Prayers of gratitude and intercession

Global Communion and Why It Matters: Exploring our shared commitment to being a worldwide family

As Mennonite World Conference, we share a commitment to being a worldwide communion (koinonia) of faith and life. Together, we seek to be a fellowship that transcends boundaries of nationality, race, class, gender and language. Yet because of our diversity, each MWC member church brings a distinct understanding of the importance of global communion to its participation and investment in MWC.

The April 2015 issue of Courier / Correo / Courrier seeks to discern the variety of reasons why Anabaptist communities from around the world come together to form MWC. In the articles that follow, writers reflect on the question: Why does my local or regional fellowship need a global communion?

A Glimpse of the Universal Church

I pastor the Mennonite congregation in the town of Enkenbach, near the city of Kaiserslautern in the Palatinate area in southwest Germany. Our church has 260 members and an average attendance of about 100 persons at a regular Sunday service.

The congregation was founded after World War II by Mennonite refugees from east and west Prussia (now Poland) who had to leave their homelands because of the war. (By contrast, other Mennonite congregations in the Palatinate area date their origin back to the 17th century, when Mennonite refugees seeking refuge from persecution migrated from Switzerland.) In Enkenbach, non-German young men serving in Europe through Mennonite Central Committee’s PAX program, a post-war relief effort, erected houses for Mennonite refugees here as a settlement, allowing our congregation to flourish. Today’s members are either refugees who came here at a young age or first generation “Palatinate” Germans.

Our congregation is one of the larger ones in Germany, much larger than the average Mennonite congregation in the Arbeitsgemeinschaft Mennonitischer Gemeinden conference (not counting the larger congregations from Russian-German background).

The local congregation plays a very important role in our German Mennonite tradition. Early Anabaptists emphasized the centrality of the local congregation, and this emphasis helped the movement survive in times of persecution. Throughout the years, though, this congregationalism has led to weaknesses, including a sometimes-too-strong sense of self-sufficiency. For example, many members of our congregation think of themselves not only Mennonites, but “Enkenbach Mennonites“ who are not so much interested in other Mennonite traditions. In the years of its origin our congregation had around 500 members and over the decades that large membership sustained many programs, making the congregation quite independent from other Mennonite groups. This has changed over the decades, due to declining membership numbers. Still, a real danger exists: the possibility that congregations will lose sight of one another, developing a mentality of “we are we and others do their own business.” 

Fortunately, many people in Germany – including many people in our congregation – have a vision for ecumenism. (This probably developed as a result of German history, which includes the major Protestant-Catholic split of the 16th- century Reformation era.) We value close cooperation with other denominations for a better witness to the world. In our town, which has Catholic and other Protestant (United Church) congregations, we have good fellowship. We have a sense of the unity of the Christian church.

At the same time, our congregation needs to realize that our Anabaptist-Mennonite family is larger that our local congregation. That expanded worldview comes through our involvement with Mennonite World Conference.

Involvement with MWC offers several tangible benefits. First, it helps to strengthen our common identity as Anabaptist-Mennonites. In our local congregation, we organized two small groups that read and studied the shared convictions of MWC, using Alfred Neufeld’s book What We Believe Together, a book from the Global Anabaptist-Mennonite Shelf of Literature, recommended by MWC. Currently, another small group reads another book from MWC’s bookshelf: Bernhard Ott’s God’s Shalom Project. Both books help us to “stay in conversation” with each other about our faith and practice as well as with the thinking and believing of the wider Anabaptist tradition. We read them not as prescriptive documents; instead, we desire to be part of a wider process of thinking and believing. We find these recommended books helpful.

In addition, involvement in MWC offers a reminder that the Anabaptist-Mennonite family has grown way beyond the ethnic German (Swiss or Prussian) cultures in which Anabaptism was first nurtured. For instance, we observe the annual World Fellowship Sunday (WFS) in our congregation, and as a result we regularly receive interesting information on the life of MWC brothers and sisters. Moreover, at every WFS observance we collect a special offering for MWC in addition to what we give through our conference for the MWC Fair Share. In 2012, when the MWC General Council met in Europe, we invited two guest speakers – women theologians/pastors from Japan and Democratic Republic of Congo – into our worship services. This was unique and gave us an important glimpse into the growth of the Anabaptist-Mennonite tradition into a global, multicultural phenomenon. A year before, in 2011, we were fortunate to have MWC General Secretary César García visit our church to give a presentation on the work of MWC. His time with us also helped to show our people the reality of global Anabaptist faith.

Furthermore, we have been fortunate to host individuals from North America through the Intermenno Trainee Program, an exchange initiative that invites young people to live in Europe and gain firsthand experience with European culture and languages. Moreover, we have hosted Paraguayan volunteers who have served in our midst. Some have even stayed and got married here.

Beyond these ventures in the local congregation, a considerable number of our members who can afford to travel have attended MWC Assemblies over the decades, including the gatherings in India (1997), Zimbabwe (2003) and Paraguay (2009). In each instance our people have come back enriched and impressed, and have given reports on their experiences.

Surely the biblical understanding of the Church is more than just the local congregation. Christians from many tribes and nations are bound together by more than just local identity. From a biblical perspective, the Church is a communion of believers who transcend labels of nation, ethnicity and race. It is a universal (or catholic, in the truest sense of the word) body. To make this known and to help experience its truth at the local congregational level, we need MWC. Ultimately, MWC offers us a glimpse of the universal, even ecumenical, identity of the People of God.

Rainer W. Burkart is pastor of the Enkenbach Mennonite Church in Enkenbach, Germany. Beyond his local congregation, he has served on the MWC Executive Committee and Faith and Life Commission, and co-chaired the Lutheran World Federation/Mennonite World Conference International Study Commission (2005-2008), which laid the groundwork for an of reconciliation between Lutherans and Anabaptists.

 

 

Global Communion and Why It Matters: Exploring our shared commitment to being a worldwide family

As Mennonite World Conference, we share a commitment to being a worldwide communion (koinonia) of faith and life. Together, we seek to be a fellowship that transcends boundaries of nationality, race, class, gender and language. Yet because of our diversity, each MWC member church brings a distinct understanding of the importance of global communion to its participation and investment in MWC.

The April 2015 issue of Courier / Correo / Courrier seeks to discern the variety of reasons why Anabaptist communities from around the world come together to form MWC. In the articles that follow, writers reflect on the question: Why does my local or regional fellowship need a global communion?

The Interdependent Existence

Growing up, my late mother had a grass-thatched kitchen with an orundu – a small garden containing all sorts of vegetables – located behind the kitchen. Orundu would also serve as a “testing ground” where any new seed could be planted to verify its ability to germinate and mature. Having been tested, the new crop could then be planted in the larger puodho, or farm.

A well-maintained orundu is not sufficient for the family; yet puodho draws from orundu in many ways. During my childhood, the family was fed from orundu as we waited for crops to mature in puodho. Orundu was easier to tend as it was within proximity than puodho that was larger but not close to the homesteads and required greater effort to tend yet gave greater yields.

When thinking about the connection between the local congregation and the global church family, orudnu and puodho offer compelling symbols, offering clearly not only the necessity but also the essence of the global in relation to the local. Most importantly, the imagery speaks to the ways in which the global depends on the local, and vice versa – what I call the interdependent existence.

The terms “global” and “local” are inherently interdependent, particularly within the church as a community of believers brought together by faith in God. As a pastor and Mennonite World Conference regional representative, my spheres of orundu are twofold: the Eastleigh Fellowship Centre (EFC), a small Mennonite congregation in the eastern part of Nairobi, Kenya, and the Eastern African Mennonite community. My tasks are challenging, taking into account that both are voluntary roles. However, the beauty of fellowship in Jesus Christ and the interdependence of local and global fellowships supersedes all the challenges therein.

At the EFC congregation, for example, we worship through songs of praise, fellowship, visitations, teachings and Sunday school classes in a setting where the majority of people are predominantly Muslims of Somali origin. This context is not only challenging but, at times, heart-breaking. Although we appreciate the composition of our region, recognizing that all people are God’s creation, in faith issues we need the fellowship of the larger community – a global community that transcends our local area in which we are religious minorities, a community in which we connect with brothers and sisters in Christ from around the world. Our orundu stands to run dry unless we constantly draw courage, strength and comfort from God through the existence and strength of and encouragement from the larger community.

Our regional affiliations with the Eastern African Mennonite community facilitate our global connections. We share at the regional level so that we can better identify with the global community and participate effectively in it. Without the global community, the regional caucuses would have no meaning. They provide effective intermediaries between the local and the global. They are the glues that hold the global and the local firmly together. The Keyna Mennonite Church and Kanisa la Mennonite Tanzania (Mennonite Church of Tanzania) bishops, executive offices and various departments at national levels play pivotal roles in shepherding believers towards a common goal – being one body of Christ (1 Corinthians 12:27).

What are some of the benefits yielded by the connections between the local and the global?    

One benefit is harmony. Sociologists have identified the concept of “other” or “otherness” as a force that divides people. This otherness is not innate but constructed. People decide what is “different” and exclude them. This can be very destructive in the body of Christ. As believers, we share a oneness in Jesus Christ, and that should be our focus regardless of differences in geography, culture and race, or at times of economic imbalances and political crises. We should embark on deliberate efforts to deconstruct any forces of “otherness” within the church so that the “oppressed other” can find space among us Christians as being the “gracious other.” For example, EFC’s existence in harmony with the predominantly non-Christian community should not go unnoticed.

As a global church, let us stand with the struggling minorities in areas where the gospel is threatened. It is time that we re-examine the relationship between theology and economics. The global church should steer its objectives towards the well being of its members. This is definitely a huge responsibility but Jesus made it clear that it is not easy to enter the Kingdom of God (Matthew 18:3-4; Mark 9:47; Luke 18:24-25), yet we can do all things through Christ who enables us (Philemon 4:3).

Another benefit is identity. Having attended and participated in a number of MWC forums, I can attest that great effort is being put into cultivating a common identity. Formulation of theologies and theological terminologies that will instill unity rather than homogeneity is of paramount importance.

By participating in the global church fora, we are enabled and subsequently find the need to re-shape our social categories in order to enhance a common identity as the body of Christ. A common identity does not compel us to strive for homogeneity. Instead, it gives us room to rise above our comfort zones to a meaningful and worthy fellowship. We can meaningfully identify and attempt to positively reshape our social categories when we participate together as a global community.

