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Holding joy and sadness in tension: The Lord's Supper

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by Gwen Groff, Bethany

Gwen GroffAt Bethany we share communion at least three times each year. Our first communion service is in January when we renew our annual membership covenant with each other. Our system of membership at Bethany is an odd hybrid. We can become members by taking a membership class and being baptized or by transferring a letter of membership from another congregation, and we can become members by annually affirming our covenant with this congregation. When we renew our membership covenant each January, affirming that we intend to walk with this particular group of people and uphold our commitments to what we state in our covenant, we mark this by celebrating communion together.

This is one of the times that I most feel the difference between the Mennonite congregation in which I grew up and the Mennonite congregation of which I am now a part. I grew up seeing communion as a very somber service in which people wore dark clothes and often wept. I recall preparatory services the week before the communion services in which members filed into a small anteroom and shook hands with the bishop and declared that we were “at peace with God and our fellow men.” Members were warned not to eat and drink “unworthily,” thereby eating and drinking “damnation unto himself.”

By comparison, our communion services at Bethany feel very open, perhaps even lax. I invite people to come forward to receive the bread and cup with the words, “This is the Lord’s table and all are welcome.” I do not ask if someone has been baptized or is a church member. This seems not very Anabaptist. It does however seem to be in keeping with what Jesus did in sharing the table with anyone who wanted to eat with him.

The Bethany communion service that I most enjoy is part of our annual outdoor service. Each summer I mow a labyrinth into the grass in the back lawn and at our outdoor service we take the bread and cup just before we begin walking the the labyrinth together. We walk into the middle of the labyrinth in silence, pause in the center circle, and come back out again. Some people look into the faces of others they pass going the opposite direction, some look down, some are chewing the bread, many are barefoot. Some children are held in their parents’ arms. Most of the children enter the labyrinth at the front of the line and run to the center ahead of the adults. There they receive a spoken blessing from one of the servers, “You are known and loved by God,” and are given grapes and crackers. They run or walk back out, passing the adults who are still on their way in. The adults walk more slowly and contemplatively.

I usually take the bread and cup to the older people who are unable to walk the labyrinth and are seated on the grass that is slightly higher than the labyrinth. I love to look out across the people walking and see our congregation moving as one, like a giant organism on the grass. Sometimes we are a little crowded as we walk but we have not outgrown the practical limits of this ritual. The service is full of laughter and reflection, movement and epiphanies. If the labyrinth symbolizes our spiritual path, the bread and cup represent nourishment for the journey.

Our other communion celebration is part of our Good Friday service. This communion meal seems to be most in the spirit of the first Last Supper. It holds together the joy of the Passover celebration, remembering liberation from slavery, with the grief of the looming death of Jesus.  It focuses on the stated purpose of communion — doing this in remembrance of Jesus — reminding us of his life, death and resurrection. The service is virtually the same every year. We eat a simple meal together in the church basement on Good Friday evening. We read aloud the Passion account from one of the gospels, we sing, we serve one another the bread and cup, and we leave in silence.

I value something about each of these three services. In the January communion service, I appreciate the emphasis on our covenanted commitment to God and one another. I appreciate the symbolism of nourishment for our faith journeys that is part of the summer communion service. And I appreciate the remembrance of the first Lord’s supper that is part of our Good Friday service. What I love about all of them is the way the communion ritual holds in tension joy and sadness. Words can’t make sense of that paradox, “proclaiming the Lord’s death.” But ritual does.

The pope is still Catholic

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The pope is still Catholic: And why that might be a good thing for all of us

by Stephen Francis Kriss, skriss@mosaicmennonites.org

Steve Kriss

Listening to CNN commentators the day after Pope Francis was named brought focused attention to a deepening misunderstanding of the church.  The CNN reporter pressed her two guests, suggesting, “Don’t you think it’s time for the Catholic Church to reform?   Will this new Argentine pope bring in a new era reconsidering the role of the priesthood, the idea of same sex unions, a relaxation on the position on contraception?”

