Scripture-focused Worship: Nehemiah 8:1-12; Luke 24:13-35

*This is the second in a series of sermons on Common Worship: Themes for Zion's Worship Life preached at Zion Mennonite Church, Hubbard, Oregon on Sunday, August 26, 2012.

Have you ever cried when scripture was read? I have….and on more than one occasion. I remember as a pastor going through some deep struggles with family and congregation. The strain was taking its toll on my spirit.  A friend had come to my congregation to preach. Revelation 21 was read. The text spoke of a coming day when every tear would be dried. That caused my eyes to flow! I was deeply moved by the promise of Scripture.

When Ezra read the words from the law, the people wept. But, then again, they also wept when they saw the foundation of the second temple laid. Maybe they were just a bunch of crybabies! No. They were deeply moved by these events. Anyway, this is how the story goes. After Judah had returned home from exile in Babylon following a decree from Persian Emperor Cyrus, they set out to rebuild the temple and to restore the community around the Law of Moses.  Ezra brought back from Babylon a copy of the Torah or Law of Moses. As a priest and scribe of the Law Ezra was intent on forming the identity of God’s people around the Torah.

It was the month of the autumn festival, known as the Feast of Tabernacles or Booths, also known as Sukkot. Its origin was as an agricultural festival. During Sukkot the people would live in booths made of palm branches to remember their temporary dwelling places after their liberation from Egypt. The people gathered at the Water Gate of Jerusalem to listen to Ezra’s reading from the Torah. Now, when we read scripture it usually takes a minute or two at most. Ezra came to a specially constructed wooden pulpit and read from the Torah from early morning to midday. Even for such a long period, the people remained attentive.  And the people wept at the reading. Not because Ezra read scripture and interpreted it for around 5-6 hours!  They didn’t weep because they had to stand the whole time. The people of Judah wept because they understood the Law and realized they had neglected it. They encountered God in the reading of the holy Word.

Scripture is a primary medium through which we encounter God.  Scripture plays many roles in the life of a congregation; as sacred writings which shape the identity of the believing community, as the church’s common language, as an ethical guidebook, as a history of our spiritual ancestors, and as a standard for our beliefs. But, one of its central roles in the church’s worship life is as a channel through which we meet God.

Last Sunday we emphasized in God-centered worship that encountering God is of primary importance. In this same vein, one of the principal roles of scripture in the church’s worship life is as a medium through which we encounter God.  Encountering God through scripture is reflected in the description of the Bible as “the Word of God.” The Bible becomes a vehicle through which we listen for and hear the voice of God.

At the same time, to conflate or equate “the Bible” with “the Word of God” is a bit misleading.  “The Word of God” is far more than the written text of the Bible. Some early Anabaptists made a clear and important distinction between the Inner Word and the Outer Word, that is, between the Word of God in scripture and the Word of God within the human heart.  This distinction is expressed by Anabaptist Hans Denck when he said, “I value the Holy Scripture above all human treasures, but not as high as the Word of God.”  More broadly speaking, the “Word of God” is God’s self-communication in whatever form that may come.  That occurs through the channels of the incarnate Word, Jesus Christ, the written Word, the Bible, the proclaimed Word in preaching, the witness of the Word in human testimony, the inner Word of the heart and spirit, and creation’s Word, God’s voice in nature. God’s voice speaks in many and diverse ways, says the author of Hebrews, but in these last days has spoken through a Son, Jesus Christ. Jesus is God’s primary Word to the world.  In worship Scripture witnesses to Jesus Christ, God among us, and is primarily a means through which we encounter God. And if we take the view of some early Anabaptists seriously, we will seek to encounter the Word of God not simply as words read from a page, but as God’s Word encountered within our hearts and spirits. The Bible is not to be an object of worship, but a channel through which we encounter God, who alone is worthy of our worship.

Bread and Bible are two primary places where the church encounters God in worship.  The story of the two disciples who encounter Jesus while walking on the Emmaus road is a story reflecting Bread and Bible, Communion and Scripture in worship. New Testament scholars have noted how Luke’s story of the Emmaus Road is more than a simple historical account of two disciples’ post-resurrection encounter with the risen Jesus. The story is shaped by Luke to reflect two arenas in the early church’s worship life where they encountered the risen Christ: in Bread and Bible or Communion and Scripture .  

Two disciples, one identified as Cleopas, met Jesus in cognito on the road to Emmaus. Their eyes were kept from recognizing him.  When are our eyes kept from recognizing the risen Christ in our midst when we go about our life journeys or worship together? They talked with the stranger about what happened to Jesus, how he was a prophet, was condemned to be crucified, was expected to be the one to redeem Israel. A group of women went to his tomb, saw the body was missing, and had a vision of angels.  And besides….. (a dramatic pause should be inserted here)….besides, it is now the third day since these things took place! The third day, the day of resurrection, Sunday, the Lord’s Day, the day when the church gathers for worship. Basically, the two disciples are the church retelling the Jesus story.  Isn’t this a significant part of what the church does at worship….retell the story of Jesus?  And notice Jesus response….how foolish not to see all of this within the Hebrew Scriptures. And beginning with Moses and the prophets, Jesus interpreted how he is related to the Torah and the Prophets. Isn’t this the church at worship proclaiming and interpreting the Scriptures? And didn’t the two disciples say later, when their eyes were opened to the presence of Christ, “Were not our hearts burning within us…while he was opening the scriptures to us?” Here is the church encountering the living Christ in the reading and proclamation of the Word. The scriptures were not dead history or dry recitation to the early church, but rather a living testimony to the risen Christ that burned in their hearts.

For Mennonites and Protestants in general the Word plays a central role in worship. Catholics and the Reformed Tradition also include Sacrament, Eucharist, Communion, or the Lord’s Table as an equally important element of worship. The centrality of Communion and Scripture is reflected in the Emmaus story.  The sun began to set behind the purple hills. The two disciples invite Jesus to their home, the place where the early church would meet for worship. Together they sat at table. Is this a common meal? Who is the host of their table? You would think it was Cleopas or his friend. No. Jesus is the host at this table, as he is at the church’s communion table. Note Luke’s wording of Jesus actions at the table meal. It sounds like a liturgical script. He took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. Isn’t this the same wording used of Jesus’ Last Supper and in Paul’s description of the early church’s communion (1 Corinthians 11)? And when the bread was broken and shared….their eyes were opened and they recognized him? Isn’t this a description of the early church’s recognition of Jesus’ presence at Communion? Bread and Bible, Communion and Scripture, the primary places the church encounters the living Christ in worship.

