Fellowship Gone Global – Gary Harder – Jan. 28/07

Fellowship Gone Global 

January 28th, 2007 

Gary Harder

 

Text:  

Psalm 71:1-6

Jeremiah 1:4-13

1 Corinthians 13:8-13

 

Introduction: Seeing in a mirror dimly

Just over two weeks ago now I had some very minor surgery on my right eye. As surgeries go this was about as minor as it gets, though the technical name for it is quite impressive. Right medial pterygium excision and conjunctival transplant. No, not a cataract surgery. It is simply that a film was growing over and into my eye, and eventually, if not cut out, it would make me blind in that eye. So a small mater of having a surgeon slice off the growth seemed an acceptable alternative.

What kind of surprised me, though it shouldn’t have, is how much my whole body was effected by a very minor intrusion on one eye. A general exhaustion, loss of appetite, constipation and some nausea. First Corinthians 12 certainly came to mind, the text about one body but many members. Says Paul, “If one member suffers, all suffer together with it.” In your physical body and in the church body.

Other texts also jumped to mind. I had seven stitches in my eye for nine days. It felt a bit like seven hair fighting with seven grains of sand for centre stage in my eye. And the words of Jesus jumped out at me. “How can you say to your neighbour, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ while the log is in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbour’s eye..” I was walking about with seven logs in my eye.

Maybe having surgery is a good thing if it drives me to remember Scripture texts. Another one came to mind as I was pondering a film growing over my eye which gradually was clouding my vision. That is the story of Balaam the prophet and his donkey. In that story Balaam, the “seer”, can’t see the danger ahead, but his donkey can. The donkey tries to protect his master from the danger ahead, but Balaam is oblivious to it. He has a spiritual film growing over his eyes. Can’t see the angel of the Lord in his path holding a flaming sword. (Numbers 22-24).

Ah, I was forced to identify with Balaam. How humbling.

On this “Mennonite World Conference world wide communion Sunday, permit a few stories of donkeys who could see things the religious and political leaders couldn’t.

Conrad Grebel & George Blaurock

The date is January 21, 1525. The place is Zurich Switzerland. A small group of people are gathered in the home of one Felix Manz. They are in crisis. The authorities of both state and church have given them an ultimatum. We look more closely at two of those gathered there.

One was Conrad Grebel. Yes, the Conrad Grebel we have named our Mennonite University after in Waterloo. Conrad precipitated the ultimatum and the crisis. You see, he had a two week old baby daughter. And he refused to have her baptized. Just refused. Wouldn’t listen to reason. Wouldn’t listen to Ulrich Zwingli, the great reformer. Wouldn’t listen to the threats of the city council. Not in over a thousand years had any Christian so deliberately and so publicly refused to baptize their baby. This was a stunning, shocking, rebellion. And from a very young man yet.

And, to tell the truth, Grebel wasn’t really the wholesome picture of an ideal young man you could point to and say, “What a wonderful role model” for our young people. He was the sort of man you would warn your daughters against. Even his own parents despaired of him. He was born wealthy and spoiled and rebellious. He was expelled from two Universities for the trouble he caused. Something about involvement in a student brawl in which several people were killed. And about being too often drunk in classes. And about all the women he slept with. When he did get married his parents detested the women he chose.

But here he was in 1525 changing history. And doing something that was such a threat to both the state and the church that they issued a stern ultimatum. All because he refused to have his daughter baptized. All because he had had a conversion experience and read the Scriptures with new eyes and came to the conclusion that the church was wrong on a whole number of fronts.

Thundered the town council “…An error has arisen respecting baptism, as if young children should not be baptized until they come to years of discretion…We have held a disputation on this matter to learn what Holy Scripture has to say about it, and having learned from it that notwithstanding this error the children should be baptized as soon as they are born; so must all those who have hitherto allowed their children to be un-baptized have them baptized inside the next week. Whoever will not do this must with wife and child, goods and chattels leave our city, jurisdiction and domain, or await what will be done to him. Each one will accordingly know how to conduct themselves.”

So Grebel and a small group of like minded folk were meeting in crisis to decide how to conduct themselves now that they had been thus warned. They were not ready to let the state dictate to them on matters of faith.

George Blaurock it was who finally galvanized the meeting and brought the crisis to a head. George was considerably older than Conrad. Was in fact a Roman Catholic priest. Trained, experienced, he had no doubt presided over hundreds of infant baptisms. But no longer. He too was now reading the Scriptures with new eyes. He had had a spiritual pytergium excision.

George was a tall, strong, powerful figure. He was an excitable man with fiery eyes and commanding voice. Some called him a madman for his zealous, almost intolerant preaching. Once, some months after this meeting, he attended a church service in Zolliken. The priest there was on his way to the pulpit. George stopped him from entering the pulpit. “What are you doing”? demanded the priest. “I am going to preach the word of God”, said George, “not you”. The sheriff was called in to remove George from the pulpit.

