God Restores in the Midst of Despair
College Community MB Church, Clovis, CA
4th Sunday of Lent
March 22, 2009

Numbers 21:4-9
John 3:14-21
Ephesians 2:1-10


Imagine the apostle Paul preaching these words to us:

You were dead through the trespasses and sins in which you once lived, following the course of this world, following the ruler of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work among those who are disobedient. All of us once lived among them in the passions of our flesh, following the desires of flesh and senses, and we were by nature children of wrath, like everyone else. But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ – by grace you have been saved – and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the ages to come he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God – not the result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.

There was a time when we lived a different way of life from a different view of the world. And at some point our worldview shifted: God revealed himself to us and we were changed. We encountered the gospel, the good news that this present evil age is passing away and God has brought near his Kingdom. The ways of life that fill this world with despair and death are not the only ways. And we do not have to live them any longer. There is a power that has freed us. In the midst of despair, in the thick of deathliness, God restores. “God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ.”

Moses led God’s people out of despair and deathliness. They were on their way to the place where God would establish them. Yet, in the midst of the wilderness, the people began to forget the despair and deathliness of Egypt as they suffered the difficulty of their journey. As we heard in the Old Testament lesson, the people cried out: “Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness?” The reader’s theater elaborated on the next statement: “For there is no food and no water, and we detest this miserable food, this God-provided manna.” Somewhere between leaving Egypt and bypassing Edom, the people began to see their journey leading not to promise, but to death. And they despaired.

Oftentimes when we are on our way to the newness God has planned for us, we fail to see the possibility of that newness. Everything around us seems to be closing in on us. What outcome could there be other than failure, further suffering, dashed hopes, death? At least in Egypt we know what to expect. Out here in the wilderness we are asked to trust, to hope – and it has been a long time since there was any hope. Are we really up for this journey? Can we really survive this road? Can things really be different? Can I be different? Can we be different?

I do not know what to do with how this story plays out. God responds to Israel’s despair by sending poisonous snakes to bite and kill them. This seems a very different response than what Paul preaches to us – God, who is rich in mercy. I will not try to excuse or resolve God’s seeming out-of-character action. And I do not know what to do with God’s response to Israel’s repentance – Moses, raise up an image of the very creature I sent to bite and kill you, and when you look at it you will be healed. Is this the practice of Egyptian sympathetic magic or the mockery of it? Is God using something they would understand from their cultural context or is he showing them – like with the Egyptian magicians and officials with the staff-turned-serpent– that he is sovereign? Egypt, its gods and its government, cannot provide for life. It produces death – via slavery and exploitation. Its theology cannot produce peace, a word Paul repeats in Ephesians, insisting that Christ is, proclaims, and makes possible peace – unity, well-being, full life. You were dead, but now you have a life of peace. Dividing walls have been broken down; reconciliation has taken place. The Israelites in the wilderness couldn’t see the way to peace, not by way of this road that God had them on. So God, in a way that may trouble us, in a way that seems scandalous, showed the people that he has power over death and power to heal and bring life.

This is not the only time God’s people have encountered God acting scandalously. You would think that Israel would be so used to being scandalized by God that by the time of Jesus, his predictions of suffering might not seem completely ludicrous . Yet even now, even 2000 years after the resurrection, I read John’s gospel and scratch my head. “Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.” How does this make sense? Sometimes I feel a lot like Peter in Matthew’s gospel: God forbid that the Messiah should suffer and die! I might not articulate it in quite that way; I might be more apt to say, “God forbid that I follow a suffering Messiah (because that means I might have to suffer).” Pre-death and resurrection or post-death and resurrection – it makes no difference: suffering and death seems a scandalous road to life, to God’s kingdom.

Following a suffering Messiah seems a lot like wandering through the wilderness. We’ve been brought out of slavery to the ways of the world and we’ve been promised a shared life of peace. The ways of this world have been exposed as death-dealing just as the Egyptian gods and powers were exposed. And good news has been proclaimed: there is a way that leads to life. Come walk in it. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” We see this Messiah who was lifted up – on the cross, from the grave and to the heavenly places - and we are healed.

Paul reminds us that we have been lifted up with Christ. The God who is rich in mercy has shown the immeasurable riches of his grace in doing this. The first few chapters in Paul’s sermon reinforces our understanding of our identity in Christ, and in chapter four he begins to tell us what the “good works which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life” are. He talks about peace, unity, love, serving one another. I wonder if others see a power at work in us, the community of faith lifted up, that may bring healing to them. I wonder if the way to life is clear, even if it is scandalous.

What we see deeply affects us. Greg asked the question last week, “How can we be devoted to anything we cannot make an image of?” He imagined Israel’s dilemma well. Yet we see the image of God in Jesus and still struggle in our devotion. And we are called to be God’s image bearers, serving the world by inviting them, as Jesus did, into their identity as persons made in his image. When they look at us do they see the life we ask them to believe is possible? Bill reminded us two weeks ago that we are called to service, not the kind that we determine we can afford, but the kind that God knows will sweep us up into the new story in Jesus Christ. Will we, formed in our identity, practice the ways of life that heal both us and those in the world seeking restoration from despair and death? Mary Anne, on the first Sunday of Lent, spoke of the image of the rainbow, a symbol meant to challenge us to meet the future with hope. As we are on this journey, do we imagine the promise that is ahead?

I’d like to share one personal story of restoration. I lift it up to you as an image of healing and life. Some of you have spoken to me about the story I shared in the Christian Leader in January. It was my story of struggling with depression. I became severely depressed several years ago during my first year of seminary. During that time I was living in Sacramento with Sarah who was finishing her teacher credentialing program at UC Davis and beginning her first year teaching high school. Those of you who have experience teaching have firsthand knowledge of the demands of this profession, especially within the first year. She watched most of what she knew of her friend disappear and saw her friend lose the capacity to engage relationally, to work, to sleep, to eat. In the midst of a busy life she was confronted with a friend in great need. And she chose to serve, to walk alongside me every single day for the year and a half I experienced the worst of my depression. Her choice meant postponing the date she would graduate from her MA in Education program. Her choice meant radically limiting the relational energy given to students, colleagues, friends and family. Her choice meant many nights of interrupted sleep and having to do most of the household chores. I would imagine the most difficult result of Sarah’s choice was carrying the emotional and spiritual burden that comes with walking alongside someone in pain. In short, Sarah gave herself up for her friend – she went against the selfish and individualistic ways of this world, and she offered herself in service. God used her to restore me. And when I am at risk of losing hope on my life journey, God uses this moment in the story of our friendship to restore me again. Something new is possible. Peace is possible. Life is extended to us as God breaks into this world and lifts up that which heals and restores.

Indeed, God did not send the Son in the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.

I therefore, the prisoner in the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.

May we turn our eyes to the one who was lifted up for our healing and know that we are lifted up with him, called to follow him in serving a world that is enslaved to despair and deathliness, offering the good news of life and peace in his name. Amen.

Walking in the Light: A Devotional Guide to Easter
MB Biblical Seminary

March 3, 2009
John 2:13-22

As we draw nearer to Easter, we prepare for the reality of God bringing life from death. It is important to remember that the hard work of clearing the way must precede the celebration.

Jesus enters Jerusalem during Passover and clears the Temple. Many in the crowds recognize the significance of Jesus’ action and teaching. The Jewish leaders, however, cannot read the signs. John has just told the story of Jesus’ first sign (turning water into wine), and here are the Jewish leaders asking for a sign. What gives you the right to judge the activities of the Temple? Who do you think you are? Jesus responds, “Destroy this Temple, and I will raise it up” (2:19). God is doing a new thing. Jesus is the Temple rebuilt.

When Jesus clears the Temple, he says, “Stop making my Father’s house a marketplace!” Jesus echoes Zechariah’s prophesy of the Day when everyone on earth will worship God in his Temple (14:21). He recalls as well the prophecy that those on the margins find inclusion as God’s kingdom comes (Isaiah 56). When those who are stepped on are lifted up and those who are vulnerable are cared for by the community, God’s kingdom comes (Jeremiah 7).

When all can freely come and worship, when justice prevails, that day will be the Day when God’s kingdom comes. With the resurrection, God validated Jesus’ life of serving the outcast and challenging the powers that forgot them. Like the disciples who understood the sign after the resurrection, we bring our anticipation of Easter into this story. May we not find ourselves in the shoes of the Jewish leaders who demanded a sign even though a sign was right in front of them. Let us stand
alongside those who follow Jesus in his ministry.

Michelle Ferguson, MA
Registrar

To read the complete devotional guide, visit: http://www.mbseminary.edu/events/2009-5

A Journey Through The Dark

Michelle Ferguson

I lost myself in July 2003 when the lights went out, and 18 months passed before I felt the warmth of light again. I realized the darkness was passing when a dear friend, who walked alongside me every day of that bleak time, said: “It’s you. There you are. I really missed you.”