The respondent said, “This Pope is still Roman Catholic.”

Again, I listened to another reporter on Saturday morning, this time on NPR, pressing a guest to define the changes that should occur in the Catholic Church under a new papal regime.  The respondent again asserted, “All of those changes that you are alluding to are the positions of mainstream Protestantism in the United States.  And those groups overall are in rapid decline. You’re asking us to create a church that just simply asks people to be nice.  And soon enough people will find out that if all we’re asking is for people to be nice to one another, they might as well just stay at home or find other things to do on Sundays.”

I’m astounded by the attention given to the papal transition this week.   There aren’t too many times when a global leader is appointed with such grandiose ritual and over such a large body.  To put it in perspective, there are more Roman Catholics in the Pittsburgh Diocese (nearly 2 million) than the global population of Mennonite World Conference churches combined (mostly recently almost 1.8 million).  There are roughly as many global adherents to Roman Catholicism as the whole population of India (about 20% of the world’s people).

Western media has been captivated by Pope Francis’ story: the first pope from the Southern Hemisphere, the first pope from the Americas.   We watched him pay his hotel bill in Rome and we watched him take a deep silencing breath of prayer before sending the exhilarated but tired crowd at St. Peter’s Square home to rest after the conclave.  So far, I like Pope Francis.

As a Mennonite, I’m not expecting a Pope who will bend to my own theological leanings and understanding.  But for the sake of us all, I’m hoping for a leader willing to justly, fairly, kindly, evenhandedly contend with the scandals and challenges that mark the Catholic Church and weigh heavily on all of us representing the teachings of Christ in an increasingly cynical time in the West.  I wonder if a leader like Francis, who has taken the Jesuit vows of poverty, availability, and service, might be able to open a time of honest and transparent conversation in Catholicism that could cascade to all parts of the global church, provoking authenticity and accessibility even for those of us who lead in Mennonite settings.

So while yes, the Pope is still Catholic, in an age of religious pluralities I don’t expect a pope who is anything less.  But in a time when Christian leadership of all types is rightly open for public conversation and criticism, Francis has this moment to lead in the global Christian movement by incarnating what is good and right about it.  Through his Jesuit convictions, he brings a perspective of willingness to question; through his context in Argentina, he’s learned how to lead in the midst of economic, social, and political turmoil; through his own commitment and character, he’s kicked off a position of piety with acts of genuine approachability.

If he’s able to lead rooted in Catholic identity—to become, in the best of Franciscan tradition, “an instrument of peace”—the words “habemus papum” spoken in a surprising transition at the Vatican this March might just be words of good news for us all.

From Lukewarm to Hot Christians, part 2

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Claude Goodby Claude Good, Souderton congregation

The Hidden Agenda Behind the Worm Project

So what is a Lukewarm Christian? Francis Chan wrote a book called Crazy Love. In it he describes the characteristics of a Lukewarm Christian: Lukewarm Christians love others but not as much as they love themselves; their love often comes with strings attached; they give money to charities and the church as long as it doesn’t impinge on their standard of living; they choose what is popular over what is right; they are thankful for their luxuries and comforts but they rarely consider trying to give as much as possible to the poor; they want to do the bare minimum to be “good enough;” they do not live by faith; their lives wouldn’t look much different if they suddenly stopped believing in God.

The author comes to the sobering conclusion that there is no such thing as a “Lukewarm Christian.” It is an oxymoron, meaning that the two words cancel each other out. If Jesus says that He will spit them out of his mouth, it means that they are really not His followers.

If you know you are “lukewarm” and you’d like to let God light a fire in you, the Bible most certainly has the answer. It starts with the words, “Seek FIRST the Kingdom of God….” I am told that in the original “to seek” has more of the meaning of “to crave.” Anyone who has an addiction to drugs or alcohol knows what “to crave” means. Some who crave chocolate or sugary foods may even understand – you gotta have it!