Agreements, disagreements and negotiations are all healthy components in re-shaping our identity. We should not keep away from the fellowship in fear of these healthy conflicts, for doing so would be tantamount to closing doors to the very fellowship with God that we desire to cultivate. Ultimately, we adjust our behaviours and self-image based upon our interactions and our self-reflections about these interactions.

In conclusion, as we approach and continue to prepare for the next Mennonite World Conference Assembly this year, neither liberal, conservative nor middle-ground perspectives should linger in our minds. Instead, our watchword should be “fellowship of the Body of Christ.” We need both orundu and puodho, local and global. We need one another.

Rebecca Osiro is a pastor-theologian and the first woman ordained to ministry in the Kenya Mennonite Church. She is the MWC Eastern Africa regional representative and a member of the MWC Faith and Life Commission. In addition, she has represented MWC in the trilateral dialogue between Mennonites, Catholics and Lutherans.

 

Exploring our shared commitment to being a worldwide family

As Mennonite World Conference, we share a commitment to being a worldwide communion (koinonia) of faith and life. Together, we seek to be a fellowship that transcends boundaries of nationality, race, class, gender and language. Yet because of our diversity, each MWC member church brings a distinct understanding of the importance of global communion to its participation and investment in MWC.

 

Jesus with Skin On 

(Darrell Winger, Canada)

For Brethren in Christ (BIC) congregations in Canada, the Mennonite World Conference provides this embodiment of the important truth that we belong to a church family that spreads around the world. We know that followers of Jesus everywhere are made one through faith in him; however, we can experience this precious truth in a practical way since MWC puts “skin” on it for us. As MWC embodies the reality of our global fellowship in Christ, our BIC Canada congregations are strengthened in important ways.

 

A Glimpse of the Universal Church 

(Rainer W. Burkart, Germany)

At the same time, our congregation needs to realize that our Anabaptist-Mennonite family is larger that our local congregation. That expanded worldview comes through our involvement with Mennonite World Conference.

 

The Interdependent Existence 

(Rebecca Osiro, Kenya)

When thinking about the connection between the local congregation and the global church family, orudnu and puodho offer compelling symbols, offering clearly not only the necessity but also the essence of the global in relation to the local. Most importantly, the imagery speaks to the ways in which the global depends on the local, and vice versa – what I call the interdependent existence.

 

Strength in the Gathered 

(Cynthia Peacock, India)

Another goal – and perhaps the most important one – was to help each conference understand our global connectedness. We wanted them to understand that, through MWC, we are linked as brothers and sisters in Christ.

 

A context for Anabaptist witness

The United States was formed, in 1776, as the first modern republic. Its founders believed they were engaging in a pioneering political experiment and granted relatively generous freedom of conscience to diverse Christian groups. It was also a nation in which, until 1865, at least 12 of every 100 people were enslaved men and women of African descent. The USA is also shaped by a history of immigration so that today people from all parts of the globe call the United States home. It has a highly complex economy, renowned research universities, a tradition of civil liberties and an extraordinarily large and globally active military. All of these factors provide a context in which U.S. Christians – including Mennonites and other Anabaptists – live.

Like other countries, the USA is also a nation of national myths. There is, for example, the myth of the “melting pot,” by which many U.S. Americans believe that assimilation is inevitable or benign or both. Perhaps more important has been the myth of “individual transcendence,” a promise that people can leave all tradition behind and start over anew, that the future is better than the past and that new equals improved. Americans in the USA are much more apt to deal with discontent by leaving a product, group or situation behind and starting over again rather than sticking with something old and working to improve or adapt it. This faith has animated U.S. society, influencing even its churches. The United States has birthed an unrivaled number of denominations and “independent churches” across the theological spectrum.

Two broad groupings

One way to think about Anabaptists in the USA, in very broad strokes, is to consider two groupings: those Anabaptists who are fairly integrated into mainstream economic and education patterns, and those Anabaptists whose daily routines clearly set them apart from their neighbors. The first group would include most members of Mennonite Church USA, the U.S. Conference of Mennonite Brethren, the Brethren in Christ (BIC) in the U.S., the Conservative Mennonite Conference and others. (All those listed above are Mennonite World Conference member churches.) While these sisters and brothers generally strive to live their faith in ways that make a difference in their local contexts, those contexts are very often professional, middle class and urban or suburban. These Mennonites and BIC typically get their news from conventional media sources, own private automobiles, believe that doing well in school is central to their children’s economic future and assume that health care should be better than it was for their grandparents.

In contrast, the Old Order Amish – the largest Anabaptist group in the United States with almost 12,000 baptized members – as well as Old Order Mennonites and a collection of related groups generally do not share these assumptions and values. From how they get dressed in the morning to the way they get to work and what they hope for their children, these Anabaptist are purposefully out of step with what the vast majority of U.S. citizens think is central to the good life. Tens of thousands travel with horses, reject higher education and refuse to put their trust in commercial insurance plans.

There are, of course, exceptions and variations in this broad pattern. Members of acculturated groups are likely to say that they go against the grain as pacifists and as people who champion high moral standards. And some Old Order Anabaptists are becoming more integrated into the national economy. Still, some of the first things observers from afar may recognize are differences between those who have adjusted to the basic contours of U.S. society – or, in the case of new immigrants and communities of color, are trying  to gain greater access to those basic contours – and the so-called “plain” groups who resist in striking ways the national myths of assimilation and individual transcendence.

Stories of immigration and renewal

Mennonites first came to what would become the United States in small numbers in the 1600s. Larger waves of Mennonites and Amish emigrated from Western Europe in the 1700s and early 1800s, and Mennonites and Hutterites from the Russian Empire arrived in the 1870s. Slowly – sometimes very slowly – these Germanic churches opened themselves up to people from other backgrounds, including Native Americans on whose land Mennonite settlement had depended. Strict immigration laws locked out most newcomers in the mid-1900s, but since 1970 the USA has again received millions of immigrants each decade, including Mennonites from Asia, Africa and Latin America. Some Anabaptist immigrants have brought their church conferences with them. For example, the Sinode Jemaat Kristen Indonesia now has eight congregations on the West Coast of the USA; the Honduras-base Amor Viviente has churches in several Southern U.S. states. Similarly, when Mexican members of the Canada-based Evangelical Mennonite Mission Church (EMMC) immigrated to the USA, they started EMMC churches here (now known as Active Mission Conference).

The USA has also been a place in which spiritual renewal movements have spawned dozens of new Anabaptist church bodies. The Brethren in Christ emerged in the 1780s in Pennsylvania among Mennonites who warmed to Pietism and to a Wesleyan understanding of sanctification. In the mid-1800s, the Old Order renewal movement emphasized the practices of humility and contentment, along with a communal approach to faith and a belief that church discipline strengthened rather than hindered an individual’s relationship with God. In the twentieth century, the Conservative Mennonite Conference found renewal as the mission-activism of American evangelicalism leavened CMC’s Amish heritage. Pentecostalism has been a source of spiritual empowerment for segments of the U.S. Anabaptist world, too.

Paradoxes of growth

Today the U.S. Anabaptist world is simultaneously becoming more urbanized and ethnically and racial diverse and becoming increasingly rural and white. On the one hand, the growing edges of many Anabaptist bodies are congregations such as Casa del Dios Viviente BIC in Pompano Beach, Florida, or Hmong Mennonite Church in St. Paul, Minnesota. Half of Mennonite Brethren churches nationwide have a clear Latino, Asian-American, Slavic or African-American character. Calvary Community Church in Hampton, Virginia, with more than 2,200 mostly-African-American members, is the largest congregation in Mennonite Church USA.

At the same time, the largest numeric growth in the U.S. Anabaptist world is among Amish and Old Order Mennonite groups. Evangelically-oriented Mennonites and BIC often dismiss these groups’ growth since it virtually all comes from the ranks of their own offspring. Nevertheless, culturally conservative Anabaptist churches do a remarkable job of attracting and retaining their youth. The size and increase of these churches – although generally off the radar of most mainline Mennonite and BIC members – means that the U.S. Anabaptist population, as a whole, is slightly whiter and more rural, in percentage terms, than it was 30 years ago.

Contemporary realities and arenas of witness

1. U.S. Anabaptists are a very small part of a very large country. The United States positions itself as a global superpower and its economic and military choices affect the lives of people around the globe. U.S. Anabaptists are part of this superpower complex. But they do not command as much cultural attention as, for example, in Canada. Nor have they had much economic or political influence as, for example, in Paraguay. Being a tiny minority in the heart of a latter-day empire has often left Mennonites uneasy about their relationship with the state.

For some, including Old Orders, the major concern has been the state’s coercive powers of assimilation. They not only resist patriotic display and military participation, but also (in most cases) public education and public health programs. For other Mennonites, the oversized role the USA plays in world affairs and its frequent military adventures abroad make them deeply uneasy and, for some, call forth regular public protest. Either way, the size of the Anabaptist community vis-√†-vis the nation has often resulted in a defensive or prophetic stance on public matters rather than, say, seeking to partner with government agencies to advance an Anabaptist vision of the world. 

2. Anabaptists in the USA live in the midst of material abundance. Regardless of how comfortable they feel wearing the label of U.S. citizens, many Mennonites and BIC are, generally speaking, well off financially. The abundance that characterizes most Mennonite lives expresses itself in positive ways through charitable giving to church and civic causes, Mennonite and otherwise. Indeed, studies of philanthropy tend to rank Mennonites as generous givers compared with many other U.S. Christians. In addition to giving to global causes, acculturated Mennonites and BIC are also spending more money on themselves, building or renovated church structures often at a cost of a million dollars or more for a single project.

3. Predictable legal and financial systems in the U.S. have allowed Anabaptists here to create a host of institutions, from mission agencies and retreat centers to investment funds and retirement homes. The work of these large, professionally-staffed institutions receives a good deal of coverage in the Mennonite press, but it should not obscure the many, many ministries that operate with volunteers and limited resources – and make a tremendous difference in the people they touch. For example, hundreds of Mennonite and BIC congregations host preschools and childcare centers, ministries run by women that benefit thousands of families each year but receive none of the attention that Mennonite colleges and universities do.