I became depressed that summer after a heartbreaking and disorienting disappointment. I had been disillusioned and sad many times in my life, but I had never felt like this before. I experienced frequent panic attacks. I was restless. I was afraid to be alone. I stopped eating. I cried and cried, and most of the time I had no idea why. I had no energy. I could not concentrate. The darkness settled on me like a thick fog—heavy and oppressive.

It was apparent to my roommate, my parents and me that I needed help. I met with a county mental health therapist who, after learning of my own faith commitment, told me he was also a Christian. He could provide me with medication, he said, but I should be able to deal with my depression by having faith and submitting to God. The therapist’s message was clear: Medication is for people without faith in God. I should quit fighting and trust God.

I know many Christians share the opinion of the county mental health professional. They see depression as an indication of some moral or spiritual failure—a lack of faith. Christians, the assumption goes, trust in God and have joy in the Lord. We should not feel such sadness because we have the Comforter. If a Christian is depressed, it means that there is a deficiency in her relationship with God. Most of all, Christians should be able to control their emotions. After all, what kind of witness is it to a non-Christian if a Christian is depressed?

This was not how I understood my experience and certainly is not how I read the biblical text. I was not fighting God, and I was not harboring some secret sin. I was struggling to make sense of traumatic events. Because I see life as a journey of faith, I took my questions and pressed God for clarity and healing and direction for the future.

With the encouragement of family and friends, I next visited a medical doctor who prescribed medication for a general depression/anxiety disorder. But I wrestled with whether or not I should take this medication. Two conversations helped me sort out my need for antidepressants.

The first conversation was with a friend who said that her father-in-law, who is a diabetic, takes insulin every day because his body does not produce insulin. Why not understand depression and antidepressants in a similar way, she said. If my body is not able to cope with whatever triggered my depression, it is not doing what it should. This warrants outside medical assistance. If my depression is situational, I will be able to discontinue the medication once my body recovers. If the depression is biochemical, medication may be a long-term or permanent necessity in order to counteract my body’s deficiency.

The second exchange was with another therapist. In one of our first appointments she explained the way the body handles stress and trauma. In the same way that stress can cause ulcers or a heart attack, it can also cause depression. This therapist said that in order to process the situation and heal emotionally and spiritually, I had to care for my body in ways that would address the emotional and physical issues. For me, this included medication.

After several weeks of taking the prescribed medication, I was able to better process the hurt and disappointment that triggered my depression in the first place. Healing has been an ongoing process, and I have required the assistance of medication on and off since then.

While the medication aided my physical healing, the love and care of people also helped me to mend emotionally. These people were not afraid to take depression seriously and to consider it holistically.

I still do not know why God allowed depression to be part of my journey. Often in my darkest moments I asked God, “Why?” and “How long?” Though these questions were not answered, I did receive the answers to other questions: “God, are you there? Do you care? Are you able to save me?” These answers came in the people who supported me. Through them I heard God say: “I am here. I care deeply. I may not lift you out of this darkness today, but I will go with you through it.”

This reminds me of J.R.R. Tolkein’s story, The Lord of the Rings. Friendship is one of the many themes in this story. Frodo, a hobbit, is appointed the task of carrying a ring of power into an evil land ruled by the Dark Lord Sauron where it can be destroyed. Committed to journeying with him in a fellowship is Sam, another hobbit.

Sam’s heart breaks as he watches his dear friend Frodo deteriorate under the burden of the ring he carries. But Sam persists, giving himself up for his friend so that their journey might be completed. When Frodo is at the end of himself, a mere shadow of the person he once was, Sam offers Frodo a memory of home:

Sam: “Do you remember the Shire, Mr. Frodo? It will be spring soon. And the orchards will be in blossom, and the birds will be nesting in the hazel thicket. And they’ll be sowing the summer barley in the lower fields. And eating the first of the strawberries with cream. Do you remember the taste of strawberries?”

Frodo: “No, Sam. I can’t recall the taste of food. Nor the sound of water. Nor the touch of grass. I’m naked in the dark…there’s nothing, no veil, in between me and the wheel of fire. I can see him, with my waking eyes.”

Sam: “Then let us be rid of it, once and for all. Come on, Mr. Frodo. I can’t carry it for you, but I can carry you!”

At every turn Sam chooses to remain loyal to Frodo. He does not turn away from Frodo in his suffering or return to their home in the Shire. Instead, he chooses to walk into the darkness alongside Frodo.

Oftentimes we do not want to remain close to those who are suffering. Suffering, struggle, pain and sorrow threaten us. They remind us that we are not ultimately in control; that life is fragile, that the evil in the world is real and prompts honesty, self-reflection and change. The journey through darkness is risky business. However, offering oneself on behalf of another is a great act of love, one that makes space for healing. Compassion takes seriously the wounds of those within our communities.

I am blessed to have had people willing to walk alongside me. There are so many who do not have such willing people. There are many who are mistakenly told by fellow Christians that depression is their fault, that they do not have enough faith. We should rather open ourselves to the Holy Spirit’s guidance and ask: How might I love my brother or sister struggling with depression?

This article was originally published in The Christian Leader (Jan 2009), a publication of the US Mennonite Brethren.

Anabaptist Liturgy:
Sacramental Theology

Michelle Ferguson

In “Anabaptist Liturgy: An Oxymoron?”[1] I set out to make space for the idea of liturgy within Anabaptist/Mennonite church practice. Though some may wonder if the very terms “Anabaptist” and “liturgy” are oxymoronic, I suggest and have been encouraged by others that Anabaptism needs a robust understanding of liturgy so that it can shape and nurture present and future communities of Anabaptists living out an Anabaptist way of being for others.

I imagine Anabaptist liturgy as embodied storytelling: the Gospel is our story, and we tell it with an Anabaptist voice. Our voice is our particular ecclesiology which speaks of “a community of brothers and sisters in faith who have voluntarily committed themselves wholly to a radical life of discipleship.”[2] As Anabaptists we submit our lives to be shaped by the biblical story so that we may live and usher others into the Kingdom of God. For us liturgy can be the embodiment of that story.

SACRAMENT

An exploration toward an Anabaptist liturgy cannot proceed without discussing sacrament. During the first millennium of the church, the term was applied broadly. Augustine defined “sacrament” as the “visible form of invisible grace” or “a sign of a sacred thing.” And several rites came to be known as “sacraments,” yet it was not until the councils of Florence (1439) and Trent (1545-63) that the list of seven sacraments was formally accepted. Those sacraments are: Baptism, Confirmation, Eucharist, Penance, Extreme Unction, Orders, and Matrimony.[3] During the Protestant Reformation, Luther brought the list down to two, seeing no scriptural basis for the other five: his list included Baptism and Eucharist.[4] Early on, sixteenth century Anabaptist writers did not shy away from the use of “sacrament;” however, the preferred terms became “ceremony” and “ordinance,” the latter being the term favored by Mennonites in recent years.

I believe our use of “ordinance” hinders a move toward imagining an Anabaptist liturgy. An ordinance must be observed because it was commanded: thus, we observe baptism and the Lord’s Supper because Jesus told us to. Three concerns arise here. First, the language used in association with “ordinance” (i.e. “observe”) makes our role out to be spectators instead of participants. Secondly, our tendency toward legalism is heightened when we think about what we do together as observance of command.[5] Thirdly, “ordinance,” insofar as it is associated with law understood as an impersonal penal code, resists narrative because it is indifferent to context. If we baptize just because Jesus commanded it, we need not ask, Why? What does baptism mean to Jesus? How does this fit into the larger story? Naming what we do together in terms of rules may make us people who do what we are told, but it does not shape us into people who embody the way of Jesus. For these reasons “ordinance” is insufficient for a move toward embracing liturgy.

“Sacrament” has more potential for promoting an embrace of liturgy because of its connection to mystery[6] and openness to story. Part of the genius of narrative is the way it reveals and conceals. Mystery is part of storytelling because stories are not meant to scientifically examine, objectively report or exhaustively itemize; stories make known the Other but do not violate the Other’s otherness. Our shared practices must shape us in relationship to that Other, God. As Everett Fox’s translation of God’s name in Exodus 3:14 suggests, we know God by how he has been-there:[7] we must enter into God’s story in order to know God and thus to embrace our own identity as God’s people. “Sacrament” is at home in story, helps us by way of mystery to enter into God’s story, and may invite us to know God and ourselves in transformative ways. Thus, I propose we take up the rich term again.