An earnest seeking for God is bound to create a love for him and his son Jesus Christ and we naturally want to obey the command, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and with all your mind.”  We can tell from human experience that if we are in love with someone the easiest thing to do is what we know that person wants. The same is true when we truly love Jesus.

If you are lukewarm, let your imagination run wild. Imagine yourself in a beautiful state, surrounded with deep love and filled with gratitude. God is magnificently creative; just think of what he can do with dust! Three times he tells us that “the LORD God formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and man became a living being” (Gen. 2:7). Try standing in front of a mirror and in wonder and astonishment take note of what God can do with dust.  We all have the attractive choice of being made and remade into in His image.

One of my delightful memories from Mexico City is walking with all our children to the grocery store through scenic back streets. Once when we were almost home, I looked around and in dismay said, “Where’s Rob?!” He was our youngest and about five years-old. We dashed back to the store and looked all over for him. As we returned to the street, we saw a kindly lady leading Rob by the hand and saying, “Is this your house?”  Rob would tearfully say, “No.” and then they would go to the next house with the same question and answer. You can imagine our great relief and gratitude to that kind woman when Rob was back with us again.

So again I say to all of us, “I just want us all to be together forever.”  I want us all to know God and to love God and to care for others so that they may also know God and love God and care for others.  Let’s all be together forever, red-hot Christians, becoming more and more like Jesus.

Read From Lukewarm to Hot Christians, part 1

From Lukewarm to Hot Christians, part 1

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Claude Goodby Claude Good, Souderton congregation

The Hidden Agenda Behind the Worm Project

Recently I had a visit from a friend. Our conversation turned to the pain of the world. Much to my surprise he broke out weeping; his weeping was caused by his deep concern for the people still living in the pain of darkness. He asked for a tissue. The next day I found the crunched up tissue and was about to chuck it in the garbage. But I suddenly thought, “I can’t throw this away because it holds tears that I believe are sacred to God.”  So I put it in a special place to remind me of how much God wants us to care for those living in darkness as well as the poor who are hungry and sick.

While living in Mexico, we sometimes took our small children to visit zoos or museums.  There were so many people around us we had to keep alert to see that we stayed together. But little Ceci made it easier. She would anxiously watch to see that none of her siblings got out of our sight; she really wanted us to stay together!

So how does that story relate to the hidden agenda behind the Worm Project?

In the beginning it appeared the Worm Project might never get off the ground. We couldn’t find people interested in distributing the tablets. I was nearly ready to give up. But I had another reason to keep trying. Just like our daughter’s deep concern for her biological family, I really wanted all of us as Mennonites to be together forever just like we want our families to be with us for eternity. All of us are part of a larger family; my prayer is that as many of us as absolutely possible will be together throughout eternity along with all the redeemed ones from every tribe and nation.  And if we are to be together forever, we must know God.

So what could be done that might encourage us lukewarm Christians to be hungry to know God? In Jer.22:10, God told the son of Josiah in strong terms that he was only thinking of himself by building a fancy palace and making people work for nothing. But his father Josiah, God said, had defended the cause of the poor and needy. AND THEN GOD MAKESTHE VERY CRUCIAL STATEMENT, “Is that not what it means to know me?” Caring for the poor is one way to know God.

Many Mennonites are frugal. Combine that with the fact that $100 will treat 7,000 sickly children, ridding them of worms (1.4 cents each tablet)–that is bargain basement prices for those who know how to pinch pennies.  We like to say: “Little is much if God is in it.” And we know God IS in it because he says, “Spend yourself/pour yourself out on behalf of the hungry.”  For those who obey, he promises that we will become like “a well-watered garden…. or a spring that never fails” (Isa.58:10 -12). The Spirit of God tends to build a real compassion within us as we realize how many can be helped with our resources. Lukewarm American Christians need an increased awareness of the pain and darkness in the world. Knowing God intimately is the key to having God’s caring heart within us for those living in that pain and darkness.