Scripture-shaped worship can enhance the potential for encountering God and Christ in worship.  Since scripture is a medium for encountering God, shaping our liturgy around the scripture is essential for worship.  Let’s survey some ways in which we shape our worship through Scripture.

·        The Christian year and the Lectionary cycle. I grew up in a church tradition that did not celebrate the entire Christian year or utilize a lectionary of scripture readings in its worship planning. We celebrated Easter and Christmas, as did the society around us, and the preacher chose his own favorite texts throughout the year.

Over my years as a pastor I have come to truly appreciate the Christian Year that begins with Advent and culminates with the season after Pentecost and the Reign of Christ Sunday. It serves not only as an alternative to the secular calendar, but is a profound practice for shaping the worship life of a congregation.  The Christian Year sets our lives within liturgical time, the seasons of the life of Christ.

I didn’t notice how much the Christian Year had shaped my life until I was no longer in a pastorate.  Working for our denomination for 7 years I travelled a lot and missed out on participating in the liturgical cycle of the Christian Year.  There were times when I would come upon Easter and feel unprepared or Pentecost would come and go and I had done nothing to celebrate it. And I felt a bit disoriented, out of time, off beat, missing an important rhythm of my life. The Christian Year can shape our lives around scripture.

The Christian Year fits into the wider framework of a three year liturgical cycle of scripture readings, known as the lectionary.  Years A, B, and C include readings from the four gospels, the Old Testament, the Psalms, and the Epistles.  By following the three year cycle and reading each of the assigned scripture texts a congregation will have heard a good portion of the Bible.  The lectionary has its limitations though. The combination of texts on any given Sunday is supposed to fit a common theme, but often the choices are arbitrary and the texts don’t fit together. The Old Testament is not appreciated for its own light, but serves primarily as illumination of the New Testament. Much of the OT is ignored and good portions of the NT left out.  But, abandoning the lectionary and relying on the preacher’s arbitrary choice of favorite texts is far less helpful. The lectionary is a significant liturgical tool for shaping the church’s worship life around scripture.

·        The Liturgy. Scripture can become used in the diverse elements of worship; prayer, praise, preaching, and blessing. Appropriate biblical texts can be used to call the people to worship, introduce the offering, or as a benediction.  The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face shine upon you. The various elements of the Sunday order of worship itself can be shaped by scriptural language. As we share these first fruits of our offerings, Lord, we seek to be cheerful givers. Prayers can reflect biblical language or allude to specific scriptures. 

In a post-Christendom culture that is becoming more and more biblically illiterate, the need to share in the stories, language, and images of the Bible becomes even greater. An important part of being a Christian is to know and understand the language of our Christian faith, which is drawn from the Bible. The world around us speaks a different language. We spend most of our time bombarded in the magazines, on TV, on the internet by the world’s language of success, power, happiness, self-help, individual rights, cyberspace, networking, and bootstrap philosophy. If the church doesn’t practice speaking its own language, it can lose or fail to understand its rhetoric of creation, redemption, sin, salvation, forgiveness, reconciliation, faith, the body of Christ, and judgment. The church needs to immerse itself in its own language not only to understand its own faith, but to understand the world around it.

Various religious and ethnic groups have their own “holy language.” For Muslims it’s Arabic, the true language of the Koran. For Catholics it used to be Latin as heard in the mass.  At one time German Mennonites feared that losing their language was tantamount to losing their faith, which was not the case. But, there is a real sense in which if the church loses its language to some degree it loses its faith. I say this knowing that we can to some extent translate Christian language into the language of the world and knowing that translation of biblical and Christian language is an important task of the church, particularly in mission and evangelism. But, as anyone who speaks another language than English knows, many words lose a great deal of their meaning in the translation. The liturgy of worship is one place where we can hear, learn, speak, and practice our own language; the language of the church shaped by scripture.

·        Scripture reading.  It made me sigh when I recently read this statement: More time is spent in most congregational worship services making announcements than in reading scripture. What does that say about the role of scripture in worship? I’m afraid that within the Free Church or non-liturgical traditions scripture reading has not played a significant role in the church’s worship life. In the congregation I grew up in, I don’t remember scripture ever being read aloud in the service. Oh, there were references and allusions to scripture throughout the service and occasionally read during the sermon, but the public reading of scripture on its own was not a part of our worship practices. Was public reading of scripture part of traditional Mennonite worship service?

Scripture reading is a most important liturgical practice. The early church did not have printed Bibles or personal scrolls to read in private. Christianity emerged in an oral culture. Sacred stories, texts and traditions were passed down orally. Most Christians were illiterate. What we have as books and epistles of the Bible were read aloud in the house churches by the few literate members. Reading sacred texts in worship gatherings was a most significant practice in forming the church’s identity within the world.

We have come to approach the public reading of scripture with the casualness of a stroll through the park on a sunny day. Some approach the public reading of scripture like they were reading a newspaper ad…written in Chinese! On occasion, I have heard scripture texts read in Sunday worship that made tears well up in my eyes….not like the reading I mentioned when Revelation 21 was read, but from a fumbled, weak voiced, apologetic, unpracticed, nonchalance in the reading the church’s sacred texts! The public reading of scripture is a sacred task to be soaked in prayer and practice. Remember, this is a major channel through which the church encounters God.

·        Proclamation of the Word. Preaching is an essential practice of the church’s worship life, particularly among Protestants and Mennonites. If I had time, I would love to have a conversation with you about why I am convinced that since preaching is a ministry of the church and not just the pastor, preaching needs to become more of a communal and conversational practice, a subject about which I wrote my doctoral dissertation.  

Preaching occupies a central place in our worship services. There are different and legitimate approaches to preaching; topical, pastoral, doctrinal, ethical, and biblical. I want to focus on biblical preaching, since it clearly reflects one of the different roles of Scripture in worship.

Biblical preaching takes the ancient Word and makes it the Modern Word. It translates then to now with a focus upon applying God’s Word to our own context today.  After Ezra read for 5 or 6 hours from the Torah, there was interpretation. They explained the meaning of the words that were read from the Torah “so that the people understood the reading.” Preaching is an act of interpretation, so that we can understand the meaning of our sacred texts.  When the people of Judah heard the words and their interpretation, “all the people wept.” There was an inner experience, a touching of the heart, and encounter with God through the written Word.  Preaching strives to become that kind of channel through which the people hear the voice of God speaking to them, they encounter the Spirit of the risen Christ, and their hearts are touched.