In order to take up the language of “sacrament” we must enter the debate of the Reformation: what is a sacrament and what happens when we “do” it? As liturgist for the Shafter Mennonite Brethren (SMBC) 2006 Lenten series, I realized during that learning to tell a distinctively Anabaptist version of the biblical story necessitated choosing a focus. The Eucharist has been an area of special interest for me, and I am convinced it is the sacrament by which Mennonites can recapture their Anabaptist vision of church and explore ways of living it out. I found the work of two Anabaptist theologians of utmost importance in developing a sacramental theology focused on the Lord’s Supper: Pilgram Marpeck (1495-1556) and John Howard Yoder (1927-1997).

PILGRAM MARPECK

Anabaptists were named for their practice of “re-baptizing,” and baptism has always centered our ecclesiology on the voluntary nature of faith and the church as a believer’s church. The Eucharist has been included but does not seem to give real shape to our ecclesiology. This may be why we have a clear understanding of the boundaries of the church but are uncertain about the nature and life of the church. The Mennonite Brethren (MB) “three-stream river” identity (a conglomeration of Anabaptism, evangelicalism and the charismatic movement[8]) sets us up to pick and choose what we do apart from a cohesive ecclesiology shaped by biblical revelation.

Marpeck, therefore, is an important voice in this discussion because he “is the only Anabaptist theologian whose circumstances and scope of thought brought the Lord’s Supper to the center of his theology.”[9] Drawing on his work, then, allows the Supper the attention usually afforded only to baptism, a move that opens the Mennonite field of vision regarding piety beyond the important elements of decision and responsibility to the oft neglected elements of grace and mystery. Baptism is “ceremony by which the church is ordered,” yet Marpeck’s work shows us how the Eucharist can be the “ceremony by which the church is sustained” and “in the process… [he] laid a theological foundation for the church’s life as a participation in the life [story] of God.”[10] Marpeck’s work on the Lord’s Supper is a guide for an exploration toward a thoroughly biblical Anabaptist ecclesiology.

First and foremost, Marpeck’s theological endeavor was meant to create a sacramental theology out of the incarnation of Jesus.[11] In the incarnation we find God entering the flesh and blood of humanity, and Marpeck clings to this reality as he seeks to bring unity between spirit and matter in an understanding of sacrament.

The incarnation defined for [Marpeck] how God meets humanity. Spiritual reality takes material form... [Marpeck] sought to avoid the imbalances he saw within Anabaptism as well as within the larger Christian world of his era. Marpeck feared the legalism of the Swiss Brethren and the dissolution of the church evident in spiritualism. He pursued an alternative to the sacramental life of Christendom because it was not founded on the response of faith. The alternative Marpeck chose was unique in its retention of sacramental realism, the belief in a “metaphysical correlation” of the event of the Supper with the body and blood of Christ. For him, the action of the congregation with bread and wine became a communion with Christ.[12]

Anabaptists tended to eliminate ceremony because they insisted that inner faith is what is real (a rejection of the Catholic ex opere operato). Marpeck, however, stressed the unity of inner and outer reality, which is truer to the Anabaptist emphasis on nachfolge Christi,[13] discipleship defined as faith evidenced by external fruit.

Marpeck defined sacrament as “an encounter between God’s grace and an existential human response of faith” that must necessarily happen within/through the material world.[14] The material event (ceremony) tells Jesus’ story and becomes “like the parables of the kingdom: by means of them we grasp the workings of God.”[15] Through them we enter into the life of God by being church visibly. For Marpeck, the church is the “prolongation of the incarnation in the ongoing community of faith.”[16] Our current MB confession of faith echoes this idea: “The church, united by the one Spirit, makes Christ visible in the world.”[17] Marpeck, however, would emphasize that the church is more than the sign of Christ: the church becomes the presence of Christ’s humanity in the world until Christ’s bodily return.[18] In this way, the church itself is a sacrament, “the paradigm for all other embodiments of the gospel.”[19]

Marpeck did not use the usual term teken (sign), because it means “an external indicator of an internal reality of which it is not a part.” Instead he used mitzeugnus (co-witness), a term deemed his “primary innovation in defining sacrament.”[20] “Co-witness” makes sacrament the union of the material and spiritual by the power of the Spirit.[21] For Marpeck, a sacrament is not something that merely signifies what occurs within us (inner faith); it is “an external reality [that] vouches for faith and becomes its medium to the internal reality.”[22] This understanding of sacrament provides us with a way to experience God as embodied persons. Our participation in Christ is not confined to an inner experience of faith; participation in Christ occurs as faith becomes bodily practice. This parallels the “following” emphasis of Anabaptist discipleship.

Because “co-witness” ontologically unites matter and spirit, Marpeck differs from other Anabaptists (though he may capture the Anabaptist vision more faithfully) in terms of time and sacrament. At a baptismal service at SMBC, the pastor stressed that the water baptism was a sign of an inner faith/conversion experience. He understood water baptism as taking place after spiritual baptism, defined as placing one’s faith in Christ. Other Anabaptists in the sixteenth century also held that “the relationship between faith and sacrament is at most sequential or concomitant” but Marpeck disagreed: he understood that “the two form an indissoluble unity, ontologically and temporally.”[23]

Dietrich Bonhoeffer writes about the difficulty of assigning temporal order to faith and obedience,[24] an idea I have always though brilliant and containing a particularly Anabaptist flavor. Marpeck developed this insight sacramentally: in the act of baptism or the Lord’s Supper, a person does more than express faith he/she already had; he/she experiences the meeting of the response of faith with God’s act of grace, moments that cannot be separated. Anabaptist discipleship would say that faith is not faith until it is acted out; Marpeck’s sacramental theology says that faith is not experienced in relationship to God’s grace until the two meet in the physical sacrament.[25]

Because Marpeck develops sacrament as an ontological and temporal unity of matter and spirit, where something actually happens in and during the sacrament, we can regain a sense of mystery we have lost by our practice of reducing sacrament to merely symbolic ordinance. Mystery gets us moving toward liturgy as storytelling. The story Marpeck’s sacramental theology of the Lord’s Supper tells is of the church becoming the presence of Jesus’ humanity. The Supper is primarily an “act of love” whereby believers loves each other and experience the presence of God through embodying the love of Christ. In the sacrament “the church is remade again and again into the body of Christ.”[26]

Marpeck’s theology of the Lord’s Supper led him to a belief in the “real presence” of Christ though “real presence” for him focused on “the action of the community and its transformation” rather than the elements of bread and wine.[27]

In [Marpeck’s eucharistic teaching], the Supper is a physical meeting of believers who gather in faith and love. When the believers do this they become one body, that is, they are constituted again as the body of Christ in the world. This claim, however, does not reduce Christ to the historical forms he takes on. The historical body of the church is also given a mystical communion with the ascended Lord through the meal in which bread and wine are shared in nonresistant love. In the sense that this love extends itself to enemy as well as friend, the eucharistic action expands to include the whole world.[28]

A liturgy of the Lord’s Supper conceived in this way is entirely consistent with Anabaptist ecclesiology.

The debate during the Reformation concerning the presence of Christ in the sacrament focused on the elements. The Roman Catholic Church insisted that the bread and wine became the body and blood and ceased to be in substance bread and wine (transubstantiation). Luther argued that though the bread and wine physically remained bread and wine, Christ’s body and blood were present in the elements (traditional use of “real presence”). Marpeck shifts the focus of the debate by arguing that the change that happens occurs in the community, not in the elements, though the elements are an essential part of the sacrament. The shift in the meaning of “real presence” may help Anabaptists/Mennonites become more open to mystery in sacrament. If the mystery is that of the church becoming the body of Christ rather than the bread and wine becoming the literal body and blood of Christ, we may be able to embrace sacrament. As a result, our gathered times may be infused with greater mystery and power, with the “real presence” of Christ as we seek to live out a discipleship that demands an embodied faith. The split between matter and spirit seems to undermine our ideas of church and discipleship; Marpeck’s theology, rooted in the incarnation, may be able to help us re-imagine church, sacrament and liturgy in a way that supports those ideas.

JOHN HOWARD YODER

Yoder’s work regarding the Lord’s Supper in Body Politics[29] fits well with Marpeck’s sacramental theology and may help us align our liturgical practice of the Supper more closely with Marpeck’s theological vision and the Anabaptist concern that church be a community living into the kingdom. Yoder’s contribution to this discussion is that of moving away from a ritualistic practice of the Supper where it can be no more than sign and toward the Supper as, in Marpeck’s terms, co-witness, an actual living of the reality. Yoder calls us to do this by reminding us of the significance of the common meal in the New Testament before it was reduced to bread and wine in the form of wafer/cracker and a sip of wine/juice.

As Marpeck rejects the inner/outer or spirit/matter split, Yoder rejects the religious/political split. Luther’s emphasis on the inner life as opposed to the outer life led him to his two kingdoms idea: just as faith inhabits the inner world of a person and may not be practical externally, Christians live under the reign of God privately while Christ’s teachings (like the Sermon on the Mount) are largely impractical in the world (polis). Yoder, a theologian whose theology is always worked out ethically, rejects this split.

