LAWRENCE JENNINGS of Infinity Mennonite Church in New York City has been involved in community and economic development for more than three decades. Since 2013, he has been affiliated with GreenFaith, first as a Fellow, and currently as a lead organizer of the new Restoration Nation faith communities/green jobs initiative. A member of the Thomas Berry Forum for Ecological Dialogue at Iona College, he was one of the key organizers of the People’s Climate March faith contingent, and has ongoing involvement with the People’s Climate Movement, the organizing body that took shape after the March. In these involvements, as well as his work with The Groundswell Group and Moral Mondays, he works closely with faith communities and inner city and “frontline” groups that often are overlooked or excluded. He authored the Open Letter from African American clergy on Climate Change as part of the “Our Voices” campaign, and is on the Steering Committee of Interfaith Moral Action on Climate, both of which aim to encourage people of to speak out about the moral and scientific urgency of the environmental crisis. Lawrence was asked by GreenFaith to write a response to the Pope’s newly released environmental teachings from the Anabaptist/Mennonite perspective. His article originally appeared in two parts on the Mennonite Church USA website (here and here). Continue reading “A papal encyclical, a Mennonite resolution, and the relevance of Anablacktivism”
Author: gws
Take No Bread for the Journey
We are Each Other’s Bread and Wine
no. 9
by Bradley Roth
Warden Mennonite Church (Warden, Washington)
February 15, 2009
Mark 6:7-13
In Mark 6, Jesus gathers the Twelve together and instructs them in their mission. They’re to go out in pairs, staying wherever they receive a welcome. He gives them authority over unclean spirits, and we find them proclaiming repentance, casting out evil spirits, and anointing the sick for healing (vv. 12-13). In all of this, the disciples are to travel lightly—extremely lightly. Jesus tells them to take nothing except a staff—“no bread, no bag, no money in their belts” (v.8). They can wear sandals, but they’re not to take an extra tunic—that is, no change of clothes.
To travel light is to be nimble, free to go where you need to at a moment’s notice—like fitting everything into a carry-on bag. But it’s also a recipe for an incredible sort of vulnerability. Jesus desired to remind the disciples of their dependence on God.
Something like this happens at the Lord’s Table. Continue reading “Take No Bread for the Journey”
Worship’s Feast
We are Each Other’s Bread and Wine
no. 8
by Rachel Epp Miller
San Antonio Mennonite Church (Texas)
November 16, 2008
Isaiah 25:6-10; Psalm 34:1-10
When I think of feasts, many stories and images come to mind. I think of family gatherings where hearty conversation goes in more directions than the people present. I think of my experience of feasting with new friends in a small village in Kenya where their generosity was displayed with everything they had. I think of our annual Thanksgiving worship service where we eat together and share about God’s presence in our lives, or the Love Feast on Maundy Thursday when we together remember and reenact Jesus’ last supper with his disciples. I think of the daily routine of my friend Rosemary who had Alzheimer’s disease who would always say to me, her caregiver, after supper, “My sufficiency has been sufonsified”. I think of camping with nieces and nephews, roasting sticky marshmallows over the fire and stuffing them with Caramilk bars. But I also think of the daily reality of food—eating lunch at church while chatting with Jake or Hugo or reading the Mennonite Weekly Review, enjoying a late supper with Wendell while catching up on each other’s day, or laughing together through last night’s John Stewart episode. Continue reading “Worship’s Feast”
Vatican and Lutheran World Federation to prepare common liturgies for 2017 commemoration of Protestant reformation
Mennonite – Lutheran reconciliation service in 2010 provided inspiration
(LWI) – Rev. Martin Junge, General Secretary of The Lutheran World Federation (LWF) says relations between the Lutheran and Catholic churches have reached an epoch-making turning-point.
Speaking during a panel discussion, held 18 December, in the Lutheran church in Rome, Junge emphasized that the relationship between Lutherans and Catholics was being transformed “from conflict to communion.” Precisely in a world “in which religion and faith are regularly portrayed and perceived as trouble makers,” he said it was a phenomenal testimony that the Lutheran and Roman Catholic churches continued to move “towards a profound communion that frees us to serve God and the world.” Continue reading “Vatican and Lutheran World Federation to prepare common liturgies for 2017 commemoration of Protestant reformation”
Ecumenical friendship calls for solidarity with ancient Christian communities in Middle East
Ecumenical friendship is not only about theological dialogue and common causes–it is also about solidarity in suffering, our calling to “bear one another’s burdens” in the body of Christ so that we might “fulfill the law of Christ” (Gal 6:2). The Catholic Near East Welfare Agency (CNEWA) is a Vatican agency that provides humanitarian and pastoral support for the Eastern Catholic churches. CNEWA works in Eastern Europe, Northeast Africa and throughout the Middle East. A key area of CNEWAs work has been supporting seminaries and training catechists in some of the oldest Christian communities that are struggling to survive in challenging conditions.