4. Anabaptists in the USA live in a pluralistic society that shapes their worship and witness. Many Anabaptist churches sing hymns and contemporary songs written by Protestant and Roman Catholic musicians. Meanwhile, the style and spirituality of the charismatic movement has flavored worship in sizable numbers of congregations. Other congregations have adopted the ecumenical Revised Common Lectionary and the calendar of the Church Year to order their life together. Some Mennonite and BIC peacemakers work with Catholics and evangelicals to end the death penalty or support unwed mothers. Still others have joined with interfaith groups to address environmental concerns.

5. Anabaptists in the USA are connected to the world in many ways. Some links are through business or the work of Mennonite Central Committee, Mennonite Economic Development Associates or Christian Aid Ministries. Other connections come through travel, adoption, marriage or hosting international students. Some congregations have formed sister-church relationships with Mennonite or BIC congregations in other parts of the world. U.S. Anabaptists have much to learn from the world family of faith. May the next Assembly, Pennsylvania 2015, allow even more connections to form and flourish!

Steven M. Nolt is professor of history at Goshen College (Goshen, Indiana, USA), and the co-author (with Canadian Royden Loewen) of Seeking Places of Peace—North America, the fifth and final entry in the Global Mennonite History series.

 

 

 

 

A “brush-arbor tabernacle” constructed for Brethren in Christ evangelistic meetings in Leedy, Oklahoma, in 1919. The BIC represent one U.S. Anabaptist community shaped by numerous spiritual renewal movements. Photo courtesy of the Brethren in Christ Historical Library and Archives

 

 

 

Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) service worker Michael Sharp visits with Elizabeth Namavu and her children as part of his work in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. Many Mennonites and BIC from the U.S. have developed global connections, sometimes through service with MCC. Photo by Jana Asenbrennerova

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

During World War I, many Mennonite and BIC men were imprisoned for refusing, because of their commitment to the gospel of peace, to enlist in the military. Here, several Mennonites sing hymns while in prison. Photo courtesy of Mennonite Church USA Archives

 

 

 

 

 

In the early 1950s, women from the First Mennonite Church in Bluffton, Ohio, USA, can meat for Mennonite Central Committee relief programs to distribute worldwide. Photo courtesy of Bluffton University Archives

 

 

 

Overflow, a worship band comprised of young adults from Latino/a Brethren in Christ congregations in and around Miami, Florida, perform at a 2014 church conference. One third of all BIC in the USA speak Spanish. Photo by Will Teodori/BIC U.S. Communications

 

 

I was 17 years old when an army captain asked me, “What would you do if our battalion was attacked tonight? What would you do if someone came and shot you?”

“I would pray,” I responded.

At that instant, I felt a sharp pain on my head. The captain had hit me with a lyre striker. A lyre is a musical instrument made of metal that produces sounds with a fiberglass striker. The pain was very intense.

The captain asked me again, “What will you do if someone attacks you?” I said, “I am not going to defend myself.”

He hit me again and asked, “Why do you want to be a Christian? Aren’t you going to defend your country?” My answer was: “I follow Christ because I have found life in Him.”

Why was I responding like that? I was just 17, and at that time, I was full of doubts. In fact, I was experiencing a spiritual crisis to the point of almost losing my faith. I had left my church, I did not have Anabaptist convictions. Military service was compulsory in Colombia, and my Christian convictions weren’t strong enough that I was willing to go to jail for them.

Walking a path of learning

I think the reason I had the courage to respond that way can be found in Luke 24, where a story is told of two disciples who are on the road to Emmaus after the death and resurrection of Christ. “Walking” in the Gospel of Luke has a very special meaning: it is about a way of life or conduct. In this Gospel, walking is related to discipleship.

In Luke, many lessons are learned while walking. Here, the two disciples are talking and they don’t agree. Jesus comes up in the middle of the discussion and asks them, “What are you discussing as you walk along?” In the original language, verse 15 conveys the idea that there was a strong difference of opinion between the two disciples.

Walking despite disagreement

Is walking together possible if we are in disagreement? Is it possible to live in a community as diverse as ours?

When we observe the map of the Mennonite World Conference, we immediately realize that the Anabaptist movement is scattered around the world. Is walking together possible within our global community when we have so many cultural, theological and ecclesiological differences?

In Luke, the two disciples that had left Jerusalem were in strong disagreement. They had likely reached the point of asking themselves whether it was worth continuing together. But that was not the way that Jesus wanted his disciples to leave Jerusalem.

Leaving Jerusalem, facing our mission and our call, cannot be carried out if we are divided. Jesus wanted his disciples to leave Jerusalem filled with the Spirit to give testimony. This is probably why the two disciples had to return to Jerusalem.

“If you want to get there quickly, walk alone; if you want to go far, walk with others,” states a well-known African saying. This is what the disciples discovered on their way to Emmaus. It is at the end of the journey in community, after walking together despite their differences, in the moment of celebrating communion that the disciples’ eyes were opened and their understanding of Christ was clarified (Luke 24:30–31). As a result, they returned to Jerusalem in unity.

Walking in different ways

The theme of our assembly, “Walking with God,” reflects various lessons we can learn from this passage. In each language, a different idea is expressed in reference to what it means to walk with God.

In English, walking refers to a constant action. It is a continuous, endless process, and thus calls for our whole life. When walking with God, we need to constantly ask ourselves, “What are we leaving behind? What do we need to take along on this journey?”

In Spanish, caminemos is an invitation. It is an invitation to abandon our fears, to open our hearts to become vulnerable. This journey requires patience: we need to wait for those who aren’t as fast and are tired. If we act with individualism and independence and consider that we don’t need any help, we will be strongly tempted to go separate ways. However, the invitation to walk together is still open.

In French, en marche, implies becoming completely involved in walking. There certainly will be tensions with other walkers that will cause many mixed feelings. But, if we walk totally committed to God and others, the tensions or problems that may arise will lead us to be transformed. If we don’t walk totally committed, those same tensions or problems will lead us to fragmentation.

The next part of the phrase, “with God/con Dios/avec Dieu,” refers to communion with God. It is impossible to walk together if we aren’t walking with God.

Those disciples on the road to Emmaus were walking together despite their differences because God was at the centre of their walk. They discovered that unity wasn’t something that was miraculously achieved in the end; it is something that is built along the way. This unity leads to a transformation that can only be found in community.

Every day during this Assembly, we will reflect on the various moments we experience as we walk with God.

As the disciples surely experienced on the road to Emmaus, there will be moments of doubt and moments when we are sure we are on the right track.

There will be moments of conflict and of reconciliation.

There will be moments when we want to walk alone in autonomy, but there will be times when we recognize our need to walk in community.

There will be moments when we need help and moments when we are ready to help.

This is the life of discipleship. We are in the midst of a process; we haven’t reached our goal yet, but are moving forward.

This passage helps me to understand why I responded to the captain the way I did. Beside me, there were four other soldiers who were also Christians. They weren’t Mennonites or Anabaptists. But when the captain asked them the same questions, they responded that they were just obeying Jesus and weren’t willing to kill to defend themselves.

Some of these friends were on the floor in pain because of the blows. Therefore, I was able to respond the way I did because I had found a new community there. Four friends with whom I was ready to walk amid suffering, violence and persecution. Four friends to whom I could say, “Let’s walk with God” despite our differences. And tonight I would like to say to you, “Let’s walk with God,” let’s walk during this week and during the years to come.

César García spoke on Tuesday evening, 21 July 2015, at Assembly 16. He is general secretary of Mennonite World Conference. He lives in Bogotá, Colombia. 

 

The Holy Spirit’s mercy irons us in our trials

“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ!” (1 Peter 1:3). Peter begins this letter with praise to God. This praising to God is a celebration of worship. This expression of blessing to God is found very often as doxologies, especially in psalms. So probably, the early churches in Asia Minor must have easily understood that Peter started this letter with worship.

But this sounds a little strange to me. Thinking of the background of this letter, the Christians of the churches in Asia Minor were in the midst of a risky situation. They had a severe possibility of losing their lives under their circumstance of worldwide persecution. Peter wrote this letter to Christians in such cruel situations. But simply, I have a question: how can we praise the Lord in a painful situation? How could Peter do that? How could the early church people understand this letter?

When circumstances threaten

It is sure that Peter wrote this letter to Christians. Peter definitely trusted these churches and greatly respected these church people. He must have known well about their deep predicament with tears and crying. Probably his letter must have reminded themselves as God’s chosen people “to be sprinkled with his blood” (1:2).

So Peter must have known that his readers knew the meaning of blood in the imminent reality, because there were so many people dying. And still, even now, we know so many people dying.

When we face an unchangeable reality and are defeated under the circumstance, we have a struggle. We hold our faith tightly, but still struggle. This struggle causes an uneasy feeling, anxiety or fear. We are depressed and our hearts shrivel. We shrink with fear.

This happen to all of us, especially when we spend unstable time in a severe circumstance. This time is very painful because the reality challenges us. Questions make us feel doubt and doubt makes us lose conviction. Then, we get depressed and self-pity covers us with a sense of wretchedness. We flinch and blanche with fear.

Ironing shrunken hearts

However, the Bible says “by his great mercy.” The Japanese Kanji character for mercy (originally from a pictograph of the Chinese character), shows that someone irons a shrunk heart with an antique style of the iron, not the modern electric iron we use now. Using the antique iron, someone irons our shrunk heart with a moderate temperature. It has neither a high temperature nor a low temperature, but exactly the right temperature.

This is the work of Holy Spirit. This Comforter irons our shrunk heart with exactly the right temperature again and again for our healing and for our regeneration.

God has done this to us and is doing this even now. And this God raised Jesus from the dead. 

There were so many people dying behind this passage in 1 Peter. And now, we still have so many people dying in this world. But this God raised Jesus from the dead in the midst of people’s dying. Jesus died like any other person but his dying has swallowed death in his victory (1 Corinthians 15:54–55).

This is the work of the God’s great power. And God works this power for all of us to shield our faith from the danger and restore our conviction in God’s great mercy. 

Sometimes, we say we have faith. But faith is not something we have had within us from the beginning, nor something born inside of ourselves. Rather, faith is something to bring into the midst of our lives from outside of ourselves.

God definitely makes us grasp the conviction that we all have been regenerated by believing that Christ Jesus was raised. In God’s ultimate power, we can stand up again in a living hope through the resurrection. And in this living hope, there is a life which gives a true life. 

The light of our living hope

Peter wants to tell people about this joy so they can be saved in the light of this living hope. He knows well how wretched he used to be. Through Christ’s blood, Peter found what he had never known before. Through the resurrection, Peter found himself regenerated in the light of the living hope. He found this; the only thing to do is to live in the light of this living hope. This is our Christian hope in the salvation to be revealed in the last time. 