Theologians were concerned in the sixteenth century for a detailed theoretical definition of the meaning of certain special actions and things, called “sacraments,” within the special set-apart world of the “religious.” The underlying notion – namely the idea that there is a special realm of “religious” reality – so that when you speak special prescribed words, peculiar events happen, was not a biblical idea. It underlies the religion/politics split… It supports one notion of the sacraments as very special religious or ritualistic activities… These medieval questions have kept us away from the simple meaning of the text long enough.[30]

The “simple meaning of the text” frees the Supper from centuries of ritualistic liturgy so that it might once again show us a way to practice it, as I would say, as storytelling liturgy where the participant enters the story being told.

The Last Supper is set in the context of a Passover meal, but Yoder says that though “Jesus might have meant ‘remember me whenever you celebrate the Passover,’” his hearers understood him to be saying, “whenever you have your common meal.”[31] Yoder fleshes out the significance of the common meal in the post-Pentecost church: the breaking of bread (Acts 2:42) was a central aspect of the life of the early church community that “extend[ed] into the formation of economic community” (Acts 4:32).[32]

In his first letter to the Corinthians, the apostle Paul responds to requests for guidance which that congregation, soon after he had founded it, had addressed to him. Most of those requests for guidance have to do with table fellowship: with meat that had been offered to idols (Chapters 8 and 10) and with class-segregated tables (Chapter 11). If their meal failed to reflect the overcoming of social stratification, Paul told the Corinthians that the participants would be celebrating their own condemnation (11:29). In celebrating their fellowship around the table, the early Christians testified[33] that the messianic age, often pictured as a banquet, had begun.[34]

Marpeck’s concern was that material and spiritual be combined in experience; Yoder’s concern is that the event be not only sign but also practice – an essential participation in kingdom living. For Marpeck the Supper sacramentally creates the church as the body of Christ; for Yoder, that body of Christ is Christ’s body (and presence of the kingdom) because it does what Christ did, namely, usher in the kingdom by establishing a new community and a new way of living defined by the reign of God. The early church communities practiced the Lord’s Supper in this way, according to Yoder, and our practice must take this on as well if is it going to be the Lord’s Supper and not just a symbol of it.

Yoder argues that the church must practice the Supper as a common meal that actually establishes the Kingdom of God: he sees the economic aspect of the meal emphasized in the New Testament texts and so takes up that concern.

What the New Testament is talking about whenever the theme is “breaking bread” is that people actually were sharing with one another their ordinary day-to-day material sustenance.
It is not enough to say merely that in an act of “institution” or symbol-making, independent of ordinary meanings, God or the church would have said, “Let us say that ‘bread’ stands for daily sustenance.” It is not even merely that, as any historian of culture or anthropologist will tell us, in many settings eating together “stands for” values of hospitality and community-formation, said values being distinguishable from the signs that refer to them. It is that bread is daily sustenance. Bread eaten together is economic sharing. Not merely symbolically, but also in fact, eating together extends to a wider circle the economic solidarity normally obtained in the family.[35]

The ethical dimension has largely been lost in the ritualization of the Lord’s Supper, and Yoder wants to revive our sacramental practice as kingdom living. One of the marks of the Kingdom of God is that “basic needs are met.”[36]

The existence of believing communities as Bruderhof, as a family of brethren marked by a new economic pattern of sharing, is, for Yoder, both the participation of the church in the messianic age and the witness that “the promise of newness [is] on its way for the world.”[37] In this way the church as the body of Christ becomes for the world. Our formative practices (sacraments) enable us to extend ourselves as the ongoing incarnation of Christ to the human and non-human world: our sacraments must result in the ethical expressions Christ’s life contained, such as caring for the poor, being stewards of creation, working for justice, etc. This aspect of Yoder’s work can take Marpeck’s sacramental theology and protect it from being merely a religious ritual; Marpeck’s fusion of matter and spirit and the way that unity plays out in his idea of the Lord’s Supper can be realized in what Yoder is urging – that our sacraments shape us as the church and are acts of believing communities living out the vision of Christ.

TOWARD AN ANABAPTIST LITURGY

It is my hope that “Mennonite liturgy” no longer sound like an oxymoron. I want liturgy to mean a careful storytelling that sacramentally sweeps us up as participants in the story. Yoder is correct in saying that it is not enough to design practices (rituals) that merely represent or point to the reality of being church. Our sacraments must be actual practices of the kingdom communities we are called to be as the church. I am not satisfied with church services containing symbols detached from the essence of who we are and what we do as gathered believers. As it is, it seems that we “go to church” without being the church; we tell a story we do not live.

We must enter into God’s story, and it is my hope that we enter in as Anabaptists. Our theological identity is one that can serve the greater church. If through participation in liturgy and sacrament our communities are nurtured in becoming the presence of Jesus’ humanity, then we, like Jesus, will live for the world, inviting others through loving service into the biblical story. We have faith that this story is indeed gospel, and as Harold Bender writes in The Anabaptist Vision, “Anabaptists [have] faith, indeed, but they [must] use it to produce a life.”[38] I want a liturgy to shape us and propel us into that life – the new life of the inbreaking kingdom.

NOTES

[1] Michelle Ferguson, “Anabaptist Liturgy: An Oxymoron?” Direction 36, no. 1 (Spring 2007), 5-19.
[2] Ibid., 9.
[3] “Sacrament.” Pages 1435-1436 in The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church. Edited by F.L. Cross and E.A. Livingstone. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997.
[4] Kenneth Scott Latourette, A.D. 1500-A.D. 1975. Vol. 2 of A History of Christianity. (Peabody: MA: Prince Press, 2003), 713.
[5] We mimic instead of living way-ishly. See Ferguson, “Anabaptist Liturgy: An Oxymoron?”, 10.
[6] “Sacrament” comes from the Latin, sacramentum, which was used to translate the Greek, musterion in the Latin New Testament. By way of sacrament one participates in the “mystery of Christ” (cf. Col. 1:26ff; Eph. 3:4, 9; 6:19, etc.). “Sacrament,” Oxford Dictionary, 1435.
[7] Everett Fox, The Five Books of Moses: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy. The Schocken Bible, vol. 1 (New York: Schocken Books, 1995), 270, 273.
[8] Ferguson, “Anabaptist Liturgy: An Oxymoron?”, 8.
[9] John D. Rempel, The Lord’s Supper in Anabaptism: A Study in the Christology of Balthasar Humbaier, Pilgrim Marpeck, and Dirk Philips. Studies in Anabaptist and Mennonite History No. 33 (Scottdale: PA: Herald, 1993), 162-163.
[10] Ibid.
[11] Ibid., 97.
[12] Ibid., 94.
[13] German, following Christ.
[14] Rempel, 122.
[15] Ibid., 100.
[16] Ibid., 98.
[17] Confession of Faith, Commentary and Pastoral Application, (Hillsboro: KS: Kindred, 2000), 66.
[18] Rempel, 133.
[19] Ibid., 148.
[20] Ibid., 120.
[21] Ibid.
[22] Ibid., 121.
[23] Ibid., 144.
[24] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship (New York: NY: Simon & Schuster, 1995), 64.
[25] I am realizing as I write that Anabaptists conceive of God’s act as already having been done; his grace has already been extended to us. This means that sacraments can never be more than just signs because they only represent the human action of faith and not the meeting of grace and faith. Marpeck’s idea may give us a way to conceive of the ongoing nature of salvation, something we MBs sorely need to grasp. Alas, this is the topic of another study.
[26] Rempel, 125.
[27] Ibid., 145.
[28] Rempel, 148.
[29] John Howard Yoder, Body Politics: Five Practices of the Christian Community Before the Watching World (Scottdale: PA: Herald, 1992).
[30] Ibid., 14-15
[31] Ibid., 15-16.
[32] Ibid., 16.
[33] Marpeck’s co-witness fits here.
[34] Yoder, 18.
[35] Ibid., 20.
[36] Ibid., 21.
[37] Ibid.
[38] Ibid.

This article was published in Direction (Fall 2007). It was originally a larger paper submitted in the course Anabaptist Ecclesiology, a directed study with Dr. Libby Vincent, Fuller Theological Seminary, Sacramento, CA.

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Commencement
Michelle Ferguson

On May 4, 2002 I graduated from Fresno Pacific University. Looking back over the last four years, I am amazed at how much my life has changed. Because I’ve been a student for most of my life, I tend to categorize my life by school years. I don’t remember much of elementary school. Junior high was the period of rebelliousness. During these two years I admitted to myself that I had homosexual feelings. High school was the time of new faith: I became a Christian when I was 15 and struggled with how that fit with my homosexuality. College has been the time of walking out of homosexuality. And now I’ve faced graduation: commencement. Another beginning.