Shaping our worship through scripture is not an end in itself. We don’t do it simply so we   can say “we are a people of the Bible.” Rather, we shape worship by scripture because scripture is a primary means of God’s self-revelation to us.  When Ezra read the Torah and the people wept, they were encountering God. When the two disciples on the road to Emmaus had the Scriptures opened to them and they broke bread together, they encountered the risen Christ. We seek to shape our worship through Scripture because it is a most significant means for encountering God.

And all the people answered, “Amen, Amen.”

God-Centered Worship: Psalm 95:1-7; John 4:21-24

*This sermon is the first in a series entitled "Common Worship: Themes for Zion's Worship Life" and was preached at Zion Mennonite Church, Hubbard, Oregon on Sunday, August 19,2012.

 

Worship is God-centered. Of course it is! Duhhh! What else would it be? Well, it could be about the people who come to worship, socializing, following the order of worship in the bulletin, a particular style of music, finishing on time, meeting human needs, evangelism, keeping a liturgical tradition, or any number of things besides God.

 

I remember a very formal, high church worship service I once attended at the Washington Cathedral as a delegate for Mennonite Church USA. The high arched ceiling, sculptures of the apostles, elaborate clerical garb, colorful drapes, and stained glass windows were visually overwhelming for this low-church Mennonite. Every tiny detail of the liturgy was carefully scripted and led by professional clergy. It all fit into an ancient pattern including processional, waving of an incense contraption, antiphonal responses to the reading of Holy Scripture, recitation of the Apostle’s creed, and recessional; just to name of few of the worship elements. Was this worship? It was for many people gathered that evening. But, for me, I was so caught up in the externals of worship that encountering God in that space was far from my mind. I was more concerned about what was happening next in the bulletin! It was probably my own subjective experience that kept me from focusing on God, which was not the intent of the worship service itself. Nevertheless, worship had become about something other than God.  

Worship is all about God. “Let us sing to the Lord!” says the psalmist.  Psalm 95 is a hymn of praise that was used in Israel’s worship life. The word worship is an Old English word worthscipe meaning to create worthiness or worth-ship. Of course, we don’t create God’s worthiness, but we do create liturgy, which literally means “people’s work,” as a means of ascribing worth to God.

Worship is about attributing worthiness to God, pure and simple. The psalmist describes God as worthy of our praise in titles like Lord, rock of our salvation, great, King, above all gods, Creator and Sustainer of the mountains, of earth’s depths, the sea and dry land, and humanity.  In response we offer worship through singing, making a joyful noise, coming into God’s presence, and kneeling before God. These are means to an end. Each of these forms is secondary to worship itself, which is ascribing “worthiness” to God. The psalmist makes clear what worship is all about. When we gather for worship it is not about style or harmony or perfectly crafted liturgies or performing for an audience. Worship is about attributing worth and praise to the Lord.

The psalmist invites us to sing praise to the Lord! Singing is about praising God. It is not about vocal skill or technical performance or musical preferences. For us Mennonites, we translate “sing” as four part harmony. As a newer Mennonite of 25 years, I can appreciate four part harmony. It is a beautiful sound.  When I first heard the old hymn 606 after a conference in Kansas, I was amazed by this classical sounding music sung in parts and that a congregation could immediately turn into a choir without rehearsal! I can appreciate the beauty of harmony in acapella singing.

But, the psalmist doesn’t appear to be too concerned with the aesthetics of sound in worship when he goes on to say, “Make a joyful noise to the Lord.” The Hebrew word can be translated as “a joyful shout, cry, blast, or battle yell.” Yaaahoo! Praise God! Not much harmony in a shout of praise! And yet, it is a means of praising God.

I take seriously the implications of making a joyful noise as praise to God. Though some of us here at Zion may not agree, drumming is means of praising God. Last Sunday I was praising God! Someone might say, “Drums are not for praising God. They’re just a bunch of noise.” Admittedly, there is more noise than harmony in drumming. But, the psalmist says, “make a joyful noise to the Lord.” Noise can be a form of praise to God, a method of worship. I even call my drumming program for churches, “A Joyful Noise.” My point is, the psalmist says that even noise, a loud shout of joy, like Hallelujah!, is a way of worshipping God.  Worshiping God can be done with melody and harmony, but also rhythm and noise, if it is done in praise to God. The means of worship is secondary to the subject of worship; God.

First, God-centered worship means that worship is focused upon our encounter with God. More than getting to sing our favorite hymns, more than seeing old friends, more than fulfilling a Christian duty, more than promoting church events, worship is first and foremost about experiencing God. That may graciously happen through the channel of liturgy, hymns, proclaimed word, broken bread, and blessing. But, those outward, human words and events are the means to an end and not the end in and of themselves. Preaching professor Thomas Long reminds us: People are not hungry for more worship services, for more hymns, sermons, and anthems. They are hungry for experiences of God, which can come through worship; in the primal sense, this hunger is what beckons people to worship.

Granted, we cannot control or arrange people’s encounter with God, even with the most beautiful singing and powerful proclamation. The pastor, worship leaders, and song leaders at Zion will only encounter futility if we think we can plan for ultimate Mystery to erupt within our order of service. And yet, we do seek to evoke the Spirit and to enhance the possibility of our encounter with God through the liturgy.

Second, God-centered worship means that God is the subject of our worship. Our liturgy, our singing, our proclamation, our elements of worship should have God at the center. If God is the subject of our worship, then we may need to re-evaluate some elements of our order of worship. For some time I have wondered about the intrusion that announcements seem to make within a worship service, even when they are framed as opportunities of service to God. In other congregational settings I have advocated for announcements to be placed before or after the worship service itself. Announcements are mostly about reminders of events and the housekeeping chores of the church and less directed toward worship of God. In God-centered worship every element of worship is directed toward God in some form or fashion.

Questions we might ask of our own worship life: Do we direct most of the elements of our worship service toward the worshippers or the one we worship? Are our offerings more for church maintenance than in praise and thanks to God?  Is our focus in singing upon the notes, the melody, the harmony, or God to whom we sing? Does the sermon point us to the preacher or to God? In God-centered worship the elements of the liturgy point us to God.

Third, God-centered worship means there must be preparation and engagement in worship. By focusing upon the magnificence of the Washington Cathedral, the elaborate liturgy, and my place in the processional and recessional, I directed my spirit away from God, the true subject of worship.  It’s so easy to enter the worship service with our minds focused on talking to friends, thinking about what I have to do after the service, will I miss my seat at the restaurant if the service runs late, concerned about what the young people are wearing to church, or any number of things besides preparing my spirit to be open to an encounter with God through the word, song, visuals, or prayer.