So Peter could praise God. We seem to hear his strong, praising voice, singing with tears. Even if God challenges us, we praise God.

Of course, we may stumble over many trials and sometimes may fall. But our faith never disappears because of the God’s shield. Nothing can conquer God’s shield. Our God wipes away every tear from our eyes (Revelation 7:17).

Again, we seem to hear joyful voices from this letter. And now, we also lift our voices together. Praising and singing, we follow our Lord Jesus Christ.

Heavenly Father, O Lord,
Have mercy on this world,
With your steadfast love and your abundant mercy.
Restore to us the joy of your salvation and sustain in us a willing spirit.
Let us walk again in your living hope from here to follow as a disciple of Jesus our Lord.
Amen.

Yukari Kaga of Japan spoke on Wednesday evening, 22 July 2015, at Assembly 16. Yukari pastors several small Mennonite congregations in Hokkaido. She is chief director of the Peace Mission Center and serves at the Mennonite Education and Research Center in Japan. 

 

Light and hope for those in darkness

Today, world security is threatened by international, intertribal and even interreligious conflicts. Sometimes, security forces have conflicts with the very people they are supposed to protect. Terrorism has created a climate of insecurity on the international level. Countries are torn apart by wars. Political-religious movements such as Al-Qaeda, Islamic State and Boko Haram spill blood in the name of religion. Opinions and philosophies divide people and create divided households.

Conflict undermines the basic social units of a strong and balanced society. It can cause divorce. It sends children into the street. It creates enemies within families and dissolves businesses, sending staff into unemployment.

Since its very beginning, the church has not been spared conflict, internally or externally. At the external level, the church has been and continues to be the victim of persecution. Internally, the church has always had to confront controversies and hierarchical conflicts. For example, the Anabaptists left the Protestant reform movement in the 16th century due to a conflict.

Our world, no matter how peaceful it may seem, is dominated by conflicts. How can the church in general and Christians in particular walk toward reconciliation in this contentious world? Is it possible for us to promote reconciliation in a world where conflict is gaining ground?

Analysis of 1 Samuel 25:1–35

The story in 1 Samuel 25:1–35 provides a model for walking toward conflict and from conflict to reconciliation. In analyzing this text, we can draw out practical implications that help us to grasp God’s thoughts about conflict and reconciliation.

Walking toward conflict (v. 1–13)

In verses 2–13 of the account in 1 Samuel 25, we meet Nabal, Abigail, David and messengers. Their encounters lead to a moment of opposition which turns into a conflict.

Nabal is a very wealthy man who lacks spiritual values and strength of character (v. 2–3). Nabal’s hard-heartedness is accompanied by spitefulness.

When David learns that Nabal’s sheep are being shorn, he sends some of his servants to ask Nabal for help for his group who is in the wilderness.

In his message to Nabal, David shows kindness, gentleness and humility. Militarily, he is higher than Nabal, but he uses a peaceful voice, appealing to Nabal’s sense of gratitude at a time of joy and festivities. He reminds Nabal that David’s group protected Nabal’s sheep in the wilderness.

In spite of David’s effort to approach Nabal with an attitude to promote peace, Nabal responds to David’s kindness with harshness, to his courtesy with contempt, to his confidence with disdain and hatred (v. 10–11). Nabal’s malice in the face of David’s kindness leads to conflict (v. 13) because David becomes angry and returns Nabal’s violence with violence.

We learn from these first 13 verses what are the primary factors promoting conflict in this story:

• Nabal’s harshness and malice are in opposition to the good faith and culture of peace shown by David (v.6–8). They incite the two sides to walk into conflict.
• Nabal’s selfishness leads him not only to refuse to share what he has with those in need, but also to refuse to recognize and thank those who have helped to protect his property. This is what makes David so angry that he decides to teach this man a lesson with violence.
• The contact between David and Nabal is handled by messengers who also play an active role in this conflict. The way in which they give information also contributes to the explosion of conflict.

The factors promoting conflict in this passage are the same today. How can the church promote peace in such circumstances?

From conflict to reconciliation (v. 14–35)

The second section of our story begins another sequence of events. The principal actors are Nabal’s servant, Abigail and David.

Nabal’s reaction does not leave his team indifferent. Nabal’s servants disapprove of the way he acts and expect reprisals from David and his servants. A prudent man, who sees danger and hides (Proverbs 22:3; 27:12), one servant helps his mistress to understand the situation. He proposes a way to get around their master, whose character could not allow him to accept reconciliation that brings peace (v. 17).

Abigail listens well. Her approach to the situation demonstrates courage, tact and humility (v. 18–20). Her peaceful strategy is built around a team working for peace (v. 19). She faces up to conflict with a peaceful plan (v. 20), all the while managing obstacles to peace (v. 19). She asks for forgiveness without embarrassment, and offers to meet needs and calm spirits.

What lesson can we learn from the way in which this woman models conflict resolution, and from the process she uses to achieve reconciliation?

Reconciliation, the path to conflict resolution

God does not want his children to participate in conflicts, but wants them to work for peace (Ephesians 4:1–3) as Abigail does. She follows a path of reconciliation which gives up hostility and re-establishes civility and communion between formerly hostile parties.

Reconciliation is an urgent need in our world. We need to re-establish communion between God and humanity (Romans 5:8–11; 2 Corinthians 5:18–19; Colossians 1:19–22); between human beings (Ephesians 2:11–22) and to reestablish harmony in the entire creation (Romans 8:18-22).

Hope for our reconciliation is rooted in the work of Christ on the cross, which wiped out God’s anger and judgment of humanity. The cross of Christ provides for reconciliation. On the cross, Christ erased the act which condemned us and triumphed over the hostility and all the cultural barriers which separated us (Colossians 2:14–15).

The work of the cross gives us peace and justice – not just for the church, but for the entire world. We are called not only to believe in peace and justice, but to apply them to all without distinction or discrimination, and to promote them to the entire world through the proclamation of the good news of salvation.

Following the example of Christ, the church must work for love, peace and justice in spite of the price which must be paid (Isaiah 11:1–5; 61:1–3; Luke 4:13, 19). The church must demonstrate compassion by its ability to see and to hear the cry of the oppressed and to identify with just causes. It is only God who reconciles us with himself by sacrificing Jesus on the cross, the pivot point of reconciliation.

Reconciliation between humans is rooted in Christ who is the peace of the world (Ephesians 2:14–17) and the source of unity for all humanity (John 17:11, 22, 23).

Reconciliation passes through the resolution of conflicts, not only on the personal level, but also at the ethnic and tribal level, and at the level of the church. 

Conflict resolution at the personal level

The Word of God teaches us that the best way to resolve conflicts is on the personal level. This involves confession before God of all sins we are aware of (1 John 1:9–10; Psalm 139:23–24) and commitment to asking for forgiveness and deciding not to repeat the same fault (Ephesians 4:32; James 5:16).

The Gospels propose this process for us:

• Pray sincerely to God and ask for forgiveness;
• Speak alone with the other person;
• Speak with the other person in the presence of two or three people;
• Speak with the other person before the church (Matthew 18:15–17).

A desire to honour God and love for the other person are necessary for conflicts to be resolved (Psalm 34:15). We must always seek divine help and ask for wisdom, self-control and appropriate speech (Proverbs 16:32; James 1:5).

In addition, we must use the rules for good communication: listen to the other person, state the truth, speak in a fair way with love, express ideas clearly and speak with integrity for the glory of God and the well-being of the other person. The objectives for this good communication are to resolve the problems which led to the conflicts. End meeting times with prayer and with words of fraternity or kindness (James 3:13–18).

Conflict resolution at the ethnic, tribal and racial level

Ethnic, tribal and racial conflicts are often the shame of the church. Our silence seems to be a form of complicity to such an extent that today, wise thinkers accuse the church of creating or participating in this kind of conflict, such as the history and heritage of racism and the slave trade, the Holocaust, apartheid, ethnic cleansing, discrimination against native populations, interreligious/political/ethnic violence, the suffering of the Palestinians, caste oppression and tribal genocide.

In the face of this situation, I call on pastors, church leaders and all readers to teach the biblical truth about ethnic diversity, but also to acknowledge the concept of sin in these ethnic groups. In Christ, all our ethnic identities are subordinated to our identity as assets purchased at the cross. In practical terms, the church must:

• Prioritize healing and reconciliation: In case of aggression, self-defense is permitted, but not the use of violence. Following the example of Jesus, who did not use weapons when threatened, the church must walk in the steps of the master. The church must demonstrate the attitude of caring for its enemies as illustrated in the parable of the good Samaritan, and practice nonviolence as the door to reconciliation.
• Promoting justice is an important way to reduce ethnic and religious conflicts in the world. To do this, the church must become deeply involved in standing up to injustice, to ethnocentrism, to racism and to oppression. It must get involved in reconciliation and identify itself with the oppressed, working for justice for them.
• Develop an inclusive church: The church cannot be a site for ethnic divisions and racial discrimination; rather it must be a setting where all are invited and taken into fellowship. Leaders must not be selected on criteria that favour ethnicity or race over spirituality. The church must not have an ethnic agenda. It is an entity of ‚Äúunity in diversity‚Äù where all members are one in Christ as taught in Galatians 3:28. The church is a new ethnic group in which there is mutual protection and security for everyone.
• Guide our approach to politics and to management of public property with Christian principles: Political opinions must not be molded by ethnic, tribal or racial prejudices but by Christian principles. Christians who are politicians must deal correctly with everyone without prejudice based on political or religious ideology. Politicians must avoid ethnic favouritism and religious fanaticism, which often encourage hatred.
• Practice love and forgive enemies: Praying for enemies is one of the signs of obedience and submission to Jesus Christ. We must love other people because they are created in the image and likeness of God (Genesis 9:6; James 3:9). Forgiveness is often very difficult to give, especially when we are victims of injustice, hatred and oppression. But we must be willing to obey the Word of God.

Conflict resolution in the church

The walk toward reconciliation requires the church to obey scriptural principles and to defend them to the world through the way it lives. It must display transparence by relying on biblical teachings. The church must continue to count on God’s help so that it can resolve conflicts more effectively. It must avoid lack of respect for its own legal and juridical texts.

