Hope that is in you

Title: Hope that is in you
Date: May 29, 2011 (6^th Sunday of Easter)
Texts: Ps 66:8-20, 1 Pe 3:13-22; Jn 14:15-21
Author: Isaac Villegas

 

Let’s review the basics. Easter is about resurrection; in the church calendar Easter is a seven-week celebration of the resurrection of Jesus. And resurrection is all about hope; resurrection and hope go together. The empty tomb is a sign of hope—hope that death does not have the last word. Resurrection leads us into the hope that the powers of violence aren’t final. Instead, resurrection reveals to us an unstoppable force of life, reaching beyond violence and death. 1 Peter says it this way: you are now saved “through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, with angels, authorities, and powers made subject to him” (1 Peter 3:21-22).

That pretty much sums up our faith: through the Holy Spirit, Jesus was raised from the dead, showing us that the powers of this world cannot overcome the God of life. And the empty tomb is the birthplace of our hope—hope that light can shine in the midst of darkness, that something can come from nothing, that what we thought was impossible can actually come to pass. As I’ve heard some of the men in prison put it, God can make a way out of no way. With resurrection, Jesus opens up before us another way of life.

To believe in the resurrection is to live in it. We believe with our bodies, with our lives, with all that we do and say. Easter wasn’t just an event 2,000 years ago; Easter, instead, is a way of life, a way of life that testifies to the truth no matter what the consequences, even if we are threatened with death as Jesus was. In our passage from John’s Gospel, Jesus tells the disciples that, through the Holy Spirit, Jesus will be present with them as “the Spirit of truth “(Jn 14:17). To believe in the resurrection is to let our lives become witnesses to the truth of Jesus, to his life and teachings; “If you love me,” he says to his disciples, “you will keep my commandments” (v. 15).

This is the main reason why I was drawn into the Mennonite church and the Anabaptist tradition. As I read the 500 year-old stories of Anabaptists, I saw in their lives the resurrected life of Jesus, the Spirit of truth, lives that defied death. To put it in the words of our Psalm for today, Mennonites  “went through fire and water” as they followed the way of Jesus (Ps 66:12); they passed through the waters of being drowned for their Easter faith, and the fires of being burnt at the stake for their witness to the gospel of God’s peace.

In the middle of the 16^th century, Menno Simons wrote about their dedication to the life and truth of Jesus; they were committed to following Jesus, Menno said, no matter what the costs—through fire and water, he said, using the words from Psalm 66. Let me read what he wrote, some of which is printed on the front of your bulletins:

We preach, as much as is possible, both by day and by night, in houses and in the fields, in forests and wastes, hither and yon, at home or abroad, in prison and in dungeons, in water and in fire, on the scaffold and on the wheel, before lords and princes, through mouth and pen, with possessions and blood, with life and death.[1]

When I was in college, I heard about this peaceful version of Christianity embodied in the Anabaptist and Mennonite tradition. At the time, I was having a kind of crisis of faith. Here’s what happened to me. I heard what the people at my church, what my Christian friends, were saying after the mass killing that happened on September 11^th, 2001. I heard Christians I respected calling for revenge. I heard the people who had taught me to have faith in Jesus turn around and say that this event required violence, that God’s justice somehow required violence. So, I thought to myself, how can I believe what they taught me about having faith in Jesus when they now were telling me to ignore what Jesus said about loving your enemies? Their desire for revenge seemed like a denial of their faith in Jesus. So why would I continue to believe in a Jesus who they didn’t seem to trust during times of struggle, when Jesus seemed to contradict their violent patriotism?

As I considered giving up on the Christianity of the people around me, someone told me about Mennonites and the Anabaptist version of Christianity. These stories saved my faith. I heard about a way of being Christian that took Jesus seriously—that took seriously all of Jesus’ teachings, including his nonviolence in the face of death. I realized that I could continue to call myself a Christian, as long as I was part of a church and a tradition that considered Jesus’ nonviolence as essential to the Christian faith, a non-negotiable. I was convinced that nonviolence is what hope looks like in our world. Because to ask for someone’s death would be to give up on the power of God’s forgiveness. To kill someone would be to disbelieve in the transformation of God’s grace. Violence is a refusal to hope for the impossible, for a miracle, a refusal to hope for resurrection. In a society that celebrates the death of enemies, our faith in Jesus’ way of nonviolence is an act of hope—hope in the miraculous power of God’s redemption, that the One who raised Jesus from the dead can also lead evil people to repentance and new life.

We heard from 1 Peter that we should “always be prepared to give… a reason for the hope that is in you” (1 Pe 3:15). So I thought I should tell you about what saved my faith. My hope was renewed when Fred Bahnson invited me to this church almost eight years ago.

As I’ve worshiped with you over the years, I have found myself being drawn into the way of Christ’s peace, the nonviolent community of God we call the church. Here, in our worship and fellowship, as we walk with one another, we give ourselves to a lifelong education in the ways that make for peace. We choose to work through our disagreements with patience, instead of resorting to violence. And we commit to struggle with one another instead of abandoning each other when a sister or brother offends us.

From this church, I have learned that faith in Christ’s peace involves more than speaking out against war and violence. Peace is a way of life, a commitment to struggle patiently with another, to find ways to actively love our enemies, and to be gentle with the people whom we may dislike. Church is a school for learning how to be people of peace, so that we can offer this same peace to the world, to our friends and neighbors, to the people we work for and the people we work with, to strangers and enemies.

As we welcome new members into our church today, we invite them into our disagreements and into our peace. We welcome Meghan, Nathan, Rebecca, and Scott because we need all the help we can get to figure out what it means to be a community of hope, a community that bears witness to the peace of Christ, the good news of God’s love for the world. With these new members come God’s gifts of faith, hope, and love. With them comes the renewal of God’s presence. I am in you, Jesus says, and you are in me (Jn 14:20). I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you (v. 20).

As we welcome new members, we receive the presence of God, more images of what God is like. We celebrate the hope that is in them, and welcome them with God’s love. Their membership in this church is also a time for all of us to renew our commitment to Christ’s way of peace in a world at war.

So please join me as we close by reading together the words of Menno Simons printed on the front of your bulletins:

We preach, as much as is possible, both by day and by night, in houses and in the fields, in forests and wastes, hither and yon, at home or abroad, in prison and in dungeons, in water and in fire, on the scaffold and on the wheel, before lords and princes, through mouth and pen, with possessions and blood, with life and death.