Do we pray before we come to worship? God, speak to me through this worship service today? Do we reflect on the proclaimed word? God, how can I apply your word to my life?  Do we sing our hymns to God or to ourselves? God, I sing praise to you! Do we join our hearts together in the corporate prayers? God, I too pray for those who are grieving. Worship can easily slip into an unconscious routine in which our hearts, minds, and spirits are disengaged and we go through the motions of the order of worship like putting parts together on an assembly line or washing the laundry.  Didn’t we do the same thing last week? Sing, pray, hear a children’s story, listen to a sermon, receive a blessing? Been there done that. We can walk through worship like a sleepwalker moving through the house at night.

Worship is more than sitting through a weekly routine of repeated elements we have done for years. If it is primarily about encountering God, then we must prepare ourselves for worship and be open to engaging ourselves in the worship experience with an openness and attentiveness to meeting God.

Not only is worship about God, it is about how we worship God. We see this in Jesus’ encounter with the Samaritan woman at the well. She tried to sidetrack him from discussing the moral issue of having numerous husbands and living with one without being married. She switched the subject to worship. “So, you’re having this relationship problem, eh?” “Uh…. uh, what are your views on contemporary praise songs.” She noticed that Jesus is a prophet. I guess she figured this out because he asked her an uncomfortable question. Prophets have a habit of doing that.  

Samaritans claimed their worship was the true religion of the ancient Israelites. They had some different means for worshipping God from the Jews. Their sacred text was their own version of the Pentateuch, the Five Books of Moses, with a significantly different version of the 10 Commandments. They rejected the post-Torah books of the Bible and the Talmud or rabbinical writings. Mt. Gerazim, not Jerusalem, was for them the true place of worship.

The Samaritan woman wanted to debate worship with Jesus, “Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem.” And debates over worship have continued to this day.

The Samaritan woman was focusing upon the differences in the location of their worship places; Mt. Gerizim vs. Mt. Moriah. The Samaritan woman’s attempt to put worship spaces is conflict serves as a fitting symbol for our contemporary “worship wars,” or should I say “worship skirmishes,” with our focus turning toward our differences in preferred outward forms of worship.

You say worship should be in Jerusalem, but we say it is in Mt. Gerizim. You say worship should be in a sacred cathedral, but I say it should be in a plain old meetinghouse? You say worship should be traditional, but I think it should be contemporary? You say worship should be with organs and pianos, but I say it should be with guitars and drums?  You say worship should follow old worship traditions, but I say it should be creative and experimental? You say worship should be formal and serious, but I say it should be informal and joyful.  And so the debate about worship that the Samaritan woman wanted to start with Jesus has been passed down through the ages. So, today we have what we unfortunately refer to as “worship wars.”

We will discuss “worship wars” more when we come to my sermon on blended worship. But, let me just say that “worship wars” usually occur when take our focus off God as the subject of worship, get caught up in the different, outward forms of worship, and insist that our preferred style dominate.

Jesus’ responds to the Samaritan woman’s attempt to sidetrack him with a worship debate. He appears to start off his response by reinforcing the differences in worship among the Samaritans and the Jews. Jesus said, “You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews.” His comments don’t seem like the best way to talk about someone else’s religion! Whatever you make of Jesus’ response, he seems to suggest that worship has a concreteness, a historical, cultural, and traditional situatedness about it one does not easily transcend. Jesus ties worship to a particular chosen people, the Jews. He doesn’t seem to be able to transcend the “Jewishness” of worship in his response to the Samaritan woman, Jesus Christ, why can’t you think more ecumenically, more interfaith, more universal! Jesus, you’re just too…too… Jewish!

There are some things we can’t transcend in our religious lives. Religion is always situated within some particular history, culture, and tradition. That’s why I get frustrated with Mennonites who, when I emphasize the importance of our Anabaptist tradition, I often hear something like, “Why emphasize being Anabaptists? We should just be Christians!” My response? Please, show me this generic or universal Christian that you want us rather to be. There is no such creature.

My hunch is that most often what the person who says these kinds of things means by “Christian” is “Evangelical Christian.” I don’t imagine that their idea of a generic or universal “Christian” means Russian Orthodox, Pentecostal snakehandlers, or Weaverland Amish! Every Christian is formed by a particular history, tradition, culture, forms and practices.  There is no such thing as a generic Christian, any more than Jesus was some amorphous New Age, universalist, transcendental, Spirit-person. The early church rejected this kind of Gnostic, unearthly, spiritualized Jesus. Jesus was an orthodox, and sometime unorthodox, Jew whose understanding of religion and worship was tied particularly to the Jewish tradition and its practices. Only with this in mind can we understand his very Jewish response to the Samaritan woman about true religion and worship.

Jesus pointed the Samaritan woman to a coming time, which had already arrived, when the location or outward forms of worship would no longer be important. Where you worship must be transcended by higher principles or realities, whether worship is done on Mt.Gerazim, at the temple in Jerusalem, in a local synagogue, in a cathedral, or in the woods. There are some things that must be considered secondary to true worship. Place, forms, and style are among those things, particularly if we understand that God is the subject of our worship.  

Jesus envisioned a coming form of worship that would focus upon God as Spirit and with true worship being in spirit and truth. To speak of God as Spirit is to recognize that God is other than human. God transcends all material existence. God transcends even our images of God, like Father, Lord, King. As Spirit God is not tied to a particular worship place, national or ethnic identity. God is not bound by my worship style or preferences. God’s Spirit is not hindered by sour notes, fumbled liturgy, or typos in the bulletin. God is not locked up in some sacred building. There is no particular land where alone God treads the earth. There is no “one nation under God,” but a Spirit that permeates all of reality.

If we end up worshipping our own musical preferences, our own historical worship tradition, a god of our national identity, a god of my racial or ethnic group, or a god of my denomination, then we have not worshipped God in Spirit and in Truth.  Spirit and truth are interconnected. They point us back to Jesus’ reference to the living water, the Spirit within. To worship God in spirit does not mean to worship God internally as opposed to worshipping God with external forms. It means that it is the indwelling Spirit, the well of water that is within us, that connects us to the Spirit of God in worship.  To worship in truth is to worship in the Spirit of Jesus, who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life.

To strive toward God-centered worship at Zion will not just be a matter of the Worship Commission diligently planning meaningful worship services, worship leaders conducting services with skill, or song leaders choosing appropriate hymns. God-centered worship requires a community of worship open to the Spirit, engaged in the liturgy with hearts open to encountering God, ears open to hearing the voice of God amid human words, and voices ready to give praise to God, who alone is worthy of our worship.  