Thankfully, God, the “Divine Coordinator,” supernaturally inspired many of our people to respond with love and care for the children with worms. God, the Divine Multiplier, has multiplied our gifts in a marvelous way. Well over 100 million tablets have gone out. He has also brought together a highly motivated Board and a team of Partners who are overseeing the distributions in many countries. The passion of both these groups of red-hot Christians insures that the program will continue.

Seasons change: a New Year's reflection

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Vietnamese New Yearby Emily Ralph, eralphservant@mosaicmennonites.org

I hate the cold.  I mean, really hate the cold.  Sure, snow is beautiful resting on the barn roof or lightly coating the hedge, but when it’s on my car, the road, or me, enough is enough.

I’ve found myself this winter dreaming about moving to Hawaii.  I’ve never been to Hawaii, but on TV it looks like the sun is always shining and a gentle ocean breeze always keeps it at a comfortable temperature for flip-flops and shorts.  They don’t have winter in Hawaii. That sounds just about perfect to me.

I can’t imagine life in C.S. Lewis’ fictional land of Narnia, held captive by an evil queen’s spell, always winter (and never Christmas).  It was an unchanging reality, the way it had always been and the way it always would be.  I wonder how they must have felt when they saw their home beginning to thaw, when green grass began to emerge from the melting snow, rivers began rushing, trees began blooming, and the chill in the air was replaced by a breeze that smelled of soil and warmth.

And then, how must they have felt their first winter after the land’s rightful king, Aslan, won back the kingdom?  Did the first snowflake send a chill up their spines?  Did the first winter’s frost send them into a panic—oh, no, not this again?  Because Aslan didn’t bring eternal spring to replace the eternal winter; instead, he put the world right, returning Narnia to the rhythm of seasons.

Last Sunday, I joined the Vietnamese Gospel congregation in Allentown, Pa. for their annual Tet (New Year) celebration.  Among Scripture readings and songs welcoming the rain and possibilities of a new year, Pastor Hien and his wife Nga performed a song called, “Only Jesus Brings the Spring.”  I was struck by this simple statement of faith, a reminder that Jesus, through whom the world was created, set our seasons in motion.

And how wonderful that the Vietnamese Tet occurred the Sunday before Lent this year!  Lent (which means “spring” or, literally, the “lengthening of days”), begins with ashes and ends with lilies, a reminder that this season will pass and a new, glorious season is on its way, a season that only Jesus can bring.

Seasons and change aren’t necessarily a bad thing.  On a very fundamental level, they remind us that whatever we’re going through, however challenging our life is, whatever seems impossible or insurmountable, this, too, shall pass.  Just as the people of Narnia heard the trickle of melting snow and murmured in awe, “Aslan is on the move!” we, too, see signs of change in our lives and know that Jesus is lengthening our days, bringing spring to our winter, offering the promise of resurrection and the hope of a world that one day will be made right again.

Seasons change.  Continual spring or summer could end up feeling as confining as the snow and cold of winter.  Just as winter prepares the land for the fruitfulness of planting and harvest, the challenging seasons of our lives shape our character and prepare us for what’s coming next.  Seasons of rest prepare us for seasons of action.  Seasons of learning prepare us for seasons of teaching.  Seasons of pain prepare us for seasons of strength.

Seasons change.  This Lent, I’m giving up my longing for Hawaii and looking ahead to the promise of a spring that only Jesus can bring.

God's Caretakers

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Steve Krissby Steve Kriss, skriss@mosaicmennonites.org

After Hurricane Sandy, I trekked with a Mennonite Disaster Service assessment team out to the peninsula of the Rockaway neighborhoods of New York City. This thin peninsula juts south from Long Island into the Atlantic in the borough of Queens. It’s a beautiful spot for a beach vacation, but a precariously situated stretch of city neighborhoods packed with people.