The church must avoid favouritism. In its prophetic role, it must be watchful and active to

• Always pull itself back to God’s will, commandments and precepts, and tell the world about those things.
• Discover the true nature of the problems in the church and in the world by deeply studying the causes, motives, sources and origins both near and far, in order to propose solutions without taking sides.
• Look for peaceful solutions and stand up to the sinful politics of exclusion and marginalization. The church must prioritize political systems which promote unity and reconciliation.

The reconciliation of people with creation

We must be people who take care of creation, because reconciliation also includes creation. Human life and creation are linked together because the earth takes care of us (Genesis 1:29–30); the earth suffers with us because of humanity’s sins which have caused heavy consequences (Hosea 4:1–3); God’s redemption includes creation (Psalm 96:10–13); everything was reconciled at the cross (Colossians 1:15–23); and the good news includes all of creation.

In light of this state of affairs, the church in general and Christians in particular must be on the frontlines of the efforts to protect creation. We must have a great desire to live on a green planet by avoiding the waste of energy, by reducing our use of carbons, by recycling our environment and by avoiding pollution.

In the same vein, we must support political and economic initiatives which protect the environment from all kinds of destruction. So we must support those among us who are called and sent by God with a special mission to protect the environment, and to do scientific research in the fields of ecology and nature conservation.

Conclusion

Violence has been used in many different ways to resolve the incessant conflicts throughout the world. But history proves that has not succeeded in bringing solutions to the problems of the world. The way of violence promises hatred, anger and vengeance instead of peaceful resolution for conflict.

Indeed, nonviolence is the ultimate solution to conflicts. Christ was nonviolent when confronted by conflicts. He outlines for us the model which we should use when resolving conflicts.

The nonviolent model for resolving conflicts, as we have discovered in the story about Abigail, is not synonymous with passively accepting injustice and aggression without protecting ourselves. It means we do not use force as a means of resolving conflicts.

The church must actively resist religious and ethnic conflicts. Only love for the enemy and the determination not to use force or violence can withstand conflicts and peacefully engage the enemy. This eliminates the structures of injustice and replaces them with good structures that have God at the centre.

Ethnic diversity is the gift and the plan of God in creation. It has been dirtied and deformed by human sin and pride which produce confusion, quarrels, violence and wars between nations.

However, this diversity will be preserved in the new creation when people from all nations, from all tribes, from all the people groups and all the languages will be reunited because they make up the people whom God has redeemed.

Because of the gospel, I ask the body of Christ collectively and individually to repent and to ask forgiveness in all places where they have participated in violence, injustice and ethnic oppression.

Today, the church must embrace the great power of reconciliation found in the gospel, and really learn about it, because Christ did not carry our sins on the cross only so that we would be reconciled with God, but also to destroy our animosities and so that we can be reconciled with each other.

Let us adopt a reconciliation style of life by forgiving those who persecute us and having the courage to expose the injustice they cause to others. Let us provide aid and offer hospitality to those on the other side of a conflict by taking the initiative to cross barriers to achieve reconciliation. Let us continue to witness about Christ in violent contexts, always ready to suffer or even die, rather than participate in acts of destruction or vengeance. Let us get involved in the long process of healing wounds, making the church a safe place of healing for all, including old enemies.

We must be a bright light and a source of hope. We must share this witness: “God in Christ, reconciling all people to himself.” The cross and the resurrection of Christ grant us the authority to confront the demonic powers of evil which exacerbate human conflicts.

Nzuzi Mukawa of the Democratic Republic of Congo spoke on Thursday evening, 23 July 2015 at Assembly 16. Nzuzi is the team leader for MB Mission in sub-Saharan Africa. He is both a professor of missions and an associate pastor of a Mennonite Brethren congregation in DR Congo.

 

Author advisory (below)

“Rock on”: Fulfilling the bidirectional royal law

We are a peace church because we are first and foremost a Jesus church and Jesus leads us in the way of peace. We care about justice because we care about Jesus and he cares about justice. We care about reconciliation and we care about the Word of God in print because we want to get to know the Word of God in person.

Jesus is at the centre of who we are. And as we continue to keep Jesus central and steward the clear and simple message of Jesus, we give that back to the rest of the body of Christ as a gift and make us all healthier.

Love is the fruit of the Spirit

I want to talk to you about love as reflected in the fruit of the Spirit and other passages of the New Testament. The Spirit’s work in us is the work of love. To the extent that we work against love, we are working against the work of the Spirit in us, and to the extent that we recognize and identify love, we are moving in partnership with the Holy Spirit.

Most scholars agree that when Galatians 5 lists the fruit of the Spirit, it doesn’t just start with love. Love is the fruit of the Spirit and what follows are eight descriptions of what love is like. Similar to 1 Corinthians 13, this is a representative list. The fruit of the Spirit is love, and you’ll begin to recognize it when you see joy, peace, patience, kindness and goodness, gentleness and self-control.

I have over the years become increasingly convinced of love’s centrality in our worship of God and how he calls us to worship him by loving others around us. It has become increasingly import to me to identify that and to call myself to that kind of love as a form of worship.

It seemed to me, growing up, that my priority was to get my relationship with God right. I would do that by spending increased time focusing on my vertical relationship. When I finally got that right, there would be overflow on the people around me. I would learn to love others well, but I needed to first come back and make sure I studied Scripture privately, prayed privately, meditated privately. It became my emphasis.

The second commandment

As we grow, we are encouraged to have those times of private spiritual expression, but Jesus was the first to begin to challenge me to go beyond this. It was the way he joined the two great commandments together into one when he was asked by a religious leader what is the greatest commandment. The greatest commandment – singular. Jesus said it’s to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength. I picture the religious leaders who asked the question saying, thank you very much, and going to leave. Then Jesus says, and the second is like it.

The second? What second commandment? He didn’t ask for the top two, he only asked for one. But Jesus wouldn’t just give him one and leave it alone. What’s the one great commandment? “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind…and the second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself’” (Matthew 22:37–39).

And then Jesus says, “On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets” (Matthew 22:40). He ties them together with a kind of bidirectional spirituality reaches up and reaches out. If we forget to reach out, we are not authentically reaching up.

As the apostle John writes, “Those who say, “I love God,” and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars” (1 John 4:20). John doesn’t say you’re unbalanced. He doesn’t say you need to grow in your love of your brother and not just love God. No, he says if you say, I love God, but you are not loving your brother or your sister, you are a liar. The two need to come together. Don’t say you love God and not love those around you who are reflecting God’s image, his likeness.

It is as though Jesus knew the religious impulse would be to so prioritize God that we could use religion as an excuse not to love others around us.

Jesus said to love the Lord your God with everything you’ve got. That’s your one mission on the planet. But without a bidirectional focus, we could use that love of God to excuse everything from blowing up ourselves and others, to torturing people, to burning heretics at the stake, to launching into wars not only against other religions but other tribes within our own religion.

There’s so much anti-Christ behaviour we can participate in in the name of the love of God if that’s all we focus on.

And not just violent behaviour. We could focus on God so much that we ignore those around us.

How could you argue with more time with God? More time in meditation, more time in prayer, more time in personal study; it just seems so holy. But Jesus says, I won’t let you get away with that. You’re going to love God and you’re going to love your neighbour as yourself and if you don’t do the one, you’re a liar about the other.

Beyond the ethic of a rock

My daughters attended a day camp that included children with mental disabilities. As I dropped off my girls in the morning and picked them up in the afternoon, I used this summer camp experience to reinforce what it means to love in the way Jesus says to love.

I told my daughters, “I want you to go there and initiative love. Love is not just not doing bad things, love takes the initiative to do good things to others.”

I tried to explain this to in a way they could understand it. They said, “Oh yeah, we’re polite.”

It’s more than being polite, I told them. It’s not just about being nice. Love goes beyond that.

They said, “Well, we won’t say anything bad.”

It’s not about not being bad, it’s about doing good. It’s about seeing the person sitting on the outside by themselves and initiating kindness to them. It’s agape, a Greek word meaning the choice to relate to someone as valuable.

I think that’s why kindness is in the fruit of the Spirit, not niceness. Niceness is not doing rude things, but kindness initiates.

I gave them an illustration. When we got out of the car, there was a big rock. “Is that rock loving anyone?” I asked them. “No, rocks don’t love,” they answered. “But is it doing anything wrong to anyone?” I persisted.

They got it. The rock isn’t being rude or unkind, it’s not hurting anyone’s feelings, it’s just sitting there. Rocks don’t do anything bad; they just don’t do anything good.

That summer we decided on our Cavey family motto: “Rock on.” Go beyond the ethic of a rock. This is the love we see in the fruit of the Spirit.

This is what Anabaptists has been teaching me in the last few years.

A new commandment

It’s not enough to just not be bad; to love is to prioritize the care of those around us. This becomes our worship to God so much so that in the New Testament, we find the apostles do a fascinating thing. Remember that bidirectional spirituality?

Just before Galatians 5 lists the fruit of the Spirit, the apostle Paul writes: “For the whole law is summed up in a single commandment” (5:14). A single commandment. And then he lists the second commandment: love your neighbour as yourself.

Didn’t Jesus say the law and the prophets hang on these two commands? Paul goes straight for the second. He does the same thing in Romans 13:8: “For the one who loves another has fulfilled the law.” Peter does the same it in 1 Peter 4:8: “Above all, maintain constant love for one another, for love covers a multitude of sins.” James, the brother of Jesus, calls it “the royal law” (James 2:8).  

We find no instance in the rest of the New Testament of the apostles quoting the bidirectional law. What makes them think they had the right to edit Jesus? When Jesus said these words, he was speaking to one who was not yet a disciple, someone who needed the challenge to come to God first.

But to his disciples, to those who have said, “I love God and I am willing to give up whatever it takes to follow him,” Jesus says, Now here’s how you will do that. Your life will be about loving others as you love yourself. For the rest of the New Testament, that becomes the command that fulfills the law for us.

That’s what Jesus says to his disciples in John 13. “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another.” Not new as in the first time I said it, but new as in the first time it stands alone. He says to his disciples, don’t work out your love for God as a separate thing. You will work out your love for God by obeying this new command: love one another. Jesus says the same thing in John 15:12: “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.”

The resurrected Jesus says to Peter, do you love me, Peter? Do you really? Well, if so, feed my sheep (John 21:17). This becomes the renewed emphasis of Christ.