This year the church marks Advent and Christmas while many thousands of Catholic Christians have been displaced by expanding war in northern Iraq. They are waiting and wondering whether they will ever be able to return home. Their story is told in an article titled “Exodus” in the magazine ONE, published by CNEWA. Here’s a brief sample:
At night, above this landscape of abjection reigns a scattering of glimmering crosses. On the feast of the Triumph of the Cross, celebrated on 14 September, Iraqi Christians erect illuminated crosses on top of their buildings and leave them there for several weeks. The crosses they left behind in Qaraqosh and Bartella have most likely been taken down or destroyed, but crosses seem to have redoubled across the recently overpopulated Christian enclaves of Iraqi Kurdistan.
While the presence of the crosses certainly brings hope to the faithful, the harsh reality grinds on: It has been months since their expulsion and they are still languishing in churches, tents, abandoned basements, unfinished buildings, repurposed schools and social centers.”
For the full story click here
Communion and peace
We are Each Other’s Bread and Wine
no. 7
by Joetta Handrich Schlabach
Faith Mennonite Church
Minneapolis. Minnesota, 11 January 2009
Jeremiah 31:7-9a, 12-13; John 1:1-5, 10-14
A number of years ago the speaker at a retreat I attended gave a couple of pointers for dealing with difficult people. By difficult, she didn’t mean the mildly aggravating kind, but the person with whom one is in deep conflict, perhaps to the point of loathing. Imagine that it’s almost impossible to speak with this person without getting into a shouting match, or having dead silence settle between you like a wall of ice.
Janet Hagberg told us that when she anticipated an encounter with the person with whom she had become estranged, she did two things mentally and spiritually to prepare herself. First, she pulled out an imaginary electrical cord so that the negative current from this person would not flow to her. Second, she imagined offering this person the bread and wine of communion. “I cannot hate someone with whom I share the body of Christ,” she said.
Mennonites have historically believed in a close relationship between reconciliation and communion. In former days when communion was a somber, holy, and rare occasion, practiced only once or twice a year, the pastors and bishops in some regional conferences would pay individual visits to each church member to ensure that no conflicts or hard feelings existed between any of the members. If such discord existed, people were expected to go and seek forgiveness and to set things right before receiving communion. In that framework, peace-seeking and peacemaking preceded the table. This was the living out of the teaching of the Apostle Paul to the Corinthian church that they should not eat and drink “in an unworthy manner” (1 Cor. 11:27).
In recent years many Mennonite churches, and we are among them, have begun to practice more frequent communion. They and we have come to believe that our communion practice and our commitment to peacemaking might be strengthened by greater frequency and by recognizing that peacemaking is linked not just to the preparation for communion but to the very eating and the drinking, and the actions that follow.
The essence of what we commemorate in communion is encapsulated in the words of John 1: “…and the Word became flesh and lived among us.” However we understand the mystery of the incarnation—God entering the human experience in Jesus—we are offered the ultimate example of peacemaking in the incarnation. No matter how many times humanity turned its back on God, no matter how many times those who considered themselves “God’s chosen people” broke the covenant relationship God had established with them, no matter how cruel and barbaric people were toward one another, God chose to enter that fallen, broken reality and express through a face-to-face human relationship the love that God has always had for all of creation. Even without dying, this would have been more than anyone would expect. To go even further and let this beloved humanity misunderstand and deal a death blow to the Holy One represents a love we cannot fathom. This is our example and our call to peacemaking.
Communion is not merely a reenactment, a memorial of something that happened in the past, the once-and-for-all death of Jesus for the sins of humanity. It is also an affirmation of the current commitment each of us who partakes makes to allow this saving love to operate in us so that we are ready to give our lives—our body and blood—in service to others. And it is a proclamation of a future reality—God’s Kingdom—that we believe, by faith, is already breaking into our world to be completed when Christ returns.
Therefore, when we take communion, we are fed and nourished by the saving love of Jesus. We are drawn into communion with our brothers and sisters in this congregation and in the worldwide body of Christ, which bids us to care for their needs as we care for our own. We are called to compassion for the wide world of suffering, which has not yet tasted life in the kingdom of God’s shalom. This includes compassion for those who inflict the suffering, just as Jesus had compassion for his assassins.