There are a lot of political issues that I don’t speak to directly. I try to avoid issues with easy-to-figure-out delineations between left and right in the political conversations that boil over into the life of the church. But driving on the thin peninsula with feet of sand blown in from the beach, cars tossed indiscriminately by rising water and trees stripped by wind, I had a distinct moment of realization: “So this is what global climate change looks like.”

I’m ready to believe and name that the relationship between humans and the planet is provoking — or at least providing the perfect storm of situations to cultivate — significant changes that will continue to have serious repercussions for all communities.

As usual in the human community, the most vulnerable are often the people that Jesus suggested we should be the most concerned about — the poor, the elderly, people with disabilities. In Staten Island where the most deaths occurred in the United States from Hurricane Sandy, most who died were from those vulnerable populations.

I do all sorts of things that both contribute to climate change and attempt to take the pressure off. I live in a walkable neighborhood. I recycle religiously and have a garden with my neighbors. I purchase wind-generated energy. But I drive a pick-up truck about 25,000 miles a year, take frequent airplane flights and have innumerable spare laptops and cellphones lying around in the house that will contribute to mounds of toxic electronic waste someday. “Living simply so that others may simply live” is complicated.

As a kid growing up around Johnstown, Pa., I learned rebuilding without rethinking our relationship with the terrain leads to further and repeated destruction.

Our little neighborhood was ripped apart by a tragic flash flood in 1977. It never really recovered. Some houses were never rebuilt. Other reconstructed homes were elevated to avoid first-floor inundations with water if a similar 100-year storm would occur again.

In Johnstown, those storms seem to come every 40 to 50 years. Along the Northeast coast, we’ve had two 100-year storms in the last two years. Journalists and neighbors in the path of the storm’s destruction have remarked that those communities will never be the same after the storm.

Seeing storm-ravaged communities provoked a graphic realization that our actions — our behaviors as humans in an interconnected system — are not divorced from the winds, rain and waves. Instead, we are a part of the creation God has made and called good. God has charged men and women to tend this gift of planetary existence and to live well within it.

Paul writes that all of creation is waiting in anxious expectation for the sons and daughters of God to be revealed. Part of that revealing is reconnecting the human relationship with all of creation, in all of its beauty and raging. It’s connecting our care of the planet with our love of the Creator and our neighbors. Both our action and inaction are intertwined with our relationship to the Divine.

Extravagant, reckless love

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Emilyby Emily Ralph, eralphservant@mosaicmennonites.org

“When I was growing up, I was only allowed one scoop of ice cream for snack,” I told my congregation’s children a number of years ago during our Easter Sunday service.  I wrinkled my nose as I looked at the piddly scoop of ice cream in my hands.  “That’s not very extravagant, is it?”

Such a big word deserved a big illustration, so I pulled out a giant mixing bowl and began scooping ice cream out of a bucket.  Eventually, I gave up and just dumped in the whole gallon, much to the children’s delight.

The boys and girls pushed in closer around the kitchen cart with their eyes wide, gasping as I squeezed an entire bottle of chocolate syrup onto the ice cream, giggling and bouncing on their toes as I covered the surface with sprinkles, unable to contain their excitement as I added cans of whip cream and finished it off with a whole jar of cherries.

God’s love isn’t just a scoop of ice cream, I told the children as their eyes remained glued to the overflowing bowl of goodness.  God’s love is extravagant—like this giant ice cream sundae.  A love so extravagant that it couldn’t stay dead.  A love so extravagant that it came back to life again.

Years later, children and adults alike tell me that they still remember the illustration of the extravagant love of God.  And that word, “extravagant,” has remained a favorite in my vocabulary.

On a recent Sunday, I visited Souderton (Pa.) congregation for a service celebrating the congregation’s partnership with Urban Promise, a ministry that works with kids in the heart of Camden, New Jersey.  The ministry’s director, Bruce Main, shared the story from Matthew 26 of the woman who poured a bottle of perfume on Jesus’ head.  The disciples responded with shock: “What a waste!”  Most of us, Main suggested, would have responded to that woman’s act of love with the same disgust as the disciples—how could she be so reckless?