Worship flows

The parable Jesus told of the sheep and the goats can be summarized by saying the way we love and worship and serve Jesus is by loving and serving those people around us in need. So, we do not parse out “this is worship and this is service,” “this is worship and this is evangelism.”

It’s all worship. We worship when we sing, we worship when we pray, we worship when we leave this place and this conference is long over.

The worship just continues and flows and flows and flows as we relate to others around us. Our religion is not a thing we contain within a holy place and a holy space with a holy priesthood. Our religion is relationship. It’s worked out in how we love those around us.

And so, my brothers and sisters, I would like to leave you with a final thought.

The church becomes a laboratory for us to experiment with what it means to love God by loving each other with likeminded people. Because when we leave the church and we try to love people outside the church, sometimes people understand and sometimes they won’t. Sometimes they receive it as a gift from God and sometimes they won’t. Sometimes they cheer for us and sometimes they mock. But the church can be a safe place where we can develop our skills at loving.

“Like good stewards of the manifold grace of God, serve one another with whatever gift each of you has received” (1 Peter 4 10).

We are stewarding God’s grace to one another. He trusts us with his grace apportioning it out to one another. What a privilege. What a responsibility.

As a Western evangelical, I knew of the priesthood of all believers. I interpreted it to mean as a priest, I don’t need anyone else, it’s just me and God. I could be the priest of my own relationship with God.

But I think, for a Hebrew, to talk about the priesthood of all believers would not be as individuals connected to God, but as priests to one another. We confess our sins one to another. We steward God grace to one another. God has given you someone else’s grace – and given them your grace. God wants to reveal truth to you and encourage you and nourish you with his grace. He could just do it individually but that would separate us.

Instead God gives it some else and says, now go find it. And he gives her grace to you and he says, come together. Be stewards of my grace to one another so that as we come together and learn to love and serve one another.

We’re experiencing more and more of the grace of God in our lives. What a privilege this is just to be the church.

So I encourage you to go get your grace. And go and give your grace. Through this giving and receiving of grace, we will develop our ability to love and to love well.

And so with these words, I close: rock on.

Bruxy Cavey of Canada spoke on Saturday evening, 25 July 2015 at Assembly 16. Bruxy is the teaching pastor of The Meeting House, one of Canada’s largest and most innovative churches. A member of the Brethren in Christ, Bruxy is an author and speaks extensively around the world.

Author advisory PA 2015 plenary speaker Bruxy Cavey resigned 3 March 2022 from The Meeting House, Oakville, Ontario, Canada, a member of Be In Christ Church of Canada, MWC member church. The congregation’s Board of Overseers requested his resignation after a third-party investigation determined he had a sexual relationship that “constituted an abuse of Bruxy’s power and authority.” Cavey’s ministerial credentials have been removed by the Be In Christ denomination.  Learn more: Pastor resigns, admits sexual misconduct | Anabaptist World

 

Read the full text of the evening sermons from PA 2015, by César García, Yukari Kaga, Nzuzi Mukwa, Wieteke van der Molen and Bruxy Cavey. These can also be a helpful resource as you prepare to celebrate World Fellowship Sunday with your congregation.

Evening Sermons from PA 2015

Walking with God (César García, Colombia)

They discovered that unity wasn’t something that was miraculously achieved in the end; it is something that is built along the way. This unity leads to a transformation that can only be found in community. 

Walking in Doubt and Conviction (Yukari Kaga, Japan)

This is the work of the God’s great power. And God works this power for all of us to shield our faith from the danger and restore our conviction in God’s great mercy.

Walking in Conflict and Reconciliation (Nzuzi Mukwa, DR.Congo)

 We must be a bright light and a source of hope. We must share this witness: “God in Christ, reconciling all people to himself.” The cross and the resurrection of Christ grant us the authority to confront the demonic powers of evil which exacerbate human conflicts.

Walking in Autonomy and Community (Wieteke van der Molen, The Netherlands)

Within a community, we cannot stand alone. The interest of the group will collide with that of the individual. And that will cause friction and pain and frustration. But we have no other way. To be human is to be part of a community. We cannot survive on our own. 

Walking in Receiving and Giving (Bruxy Cavey, Canada)

We are a peace church because we are first and foremost a Jesus church and Jesus leads us in the way of peace. We care about justice because we care about Jesus and he cares about justice.

Some of us remember that the term “Anabaptist” was first of all an insult. This word, literally meaning “rebaptizers,” belonged to the arsenal of other insults hurled at our ancestors. Not by pagans or Muslims, but by other Christians in Europe. They called us enthusiasts, heretics, seditionists and blasphemers. Our forebears were able to give as well as they got, at least with words. Anabaptist leader George Blaurock said at his trial: “The pope with his following is a thief and a murderer, Luther is a thief and a murderer with his following, and Zwingli [and his colleagues] are thieves and murderers of Christ.”

That kind of language wasn’t new to Christians in the sixteenth century. Violent language and attitudes also permeated the communities into which Jesus was born. In their War Scroll, the first-century Essenes who withdrew to the desert to form a pure community described their expectations of a great war where God would lead them against their enemies: “The first attack of the Sons of Light shall be undertaken against the forces of the Sons of Darkness.” This text has often been compared to 1 Thessalonians 5:5, where the Apostle Paul calls the Jesus people “children of light.” Now, 1 Thessalonians is not usually called upon as a source of teaching on conflict within the church. Usually, students of the Bible looking for help on this question turn to 1 Corinthians. That letter discusses a host of troubling issues: believers taking each other to court, some people arguing that marriage is bad, rich community members pigging out at the Lord’s Supper. And, at the center of their faith—whether the resurrection was a reality.

Or we turn to Philippians, where Paul offered Christ who became a slave, as our model. Paul then urged us to “have that same mind,” and later exhorted two women leaders in the congregation to “be of the same mind.” Or we turn to the great letter to the Romans, where Paul seeks to help Jewish and Gentile believers whom he hasn’t met to make space for one another despite their many differences.

But 1 Thessalonians? Certainly, this early letter wasn’t a response to conflict among Jesus believers. Indeed, the primary issue there seems to be that they were all so fervently expecting the Lord’s immediate return that matters of daily life seemed of little importance—that is, until some of the believers died. Yet even here, in the midst all this eschatological fervour, Paul has within his core convictions the importance of how believers live together day by day.

Some of Paul’s Thessalonian imagery would have been familiar to the desert-dwellers at Qumran. Just like them, he was using Old Testament writings to reflect on “the day of the Lord.” But Paul takes a different approach than the Qumran War Scroll. For the members of the Dead Sea Scrolls community, the corrupt leaders in Jerusalem and their brutal Roman masters physically represented the “children of darkness.” Paul does recognize the reality of the dark powers in society when he notes: “People who get drunk get drunk at night” (v.6). He does directly criticize the Roman troops who enforced “peace and security” (v.3). But for Paul, being “children of light” is a community label, in the midst of the forces of darkness—not people but powers. In that very setting, Jesus’ followers can watch for the Day of the Lord with confidence, not fear or violence.

Paul knows that Old Testament prophets describing the Day of the Lord frequently described God as a warrior. In Isaiah 59:17, God puts on “righteousness/justice as breastplate,” a “helmet of salvation,” “garments of vengeance,” and a “cloak of zeal.” According to Tom Yoder Neufeld, who spoke yesterday, God’s warlike garments demonstrate God’s response to injustice.

In that case, the “cloak of zeal” images the passion that we need to respond to places of deep human suffering. At the same time, Paul recognized that zeal, or passion, even in the quest of what is good, can be bad. Paul might have been thinking about the “zeal of Phinehas” who slaughtered an Israelite with his foreign wife (Numbers 25). Perhaps he was reflecting on Elijah’s slaughter of the prophets of Baal. (As Millard Lind of blessed memory reminded us, while God ordered Elijah to challenge the prophets of Baal, God did not command him to kill them.) Paul certainly includes his own past in this dark company, certainly recalling the murder of Stephen. “As to zeal, I persecuted the church” (Philippians 3:6).

Jesus people are like the authors of the War Scroll, in much of our analysis of the political, economic, cultural and religious settings in we live. We know that the times are dark. However we describe particular things happening in our communities and our world, most of us would agree that world and even church events do not seem to be following God’s plan. The Thessalonian believers likely experienced their world in a similar way. So it is very significant that in this letter, Paul describes God’s people rather than God’s own self putting on armour. We are now the passionate ones, the zealous ones, entering into the world where God has placed us. But Paul’s verbal picture of Christian armour surprises us, in relationship to his source in Isaiah 59. We are putting on this armour, but rather than “garments of vengeance” and a “cloak of zeal,” what Jesus’ followers wear sounds like the virtues underlined in 1 Corinthians 13: the “breastplate of faith and love, and for a helmet the hope of salvation.”

So how does Paul’s earliest letter to the Thessalonians offer us guidance to live as children of light, especially when we disagree? We do know what time it is. No matter what else we may include in our practices and beliefs, we know that it is time for followers of Jesus to be found in the places where the darkness threatens—whether among victims of racial, religious or sexual violence and among those trapped by the crushing weight of poverty or the demons of substance abuse. We even must be present with people sitting beside us in church who hunger for a deeper experience of God in the face of overwork, over-entertainment or overeating. Paul’s counsel sounds simple: “So continue encouraging each other and building each other up, just like you are doing already” (v.11).

One of the fundamental purposes of Mennonite World Conference has been for members of our Christian faith family to build each other up. But we all know that in many times and places we have not done this very well. The choice of location for the first MWC assembly in the global South raised big questions about the “political” appropriateness of place for an MWC meeting. In 1969, the MWC presidium, meeting in Kinshasa, DR Congo, confirmed plans to hold the 1972 assembly in Curitiba, Brazil. Motivated by a desire to hold the next gathering in the “Third World,” presidium members had taken note of the fact that meeting anywhere in South America, Africa, or Asia “meant that political and other conditions would be different from those which generally prevail in Europe or in North America.” They commented that such differences “were not considered insurmountable.” However, in late 1969, sixty European church leaders presented a dossier to Pope Paul criticizing Brazilian torture and repression of political dissenters. In response, Lutherans moved their 1970 world gathering from Brazil to France, and Mennonites in the Netherlands publicly raised the possibility that they might not send delegates to the assembly if it were held in Curitiba.