A day is coming when

            We will worship God

                        as universal Spirit

            Worship will not be bound by

                        national identity

                                    race or ethnicity

                                                physical or mental ability  

                                                            gender or sexual orientation                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

A day is coming when     

            We will worship God

                        In spirit and truth

            Worship will not be limited

                        to sacred buildings and holy places

                                    to formal or informal liturgical traditions

            We will worship God

                        with our hearts open

                        with minds focused

                        with our spirits engaged 

            We will worship God

                        in the Spirit

                                    not simply internally without external forms

not off in the woods as an isolated individual

but through the indwelling Spirit

within the transnational, multicultural

gathered community of believers

and in the Spirit of Christ

                        who is the Truth

A day is coming when

we will worship God

            in spirit and truth

Christian life is formed by being a new people in Christ:1 Peter 2:4-10

 

*This sermon was preached at Zion Mennonite Church on Sunday, July 22, 2012. It was the last in a series on Anabaptist Core Convictions.



We opened this series of sermons on Anabaptist Core Convictions with a biblical text that described Jesus as the foundation of a building. We conclude with a biblical text that describes him as the cornerstone of a building. 1 Corinthians speaks of Jesus as the foundation. The church is built upon that one foundation. 1 Peter speaks of Jesus as the “cornerstone” of a building. The cornerstone is the foundation stone of a building.  It determines the position of the entire structure. The church is composed of living stones built into a spiritual house, a temple, with Jesus being the cornerstone.  In each of these images Jesus is central to the church. And the church is central to the Christian life.

In the letter of 1 Peter this church, this community of Christ, is described as a distinct people, a holy community, a political body, set apart from the surrounding world; a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, aliens, and exiles. The early church saw itself as a peculiar people within the Roman Empire.  This image and reality all changed after Emperor Constantine proclaimed a wedding of the church and state by making Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire. The church moved from being a distinct, persecuted minority at the margins of society, to being the majority of citizens of an empire and located at the center of society.

The 16^th century Anabaptists sought to restore the New Testament model of the church.  The Anabaptist concept of a believers’ church, rooted in Jesus Christ and separate from the state, ran counter to the Christendom model of the church represented by emperor Constantine.   

Today, the Western church in Europe and North America are becoming more secular, post-Christendom societies.  The church has lost its privileged place in our culture. It is moving further to the margins of the social order and becoming an “alien institution” to society. In this post-Christendom context, the New Testament and Anabaptist models of church may be the most hopeful for the church’s survival within a post-Christendom empire.

Understanding the nature of the church is crucial for understanding Anabaptism. The following characteristics reflect an Anabaptist ecclesiology or understanding of the church.

The church is a body of believers called out from and sent into the world. Let’s analyze each of the phrases in this statement. First, the church is a body of believers. It is grounded in the voluntary confession of Jesus Christ as Savior and following him as Lord symbolized in baptism. Roman Emperor Constantine, during the 4^th century, represented a major shift in the nature of the church from a voluntary association of believers in Jesus Christ to a church formed by state compulsion, the baptism of infants without personal choice or ability to confess and follow Christ, and the union of the church and state. This Christendom model gave a privileged place for the church in society. Within Christendom a person was a Christian by virtue of their citizenship; a citizenship that called upon everyone to support the aims, interests, and military defense of the state.

The Anabaptists rejected this Constantinian view of the church.  The church was not understood as a building, a parish or regional location, a social club, an association of ethnically similar or politically likeminded people, or synonymous with the state or society. The Anabaptist view of the church went radically counter to the view of the dominant culture. Adult believers’ baptism, a voluntary choice based upon personally and consciously following in the way of Christ, was a subversive political act, in that it not only shook the foundation of the church, but tore apart the fabric of the church and state union. Their view of the church was radical in its day. From an Anabaptist perspective, the church was a distinct body of baptized believers who followed Jesus Christ in life. 

Second, the church is ecclesia from the Greek word kaleo meaning “called out.”  It originally referred to a civic assembly gathered together from the community for political purposes. The church are those who have been called out of world to be a distinct people, a chosen race, a holy nation, God’s own people, aliens and exiles, as Peter describes the early church. This description points to the gathering together of a unique people, separate and distinct from the state, society, and world. Thus, the church is a political body, not in the sense of participating in “partisan politics” like being Democrat and Republican or because it is involved in state political issues. But rather, the church is a political body because it is called out from the world as citizens of heaven, assembled as a distinct body, governed by God’s kingdom under the Lordship of Jesus Christ.

   
Third, the church is apostolic from the Greek word apostelo meaning “sent forth.” The church is not simply a body of believers that isolate themselves from the world.  The church is engaged in Missio Dei, the mission of God in the world. Jesus said, “As the Father has sent me, even so I send you.” The church is apostolic, not in the sense that we can trace our leadership back to the apostles, but because the church, like the apostles, is “sent.” To simply come together for worship or teaching is not being the church. To truly be the church we should understand ourselves to be as much a “sent church” as we are a “gathered church.” 

Christians are formed by the church and its practices. As a gathered body of baptized believers, the church is where we are formed by communal spiritual practices. This is interconnected to what we talked about concerning discipleship or following Christ. Discipleship is not simply an individual private affair that I do on my own, but requires engagement in the corporate practices of the church. Rodney Clapp, an Episcopalian Anabaptist, states it clearly: there is no genuine Christian formation and life apart from the body of Christ. Church practices shape and form our identity as a distinct, peculiar people.

Baptism is a church practice that marks us as a distinct people. It is not simply, as some have put it, an “outward sign of an inward grace,” making baptism into a ritual that primarily marks a private, inner experience. For Anabaptists, baptism was a watery sign of faith in Jesus Christ, a commitment to follow him in life, and incorporation into the church. It was a radically, politically subversive act altering how one understood the church and society and was therefore a dangerous, seditious act worthy of death.

Baptism marks the church as different from the world. Baptism initiates incorporation into the Body of Christ, a community of resident aliens.  Baptism as incorporation into the church is a common belief which is held by most Christians, but which Anabaptists understood as being embodied in a local congregation of mutual accountability, a community distinct from the world. Miraslov Volf, an influential theologian at Yale University, sounds very much like an Anabaptist when he connects baptism and the church’s collective difference or distance from the world when he says,

No one can baptize himself or herself; everyone must be baptized into a given Christian community. Baptism is an incorporation into the Body of Christ, a doorway into a Christian community. Baptism will not do the distancing for you, but it will tell you that genuine Christian distance has ecclesial shape. It is lived in a community that lives as “aliens” in a larger social environment.

Our baptism marks the beginning of the journey of following Jesus, our identity as a people, and where our primary allegiance lies.  It marks us as a distinct people in the world.

