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Dear Berea,
I needed a break. I was tired. So this message is a day late. Sorry, but I needed to pause before writing. I don’t feel like I have been particularly strained by any one project, I just have a lot of needs and frustrations coming at me at once and I guess that got to me. I needed to reflect on who we are, what we are doing, and how we are doing it. I needed to think back to the meeting on Saturday and the worship on Sunday.
God has a way of helping us in these times. A word of scripture here. A few butterflies fluttering (they don’t really fly at all, it seems to me) over the zinias at the sanctuary entrance. A word from our child that says there was some truth being told. The parking lot jammed full of cars for the open house this morning. A serendipitous call from a local news station saying they wanted to interview me about our church.
What? Yes, out of the blue yesterday I was asked to tape a brief interview about our congregation for a local news station. They wanted to know what sets us apart. It seems they do this every single week and were looking for something different. Presenting a Mennonite congregation seemed to fit the bill so they called and I agreed to meet them this morning and that helped focus my thinking. Then Leah and Anni sent me emails that made me think even harder about the same questions.
What does it mean to be Mennonite? What does it mean to be Anabaptist? Well, for one thing, it means we are not the mainline church. We inherit a tradition of searching for radical faithfulness and genuine community even as our forebears bound themselves inextricably (and inexplicably, in my mind) to nineteenth century farming technologies, eighteenth century clothing, and sixteenth century theology. We inherit a tradition that grew out of a Catholic pietism and redefined itself in its rejection of Protestant pietism, that has defined itself as over-and-against from its inception despite the inherently limiting effects of such a self-definition. We inherit a tradition that included resistance to slavery and conscription even as it held tight to a patriarchal rejection of women as fully ordained leaders in the community and fiercely resisted the gospel invitation to open up the community of salvation and expand the reconciling work of the kingdom of God.
So, where does that leave us?
Well, that’s what I was trying to figure out as I thought about how to write back to Leah and Anni and trying to get ready to summarize our community in a forty-five second spot for television and still wondering what to write to all of you in this letter. Who is Berea Mennonite Church? How do we claim the tradition of peacemaking and community when our brothers and sisters get so tired and frustrated that they walk away from us? How do we begin to talk about reconciliation when we are so fractured and isolated and flailing about for even an organizing structure for our community? How do we present ourselves as a different model of the church when we are so far in the Anabaptist diaspora that every conversation about our faith begins with some association with the Amish?
The early Anabaptists were sure that they were doing something different. They had read the scriptures and listened for the Spirit of God and they felt confident in their call. They recognized that people were losing faith in the church. They saw that the medieval church’s marriage of the sword of law and the kingdom key was adulterous at best and a primary source of violence and prejudice in the world at its worst. They did not blink at the demands of the gospel and they did not compromise about the mission of the church. It is the body of Christ. It is the place of salvation. It is the kingdom community and its work is to bring the whole world into God’s reconciliation.
Our circumstances are different, but maybe not so much. We have read the scriptures and listened for the Spirit of God to call us forward. Trust in the church is at an all-time low. At the same time, the political power of churches is so unquestionable that most people think church is just a place for couching one’s rightist or leftist politics. As for living out the demands of the gospel, Shane Claiborne may be stirring the pot on his speaking tours and living in an intentional community, but there are not a lot of folks selling what they have and giving it to the poor, inviting strangers to share their warts and find salvation in the midst of . . . well, us. We are just not that sure of ourselves. In fact, we are not even certain enough to even call brothers and sisters in the community to keep them close, much less invite in strangers.
But we have started out and I think we have done so boldly and faithfully. We have been blessed with one of the greatest gifts any congregation could ever receive – six acres of God’s green earth in the middle of a city. A year ago today I was mowing the lawn. The grass was really high and it was really hot. More than a few folks had complained about the way the place looked. That’s what my prayer journal says, anyway. I don’t know if that was the day I started praying we could grow something different than grass or not, but I know I was not the only one or the first to do that. I also know that this morning as I walked out through the garden it was a very different church yard than just a year ago. Our prayers were answered because we decided to be a different kind of church. And when I made it inside, there were children and parents everywhere getting to know each other and reading and playing with blocks and matching games and smiling all around. I cannot tell you how many people thanked me for letting them set up the school in our building. So I think we have stepped out in faith, too.
Have we gotten it right? Well, I don’t know. It has been rough on the edges sometimes, but then so was Jesus. It has been harder than many would like it to be, probably, but then following him always has been. And we have found some agreement on the way, though that does not seem to be all that common. I think we agree that it is better for the church to be a garden in the creation than a city on a hill and I think we are excited at the different ways the farm points us forward. I think we agree that it is better for the church to be a sanctuary for all the people of God and not a prop for the law and order of society and I think we are curious and eager to see who God will send our way as angels unaware. I think we are coming to believe in the potential of a church that is not so much a hospital for sinners as a laboratory for peaceful growth of the kingdom and I think we are starting to believe that inviting friends and neighbors to that kind of community is good and not nearly so awkward as we had expected. How valuable is it for us to know that we want to be a church that is a garden, a sanctuary, and a laboratory for peace? I suppose that depends on how far we take it.
It has already cost us along the way and we have a long way to go. Despite the words of the gospel lesson this week– see Luke 14:1, 7-14 – we are not sure who to invite to join us. Despite the warnings of the Hebrew lesson – see Jeremiah 2:4-13 – we do not say first that God is the miracle worker who made us a people and gave us the great covenant of faith but instead we still invest at least as much of our trust in the gods of finance and the social contract. We have more to do. It will cost us more. For now, though, I think Berea Mennonite Church is beginning to know how we answer these questions. Thanks be to God for that. Thanks be for the opportunity to work and learn together. Thanks be that we will not get it all right and thanks be that we can go to each other in grace and repentance and offering forgiveness. Most of all, thanks for being the church.
John