Our participation in communion is practice: a holy rehearsal for the way Christ calls us to live, to interact, and to pray each day. Each day we need to be in communion with God, thanking God for coming to us despite our brokenness and sin and granting us forgiveness and peace. Each day we need to be mindful of our brothers and sisters in Christ, here and around the world, seeking reconciliation with any who have wronged us or whom we have offended. And each day we need to counter the messages of despair that shout out from headlines with prayers of persistent hope for God’s kingdom to come. When we pray for wholeness for others, we cannot at the same time wish or do them harm. When we thank God for saving us, we cannot at the same time wish God’s wrath on others. Communion calls us to a total life of peacemaking.
As we gather for communion, we will give expression to these various dimensions. We invite you to come down the center aisle and approach the servers in pairs (whoever arrives at the same time you do). Each of you will take a piece of bread from the basket and place it in the hand of the other and then eat it together; you will do the same with the cup. In the coming week, please be mindful of and pray for the person with whom you share communion.
After you have received the elements, you may move to the large table where you will find small pieces of paper and pens. Here you may write the name of a person, a relationship, or a place in the world that needs peace, which you will commit to pray for throughout this year. You may use a paper clip to hang your prayer on the tree.[*] Everyone is invited to take part in this prayer exercise, even if you do not participate in communion.
When Jesus knew that his time with his disciples was coming to a close, he reassured them with these words: “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.” As if words were not enough, he took bread and after giving thanks said: “This is my body that is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” In the same way, after supper, he took the cup, saying: “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me.”
As often as we eat this bread and drink this cup, we proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes; we proclaim his presence with us here; and we joyfully anticipate his coming kingdom.
[*] The tree that was part of our Advent/Christmas/Epiphany visual elements was still standing on January 11 when this sermon was preached. It became our peace tree as we decorated it with prayers for peace.
Communion: a witness for peace
We are Each Other’s Bread and Wine
no. 6
by James M. Lapp
Salford Mennonite Church
Harleysville, Pennsylvania, May 4, 2008
Recently I participated in a peace witness in Washington DC. About 3000 of us met on a Friday evening at the National Cathedral for nearly two hours of worship together. We then went out into the cold wind and rain to walk together to the White House to give witness to the urgent concern we felt about the war in Iraq. We carried tiny lamps as signs of hope in the darkness of night. After walking perhaps two miles, we circled the White House singing, holding our small lights as a witness against the dark shroud of war that hangs over our nation. Likely the President was not at home the evening we encircled his house, but this did not deter the enthusiasm of those who walked in an orderly way to give voice to the depth of their convictions. It was one small witness for peace in a disordered and fragmented world.
I have occasionally participated in other gestures designed as a witness for peace, such as redirecting that part of my federal taxes devoted to past, present and future wars to ministries of compassion. I have joined with countless others in writing letters to congressional leaders to call for refocusing of national priorities toward peaceful activities and to give witness to my faith in Jesus the Prince of Peace. I realize these actions may seem strange and perhaps even reprehensible to some of you. Many Christians agree that war does not represent God’s intention for humankind, but too often we sit back in helplessness not knowing what to do about it. Continue reading “Communion: a witness for peace”
Pope Francis apologizes for persecution of Pentecostals
by Josephine McKenna
Religious News Service
CASERTA, Italy (RNS) Pope Francis sought forgiveness for decades of persecution of Italian Pentecostals when he met with around 300 evangelicals from the U.S., Argentina and Italy in the southern town of Caserta on Monday (July 28).
The pope made his second visit in as many days to the Mafia stronghold near Naples, this time to meet evangelical pastor Giovanni Traettino, whom he befriended while he was archbishop of Buenos Aires.
During the visit, Francis apologized for the persecution suffered by Pentecostals under Italy’s fascist regime in the 1920s and 1930s and urged Christians to celebrate their diversity and unity. Continue reading “Pope Francis apologizes for persecution of Pentecostals”
Tension at the table
We are Each Other’s Bread and Wine
no. 5
by Rev. Joanna Harader
Peace Mennonite Church
Lawrence, Kansas, August 3, 2008
I invite you to dig into your memories and imaginations. Envision the table. It’s a big table, with all the leaves put in. The table is covered by Aunt Betty’s table cloth that doesn’t quite reach the ends. There are lots of chairs around the table—six nice wooden ones, a few wobbly chairs brought up from the basement, a couple of metal folding chairs, and, of course, the piano bench where the two smallest have to sit and share the curved end of the table.
It’s supposed to be a nice meal. The food is good. There is an air of celebration. Things are going well. Grandpa says, “Amen.” You say, “Please pass the Jello salad.” But then Uncle Herman says, “Can you believe those anti-family kooks up in Massachusetts, letting gay people get married?” And your cousin Frank, who is still in the closet, looks intently at his mashed potatoes. Continue reading “Tension at the table”