Communion is a church practice that forms and identifies us into a peculiar people. Who else in this world would gather together and share bits of bread that would barely feed a squirrel and a tiny sip of grape juice to remember someone’s shed blood and call it a meal? A peculiar meal, indeed. Communion, Eucharist, or the Lord’s Supper is a ritual meal that not only reminds us of Jesus death on the cross, but is a practice that forms us and identifies us as a distinct people. 

The Eucharist, as a symbol of sacrifice, forms us into a new people ready to be broken and poured out for others. Communion, as an open table, shapes us into a new people who are one in Christ, undivided by gender, race, ethnicity, economic class, or nationality. The Lord’s Supper, as a ritual of remembrance of Jesus death and the table of forgiveness, molds us into a people who take upon themselves the nonviolent way of the cross, forgiving our enemies.

If we had time we could explore worship, preaching, Bible reading, hospitality, prayer, singing, social witness, and peacemaking as practices of the church that form us corporately as a peculiar people. Let me simply say that the practices of the church play a significant role in shaping our identity as a people making the church essential to a distinctive Christian life.

The church is an alternative society, a new people in Christ. This distinctive relates to the church being “called out” from the world. For the church to be the church it must be dissimilar from the surrounding world, otherwise it is simply another version of the world. Jesus said that we are to be in the world but not of the world. Separate but engaged. This is not a tension that is easily maintained. If the church emphasizes separation or nonconformity, it can become disengaged from the world, the characterization we give of the Amish. If the church emphasizes being part of the world it can become so assimilated as to be indistinct from the world, which is the face of cultural or nominal Christianity. 

If the church is to be the church it must be countercultural, at least in certain ways and forms.  Many ethnic Mennonites have overreacted to this Anabaptist emphasis upon nonconformity and separation from the world.  I believe that is one reason so much of contemporary ethnic Mennonite culture reflects a significant assimilation into the American way of Life. We don’t like being different. We want to be like everyone else. So, in their overreaction to negative experiences of nonconformity and separation from the world ethnic Mennonites have thrown them away as Anabaptist practices.

Some members of Zion have grown up under the yoke of nonconformity expressed as forced rules and a rigid adherence to dress and cultural habits practiced with an air of superiority, all done in proper Mennonite humility, of course! I have noticed at Zion how this overreaction to early experiences of enforced distinctiveness has resulted in some hesitancy and even resistance to being more definitive and directive in leadership and clearer in direction for the congregation.

From the perspective of an outside observer, I think being more definitive and directive for some at Zion feels a bit like those old rigid rules. It smacks of exclusiveness or “my way is the only way,” even when that’s not what it is all about. I think a lack of clarity that exists around significant issues in the life of Zion may come from a hesitancy to be definitive because it smacks of exclusion and being authoritarian. We don’t want to exclude some by being too definitive. If we become more directive, it feels like “I am in and you are out” or “I am right and you are wrong.”

As someone who was not raised in this religious cultural environment, but in a Fundamentalist tradition with many similarities and differences, I need to simply say to some of you at Zion, “Get over it!” “Move on!” Let go of your fears of the four d’s: distinctiveness, directiveness, definitiveness, and decisiveness! Am I sounding too directive? Maybe a bit too decisive? This overreaction to early negative church experiences about how distinctiveness was rigidly practiced will be a roadblock to bringing greater clarity and definition about who we are as a people and a hindrance to more directive leadership, notice I didn’t say “authoritarian,” but “directive leadership.” 

The solution to rigid rules about nonconformity and separation is not to “throw the baby out with the bath water,” that is, to simply reject nonconformity and separation from the world by totally assimilating ourselves into the wider culture, or by being wishy-washy about our peculiar identity within the world, or by resisting clarity. We can translate the principles of nonconformity and separation, so that we become a holy nation, a peculiar people, and thrive as exiles and resident aliens in our own land and social context.  If the church is to be the church and not the world, it will need to learn how to translate Anabaptist principles of nonconformity and separation in our consumerist, Capitalist, materialistic individualistic world in ways that assist us in following Christ in our day and time.

The church participates in the divine mission (Missio Dei) Anabaptism was a missionary movement. They were one of the few Christian movements that believed that being a missionary was not as a special vocation for the gifted and trained or the commission of a mission agency, but was the practice of every Christian. They applied Christ’s Great Commission to every believer to go into all the world and make disciples of all nations, baptizing and teaching them to follow Christ’s commands. Baptism was their ordination to evangelism, mission, and ministry.

As I said earlier, not only is the church “gathered,” but it is also “sent.” And God is the primary sending agent, not some church agency or the church itself. We are not released from engagement with God’s mission because we lack training, agency sponsorship, or because we are not on the evangelism, outreach, or service committees of our local congregation. As followers of Christ and members of the church through our baptism, we have been ordained by God as ministers and missionaries in the world!

The church is not only separate from the world, but sent into the world. To be a missional church, to be an Anabaptist church, is to be as much sent as it is gathered. Does each one of us here at Zion have that understanding and sense of being “sent” by God? Or are we only part of what we are and should be as Christ’s church; an assembly of believers who gather for worship? Jesus was speaking to you and me, followers of his way, when he said, “As the Father has sent me, even so I send you.” What does that mean for us as individuals and as the church in our relationship to our families, our communities, our nation, and our world?

One thing mission means is that we are sent to “call out” people from the world into the realm of God’s kingdom. And evangelism means more than proclaiming a message of personal salvation. It is a call to join in the new humanity, the people of God, a holy nation, the church. The church is essential to the divine mission.

Jesus is the center of our faith. The essence of the Christian life is discipleship. The Christian life is formed by being a new people in Christ. This interconnected web of Anabaptist Core Convictions can powerfully shape our identity as a distinctive people and a particular congregation. In a secular, post-Christendom world, the Anabaptist model offers a time-tested vision for radically and faithfully following in the way of Jesus, for living on the margins of society, where the church is headed in our culture, and for being a distinctive, practice-oriented church amid nominal Christianity. There are people who are hungry for churches that are shaped by these convictions. I believe that when we know these convictions, affirm them, celebrate them, and share them, we will have a better grasp upon who we are as a people and what is our particular mission in the world.

The Essence of the Christian Life is Discipleship: Luke 9:23-25

*This sermon was preached at Zion Mennonite, Hubbard, OR. It is the second in a series "Anabaptist Core Convictions."

No one can truly know Christ unless they follow him in life---Hans Denck

Anabaptists of the sixteenth century, and most of those who yet share their rich and “radical” Christian tradition, were “theologians of praxis rather than reflection.”---Barry Callen, Radical Christianity

Mennonite church historian Harold Bender made one of the most significant modern contributions to defining Anabaptism with his presidential address to the American Society of Church History in 1942.  His classic statement on Anabaptism became known as the Anabaptist Vision. Although it would later be questioned as being too idealistic and for leaving out Anabaptists that diverged from his viewpoint , Bender’s Anabaptist Vision has provided a compelling synthesis of essential elements of Anabaptism.

