebuilding project
Let me use that verse to shift the focus to the church and our relations with each other in the body of Christ.
Much of our spirituality, much of our evangelism, is person-, individual-focused. Do I have peace with God? Have I been justified? Am I saved? The Anabaptist emphasis on personal choice and decision may well contribute to that emphasis. I do not want to downplay the importance of that. Our relationship to God is intensely personal. However, it does not stop there. The Scriptures put God’s peacebuilding into a much larger frame. The repeated mention of Gentiles and Jews in Ephesians, for example, is a way of speaking of humanity as a whole, torn by divisions and hostilities. Christ is “our” peace, not just “my” peace, where “our” includes those from whom I have been estranged. As peacebuilder, God gathers up “all things” in and through Christ (1:10), and that includes all peoples, indeed “all things” in all creation.
What then is God “building” with this peacemaking effort? God is rebuilding humanity, expanding God’s family, extending the borders of God’s people. God’s peacebuilding is intended to bring about a unity, a oneness made up of formerly estranged and hostile, broken and sinful humanity. God is fashioning a home – the house of peace. We call this “church,” the root meaning of which is “the Lord’s.” “Church” is nothing less than the peace building project of the “Lord of peace” (2 Thess 3:16). Are we able even for a moment to look past the necessary structures and institutions, the draining responsibilities, exhausting challenges and frequent disappointments we so often experience as “church workers,” and see God the giver of peace building a home, electrifying it with the Spirit, with the corner and the headstone Jesus Christ himself?
Peace building in relation to the church, and that includes our living out unity, is not a distraction from our real peace witness. Being a “peace church” is not pointed only outward toward the world. The work we do in the MWC is at its very core participation in God’s peacebuilding. Our commitment to live out unity in the MWC is nothing other than building on God’s home, more, of announcing the gospel of peace to the world – “so that the world may know” (John 17). In short, the church is at the very center of God’s peacebuilding.
4. False dichotomy
I propose that we take the Bible’s witness as an urgent invitation not to perpetuate but rather to overcome a division that has troubled us for much of the history of the MWC – between peacebuilding on one hand, and the church and its mission to proclaim the gospel, to baptise and make disciples, on the other. Yes, of course, members of the body are different from each other and have different tasks. That is essential for a body (1 Corinthians 12). Some will feel more excitement about and equipped for some parts of the church’s peacebuilding agenda than for others. That may well be the Spirit giving different gifts. There is both room for and necessity for division of labour. But we are one body, ultimately engaged in the same peace project. In my view both ends of the spectrum are impoverished without the other. Both suffer from a lack of shalom, a lack of wholeness intrinsic to biblical peace.
Much like the leaders of the MWC assembly in Curitiba in 1972, I yearn for reconciliation. That means more than coexistence and a willingness to get along. It means being close enough that we rub off on each other, that we build each other up with “the truth that is in Jesus” (Eph 4:21), that we shape each other’s imaginations. It means that we engage each other critically and accept such criticism as saving grace.
In my view we need each other, and will more and more. We need the unity of those pulling and yanking at both ends of the tension-filled chain of peace. We are likely to face headwinds that will engulf us all.
In some sectors of our communion it is at present sexuality that is tearing at the fabric of unity. But the growing climate crisis will test us as much or more. It will require all hands on deck.
So much of our peace building has been premised, at least in the Global North, on a moment in time when our wisdom as peacebuilders is appreciated, even welcomed, when we have the shared optimism that things can be changed. But there are signs that this seems to be changing with the rise of fear, suspicion and even hatred in the public sphere.
It is worth pondering that much of the peace theology, we say theologies, of the Bible were forged under the iron lid of empire, the brutality of persecution, the vulnerability of human life to disease and famine. Biblical calls to pursue peace, in Old and New Testament, were spoken into contexts of conflict, disorientation, displacement, exile and imperial oppression. That was true no less for early Anabaptists.
It is important that we were able to make such good use of this unusual moment in human history, at least in the Global North. But will we be able to articulate the gospel of peace when the leaders of our countries are stoking violence, hatred and fear, when the structures of democracy are looking ever more shaky, when war is increasingly attractive as an instrument of power, when the future looks bleak and unforgiving with respect to ecological devastation? We will need us all, the analysts, the diplomats, the environmental scientists, the environmental practitioners, as much as we will need pastors, prophets, paracletes and evangelists whose take on the gospel will have a word to sustain us when hope is stressed, when the future is bleak, who can keep us from seeking salvation in a way that gives up on the creation God loves.
It is in times like these that any peace theology worth its name is tested. It will survive such a test only to the degree to which it is anchored in the heart of a very thick and robust gospel. The call to peacemaking in the Bible is thus necessarily tied to suffering and hope, the willingness to “take up ones cross.” It may even be that we will need to ponder and rediscover the old wisdom of nonresistance as the hard work of dogged patient persistence in hope. My sense is that those from the North will need to sit at the feet of sisters and brothers from the Global South. Thank God for this MWC family and the depth of experience and wisdom that resides in it.
I’m reminded again, in conclusion, of Romans 5:
Therefore, since we are justified by faith (or since we have been made capable of doing justice by the faithfulness of God), we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand; and we celebrate our hope of sharing the glory of God. And not only that, but we also celebrate our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.
With that text we are the very wellspring of what we need to sustain peacebuilding: peace, grace, hope, suffering linked to endurance, character and the peacebuilding love of God poured into the core of our being by the Spirit. Precisely for times such as these.
I close with a benediction from 2 Thessalonians 3:16:
Now may the Lord of peace himself give you peace at all times in all ways. The Lord be with all of you.
AMEN
Thomas R. Yoder Neufeld is chair of the Faith and Life Commission (at time of writing). He is professor emeritus of Religious Studies & Theological Studies at Conrad Grebel University College in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, and a member of First Mennonite Church, Kitchener, Ontario, Canada.