August 1998 I moved into my dorm room at a Christian liberal arts college. I had visions of leading Bible studies and making the Dean’s List. This was the place I was going to make a difference for Christ, a place where I could grow in my faith. I thought my homosexual attractions had been taken care of. Sure I felt them every once in a while, but compared to the way it had been my freshman year of high school, they seemed a thing of the past. I had been the leader of the Christian club on my high school campus for three years; of course I was “over” my struggle with homosexuality. I was determined; will power was all I needed. It seemed to have worked because as I began my freshman year of college, homosexuality was that thing in my past I was not going to bring with me to this new time and place in my life.

Within a month I found myself in an emotionally dependent relationship with one of my roommates. Shortly after that our relationship became sexual; despite attempts at ending the sexual part of our relationship, we did not walk away from that until the end of the school year. During the summer we told our Resident Director about our relationship and said that we wanted help changing it. I did not want to continue falling sexually, but throughout the school year it seemed almost impossible to resist. Summer break was our chance to start over. After the school got involved, we told our parents about what had happened. By the end of the summer I transferred to another school.

My first year at Fresno Pacific forced me to deal with my sexuality. I had spent 8 months diving into sexual immorality, and I had no idea how to pick up the pieces and move on. I felt alone. I felt like a failure. However, I knew that God had something better for me and I was determined to find freedom from homosexuality. I fervently read my Bible, journaled and prayed. I begged God not to turn away from me, but to remain faithful. He did just that. He provided me with three friendships that allowed me the first steps out of sexual brokenness. These girls were true friends: I could talk honestly, trust them, and learn from their examples. I began to learn what it meant to separate my idea of a friend from my idea of a lover. I struggled to keep myself on the right path, but it is evident to me that God was directing my steps. I am forever indebted to those girls and the way God used them.

By the time my junior year rolled around, I had new challenges before me. My faith was tested. I had been free from the sexual relationship of my freshman year for a year. I had learned something about healthily forming same-sex friendships. In the fall I got the crazy idea to look into spending a month of my next summer break volunteering with an ex-gay ministry. I was entirely resistant to this idea at first, but the Holy Spirit continued to prompt me in that direction. So, I e-mailed different ministries around the country and got in contact with Exchange Ministries in Orlando, FL. Alan Chambers was the director. He was a big part of testing my faith. There were dozens of times when I wanted to cancel those plans, but I knew I had to go. Not only did God test my faith by opening this door for ministry, but He also tested me relationally. I had been praying about whether or not I would ever be able to truly be attracted to and love a man. A week after I had surrendered that question in prayer, I met the man that helped answer that question for me. I fell in love. Though the relationship ended after six months, I was incredibly encouraged. I knew that that type of relationship was a possibility in my future, but was shown that it was not the right time. During this year I started an accountability group with 7 other girls. We called ourselves "On Belay," a rock-climbing term describing our relationship with one another and with God: we harnessed ourselves individually to one another in support, and we also depended on God to secure our climb. I experienced deeper same-sex friendships and the affirmation and exhortation that come with having godly friends. This group was pivotal: I needed to pursue further healing, and the only way to do that was to step out and explore these relationships.

My junior year also tested my pride. I began feeling very good about where I was at in my struggle with homosexuality. In my mind I am sure I believed I was over it, that I had “arrived.” I had been making so much progress that I felt like nothing could shake me. And, as we humans tend to do, when I began to feel proud I assumed I was self-sufficient and started to slip in my relationship with God. I talked about God, led Bible studies and was a student leader, but I slowly fell away from the passionate pursuit of God I had thrown myself into the year before. This left me vulnerable and unaware of my weak spots. By the end of the school year I found myself in a place I thought I would never be in again: I was face to face with another sexual temptation. The last week of school I was so confused. I was headed to Orlando, yet I had flirted with another homosexual encounter. Thankfully, because of the growth I had experienced, I was able to pick up and move on quickly. I spent the summer working for Exchange and continued in my healing process. I will never forget what Alan told me when I confessed what had happened. He told me that it was a good thing that I had learned the lesson of my vulnerability, and that I needed to remember that I was not the person I used to be. Making a mistake did not mean I had to start all over. He showed me grace and encouraged me to push ahead.

My senior year, I continued to grow in relationships. I confessed my mistakes to On Belay and my campus pastor, with whom I had been meeting regularly since I started at Fresno Pacific. They all affirmed me and I learned a greater level of accountability through that experience. I became aware of the boundaries that need to be in place, and of the triggers and things that make me vulnerable. I was able to compensate when I became tired or vulnerable so that I did not stray in my relationships. I also learned to be aware of the function of different relationships and not to expect all things from one relationship. God also blessed me with some very special friendships in which I was able to experience genuine intimacy. My best friend and I do not try and extract everything we can from each other, but work toward mutual edification. We work for the good of the other. We learn from one another and do not draw on one another for ultimate comfort, but understand that we are to point each other towards the fulfillment God gives. That is such a place of freedom. Granted, it has not been easy. It is never easy surrendering self-centeredness for the commitment to love your neighbor. It is never easy to accept correction from another. It is never easy to confront your friend. It is not always easy to allow someone else to see your limitations and weaknesses. Honesty, however, reaps the blessing of healthy relationship, and I am experiencing the goodness of being created for unity with the body of Christ.

In May I received my degrees. Looking back on the many lessons learned and experiences had, I feel a sense of accomplishment and complete thankfulness for God’s hand on my life. I could never have taken one step without Him. Without Him I would still be stuck in the sexual mess of my freshman year. But that is not where I am now. A friend said, “Now you have a forward purpose that governs what you do with how the past makes you feel.” Graduation was commencement. I have not arrived at a point in my healing where I am safe to stop or where I can take control of my life. Spiritual maturity is not gaining the ability to handle things on your own; it is measured by the humility one displays by becoming more dependent on God and the guidance of the Holy Spirit. May 4th was the close of a certain place in my life, yet it was also the beginning of so many more things God has for me to learn and apply. Every step I take does not mark an end, but a commencement. God yearns to take me so much further.

This article was published in The Exodus Update (June 2002).

The Power of Community
Michelle Ferguson

Sarah and I were on Highway 99 headed back to Fresno Pacific University. I sat thoughtfully in the passenger seat. “I really wish you had a brother so that I could marry into your family,” I said. We chuckled, but we both knew that it came from deep within me. In that moment I felt a stirring in my heart: life was seeping into my soul as I began to feel things I had never known before.

It is not good to be alone

I transferred to FPU as a sophomore after bottoming out spiritually. During my freshman year, struggles I had pushed away in the excitement of my first years as a Christian refused to be ignored. I found myself face to face with the part of me I feared and hated the most: I was overwhelmed by homosexual feelings for my roommate. I tried to ignore them. I tried to pray them away. I tried to convince myself I did not feel “that way” toward her. I felt discouraged and guilty. And when the opportunity arose to act on my feelings, I felt helpless to resist. I spent the rest of the school year struggling with the conflict between my behavior and my faith.

When I transferred to FPU and started my sophomore year in a new school with no friends, I still had a whole host of “issues” to deal with. I had spent the summer in repentance before God, and as the school year began I took the first steps toward reconciliation with God and with myself. I did not know how (or if) I was going to change, but I knew obedience to my Lord was imperative. The Word of God had cut that message into my heart, and I was determined to walk it out. That year I learned that homosexuality was not my main problem. It was a symptom of wounds I had borne since childhood, and it was a desperate attempt to cope with the pain and emptiness I felt. In order to experience wholeness in Christ I was going to have to dig beneath the surface of my homosexuality and address the roots of my brokenness.

It may seem too simple to say that my real need was for genuine and intimate relationship, but the more I learn about myself and people in general the more I am convinced that the human need for connection should never be underestimated.

I did not grow up with strong or healthy relationships in my life. Seeing the dysfunction between my parents, at an early age I rejected connecting with them. I retreated within myself and detached from life. It was not safe to trust others. I kept everyone out in order to protect myself. Within my walls was a lonely place to be. As a little girl I yearned for a friend. Someone to trust. Someone to know me for real who would love me.

By the time I was in junior high school that yearning had translated into sexual attraction for other girls. I desperately wanted to connect with another girl, and somehow the intimacy of a romantic/sexual relationship seemed to be the answer. I was dulling my loneliness and pain with alcohol and hoping for the perfect best friend to enter my life. I was drawn to “needy” people, and I was determined to fill their needs so that they could be happy. I did not realize that my desire to fill their need was really my way of coping with my unmet needs.

A vision of community

My second year at FPU I took an Anabaptist theology class. We read The Anabaptist Vision and wrote a paper reflecting on Harold Bender’s summary of the distinctive elements of Anabaptism. This assignment helped me find the words for everything God was forming in me. Anabaptism gave me the language with which to articulate and hear the solution for my need. Within the context of community, defined as a voluntary and genuine brotherhood, I saw the possibility for healing and wholeness become a reality. I found my theological home.