Throughout 1971 and up until the Curitiba assembly in July of 1972, debate about the appropriate action in the form of letters to the editor, news releases and official MWC statements raged through the pages of North American Mennonite periodicals. An international Mennonite group met in Curitiba in January 1971, and announced continuation of the plans to hold the assembly there. They announced that Brazilian authorities informed them of the regulation against political discussion during the assembly. The MWC executive secretary commented, in apparent agreement with this dictate: “To talk of politics would be (to most Mennonites around the world) a violation of the basic purposes of the Mennonite World Conference.” South American Mennonites agreed, labelling the reports of repression “propaganda and half-truths inspired by the communists.” In response to an official MWC report several months later, a Canadian Mennonite professor suggested satirically that no one should speak about “the lordship of Christ, for that has always been a clearly political category.” A writer in Ohio soon condemned that professor’s views as “extreme.”

Official MWC responses to the controversy made several efforts to defend the idea of a “non-political” gathering. However, over the course of the debate, the call to fellowship with sisters and brothers appeared a more persuasive argument in favour of meeting in Brazil. The president of the Conference of Mennonites in South America said those who wanted to withdraw from Curitiba did not show “a brotherly spirit,” while the MWC executive secretary noted that South American Mennonites “long for our fellowship and encouragement.” A writer reflecting ahead of time of the theme chosen for the assembly, “Jesus Christ Reconciles,” issued a call to Mennonites around the world to break down the barriers between them through practical expressions of relationship, an indirect call to attend the assembly.

Wounds from the conflict still smarted within the wording of materials developed for the 1972 assembly itself. Referring to Curitiba as the “smiling city,” the program booklet prepared by Brazilian Mennonites described the city’s tourist attractions, and briefly mentioned the coming of Mennonites to Brazil from Russia in 1929 and 1930. The program booklet further stated, “For the first time, Mennonites will be having their conference in a country belonging to the so-called ‚ÄòThird World.’” The booklet added: “We who live in Brazil are not conscious of a ‚Äòcorrupt,’ ‚Äòterroristic,’ or ‚Äòextortionate’ government.” Later, the official conference message indirectly acknowledged the questions that had been raised about meeting in Brazil: “As followers of Jesus Christ, we do raise a prophetic voice against all exercise of violent repression, persecution and unjust imprisonment, torture and death, particularly for political reasons…. As Mennonites who in their history have experienced what persecution represents, we feel that thankfulness for a quiet and undisturbed life cannot close our eyes to the many inequities that are inherent to the social and economic structures of today’s world.” 

While this tension among Mennonites was only partially resolved, elsewhere in our history, and in the history of Christian ancestors from other cultures, stories of building each other up are woven like tiny gold threads into the texture of institutional problems. These stories show us some pathways, not smooth or easy, but places to walk up steep and rocky ways in the middle of deep and unresolved conflicts.

One such model is Hilda of Whitby, a seventh-century English abbess. From the beginning Christians had differed sharply about when to celebrate the Lord’s resurrection. Some Christians honoured their origins in Judaism, while others resolutely refused to celebrate Easter on the same day as Passover. Many Celtic Christians, rooted in their own ancestral calendar, set the date of Easter according to those ancient customs. But they came under pressure from leaders in Rome, who continued to insist that Easter could never happen at Passover.

A decision-making synod met at Hilda’s monastery in 664. Although Hilda favoured the Celtic calendar, the Roman perspective was dominant. Hilda’s leadership was as an important reason why the Celtic Christians accepted the Roman decision even though it countered their beliefs and culture. Amazingly, after the meeting, Hilda continued to be remembered as a leader respected and consulted by all, even those who disagreed with her. Hilda was motivated by the command to “build each other up” even as she made place for views different from her own.

More than 1,000 years later, some Christians in the United States were developing a conscience about their complicity in the Atlantic slave trade. Quakers shared with early Anabaptists the protest against state coercion and use of violence. But Quakers also had among their members those who owned, bought and sold slaves. Quaker merchant John Woolman, wrote in his 1750s diary about a lengthy and painful debate in his faith community over this question. 

According to Woolman, “the case of slave-keeping lay heavy upon me,” knowing as he did that some fellow Quakers did own slaves. So, Woolman went first to the Quarterly meeting of Philadelphia Friends and then to the Yearly meeting. Although Woolman’s language sounds heavy and flowery, hearing his words directly also helps us to understand the weight of this process: “In this Yearly Meeting several weighty matters were considered, and toward the last that in relation to dealing with persons who purchase slaves. During the several sittings of the said meeting, my mind was frequently covered with inward prayer, and I could say with David, ‚Äòthat tears were my meat day and night.’ The case of slave-keeping lay heavy upon me, nor did I find any engagement to speak directly to any other matter before the meeting.”

Finally, however, Woolman spoke up: “In the difficulties attending us in this life nothing is more precious than the mind of truth inwardly manifested; and it is my earnest desire that in this weighty matter we may be so truly humbled as to be favoured with a clear understanding of the mind of truth, and follow it; this would be of more advantage to the Society than any medium not in the clearness of divine wisdom. The case is difficult to some who have slaves, but if such set aside all self-interest, and come to be weaned from the desire of getting estates, or even from holding them together, when truth requires the contrary, I believe way will so open that they will know how to steer through those difficulties.”

Despite his challenge to the economic interests of Quaker slaveholders, the meeting could not resolve the disagreement. But they did agree to put together a group of Friends who would visit and counsel with their slave-holding brothers and sisters. In 1758, Pennsylvania Quakers “made it an act of misconduct to engage in slave trading.” And although they continued to argue the question within their meetings for decades, Quakers played a larger and larger role in the abolitionist movement.

From our past, a major disagreement that led to the Anabaptist separation from the state-sponsored churches of Europe still troubles our relationships with other Christians. But now, we are talking with former Christian enemies about matters which often violently separated us 500 years ago. MWC theologians, together with both Lutheran and Roman Catholic theologians, are holding conversations about the meaning of baptism today. To be Anabaptist still means, for most of us, to be baptized when we are old enough to understand the commitment we are making. So one Mennonite dialogue participant recently noted: “We are all trying to rethink the issues in terms of the 21st century, not only the 16th century…. [We all] are aware that only through the work of the Holy Spirit will this dialogue lead us closer to the mind of Christ.”

When we look at the past, or at churches far away from us, we may think their conflict issues are foolish. Does the date of Easter really matter? Does pouring or immersing in baptism really matter? When we get to questions like who can be ordained as a pastor, or whether members can serve in military forces, or how speaking in tongues shapes our worship, or who is in charge of the income from our church properties, or what language the leaders should speak, it is more complicated.

Today, some Mennonite leaders in the Congo are teaching sisters and brothers to ground their work in peace with God. They call for two disciplines in their work: “the discipline of discernment,” and a “radical Christocentric life. “Some leaders in the United States are calling to move forward as “a unified yet diverse community,” “unified because of the centrality of the person of Jesus Christ,” and refusing allow our disagreements “the power to cause division among us.” 

The Apostle Paul tells us that we know what time it is—it is a time for God’s people in Christ Jesus to be children of light in our world. His end-time words are not to call forth fear, violence or division. And they’re not meant to pull us out of living like Christ in the everyday. He wants all his churches to do what he is doing: build each other up. He insists even more strongly on this approach in the section that follows our passage: “Live in peace with each other‚Ķ. warn those who are disorderly. Comfort the discouraged. Help the weak. Be patient with everyone. Make sure no one repays a wrong with a wrong, but always pursue the good for each other and everyone else. Rejoice always. Pray continually” (1 Thessalonians 5:13‚Äì17, CEB). In many settings in the Mennonite world, we are tempted instead to keep doing what we have been doing: fighting, splitting and using harsh and violent language about each other. It is time to take to heart Paul’s counsel and the unusual Christian stories we’ve just heard. They remind us that we can “build each other up,” even in the midst of life-wrenching differences.

May we reach into the pastoral, Christ-centred heart of Paul and those who heard his call so that our light as children of Light will make that difference, today, this year, and as long as God calls us to God’s mission on this earth.

—Nancy R. Heisey teaches biblical studies and church history at Eastern Mennonite University. She served as president of MWC from 2003‚Äì2009.

 

Tom: We walk with God in both doubt and conviction. Both are part of our walk of faith. After all, as Hebrews 11:1 reminds us, “faith is the reality of things hoped for, the proof of things not seen.” As Paul says in 1 Corinthians 13:12, if we see at all, it is “through a mirror into a puzzle.” That is what faith is like: doubt and conviction—both.

Rebecca and I will address this topic out of very different contexts, Rebecca from Kenya and I from Canada. We are learning that this is the best way to deepen our convictions, listening to God’s word with different ears and from different life settings.

Rebecca: In my language, the word for doubt is kiawa. Among the Luo of Kenya kiawa is used in a situation where the process or end result is not certain. In the absence of direct, clear translation, kiawa simply means ‘may be.’ It is not necessarily negative or positive.

Doubt is shaped by context. The phrase, jakol kudho (the thorn remover), has been coined alongside kiawa to affirm the positive as well as iron out the negative aspects of doubt in one’s journey. The term jakol kudho (the thorn remover) literally applies to someone who will remove the thorn that has pierced the traveler’s foot. As a concept the term applies to an aide, enabler or companion.

In my country, walking through forests and thickets is something we still do, particularly in rural settings. This is not a short, simple, luxurious walk but a journey full of uncertainties and dangers. One cannot escape attacks from social misfits and criminals, unfriendly clan/tribesmen, venomous reptiles, wild animals or thorny shrubs. Under such circumstances it would be understood if one would doubt safe arrival at one’s destination.

In this setting, even the less dangerous pricks require some assistance as the thorns usually pierce deep into the traveller’s flesh. The thorn remover walks along and intervenes in the face of danger. He or she is useful in comfortable as well as dangerous circumstances: giving assurance, appreciation and offering direction to the traveller as the situation calls for.

The either/or of kiawa (doubt) is equally depicted in the Luo Bible translation. In Matthew 14:31 for example, Jesus asked Peter why he doubted. Doubt there is not a complement. The literal translation in Luo is “Why did you add doubt to it?” It is a reprimand.

On the other hand, in translating doubt in Acts 12:11 in the story of Peter’s imprisonment, Luo is affirmative: “Now I know that it is true!” instead of “Now I know without a doubt!” The translations in Matthew and Acts correlate with the Luo’s cultural usage of doubt that can be a reprimand or complementary.

