Living God, by the power of your Spirit, help us to hear your holy word, that we may truly understand; that, understanding, we may believe; and believing, we may follow in faithfulness and obedience [and joy!], seeking your honor and glory in all that we do, through Jesus Christ. Amen.
We just prayed the words of Ulrich Zwingli – a 16th century Swiss church reformer alongside whom the first group of early Anabaptists emerged in Zurich. And if your eyes are starting to glaze over and you’re already slouching in your seat at the mention of anything from the 16th century… you’re likely not alone.
But during this fall we’re going to dive into what it means to be Anabaptist Mennonite Christians today, part of a tradition that arose in Europe in the 1520s and today continues as a movement with incredible theological, linguistic, cultural, geographic, and denominational diversity.
Telling stories about how we got to this place, how we got here – as Christians, as Mennonites, as CHMFers – is as complicated as answering the question – who are we now? These questions are worth wrestling with and searching for good answers to, because I think that people around us are curious. And we’re curious:
“What’s a Mennonite?” – you maybe have been asked. “That’s like Mormon, right?”
“You’re Mennonite – I thought you guys rode in buggies and wear bonnets?”
“Oh, you’re Mennonite, you’re the same as the Amish, right?”
“What do the Anti-Baptists have against Baptists? Because I grew up going to a Baptist church?
“Why do you talk about peace so much?”
“Does being Mennonite mean we’re Christian like everyone else or not?
These questions arise from curiosity about the uniqueness of the Anabaptist movement but also the difficulty in articulating its distinctives to others. Why does being an Anabaptist Mennonite Christian matter? And how do we tell the story of our faith to ourselves and others?
The apostle Paul, in his letter to the church in Corinth is addressing a congregation quarreling amongst themselves. One faction describes themselves as belonging to Paul and another belonging to Apollos. The contentious Corinthians care about what they believe and how they became the church that they are. They’ve found faith in Christ in this community. For some it was Paul who first made that connection to the faith for them, for others it was the care of Apollos that strengthened their decision to follow Jesus.
Paul uses the metaphor of the church as a living garden – and describes himself as the one who planted the church while Apollos watered it… and while these jobs of care and nurture for the church are important – it is only God who gives the growth to the church, Paul says. And Paul’s metaphor reframes the focus from the leader to the purpose of community itself – from the gardener to the garden and ultimately to God.
It’s one thing to get excited and argue about all sorts of different gardening or farming philosophies, different seed catalogs, different books and Youtube gardening experts…but it’s another to feel in your back and hands the hundreds of hours of labor invested in those plants. But beyond this, what really matters, if the church is a field or garden, is that it thrives, and only the power of God’s love can provide growth. The miracle of growth and life and the miracle that the church is a community at all, is a gift from the divine.
Focusing on the divine creativity that brought the church community into being, shifts how human leadership is viewed within this community. Paul describes both himself and Apollos as sharing a common purpose, working and laboring together as God’s servants.
The other metaphor that Paul uses for the church is a building. And Paul is proud of the work he’s done, writing “according to the grace of God given to me, like a skilled master builder I laid a foundation, and someone else is building on it.” Maybe Paul’s pride gets the better of him here as he really underscores that it was him (not Apollos) that planted the church in Corinth and it was him that laid the foundation for this church to be what it is.
But then Paul subverts his own importance by centering Jesus: “Each builder must choose how to build on it. For no one can lay any foundation other than that has been laid; that foundation is Jesus Christ.”
Paul reminds the church in Corinth, that it’s not Paul or Apollos or anyone else’s work that has made the church possible – the church’s only foundation is Jesus. This verse – 1 Corinthians 3:11 – was the favorite scripture of excommunicated Dutch Catholic Priest and Anabaptist, Menno Simons. Menno would preface all of his writings with this verse.
Next week we’ll dive more into who Menno Simons was and the bigger Anabaptist movement that he was a part of. But for today – all you need to know is that in the 1500s there was a Dutch guy with the cool-sounding name of Menno, and he left the Catholic church after reading the Bible and wrestling with theologies of communion, baptism, and discipleship.
And I wanted to begin this series on “What it means to be an Anabaptist Mennonite Christian” with this text from I Corinthians 3 – not only because it is our namesake’s favorite scripture and it distills how central Jesus is to the life of the church and to the Anabapist movement that’s still unfolding today, but also because Paul in that letter to the Corinthians is wrestling with the relationship between the role of leaders and names and founding stories and factions in the church.
Who are we? Are they part of us? How did we get here? Who gets to tell our story?
Being an Anabaptist Mennonite Christian matters not so that we can boast about how great our leaders are or pretend like we have a history more holy or exceptional than anyone else does. Being an Anabaptist Mennonite Christian isn’t about who your parents or grandparents or ancestors were or where the home farm is or knowing certain recipes or having the right last name or going to the right college or singing the right songs.
Being an Anabaptist Mennonite Christian matters – because it is a living tradition in which we have come to know and follow the living God made flesh in Jesus Christ.
Being an Anabaptist Mennonite Christian doesn’t mean we deny the goodness and beauty of other traditions, but it does mean that it is in this particular living movement of Jesus followers that we have come to claim Jesus as the center of our faith, community as the center of our life and reconciliation as the center of our work.
We don’t come to know God in the abstract – but we encounter God and learn how to worship and follow God in the nitty gritty particulars of this tradition. Jesus didn’t become flesh in the abstract – but was a Palestinian Jew born in Bethlehem, raised to know God in Galilee.
The living Anabaptist Mennonite tradition offers to us a testimony of what following Jesus looks like – how it prays, sings, serves, heals, welcomes. We can’t be Christians by ourselves. We need other people to tell the good of Jesus to us. We need others to live and share that good news with too.
When we hit the limits of our words – our tradition gives us many praying witnesses to walk alongside. When the violence of our world overwhelms us, we sing alongside those who’ve raised their voices staring down guns or engulfed by flames. When we don’t know what it means to live out our baptism, we remember the water poured out in secret home meetings and the rivers where believers submerged one one another, believing that they were baptizing one another into the peace of Christ.
For Christ is the foundation that has already been laid, Jesus is the cornerstone, and the Anabaptist Mennonite tradition is one living witness to Christ. Chapel Hill Mennonite is a living witness to Christ.
Some of us here have been a part of CHMF for as long as you’ve been alive. Others here chose this church or the church chose you – in a season of hunger for a community of faith that looked like Jesus. Some of you – might not even know why you’re here – but people were friendly and you kept coming back – and now you’re trying to figure out what being a Mennonite follower of Jesus means. Welcome to you all.
All of us here bear responsibility – for this field that is the church, for this messy patched and propped up and many-roomed building that is the church. We are all called to be God’s servants working together, choosing with care how to build on the history of past witnesses to the faith, choosing to repair past harms and mistakes.
And in your love for the church, whether for CHMF or our Mennonite denomination or the church worldwide – never let that love morph into boasting, belittling, or competition. Be builders of compassion, be tenders and waterers of love.
And remember that it is always God who provides the growth of the beloved community that is the church. Remember that for all our efforts, hopes and dreams, the foundation already has been laid, and that foundation is Jesus.
So thanks be to God that we have come to know the love of Christ and the communion of the Holy Spirit, here in the messy and beautifully quirky corner of God’s garden that is the Anabaptist Mennonite church, that is this fellowship of Chapel Hill Mennonite.
And may we not boast about who we are or who we’ve been, but may we remember that all good things are ours, past, present and future, because we belong to Christ, and Christ belongs to God.
May it be so.