For the next two years at FPU I sought out relationships in which to explore this new concept of community. I participated in an accountability and Bible study group with several other girls. We called ourselves On Belay. It was in this group that I formed relationships that taught me healthy same-sex friendship.

As I grew in these friendships, I noticed deep changes occurring in me. As my basic needs for relationship began to be genuinely and appropriately filled, I struggled less and less with homosexuality. By the time I graduated I no longer identified myself as homosexual. My new understanding of relationships and the concept of community brought great healing and helped me reorient my life.

Home is where community is

On Belay gave me the opportunity to experience a new model for same-sex peer relationships that proved powerful; however, my deeper need was for family. Even though my parents’ marriage and our family had been affected by coming into relationship with Jesus Christ, the history of those relationships caused me to look elsewhere for family community. God gave me such a community when Sarah Bergen, one of the girls in On Belay, introduced me to her family.

I automatically felt comfortable and welcomed by her parents Stan and LeeAnn and sisters Melissa and Laura. As I got to know Sarah’s family, I was more and more amazed: I was seeing people who were the kind of family I had longed for all my life.

It is no coincidence that the Bergen family is rooted in Mennonite Brethren faith. Over the last five years I have seen the theology that won my heart worked out in the daily lives of this family. The Anabaptist focus on nachfolge Christi (“following”) is embodied by the relationships between this father, mother and three daughters. As I met and became familiar with the extended Bergen families I realized that this was indeed a community from which to learn community.

In good Anabaptist fashion, I could only learn community by practicing community. The Bergens’ extension of relationship to me each time I visited with Sarah reinforced the work God was doing in my life. Slowly I released and repented of my lifestyle of detachment and began forming authentic ties within the family. This has been a terrifying process at times. However it is the way toward wholeness.

“You belong”

Last November I was struggling with seeing myself as part of the family instead of just “one of Sarah’s friends she brings home.” I wanted to belong, but I was still maintaining a measure of detachment. We sat around Stan and LeeAnn’s dining room table and talked about my feelings. It was hard to be so honest, especially about my fears, but I knew I could trust them with my heart.

I cried, talked and shared about how I had never really let people in before. I told them that one way of keeping my distance was to hold on to the thought that I was only tied to the family through Sarah, that I did not have a place of my own. LeeAnn reached across the table, took my hand and said, “You belong in this family with or without Sarah.”

My heart trembled.

She said it again, “You belong in this family with or without Sarah.” My heart released its last bit of detachment and I let her words in. Again, “You belong in this family with or without Sarah.”

My heart allowed itself to receive words of life, and a wound I had carried for years felt its first healing touch. LeeAnn repeated her words slightly differently, “You belong in this family.” I took my place in the family in that moment. LeeAnn and Sarah shed a few tears. As Sarah and I got into the car to drive back home to Sacramento, Stan hugged me. Even when I started to let go, he held on. His prolonged embrace repeated LeeAnn’s words in his own voice.

Power to transform

By no means has this family exhibited or offered perfection, but it has modeled a lifestyle of love, honesty, intimacy, sacrifice, commitment and interdependence that I have never seen before. Being welcomed into this family has also been my initiation into Mennonite faith and spirituality. The depth of community shared by the Bergens has been shaped by their commitment to Anabaptism and my experience in the Bergen community has shaped the Anabaptist identity to which I have committed myself. This sounds like the truest form of discipleship I could ever describe.

Discipleship is not just Sunday schooling people to know the right things. It is binding oneself to others in community and living out the gospel. Harold Bender writes, “The Anabaptists could not understand a Christianity which made regeneration, holiness and love primarily a matter of intellect, of doctrinal belief, or of subjective ‘experience,’ rather than one of the transformation of life. They demanded an outward expression of the inner experience. Repentance must be ‘evidenced’ by newness of behavior” (The Anabaptist Vision, italics mine).

As I sat in Shafter MB Church for the Christmas Eve service and heard Sarah’s aunt, Ruth Bergen, share her story of dealing with cancer, I heard her telling a story more of community than anything else. After thanking everyone who had prayed, brought food to her home, visited and made visible other forms of support, she said, “The kingdom of God is truly at hand.” I sat amidst that community and my heart said, “Amen.” With Bergens beside, in front and behind me, I was surrounded with examples of the kingdom, of true brotherhood. Though we await the coming of the fullness of God’s kingdom, it is in community that we live in that kingdom here and now and experience healing and wholeness.

Ever since I began to feel life take hold in my heart through this community, I have heard a call to share my story with the larger Mennonite community. God’s Spirit has prompted me to say “Now as to the love of the brethren, you have no need for anyone to write to you, for you yourselves are taught by God to love one another; for indeed you do practice it… But (I) urge you, brethren, to excel still more” (1 Thess. 4:9-10).

As Anabaptists we have a certain understanding of the community of God that can offer a prophetic voice in our day. We only need to live it out, to embody it. By confession we do not truly have faith unless we are putting into practice. Brothers and sisters, my life has been changed because of the power found in community. Let us live so as to continue to see God’s power manifested in many others.

This article was published in The Christian Leader (March 2005).

Thirsty in a Dry and Weary Land
Michelle Ferguson
July 2006

A Matchbox 20 song I listened to as a teenager has a chorus that goes: she says baby / it’s 3 am / I must be lonely / when she says baby / well I can’t help but be scared of it all sometimes / says the rain’s gonna wash away I believe it.1 If this band is good at anything, it is good at expressing the melancholy, if not apathetic, worldview common to the world in which we live. This song in particular gives us a depressing image: a man cannot sleep; he is up during the “watches of the night” (Ps 63:6) afraid of the relationship he is in; he fears both being truly needed by the woman he loves and that she could leave him. The sound of the voice that sings this song exudes uncertainty, restlessness, hunger. I connected with this song (and with this album) because the music reached down into the deepest parts of me and touched the desire residing there that had yet to find the language and voice with which to be articulated. My seminary journey these last three years has given my desire the language of scripture, maturing it by teaching it to step into the biblical story and echo its characters: I have learned to cry out in prophetic anguish; I have prayed with the psalmists in their laments and thanksgivings; I have tried to question like Job; I have confessed and rebuked in the style of Peter. It is 3:51 am and I know I am lonely.

I am lonely for God, for community. I am lonely with the ache of desire throbbing in my heart, my gut, my soul. Indeed I find myself in “a dry and weary land where there is no water.” I am merely weeks out from my masters program and I am desperate to study and dialogue with others who are just as desperate in their endeavor to study. But here I am, where God has called me. The wilderness. The desert. When I sit in the pew on Sunday mornings my mouth fills with sand, adding insult to the injury of my already parched tongue. When I sit on my couch during the week my soul shrinks the way a piece of meat turns to jerky as the slow heat of an oven sucks its moisture away. In a recent phone conversation with a Fuller professor and well-known Christian philosopher, I heard that I am one of the many seminary grads that have experienced as a result of good theological education the eye opening and heart swelling that ruins me. I cannot live satisfied; I am bound to the insatiable yearning for “something better.” I “have looked upon [God] in the sanctuary” of scripture and seen how far we are from the vision Jesus Christ has ultimately revealed. I praise God for what I have seen, but I cry out to him even more because what I have seen has elicited the response Isaiah gave when he saw God: Woe is me; I am unclean among an unclean people. I feel like I have been sent out into the desert, a prophet lamenting how God’s people just don’t get it. It is lonely out here.

Down deep in our souls in the parts where we cannot hide from ourselves, aren’t we all lonely? Aren’t we all aching to live a vision we probably aren’t even aware of yet? Don’t we know there has to be more than this? Can this really be salvation? Can this really be new creation? This? We aren’t allowed to voice these questions: it feels irreverent, faithless, risky. We’re all at least a little depressed, and we’re all a little afraid that we might find “something better.” What if we needed it? What if it needed us? What if it demanded everything of us? Or, what if we caught the vision and it slipped through our fingers? What if it abandoned us? It’s 3 am and we just can’t help but feel scared… because we’re haunted2 by God calling out to us in the “watches of the night.”

The only way I have found of surviving this “dry and weary land” is to trust that God’s vision, however far we are from seeing and living it out, is on its way to being fulfilled. As sure as God spoke creation into existence, God is speaking new creation into being. His steadfast love holds him in covenant with us. He promises that “as the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return there until they have watered the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and succeed in the thing for which I sent it” (Isaiah 55:10-11). His word has gone out into our world:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God… He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him. He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him. But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God. And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth… No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known. (John 1:1-18)

God’s vision has been made known to us through Jesus, and inasmuch we follow the Messiah who suffered, we become partners in that vision. There is a connection between seeing God and praising God. And seeing God always radically changes us. If we are not changed, our praise may be nothing more than empty words. As Anabaptists we are convicted that salvation means embodied confession — belief seen in the newness of our life. Spoken words that are not rooted in the reality of our lives are meaningless. Our praise of the God we encounter comes from lips attached to bodies that kneel in repentance and walk the road of the crucified Christ.

