Luke 4:14-21; 6:46-48; 1 Corinthians 3:11
Introduction
Mennonites can be particular about the farmer’s pork sausage they prefer. In this area, there are a lot of varieties to choose from. Detweiler’s, Snyder’s, Gerber’s, Stone Crock, Stemmler’s, Earlidale, F & M in Wallenstein, and of course many of us remember with fond nostalgia the recipe made for many years by the late Floyd and Doreen Martin.
The seasonings matter, the cuts of pork that are used, and how finely it is ground. Smoked or plain? Garlic or maple flavoured? Pan seared, BBQ’ed or oven roasted? There is a lot to consider. A lot that goes into choosing your favourite variety, and how to enjoy it. And that is just the most local sausage scene. Then there are those Mennonites from Dutch/Russian origins who think they have the best kind of farmer’s sausage. That’s a whole other dispute I won’t even wade into today!
When my brother-in-law and his family come twice a year from Virginia during the holidays, they always request a traditional Woolwich Township sausage and scalloped potatoes meal, because they can’t get the same kind of sausage where they live.
What kind of sausage do we serve, you might ask? Well, that is a delicate question! So delicate in fact, that we had a family “farmer’s sausage cook-off” one summer recently. We served five different kinds of locally sourced farmer’s sausage, all prepared the same way, in a blind taste test, each of us rating our most favourite to least favourite. The competition was close, but we came up with a clear winner, and that is the kind of sausage we have served ever since. And the winner was…! Pause…. I am not going to tell you that! I could cause a church split! Mennonites have split over seemingly less serious matters in the past! It might also cause a run on that brand of sausages, and I don’t want them to be sold out the next time I place an order! Maybe it’s a good thing that we are having ham and scalloped potatoes in two weeks at our fundraising meal. At least ham we can agree on (I hope!)
Connecting to the Anabaptist Story
It turns out that eating sausage has been a delicate, even divisive activity since the very beginning of the Anabaptist movement. But for that story we need to transport ourselves back to late medieval Europe, and a time of particular unrest and upheaval that we know as the Great Reformation. From the fourth century on, Christianity was the Roman Empire’s official religion. Over the next 1000 years, the church and state became deeply connected, forging ‘Christendom’, a Christian kingdom. If you were a citizen of the Empire you belonged to the church, if you belonged to the church you were a subject of the Empire. By the seventh and eighth centuries it was the universal practice to baptize infants soon after their birth, initiating them into the church and marking them as citizens of the state (historical information was taken primarily from the new book by Troy Osborne, called Radicals & Reformers: A Survey of Global Anabaptist History, published in 2024. Troy is a prof at Conrad Grebel University College, Waterloo, ON).
Ordinary people experienced Christianity through the seven sacraments administered by the local priest. These rituals were physical signs of God’s grace. They included infant baptism, confirmation, confession and communion, among others. People were also expected to fast, pay tithes, and give to charity. As part of their fast during Lent, they were not allowed to eat meat. These orderly traditions governed almost all aspects of their lives.
It was expected that people confess their sins at least once a year to the priest, and then to do acts of penance imposed by the priest. But, it was also assumed that penance did not cover all of your sins. As a result, purgatory was believed to be where most people went after death, before they could enter heaven. Penance continued in purgatory until God was satisfied. People could shorten the time in purgatory by purchasing something called indulgences, which were like charters of grace and forgiveness. These could be for acts of charity or for acts of devotion like fasting or prayer. Or people could go on pilgrimage to a shrine at a sacred site, or visit a relic–a holy object believed to carry sacred power.
As you can imagine, it was a system ripe for exploitation, playing on people’s guilt, shame and greatest fear. There was a corruption scandal that exposed the abusive nature of the system. Bishop Albrecht of Brandenburg basically bought himself the role of bishop over a wider region, with money embezzled from the sale of indulgences to peasants. The man he got to promote the sale of indulgences was a master salesman, using catchy ditties, and posters, playing on people’s fears of hell and purgatory. “As soon as the coin in the coffer rings/ the soul from purgatory springs!” suggesting that one could purchase forgiveness of sins.
Martin Luther was outraged. He was an Augustinian priest, and a well liked teacher at the University of Wittenberg. A careful student of scripture, he had his own spiritual crisis, fearing that nothing could cleanse him from sin and satisfy God’s righteous wrath. Until he read Romans, and the concept that God in mercy justifies people by grace through faith.
This breakthrough gave Luther a deep sense of relief and gratitude. But his understanding of salvation by faith, directly challenged the authority of the Catholic Church in demanding from the people all these sacraments, charitable deeds, fasting, confession, indulgences and so on as if God’s mercy needed to be earned.
To express his outrage, in 1517, Luther wrote 95 arguments (theses), and posted them on the church door in Wittenberg. His ideas spread quickly, due in part to the latest communication tool, the printing press. He was ordered to defend his writings, in front of German princes and church authorities. When he had done so they ordered him to recant his “heresies.” Luther’s response was this, “unless I am convinced by the testimony of the Scriptures or by clear reason…I am bound by the scriptures I have quoted and my conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and I will not retract anything…here I stand, may God help me. Amen.”