Peter was deep asleep though he awaited execution the next day in a heavily guarded prison (Acts 12:6). This is paradoxical. Could it have been an act of faith that Peter calmly awaited to be with Christ, as Paul writes in Philippians 1:21: “For to me to live is Christ, to die is gain”? Peter’s journey of faith on earth was just about to conclude in a horrific way, yet he slept deeply! The depth with which he slept was not reminiscent of someone who doubted his destiny.

Among my tribe (Luo), Peter’s seeming comfort amidst awaiting disaster could be better captured by a phrase, wuoth gi jakok kudho meaning walk or walking with the thorn remover. Peter must have been walking with jakol kudho, his companion and enabler throughout! The thorn remover was by Peter’s side in the person of the servant girl Rhoda (v.13), in the prayer group (v.5 & 12), and in the angel of God (v.7). Various dimensions of jakol kudho are with us today ready to attend to our needs if only we give a hearing ear.

An African writer, Kwame Wiredu correctly notes that African philosophy (thought) is transmitted orally through proverbs and folklore. Likewise in the Gospels we find the idiomatic use of ear and hearing: “he who has ears… hear…”! In Acts 12:7 & 8, jakol kudho appeared to Peter—struck and spoke to him. Peter’s role was to give a hearing ear and obey: “Get up…. Put on your clothes and sandals…” Peter then followed jakol kudho (the angel) toward freedom away from the prison.

Jakol kudho, (the thorn remover) becomes the proverbial phrase through which the either/or in kiawa (doubt) is harmonized. The possibility of doubt in one’s wuoth (walk or journey) is replaced with conviction full of hope.

With jakol kudho, kiawa is used in a sense that connotes strong conviction. Jakol kudho intervenes in difficult situations to allow the sojourner time to articulate issues and respond accordingly, similar to the delay in execution of Peter that gave brethren time to offer passionate prayer. As Peter’s total obedience in every instruction given by the angel (v.7–10) was geared towards his freedom, so is a sojourner indebted to jakol kudho for positive results to be realized. It takes fervent prayer or fellowship of a faith community and obedience of the faithful that reaches out for God’s intervention.

As the sojourner and jakol kudho embark on their journey, the invocation of the supernatural powers by his or her kin takes place. They never cease to chant words for safe return after which a communal thanksgiving ceremony is conducted. In Acts 12, the fellowship of believers was still writhing from the loss of James; thus they offered continuous and fervent prayer (with compassion) for Peter. Communal or corporate prayer is of paramount importance in our journey of faith.

The church today finds herself between forces that threaten the very existence for which numerical and spiritual growths stem. She is strongly guarded behind economic and sociopolitical systems that perpetuate cultural hegemony at the expense of harmony and tranquility in the global society. We need continuous and intense invocation of Christ Jesus that he may enable and free us through the Holy Spirit.

Jesus, the greatest jakol kudho will always intervene, for he is interceding for us before the Father (Hebrews 7:25).

Let us spend the week here in prayer—of thanksgiving and supplications. God, through MWC, has provided a forum for us to fellowship. It is not a time for us to be critical of or distance ourselves from one another.

Paul cautioned in 1 Corinthians 11:18 against divisions in the church especially those geared toward who (which faction or worship pattern) has God’s approval (v. 18). It is a moment for intercessory prayers for fellow Christians who are suffering because of their faith, such as the conscientious objectors; those languishing in prisons of poverty; those threatened by heavy presence of secularism and religious radicalism, etc. It is time our theology should help in shaping the global economy and social well being in our endeavour to establish a global church of “just peace”!

Christ, the greatest jakol kudho is with us even when there seems to be no way. We should not forget that it is darkest just before dawn! With jakol kudho, doubts are but necessary windows of conviction. It is healthy to doubt, but not when it causes divisions among us rather than bring us together to further exploration, reexamination and analysis—in a fellowship mood. Doubt is an element of faith, for by doubting we come to the question, and by seeking, we arrive upon the truth. Jakol kudho will lead us into safety from the guarded prisons (Acts 12:6) to a guided walk (v.11, 12 and 17)!

Tom: Rebecca, my thoughts echo yours. For us in the Global North, doubt is unavoidable, and often a necessary and good thing, as you say. Doubt as alertness to danger, even suspicion of false certainties, is a good thing. When we yearn for simple answers such “good doubt” can keep our faith from becoming “blind” and our convictions from becoming hard and brittle, unable to respond to the complex questions of faith and discipleship. Such doubt is essential to convictions that grow out of faith and not fear.

But there is also doubt that has left a trail of devastation in the churches of the Global North. Let me name a just few of the thorns on our path:

While we suffer much poverty and racism in the Global North, wealth and privilege are among the most dangerous thorns. If poverty and oppression are the prison of many in the Global South, as Rebecca says, too many of us are imprisoned within the fortress of our own wealth, privilege and power. We often think of them as “blessings,” and then, like Israel, make God into a golden calf of prosperity, greed and violence. We should—no, we must—doubt such a god! Is it any wonder that many today turn away in disgust, wanting nothing to do with such a faith.

Knowledge, science, technology—also the so-called “blessings” of our culture—can and do lead us to the illusion that we are the masters of our own fate. Not surprisingly, an unnecessary God makes little sense, leading many to abandon faith entirely.

That is our world. What about the church, what about our faith? There are many more thorns there. For example, we confess the Bible to be the Word of God. But that conviction can be shaken by thinking we have to be experts to make sense of it, or by how difficult it is to agree on what it says, or we’re scandalized by how we see others use it. Just think of our present struggles in the Global North over sexuality. Many of us have stopped reading the Bible altogether. Doubt then easily gives way to indifference, even disdain. So doubt leads to neglect, and neglect to nothing less than corporate loss of memory.

For some, the most damaging source of doubt is, ironically, the church itself. Our long complicity in slavery, colonialism and the genocidal treatment of indigenous peoples haunts us to this day. In the past century alone, millions of Christians have killed millions of Christians. We callously destroy God’s creation along with everyone else. Can this possibly be the body of the Christ whom a loving God sent not to condemn the world but to save it?

Our own congregations can shake our convictions, either because they are too closed and fearful or too open and reckless. Even closer, you may have been terribly harmed by someone in the church you have looked up to as role model and teacher. Injury and betrayal have too often led to conviction-shattering, faith-destroying doubt.

It is tempting at such times to point the finger at others. But if I am honest, I myself find it so hard to believe, to love, to forgive, to share the gospel, to share my possessions, to empathize with those who suffer, to make peace, to work for justice. Where is the transforming power of the Spirit in my life? Is my own faith an illusion? I myself become the source of my doubt.

Dangers such as these make our walk of faith as much a struggle for survival as any thorn or wild animal.

How then do we walk with not only doubt, but also with strong and firm conviction?

The words we read at the beginning from Hebrews 11 are realistic about faith: faith is the assurance of things we cannot see (v.1). “We walk by faith, not by sight,” Paul reminds us in 2 Corinthians 5:7.

But Hebrews also insists that there is someone with us on the walk of faith—Jesus. “We do see Jesus!” (Hebrews 2:9), the “pioneer of our faith,” as Hebrews 12 puts it (v. 2)—our jakol kudho, in Rebecca’s words, tested in every way as we are (Hebrews 2:14–18).

Yes, some days we all head in the same direction, singing the same songs, as here at this assembly. God be praised! At other times, we stumble about, hanging on to each other for support or just as likely arguing about which way to go. With Thomas, that famous doubter, we ask: “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” (John 14:5). Do you remember how Jesus answers? “I am the way, and the truth, and the life” (v.6). He is our pioneer. He is God walking with us in doubt and conviction. That is surely the most fundamental conviction we need: not walking with God so much as God walking with us!

God also walks with us in the very same Bible that often gives us trouble. That is where our hopes and convictions are anchored. It is in the long story the Bible tells of Israel and of the early followers of Jesus that we learn of a God who walks with us, of God’s son who teaches us how to walk, about a Spirit who enlivens and empowers us, of convictions about our identity, our calling, our mission. We dare not neglect so great a gift.

But the Bible is God walking with us in another way too. With often brutal honesty, it gives voice to our own struggle with doubt. The story of Job has given comfort to countless persons struggling with faith in the face of incomprehensible suffering. Israel’s hymnbook of psalms contains cries of rage, resentment, lament, and bewilderment. “My God, why have you abandoned me!”—words from Psalm 22 Jesus himself uttered on the cross. How often have I made my own desperate prayer the response of the father who pleads for Jesus to heal his son. When Jesus asks him, “Do you believe?” he answers “Yes, Lord, I believe; help my unbelief!” (Mark 9:24).

Sometimes our faith is little more than doubt expressed honestly to God. But faith it is—faith as rock-bottom trust uttered in the darkest of nights!

The Bible may not always be a clear map or brilliant light, but it is always a truthful witness to a God who walks in solidarity with us even when we see nothing, reminding us that we are not the first for whom faith is a struggle.

And the church? Of course the church will test our faith. After all, you and I are in it! But as much as the church often puts our faith to the test, it is God’s creation—God’s work of art in the making, a people learning to walk together. We share convictions, and we share doubt. When Paul tells the Galatians that they are to carry each other’s burdens, that surely includes carrying each other’s fragile faith. We mourn with each other when doubts overwhelm and faith grows dim. We rejoice when faith grows strong. We thank God for those with strong faith and conviction. We need them on the path of faith.

Just think of the sisters and brothers long passed and those with you on the walk. Many are here, beside you, from all parts of the globe! They are models of courageous and joyful witness, patient love, breathtaking forgiveness, passion for justice and peace. They carry you when you are weak; they take your hand when you can’t see the way. They are the body of the thorn remover. No, you are the body of Christ, you, we all together are God walking alongside us in faith, doubt, and conviction. Thanks be to God!

Rebecca: So we close as we began, with words from Hebrews, this time from chapter 12:

“Lift your drooping hands and strengthen your weak knees, and make straight paths for your feet, so that what is lame may not be put out of joint, but rather be healed.

Pursue peace with everyone, and the holiness without which no one will see the Lord.

See to it that no one fails to obtain the grace of God.” (Hebrews 12:12–15)

Amen.

—Rebecca Osiro is a pastor in the Kenya Mennonite Church, EFC Congregation, Nairobi, Kenya. She was elected vice president of MWC at the 2015 General Council meetings. Tom Yoder Neufeld is a retired Mennonite Bible professor from Waterloo, Ontario, Canada.