I thirst for this newness of life. I thirst for communion with others who have completely offered themselves up to this journey. I endure in the hope that Jesus came to gather his people and will come again to redeem us as sons and daughters. I wait for that Day. I wait with hands stretched out asking for clearer vision with which to know God. I wait with my heart on my sleeve, begging for partners on this road of discipleship.

Lovers Less Wild: Keeping Ourselves from the Kingdom
Michelle Ferguson
March 2006

Jesus came preaching the “kingdom of God.” More often than not we evangelicals think of God’s kingdom in terms of where we go when we die. It is no wonder then than the “gospel” for us mostly means “winning souls.” What if we thought about the Kingdom differently? “Now having been questioned by the Pharisees as to when the kingdom of God was coming, He answered them and said, ‘The kingdom of God is not coming with signs to be observed; nor will they say, 'Look, here it is!' or, 'There it is!' For behold, the kingdom of God is within you’” (Luke 17:20-21). I do not deny that there is a future element to the Kingdom; however, Jesus also teaches that with his coming, the Kingdom has come. Somehow, the Kingdom of God is within us. Like wine is in a cup, the Kingdom is within us.

Before we get too comfortable with that, we also have to remember that Jesus time and time again flipped people’s expectations upside-down when it came to the Kingdom. This is especially true about who was “in” and who was “out.” Jesus came and brought the Kingdom. This fact does not mean that the Kingdom is automatically within us. We are not automatically “in.” Jesus tells parables about people missing their entrance, and making excuses about why they can’t come in. He also tells parables about people thinking they have been reserved a place and being turned away. He tells a parable of a man who enters in but is thrown out. He tells parables about people entering in who everyone else thought would never be allowed in. Let us be cautious about thinking we know how the Kingdom works.

Our question today is - What does it mean to have the Kingdom within us? If we think of the Kingdom in terms of rule, we might understand what Jesus was teaching. The Kingdom of God is God’s effective reign. The praise song we sing that says, “Reign in me,” gets at what the Kingdom is. The Kingdom of God is within us insofar as God reigns in us. Even this idea gets thinned out and reduced as we try and reassure ourselves that we’re “ok” and “in.” We are so preoccupied with being “justified” that we miss most of what Jesus teaches. However, instead of trying to correct the ways we distort what Jesus taught, I will offer one thing to think about.

One of the ways that we reject the reign of God, one of the ways that we keep ourselves from the Kingdom of God is by trading the scandalous, uncontrollable, passionate God for less wild lovers. During Advent I talked a lot about story and the way we need to abandon our small stories so that we can give ourselves to the larger story of God. We were made to live in God’s story. When we do not do that we feel an ache, a loss, a dissatisfaction that lets us know we are incomplete. Living the smaller stories is to live a sub-human existence. Jesus came in the flesh to show us what it meant to be human and to live God’s story. He came to invite us into that, into the Kingdom.

In the drama of kings and kingdoms, we know that there is always an enemy. Satan is the one who has set himself up against God’s Kingdom; he tries to wield power in a way that illegitimately claims authority over us. He wants us to be subjects in his kingdom. One of the ways that he captures us and holds us as slaves is by “convinc[ing] us that we need to create a story to live in that is not as dangerous as the Sacred Romance [God’s story]” (Curtis & Eldredge 116). I believe the “American dream” is such a story. We grow up with our greatest longing being a spouse, 2.5 kids, a dog, a house in the suburbs and cash enough for retirement. The picture we hope for is domesticated life – life under our control, comfortable life. And why not? We deserve it. We’ve earned it. As a Buick commercial once said, “It is not wrong to want luxury; it is wrong not to.” But that story is not our story. That is not what we were created for. That is not what we were called by Christ for. If you read through the gospels, you will see that following Christ means something radically different than that small story of security and ease. And the “American dream” isn’t even the only story that threatens to make us captive to Satan; he’s got a million more he’s ready to whisper into our hearts.

In their book The Sacred Romance, Brent Curtis and John Eldredge devote a chapter to our “less wild lovers.” We live small stories to quiet our heart’s desire for God’s large and wild story. “We both become, and take to ourselves, lovers that are less dangerous in their passion for life and the possible pain that comes with it - in short, lovers that are less wild” (126). They propose two categories of smaller “scripts” that we live: one of the ways we take up less wild lovers is to “choose anesthesia of the heart through some form of competence or order... a soul occupied by a seemingly redemptive busyness” (130-131); the other way we whore ourselves is to “choose a different kind of control: indulgence. We put our hope in meeting a lover who will give us some form of immediate gratification, some taste of transcendence that will place a drop of water on our parched tongue” (133).

We stand in a history of people who have prostituted themselves by chasing other lovers. Read the first couple of chapters of Hosea. Israel is pictured as an adulterous wife climbing the walls to get to her lovers. Are we afraid to truly give ourselves up to the great Romancer of our souls (the one we cannot predict or control)? So we choose affairs of the heart. “We give up desiring to be in a relationship of heroic proportions, where we risk rejection, and settle for being heroes and heroines in the smaller stories where we have learned we can ‘turn someone on’ through our usefulness, cleverness, or beauty (or at least turn ourselves on with a momentary taste of transcendence)” (135). Derek Webb, my new favorite musician, sings one of the small scripts we live: “Don’t teach me how to live like a free man... Don’t teach me to listen to the Spirit. Just give me a new law. I don’t want to know if the answers aren’t easy. So just bring it down from the mountain to me. I want a new law. I want a new law. Just give me that new law.” As Christians we say we are free from a law that forces external behavior (the righteousness of the Pharisees) but that cannot change the heart (Romans 8:3-4). Derek Webb ends his song: “What’s the use in trading a law you can never keep for one you can that cannot get you anything? Do not be afraid...” Making a “new law” out of Christianity is another of our favorite less wild lovers.

Let’s summarize our condition: we trade God’s story for less wild stories; in doing so we keep ourselves from the Kingdom by living Satan’s scripts. Something is horribly wrong. But that is not the final verdict. We do not have to continue the path of pursuing less wild lovers. Hebrews tells us that Jesus experienced life in the flesh and now stands as our perfect High Priest who offers us grace and mercy in our weakness. We can endure in giving up our lives to God’s story because Jesus offers us the way of repentance and new life. Do not be fooled: your lovers will protest your move toward faithfulness to God. It might even feel like you are losing yourself. Hear Jesus’ words: "If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it” (Lk. 9:23-24). Following Jesus, living God’s story, costs us our lives. And it costs us our lives every day. Will you challenge yourself to ask, “Is God’s reign effective within me?” Will you plunge into the gospels and measure your story against the story Jesus tells there? Will you repent of your less wild lovers? Will you recklessly abandon yourself to the Romancer of your soul? I long to do this more and more in my life. Will you join me? I need you; we need each other.

Let Not Our Hearts Grow Fat
Michelle Ferguson
February 2006

Psalm 23 is a beloved prayer in the church because it reminds us of the ways in which God is faithful to provide: green pastures, quiet waters, restoration, paths of righteousness. In times of trouble, when more often than not God’s provision is less apparent, David’s psalm encourages us to hope in the ever-present God in times of trouble, even in the shadow of death. We receive direction, protection, sustenance, and purpose to the point that our cup overflows. We find hope in the promise that goodness and lovingkindness will follow us all our days and that we will dwell in God’s house for all eternity.

As churchgoers if we’re not praying Psalm 23, we’re often praying the Lord’s Prayer. We acknowledge God respectfully and ask that he provide: bread, forgiveness, deliverance.

Much of our relationship with God is about asking him to give us something. If we’re honest, most of what we ask for has nothing to do with need; we ask for what we want, what we feel like, what would be nice. And most of the time what would be “nice” has to do with something we wish to possess. Many “praise reports” detail people who believe God “gave” them new (fancier, bigger, better) RV’s, furniture, houses, etc. These three examples come straight from Mennonites, those who enjoy the title “quiet (simple) of the land.”

This should not surprise us if we actually listen to the prevailing notion of the gospel our evangelistic programs advertise. Many of us would never say we believe in a “health and wealth” gospel, but how true is that when the gospel we hear week after week is being packaged with titles such as “The Benefits of Salvation” and images such as “salvation as a ticket (or blank check) to heaven”? We try to appeal to the consumer in us: evaluate the cost-benefit analysis of the gospel and make a decision today to buy into our program of salvation. Even salvation becomes something we own, something we possess. This is not a biblical picture. Somehow what started out as something good (God’s provision) turns into something false (our manipulated version of the gospel).