And now, on January 25, 1525, it was George Blaurock who made the decisive decision which would give birth to the Anabaptist movement. “Con
rad”, he begged, “Please baptize me with true Christian baptism upon my faith and confession”. He had already been baptized as an infant. And now he demanded baptism as an adult believer in Jesus. And young Conrad, rebellion still coming out of his ears, and certainly not qualified to baptize anyone, and certainly not ordained, did so. And then requested that George likewise baptize him, and soon everybody in that room was re-baptized, and the Anabaptist movement, which is our spiritual heritage as Mennonites, was launched. And also launched was a severe persecution, because this new way of seeing the Scriptures threatened the church and state leaders to the core.

Several years later this same George Blaurock was captured and tortured. Then he was tied to a stake, had gun powder rubbed in his hair and beard, and both the stake and the beard ignited to burn him to a crisp. A few days later his wife was drowned for also being an Anabaptist.

Jeremiah

The date now is 627 BCE. The place is Anathoth, a small village about three miles north of Jerusalem. In Anathoth in 627 a young teenager is jolted by a call from God. He hadn’t expected the call. He didn’t want a call. He was just minding his own business doing what teenagers normally did there in Anathoth. Yes, he was the son of one of the many priests there, but that certainly didn’t mean that there was any reason for God to choose him for anything special.

But there it came. A voice that could only be from God. ‘Jeremiah, before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you to be a prophet to the nations.”

“Woa. Big mistake. A priest like my father maybe. Here and there some specific religious duties. But Prophet? Never”. Jeremiah tries to say no to his calling. “Ah, Lord God! Truly I do not know how to speak, for I am only a boy”. “

I am only a boy, a mere teenager. I don’t know now to speak. I’ve got nothing to say.” This protest doesn’t seem to deter God at all.

Says the Lord, “Do not say, ‘I am only a boy’; for you shall go to all to whom I send you, and you shall speak whatever I command you. Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you to deliver you.”

Do not be afraid. But how can a teenager receiving this kind of call not be afraid. Afraid of this God who is calling him. Afraid of the people to whom he is supposed to speak. Afraid of the impossible crisis Judah is in. Judah has a rotten king (Jehoiakim) who wants nothing to do with the Lord God. The people are in turmoil and crisis. Babylon is threatening to destroy her. And Jeremiah is called to be a prophet, a spokesman for God, and is told not to be afraid.

“Then the Lord put out his hand and touched my mouth; and the Lord said to me,

‘Now I have put my words in your mouth. See, today I appoint you over nations and over kingdoms, to pluck up and to pull down, to destroy and to overthrow, to build and to plant.’”

Don’t fret over being only a young lad. Don’t fret over not knowing how to speak. When the time comes you will know what to say. What will this word be? One part of the message will be a bitter one. God will destroy and overthrow. The other part of the message will be a very hopeful one. God will build and will plant. Jeremiah will bring both a bitter message and a hopeful one. God then reinforces this polarity.

“The word of the Lord came to me, saying, ‘Jeremiah, what do you see?’ “What do you see?” And I said, ‘I see a branch of an almond tree.’ Then the Lord said to me, ‘you have seen well, for I am watching over my word to perform it.’”

The almond tree was often called a watch tree. It was the first plant to produce blossoms in spring. You watched for it as the first sign of spring. It was always a blossom bringing hope. In addition, Jeremiah was also to see this blossoming as a sign that God would watch over God’s word.

“The word of the Lord came to me a second time, saying, ‘What do you see?’ And I said, ‘I see a boiling pot, tilted away from the north.’”

A boiling pot tilted form the north. Probably meaning the Babylonians coming to pour out their destruction on Judah. A message of judgment.

So always there would be two sides to the prophetic message Jeremiah was to speak. There would be words of judgment for abandoning God. There would be words of hope because God would not abandon God’s people, but would rather forgive and restore them. Jeremiah would be able to see what others couldn’t, or refused, to see. He could see judgment coming when the other religious leaders, including other prophets, denied that anything was amiss. He saw hope when a whole people had totally despaired.

And so it is all through the book of Jeremiah, judgment and hope mixed together. And so it is that a young teenager begins his work And so it is that his personal life becomes one of pain, and of recurring depression, and sometimes of raging anger, and of being mostly rejected by his people. They wanted to continue living with the film growing over their eyes, blinding them to the realities of life which Jeremiah saw so clearly.

Menno Simons

The time is 1536. The place is now the Netherlands. Pinjum, to be exact, a small village in northern Holland. Menno Simons was a Catholic priest there. But Menno was soon in crisis, his life in total turmoil. He realized how empty and vain his own life was, even as a priest. He confesses, “I had not touched the Scriptures during my life, for, I feared, if I should read them they would mislead me. Behold, such a stupid preacher was I…”

Menno began to hear about these Anabaptists who were so reviled and persecuted by his own hierarchy and by his peers. And he began to read the Scriptures, really for the first time. His torment grew. He was in the middle of a very painful pytergium excision, one which would radically reorient his faith and his life.