Bender considered the first of his three concepts as the key element to the Anabaptist Vision.  His key element was discipleship, "a concept which meant the transformation of the entire way of life of the individual believer and of society so that it should be fashioned after the teachings and example of Christ..." According to Bender discipleship, or following in the way of Jesus, was understood to be central to living the Christian life.

Discipleship is all about following in the way of Jesus. Jesus came to people fishing on the shore, collecting taxes, eating dinner, walking along the roadside, worshipping in the synagogue and called them to follow him. Since he was a peripatetic or traveling teacher, his first disciples literally followed him. They learned his way by listening to his teachings and learning from Jesus as he modeled his lessons within everyday life as he traveled here and there.

For the early disciples following Jesus was a challenge in that they had to leave aside their vocations and families to travel beside Jesus with no possessions and to depend upon God and the good will and hospitality of those they encountered along the way.  This all required self-denial, laying aside personal needs and desires in order to go where Jesus went and learn from him.

Their journey was made even more difficult in that Jesus was on a journey to Jerusalem and the cross to confront the powers that be. The disciples’ journey with Jesus took them to a destination they did not imagine and would have just as soon avoided. They were challenged to live in the way of Jesus and face the cost of what that would mean. To follow Jesus meant to take upon oneself the consequences of living by the teachings of this wandering prophet and imitating his example. And Jesus’ life and teachings led him into conflict with religious and political leaders of his day and ultimately to death on a Roman cross.

And so, Jesus made it clear to his disciples what following him meant: If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. Following Jesus was not an easy road to travel.  And even though  following Jesus for us will probably not mean literal crucifixion, a cross, it will mean following Jesus along his winding road to its ultimate end. Thus, “taking up one’s cross” represents whatever consequences we may encounter with our own personal struggles and in conflict with the powers that be on our journey with Christ and doing it all in the nonviolent way of Christ, represented by the cross.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, German theologian, leader of the Confessing Church, and opponent of Hitler, made clear the cost of discipleship by contrasting “cheap” and “costly grace.” Bonhoeffer said, "cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline. Communion without  confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ." Anabaptists would resonate with Bonhoeffer’s understanding of the cost of discipleship. Nochfolge Christi, following Christ, was at the center of Anabaptist faith. Harold Bender, in his Anabaptist Vision defined the essence of Anabaptism in this way:  The great word of the Anabaptists was not “faith” as it was with the reformers, but “following” (nachfolge Christi). The Anabaptists had faith, but their emphasis was upon living out their faith in life. The Anabaptists believed that discipleship was the essence of the Christian life. 

In this light we can better understand the saying of Anabaptist Hans Denck I quoted last Sunday: No one can truly know Christ unless they follow him in life. Discipleship is more than having knowledge of Christ. Discipleship is more than believing in Jesus with the heart and confessing him with the mouth. It is more than “getting saved and going to heaven.” It is more than obeying a rule book, even if it is the Bible. It is more than going to church on Sunday or observing the customs and habits of a church tradition. Discipleship is a journey, a sometimes difficult and costly journey. It is all about following Jesus in our day and time, ethically, nonviolently, and no matter what the consequences may be.

In this sense discipleship is a creative journey of following the living Christ in our lives today. It is more than a literal, “wooden” imitation of Jesus’ first century teachings and actions. We cannot simply read the story of Jesus healing the blind and go out on our streets and try to do the very same thing. Discipleship requires an act of translation; translating the life of Jesus into our day and time and then “living the translation.”  Discipleship calls for an imaginative application of his way of life then to our way of life now.

And as imaginative as this question might be, discipleship is more than simply asking ourselves: What would Jesus do?  Surprisingly enough, Evangelicals like quoting this question of Charles Sheldon, even though they are probably unaware that he was a Christian socialist! The letters of the question, WWJD, have been mass produced into arm bracelets for young Evangelicals to wear as a form of Christian identity. That seems a bit odd, since Sheldon was a Congregational Church minister and part of the Social Gospel movement. He proposed the question WWJD in a series of sermons, then in his novel In His Steps, as a way to face moral decisions, a way to discern how to “follow in the way of Jesus” in our own time, particularly regarding social issues. Walter Rauschenbusch, leader of the Social Gospel movement, attributed his inspiration for this movement to Sheldon’s novel.

Following Jesus goes beyond asking a question about how to imitate Christ in the face of moral and social issues. Discipleship calls for following the moves, impulses, callings, and Spirit of the living Christ through experience, Scripture, traditions, and practices of the church applied to our time and context. That requires creative imagination, openness, and a process for discerning the leading of the Spirit of Christ today.

So, discipleship is more than believing in the heart and confessing Jesus Christ with the mouth.  It is more than “being saved by grace and going to heaven.” Discipleship is more than going to church on Sunday mornings and obeying church rules or following its customs and habits. It is more than practicing a rote repetition of Jesus words and acts. Discipleship is an imaginative, Spirit-led journey of following in the way of Christ today in our personal lives, our believing communities, and within the world around us.

Discipleship has to do with our personal spiritual journey.  Jesus said that if we want to be a disciple, we must take up our cross.  It is a personal, cruciform journey. For the early disciples literally following Jesus was an essential part of becoming one of his students, since he was a travelling teacher. One had to personally choose to follow Jesus.

Following Jesus today is a personal spiritual journey. Daily we set off on this journey as a student apprentice or disciple of Jesus. A student apprentice learns both by gaining knowledge and by engaging in practices. As Jesus studied the Torah, prayed in the synagogue and in solitary places, observed life around him, developed relationships, welcomed the stranger and marginalized, healed the sick, liberated the captive, proclaimed good news, and witnessed to the ways of God’s kingdom, he grew in wisdom and practice.

So, as Jesus’ first disciples had to personally and daily decide to follow Jesus, we personally and daily choose to follow in his way. Discipleship calls us to personally engage in practices of reading the scriptures, gathering for worship, prayer and meditation, discerning God’s will, showing hospitality to strangers and immigrants, resisting the powers that oppress, and proclaiming in word and deed God’s coming reign.  These are classic practices that engage us in following in Christ’s path.