I am amazed that a tradition that was borne out of its insistence on following the costly way of Jesus even unto death has capitulated to the Americanized gospel. But, as Derek Webb sings, “Everything’s for sale in the 21st century.” We work pretty hard to sell the gospel. It is no wonder that in order to do so we have to use marketing skills learned from the market society in which we live. We use sex, drugs and rock n’ roll to sell the gospel. Accept Jesus and he will give you a fulfilling marriage… Come to Jesus and find relief for your guilty feelings… Come to our church; we’ve got the best worship band in town! Oh, of course we’ve “spiritualized” everything, but when it comes down to it, following Jesus has been turned into trading the currency of morality for possessions of personal satisfaction.

How does this happen? How do we get so far off the path (the road Jesus traveled)? Hosea 13:1-14:10 is a vital passage to consider in answering this question.

God’s people Israel whom he had “taken in his arms” and led out of Egypt was caught up in worshipping the gods (idols) of the surrounding peoples. Since coming into the Promised Land, Israel knew great abundance. However: “Israel is a luxuriant vine; he produces fruit for himself. The more his fruit, the more altars he made; the richer his land, the better he made the sacred pillars” (Hosea 10:1). Israel was sated and his heart grew proud; therefore, Israel forgot God (13:6). Imagine a grotesquely obese man eating - shoving food into his mouth by the fist-full, half-chewed pieces oozing out of his mouth and dripping down off his chin. Imagine what his heart looks like – arteries clogged, blood barely squeezing its way through, tired ventricles and atrium pumping irregularly. This is Israel’s heart. They ate of the land until they were fat hearted, and then they forgot God. They prostituted themselves with other gods.

God declares his intent to destroy Israel: he will dry up the land, plunder their hoards and slay them. By this they will know that he is God: “Only I the LORD have been your God ever since the land of Egypt; you have never known a [true] God but Me, you have never had a helper other than Me” (13:4). The so-called sustenance they have gorged themselves with will be taken away from them; they will be stripped and exposed to the fact that God is their only true source of life (Fishbane 41).

As is the pattern in prophetic oracles, alongside the declaration of God’s intent to destroy Israel, is God’s disclosure of the way of deliverance. “Return, O Israel, to the LORD your God, for you have fallen because of your sin. Take words with you and return to the LORD. Say to Him: ‘Forgive all guilt and accept what is good; instead of bulls we will pay [the offering of] our lips. Assyria shall not save us, no more will re ride on steeds; nor ever again will we call our handiwork our god, since in You alone orphans find pity!’” (Hosea 14:2-4). These words remind me of Jesus’ message to the towns and villages of Israel: “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel” (Mark 1:15). If Israel repents, God promises: “I will heal their affliction, generously will I take them back in love; for My anger has turned away from them. I will be to Israel like dew; he shall blossom like the lily, he shall strike root like a Lebanon tree. His boughs shall spread out far, his beauty shall be like the olive tree's, his fragrance like that of Lebanon. They who sit in his shade shall be revived: they shall bring to life new grain, they shall blossom like the vine; his scent shall be like the wine of Lebanon. Ephraim [shall say]:‘What more have I to do with idols? When I respond and look to Him, I become like a verdant cypress.’ Your fruit is provided by Me” (Hosea 14:5-9).

The first image we see is Israel’s fatness. The next image is God stripping the land bare: it becomes like a desert, dry and withered (see fig tree in Matt. 21:19). The image we end with is God’s promise of fruitfulness and nourishment. In the end, Israel may receive sustenance from her God, the only true source of provision, if she confesses her adultery and returns to her first love.

“He who is wise will consider these words, he who is prudent will take note of them. For the paths of the LORD are smooth; the righteous can walk on them, while sinners stumble on them” (Hosea 14:10).

In our American lives of wealth and comfort we are hardly ever confronted with our need. We often insulate ourselves from being aware of other people’s need. What if we reoriented our lives so that we were always aware of need? What if we lived in a way that created dependence on God? What if we lived constantly trusting God’s provision, knowing him as our only source of sustenance and walking with him as if we believed he is our shepherd?

Throughout the Bible God’s holy name is connected to Israel’s faithfulness to him. Our holiness glorifies his name. That is why so many psalmists pleading for God’s deliverance urge God to act on behalf of his “namesake.” When the early church prayed, “Your name be made holy,” they had in mind the sanctification of God’s people. When all things are made new, when the people of God are gathered into his kingdom, God’s name will be confessed and his “glory will be revealed.”

Now is the time when we are called to prepare ourselves, to be ready for the return of Jesus. Living confessionally must include living with hearts dependent on God. That means we have to order our whole lives to that end. Let us examine ourselves, repent where we find our hearts fat, and turn to our source, our God. Let us live lives of true abundance and refuse to settle for lives filled with the artery clogging possessions of the peoples that surround us.

Purify Our Imaginations
Michelle Ferguson
January 2006

We are people shaped by what we encounter. Whether by television, music, movies, newspapers, advertisements, relationships, or church services, we are constantly being influenced. What enters into us by way of sight, sound, smell, taste or touch becomes part of who we are. The scary thing about living in a society where we are bombarded by stimuli is we cope with encountering so many things by becoming desensitized. We become people who do not even realize how many influences surround us. We become unaware of what is getting in and shaping us. And we’re probably so tired from all the stimulation (whether we’re aware of it or not) that we just want to shut down, check out… go to sleep. We do not feel we have any extra energy to spend on anything. We become people who go through each day guided by that of which we are not aware. And because we are tired, we don’t question it. We “go with the flow.” And as we are carried along with that flow, we become people who gather up extra energy only to attend to crises. Unless we are forced to, we do not often swim against the current that is sweeping us downriver.

I realize that I am living that pattern when I am overwhelmed with feeling that my life is out of control. Things are happening around me and to me, but I am not living the way that I want. Life may not be “bad,” but life is not all I know God has promised it to be. I find myself not being the person God has called me to be. And I wonder why.

When I swim out and take time to sit on the shore, I gain some perspective on the river. And I see that it is taking me where it wants to go by the force of its flow. But where I want to go, where I am called as a follower of Jesus Christ is a location different than the destination of the river.

On the train to class last week I read Matthew’s gospel; on my way home I read Mark’s gospel. It was a surprising experience to finish those two gospels and realize that it had been a very long time since I last read any of the gospels all the way through. Now, I am a seminary student. My full-time job is to study. However, though I may study sections of scripture and read thousands of pages of biblical scholarship and theology each quarter, I haven’t sat with the text of the bible and just read its story in a while.

How in the world am I supposed to be shaped by the good news Jesus Christ proclaimed if I am not living in that text? Jesus said, “If you abide in my word, you are my disciples indeed. And you will know the truth and the truth will set you free.” Paul said, “Do not be conformed the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may discern the will of God, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.” I am not saying that I never read the bible, but I am realizing that I do not even come close to reading it enough. Is there “enough”? Am I a person shaped by the word of God, or do all the other things that surround me and influence me win as a shaping force in my life?

In the second sermon you let me share with you during Advent I said,

We are called into this story. And the only way in which we can truly enter in and live in this story is to know it as well as Jesus did. And to be readers of the story who encounter this story imaginatively. My favorite Old Testament theologian, Ellen Davis, writes extensively about imagination – and about shaping our imaginations by the text in order to then read the text imaginatively. We can’t manipulate the text to make it say whatever so-called imaginative thing we want it to. We have to submit our imaginations to the story that began at creation and be shaped so that we can engage the text over and over as storytellers.

Ellen Davis writes:

Consider this: imagination is the capacity to envision the existence of something that does not yet exist; we see this in the imagination of the artist. So it makes sense to say that the creation of the world, the covenant between the Creator of heaven and earth and an old man named Abraham, the creation of a nation of priests out of a band of runaway slaves, the incarnation of the Godhead in human flesh, the explosion of death’s finality, the inclusion of the Gentiles in God’s covenant with Israel – all these and more are remarkably imaginative acts on God’s part, acts through which God envisions and effects something totally new, totally unimaginable before it was brought into being. If we are faithful readers of the stories of these imaginative acts, we will find our own imaginations expanded and transformed. Scripture will claim us and make us into new people. (Ellen F. Davis & Richard B. Hays, The Art of Reading Scripture, xvi)

The people we will become if we submit ourselves to abiding in scripture are people who resist and escape the force of the river’s flow. We will be people who strike out on the path of Christ because his word will truly be a lamp unto our feet. Life won’t be something that carries us along; it will be the intentional pursuit of the claiming and proclaiming the abundance of God’s promise.

We are being shaped every moment. And by what? Things of which we are unaware? Or the story that we have said we believe? Will we protect ourselves from the “pattern of this world” that seems to saturate the very air we breathe? Will we abide in the word that transforms us?