As Main encouraged us to love recklessly, I found myself thinking about traditional Swiss-German Mennonite values: living simply, frugally.  What a difference there is in how we hear “love extravagantly” and “love recklessly!”  While they mean virtually the same thing, extravagance can be controlled: we can weigh the options, evaluate the outcome, and then, when we decide our love will be effective, love extravagantly.

But what Main, and I believe Jesus, is encouraging us to do is to love with risk.  To pour our love out in ways that we can’t control, can’t predict, ways that may not be efficient, may seemingly not be effective.

Jesus poured out his life knowing that we might still say, “No thanks.”  If we are truly going to join God in God’s mission in the world, we can’t control how people will respond to our love.  We can’t prevent our love from being rejected or ignored.  Perhaps the greatest hindrance to mission is our fear that our experiments will fail and our money, time, or emotional energy will have been needlessly depleted.

May we instead judge extravagant love by the act, not the outcome.  May we see reckless love not as carelessness, but as overflowing compassion.  And may our extravagant love draw others to a God who first recklessly “wasted” his love on us.

The good news is still breaking

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Steve Krissby Stephen Kriss, director of leadership cultivation

“After a sermon like that, I just want to cry,” commented octogenarian Roma Ruth, reflecting on Salford intern John Tyson’s debut sermon on Sunday.  John is an Eastern Mennonite University and Christopher Dock High School grad studying now at Princeton Seminary.  His internship represents the best of flourishing conference, congregation, and community relationships.  He is learning alongside his old high school history teacher, Joe Hackman, who is now Salford’s lead pastor.   I’m serving as John’s official supervisor for the year, a role I’m happy to fill as the conference’s director of leadership cultivation.

Roma’s family helped to start the small mission church in Somerset County, Pa., where my family first connected with the Mennonites.  Now, almost thirty years later, I am the one cultivating new generations of leaders.  In the seven years I have worked for the conference, it has been both a challenge and a joy to do this kind of work, helping a historic community navigate into the realities of next-generation leadership.  I’ve worked with dozens of interns, students, pastors.   I continue to witness amazing and sometimes disturbing things.  It’s not easy to be a next-generation leader in the church.  There are lots of bang-ups and bruises.   What amazes me, though, is the willingness of young people to invest in our broken but beautiful communities in spite of, and sometimes because of, this very brokenness.

Roma told me that her tears were from the realization that John’s sermon spoke powerfully to issues of the Good News, justice, and peace that are close to her heart.  She recognized in the sermon yet another turning of the page.  It’s a gracious realization that God continues to call forth new leaders in nearly 300-year-old congregations in a half-millennia-old tradition in ways that are both resonant and discordant with the past, but nonetheless harmonizing with the way of Christ across the generations.

I am becoming more and more aware that the Spirit is increasingly calling leaders across ethnic lines, calling women, calling people born outside of the Mennonite fold into our contexts of worship and ministry.  These men and women are highly skilled, highly committed, willing to be vulnerable, willing to contribute without thought of compensation, often living somewhere between patient and zealous, believing in both constancy and change.  Of course there are still areas of growth, but overall the gifts of next-generation leaders are like the gifts of the magi—appropriate, overwhelming, full of mystery and grace.

It is fitting that John’s sermon was on Epiphany, a time of celebrating the gifts of those coming from another place, marking the inbreaking of salvation, wise to the ways of the world, bearing with them what they hope will witness to a beautiful new beginning embedded in a real and historic story.   Our community’s challenge is to have the courage, wherewithal, and imagination, along with the spiritual rootedness, to understand and celebrate that God is still with us and that, as John said in his sermon and Roma affirmed this last Sunday at Salford, “the good news is still breaking.”