Discipleship involves engaging in communal practices. Anabaptism views discipleship not merely as a personal spiritual journey, but a communal practice of the church.  Western Christianity, with its emphasis upon individualism, has distorted the faith and its practice by turning it into personal and private matter. It’s between me and God. With this mindset the church in Western culture becomes a building where I, as an individual believer, gather to personally give thanks to my personal Savior, for my personal salvation confessing my personal faith, and worshiping my personal God. 

This very personal and individualistic understanding says, “We must not hold one another accountable for how we live, that’s a private matter. We don’t want others intruding into our personal faith and practice.” Church is a place where we individually gather to study, pray, worship God, meet friends, and go home to our private lives. This is a complete distortion of both discipleship and the church and definitely not an Anabaptist perspective.

Church is ecclesia, a people called out from the world, bound together by Christ, building up one another, holding one another accountable for our spiritual growth, encouraging one another in the use of our gifts, sharing in common ministries and practices, and sent into the world in mission and service.

The Christian life is not a solo performance. It takes an orchestra. Christian life is not my personal canoe I paddle downstream. It is a large row boat with everyone engaging together in the rowing upstream against the grain of our human nature and our culture and society. Discipleship is best performed in a covenant community. We are bound together to assist one another on the journey of discipleship; to encourage, build up, challenge, call to accountability, and pray for one another. Discipleship does not say “everyone for themselves.” But rather, discipleship says, “We are all in this together!”

That is why the corporate practices of the church are so important. We need each other to follow in the way of Christ. We need mutual care, charity, and economic justice when some cannot survive the financial strains of Capitalism and the free market society. We need small support groups in the church to help us resist peer pressure or cultural conformity that sucks us into materialism and consumerism. We need church ministries that challenge us to connect with the poor, the oppressed, the marginalized, people we don’t connect with on our own. We need the church’s social ministries to help us connect with cross-cultural and other multi-racial groups, and to practice peace and social justice, when we would just as soon go home to our nice families, comfortable homes, and just be good Christian neighbors. We need the church in order be disciples, to fully and radically follow in the way of Jesus.

Discipleship leads us to practice hospitality, serve others, and engage in peace, justice, and reconciliation. More broadly I could say that discipleship leads to living in the way of Jesus. I could have also have said “discipleship leads to a lifestyle of healing, caring for the marginalized and outcast, confronting the powers that oppress people. But, my focus in this teaching sermon is to highlight  the way discipleship is manifest within the Anabaptist tradition and our particular congregation. The practices of discipleship I have listed are particularly important to Anabaptism and to Zion Mennonite. These are contained in Zion’s new vision statement, which we will soon be sharing with the congregation: hospitality, service to others, and peace, justice, and reconciliation.

Hospitality has to do with welcoming the stranger among us. It is as old as Abraham welcoming three strangers by the oaks of Mamre and as new as an invitation for lunch to a first time visitor at Zion Mennonite. Jesus and his disciples depended upon the hospitality of strangers for their mission. Jesus practiced hospitality toward the stranger, marginalized, sick, unclean, women, and social outcasts. As an essential practice of the early church, hospitality was critical for the growth of the church as they welcomed new people into their house churches. It is one of four key elements our Worship Commission is emphasizing for Zion’s worship life. Practicing hospitality is a way of following Jesus.

Jesus’s life was about serving others as a way of serving God. Jesus made this clear when at the Last Supper he grabbed a towel, bent down, and washed the dusty feet of his own disciples. Discipleship, or following in the way of Jesus, necessarily entails serving others. This is a hallmark of Anabaptist and Mennonite faith and practice. Mennonite Central Committee’s work of community development, hunger relief, community and global service epitomizes this Anabaptist emphasis. These are not simply humanitarian efforts, but a corporate form of Christian discipleship. As MCC’s motto states, what they do they do it “In the name of Christ.” This emphasis upon discipleship as serving others is also seen in other organizations and practices of mutual aid, disaster service, and community service opportunities. Serving others in the name of Christ reflects this Anabaptist conviction of walking in the way of Christ today.

Peacemaking, justice, and reconciliation are crucial ways of practicing discipleship. At times I have classified peacemaking as a distinct Anabaptist core conviction in and of itself, since it has come to signify a key distinctive of the Anabaptist tradition.

I believe that this is one area of discipleship that marks Anabaptism as peculiarly distinctive among the various Christian traditions. My use of terms needs some explanation. First, I use peacemaking instead of the classic Mennonite term nonresistance. Peacemaking is more than a passive stance of not retaliating against violence received. Peacemaking goes beyond the old traditional Mennonite perspective of simply avoiding personal violence, military service or occupations that engage in violent force and separating ourselves from those that do. Neither is Anabaptist peacemaking  simply “passivism,” a passive opposition to war.

If passive non-resistance is all that traditional Mennonites understand by its “peace stance,” then we have a long way to go in understanding the full implications of this significant arena of discipleship. On the other hand, Christian peacemaking is not just about actively engaging in liberal political efforts to end war. Christian peacemaking is a practice of discipleship, a way of following Jesus Christ.

Second, I believe that peace is inextricably linked to justice. Justice is not about vengeance, retribution, or “giving people what they deserve.” Justice is about rectifying wrongs, making things right, correcting inequities. This may not have been the way most early Anabaptists or Mennonites thought of nonresistance, but in our modern world “there is no peace without justice.”  Remember, I am not simply talking about convictions of historic 16^th century Anabaptism or an ethnic Mennonite tradition, but rather a living Anabaptist tradition of faith and practice that we must translate into our time and context. To do justice is to follow in the way of Christ.

I am convinced that the Anabaptist way of following Christ in our world today will necessarily expand to include judicial, economic, gender, racial, and global justice. Why? Because these are significant issues every good liberal should be concerned about? No. Because these are ways of following Christ in our broken, violent, and divided world today!

Third, justice calls for reconciliation.  When human relations have been broken by violence, war, injustice, oppression, conflict, denial of human rights, not only is there a need for justice, but a means by which conflicted parties can be brought together and relationships restored. The creative, groundbreaking, global work of Mennonites like John Paul Lederach in conciliation and Howard Zehr in restorative justice exemplify this modern Anabaptist impulse toward the work of reconciliation. Following Christ in our world today will mean engaging in the work of reconciliation.

Peacemaking, justice, and reconciliation grow out of the desire to follow in the way of Christ. I am convinced that these are not peripheral issues that Christians can take or leave, but are essential to the gospel of Jesus Christ. And these are issues we cannot simply engage in on our own. They require a corporate body, a new people, an alternative community to enact these practices, which are ways of following Christ in our world today.

Discipleship, following in the way of Christ, is an Anabaptist core conviction. It’s as simple as responding to the voice that says, “Come follow me.” And it’s as hard as denying yourself and taking up your cross daily and following Christ.