Category: Features

Communion and peace

We are Each Other’s Bread and Wine
no. 7

Eichenberg's Lord's Supper (small)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

Eichenberg's Lord's Supper (small)by James M. Lapp
Salford Mennonite Church
Harleysville, Pennsylvania, May 4, 2008

 

 

John 17:1-11, 20-24

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” →

Washing feet, getting real

Gerald W. Schlabach
Homily for liturgy of footwashing
Bridgefolk 2014
Texts: Psalm 33, Philippians 2:1-11, John 1:1-27

Perhaps you have read the novels of the Southern writer Walker Percy. Percy had barely begun a medical career in the early 1940s when he contracted tuberculosis. During his long recuperation he began reading the Russian novelist Dostoevsky, the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard, as well as other existentialists. He never practiced medicine again, but instead became a writer. And in 1947 he became a Catholic. Together with Flannery O’Connor and Graham Greene, his work has played some elusive role in weaving a Catholic worldview for me and perhaps others here. (In checking his bio I even learned this new factoid: Three months before his death in 1990 he became a Benedictine oblate and is buried in a monastic cemetery.)

Especially in his first two novels, The Moviegoer and The Last Gentleman, Percy’s lead characters are all uneasy. 1950s America has told them how to prosper, succeed, make their ways through the world, and engage in its obligatory pursuit of happiness. Yet the pretense and unreality of it all nags at them. Binx the “moviegoer,” for example, sees himself on a secret search, for what he is not sure. His step-cousin and possible love interest Kate is intermittently depressed in a slightly manic way. But is her condition simply depression? Continue reading “Washing feet, getting real” →

Tension at the table

We are Each Other’s Bread and Wine
no. 5

Eichenberg's Lord's Supper (small)by Rev. Joanna Harader
Peace Mennonite Church
Lawrence, Kansas, August 3, 2008

 

Matthew 26: 17-30

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” →

What do we remember?

We are Each Other’s Bread and Wine
no. 4

Eichenberg's Lord's Supper (small)by Gareth Brandt
Emmanuel Mennonite Church
bbotsford, British Columbia, Canada, November 11, 2007

 

1 Corinthians 11:17-34

On Remembrance Day in Canada, our country asks us to remember the sacrifice of soldiers who died and are dying in battle.  “Armistice Day” was the original name given to this national holiday that began in 1919 to remember the First World War as the “war to end all wars.”  Armistice is about the laying down of weapons.

Sadly, World War 1 was not the war to end all wars but the war that began the bloodiest century in the history of humankind.  Guns have not been laid down; rather, more sophisticated weaponry has been invented.  We have a day of remembrance, but it seems we have amnesia.  We forget and repeat the vicious cycles of violence all over again.

Without memory we are bound to repeat the mistakes of history.  Memory is also one of the primary handles we have for understanding the roots of our faith.  Though we experience faith in the present, those experiences are built on the foundation of memory.  Memory keeps the significance of past events relevant and meaningful for the present.
Continue reading “What do we remember?” →

Praying an Anabaptist office

by Chris Labadie

This semester, as part of Fr. Anthony’s School of Theology•Seminary course on the Liturgy of the Hours, we had the assignment of praying an intentional “office” experience and journaling about how the prayer connected with our daily life and the course materials.

I chose to spend the week of Easter praying morning and evening prayers from Take Our Moments and Our Days: An Anabaptist Prayer Book. This was a fascinating exercise – coming from my usual base in the more traditional aspects of Catholic liturgy – because historically the Anabaptist worship tradition is much freer and rooted in the movement of the Spirit. “Anabaptist” is an umbrella term for various groups growing out of the “Radical Reformation” – Amish, Hutterites, Mennonites, Brethren, Bruderhof, Apostolic Christian Church – but from what I have researched Take our Moments and Days is associated primarily with Mennonites. The idea that there would be a set form of liturgical worship in the Anabaptist tradition intrigued me because I wondered how this would work with the freer worship style.

Continue reading “Praying an Anabaptist office” →

How I met the Mennonites

by Beverly Schmitt, Michigan

How I met the Mennonites is a story of stories which began in the early seventies. One glorious May Wednesday, my husband and I drove from our southwest Michigan home to the rural Shipshewana, Ind., community with three hundred some residents, for the weekly flea market and auction we’d heard so much about. On Wednesdays, however, an extra twenty thousand people, from all over the Midwest and beyond, showed up for the festivities: for the fruit and vegetable market, home-baked goods, and auctions of livestock, household goods and tools; acres of wares for sale and… the local community of Amish and Mennonites.

Yes, as we shared the road with horse-drawn buggies, we’d noticed the simple, white farm houses, no power lines, cheerful gardens, colorful laundry, teams plowing the fields, children at the one room schoolhouses, and bake sales of cookies, pies, breads, egg noodles and angel food cakes, tended by gentle people whose dress and language reflected another place and time. We stopped and sampled the quiet hospitality of folks living their faith with simplicity, in harmony with the land and others, not for show, but clearly in a way that set them apart. We were smitten, and wanted our Catholic grade-school children to experience this culture and its values – a spirit caught, not taught.

Continue reading “How I met the Mennonites” →

Dear Monks / In One Voice

Dear Monks,

I arrived at Saint John’s on New Year’s Day 2009, as “wife of” a scholar at the Collegeville Institute for Ecumenical and Cultural Research, afraid I would either freeze to death or die of boredom! I came not knowing what “the Hours” were and not knowing much about monks or why monks exist. But soon I was walking to the abbey church in minus-20-degree weather to pray with you. I returned day after day, not knowing why, but I simply could not stay away. You were always there in the choir stalls; I came and you took me in. You gave me hope.

At daily Mass I listened to homilies that were from the heart. Some were inside the box, some outside—but they were homilies that have and are changing my life. I prayed prayers that were no longer just words, but truths that caused me to question and to make commitments.

After five months at the Collegeville Institute, my husband and I returned to our home in Washington, D.C., but you were still with me. I trusted that my heart, the one you helped to heal, the one that is learning to listen, would be a heart that gives to others and helps bring healing and love to the wider world. If and when that happens, it is because of you.

Continue reading “Dear Monks / In One Voice” →

The mentally ill are our lepers

In a March 28 article in National Catholic Reporter, Melissa Musick Nussbaum compares the lepers healed by Jesus, previously ostracized as “unclean,” to patients of mental health facilities today.  She writes:

I serve on the board of my local Catholic Charities. Our Marian House Soup Kitchen and drop-in center is located downtown, just across the street from the cathedral. Many of those we serve are mentally ill. Every year the cry goes up to move the facility to some place far away from downtown shops and restaurants. Every year the cry goes up to relocate our Lazaruses so that our way is unhindered, our view is unspoiled, and our fantasies remain intact.

So I’ve been interested in Dr. [Abraham] Nussbaum’s work, a work he does with many others of like mind, to find a different way to treat and live with the mentally ill. His attention is drawn to the many Mennonites, who, as conscientious objectors during World War II, worked as attendants in American mental asylums.

Menno Simons, the Anabaptist father of the Mennonites, was a Norbertine priest before he left the order and the Catholic church. But Nussbaum believes that Simons, and his followers, may help lead the church back into right relationship with our brothers and sisters who suffer from mental illness.

Nussbaum goes on to outline a history of the Mennonite conscientious objectors who completed their Civilian Public Service in psychiatric hospitals, refusing to use any force against patients.  She concludes with a vision for what service to the mentally ill could look like in a Catholic context.  The full article is available here.