It was February 2nd, 1536, a feast day for the church. On that day he would be required to preside over a public worship, and lead the magistrates of the town in a procession before the figure of the virgin Mary. He realized in his heart that he couldn’t do that. He realized he could no longer remain a priest. He made a public statement to this effect. He was now an Anabaptist. And he immediately went into hiding, for he was now a hunted man.

Menno Simons was soon a leader of these scattered groups of Anabaptists. His particular leadership gift was to be a pastor to these scatter
ed and persecuted people. He offered hope and encouragement when there was much reason to despair. He brought people together. He traveled through the Netherlands and Europe, always on the run, but always the pastor and encourager. He insisted that the true church had to be a peace church. He insisted that followers of Jesus had to give evidence in their lives that they were following Jesus. Soon those under his pastoral oversight came to be known as Mennonites, followers of Menno. I suppose we could say that unofficially he began Mennonite World Conference.

But there was also a dark side to Menno. He also insisted on a pure church. And he wasn’t very tolerant with church members who weren’t as pure as he thought they should be. As one historian has written, “He was cantankerous, judgmental, and sometimes plain silly…” (Vogt, Mennonite Mirror, Sept., 86.p.30). He banned a lot of people from the church.

We Mennonites have also inherited this side of the Menno heritage, often more ready to see the faults in each other rather than the gifted-ness and specialness of each member of the body. We have a rather dismal record of church splits, of fragmentation, of being judgmental, of thinking we are superior to others of God’s children. There are some 25 different Mennonite groups, or conferences, in Canada alone. It seems there has been a blinding film growing over our eyes when it comes to seeing each other as brothers and sisters in Christ sharing one body, one church, one fellowship, one vision of following Jesus.

January 28, 2007

There are almost one and one half million members of Mennonite World Conference. Today has been named “World Fellowship Sunday”. Mennonites and Brethren in Christ around the world have been invited to celebrate communion today – to remember each other, to pray for each other, and to commune together.

We are an amazingly diverse lot, we one and a half million Mennonites.. We are so diverse its hard even to imagine us being in one body together, let alone worshipping together and communing together. We would have many reasons to splinter, to fragment, to say, “you’re not as Anabaptist as we are”. I don’t know what Menno Simons would say to this incredibly diverse lot who are named after him. How many of us would he have banned by now?

But I think there has been a new wind of God moving among us – a wind that is breaking down dividing walls. I wonder if it started with Mennonite Central Committee. As far as I know, all Mennonite groups in North America participate in MCC. We can work together and serve together in the name of Christ. Though we don’t agree with each other on our theology and on how we read the Bible. We are united in service.

And now Mennonite World Conference is trying to take the next step, of bringing us together in worship and in fellowship and in communion. And amazingly, also in trying to unite us in basic beliefs. This past summer MWC produced a statement of faith, printed in our bulletin insert, which was the result of a world wide consensus on what we can agree on. It is a bringing together of the most conservative and most radical, most fundamentalist and most liberal elements of our world wide fellowship, and saying, “Yes, we can agree together on this”. That really is amazing. I think there is a new Spirit of God blowing over and through our world wide fellowship.

And at this moment MWC is also in some very fascinating, and I think significant, dialogue conversations with other Christian traditions. There are official conversations going on with Catholics, with Lutherans and with Pentecostals. Some of you in this room are a part of those conversations. There is a new wind blowing from the Spirit of God.

And today we have the privilege of knowing that we are sharing in communion with Mennonites and Brethren in Christ from around the world – Africa, Asia, South America, Europe, North America.

And we are learning of the great gifted-ness, especially the spiritual gifted-ness, of the Mennonite Church, especially in Africa, in Asia, and in Latin America. We North Americans and Europeans are often the ones in spiritual poverty. And it may be that our world wide fellowship will help save us all as we become more and more mutual and more and more dependant on each other.

Conclusion

Paul addresses an equally diverse church in Corinth. He tells them that love is more important than anything that could possibly separate them.

Then he acknowledges that all us humans still can’t see things all that clearly. We still all have a film growing over our eyes, a pytergium which will probably only be excised by death and by eternal life.

“For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known.”

In the meanwhile the Jeremiah’s called by God will continue to see things the rest of us can’t -both signs of judgment and signs of hope. And people like Conrad Grebel and George Blaucrock and Menno Simmons will inspire us with their visions, despite their many human failings. And we will joyfully participate in communion together with brothers and sisters in Christ from around the world- a foretaste of the time we will see face to face and know fully just as we are known fully.

And that is enough, for now. Thanks be to God.