Fearing what the authorities would do to Luther, some of his supporters spirited him away into hiding in the Wartburg Castle, where he spent a year translating the bible into German, the language of the people. Nearly all reformers after Luther built on his appeal to the authority of scripture to supersede the authority of church and state.
Peasants, artisans and craftspeople felt the heavy hand of Christendom on all aspects of their life. During this time there was considerable unrest–protests and even armed insurrections– with peasants demanding religious change, but also social, political and economic justice based on the teachings of Christ in scripture. There was some intersection and overlapping, between the peasant’s unrest and the Anabaptist movement until a bloody crackdown by the authorities ended the so-called Peasants War in 1525 (The Bechtel Lectures at Conrad Grebel College, winter 2025, featured Karl Koop, professor from Canadian Mennonite University, Winnipeg, who has done research on this overlap–something Mennonites have not been keen to share).
Ulrich Zwingli, a popular preacher and the leading reformer in Zurich, Switzerland gathered a small group together to study ways to renew the church according to scripture. And this is where we come back to the “affair of the sausages” as it is called. During Lent in 1522, members of Zwingli’s small group (school) met in one of their homes, where they cooked and ate sausages. This simple act violated the prohibition against eating meat during Lent. The first step toward reform in Switzerland came with the eating of sausages. Zwingli began to preach against all sorts of things dictated by the authority of the church and its traditions: fasting, indulgences, celibacy for priests, the use of images in worship, the veneration of saints. Arguing for the bible as the ultimate authority for those who let the Spirit guide them.
The Zurich city magistrates were willing to work with Zwingli to bring about reforms, but they wanted gradual change at an orderly pace. Radical reformers in Zwingli’s group, like Conrad Grebel and Felix Manz and George Blaurock insisted on moving more quickly, and implementing only those things that were commanded in scripture. By the summer of 1524 they were questioning the practice of infant baptism. Some parents in the area were not baptizing their children. By December of 1524 they were convinced that according to their understanding of Scripture, baptism was a visible sign of an individual’s faith and commitment to a new life in Christian community. Only adults could understand and make this kind of commitment. Zwingli wasn’t willing to go that far. He argued that infant baptism wasn’t forbidden or commanded in the bible. On January 17, 1525, Zwingli and the radicals disputed the issue of baptism in front of the city magistrates. The city council sided with Zwingli and issued a mandate that all babies needed to be baptized within the next 8 days, or their families would face exile. On January 21 they issued another mandate closing down radical bible study groups.
Later that same day a group of the radical leaders gathered in the home of Felix Manz’s mother Anna to consider their response. After prayer, George Blaurock asked Conrad Grebel to baptize him. Blaurock knelt and Grebel baptized him, then Blaurock baptized the others as well. In defiance of the city mandate, Manz, Grebel and Blaurock spent the week going house to house in the surrounding countryside leading bible studies, baptizing believers and celebrating communion. Their opponents called them Anabaptists, or rebaptizers. Accusing them of practicing something that was punishable by death in the Holy Roman Empire.
From eating sausages during Lent, to adult (believer’s) baptism. This is our story. This 500th anniversary of those first re-baptisms, and the beginning of what is now a world-wide movement, is an opportunity to pause, and reflect on Anabaptism, on being a Mennonite, as they were later called. What does it mean in 2025? We began to explore that in a celebratory service last week with our perimeter cluster of churches at Breslau.
Here this morning we have symbols of this faith heritage on the front table:
- The bible to represent the authority of scripture, and the importance of the story of Jesus
- A pitcher to symbolize the importance of believer’s baptism as a sign of inner transformation
- A basin and towel and offering plate to represent discipleship, following Jesus in lives of mutual care, support
- The plate and cup for communion – commitment to membership and accountability in community; identifying with Christ’s suffering
- One of the oldest hymn books used in this church.
- Key to our original church building out at Three Bridges (Brent shared about this artifact–you can read that in our church newsletter), links us to this Anabaptist story
The theme for this worship series on Anabaptism at 500 is renewal. Anabaptism was a renewal movement in its day. Is it time for another season of renewal? Phyllis Tickle wrote a book called The Great Emergence. Her thesis is that every 500 years or so, in cultures shaped by Western, Mediterranean Christianity a major upheaval happens. It happens in all aspects of culture–technology, science, health, education, family, work and religion. Everything changes, and the change is rapid and unsettling. The old ways of doing things don’t work any more or don’t make sense any more. It’s out with the old to make way for the new. It’s like cleaning out our attics and having a giant rummage sale.
One of the most distinctive features of that 500 year rummage sale is the question of where does authority lie? Every 500 years, or so it would seem, our source of authority gets holes in it, gets shaken to its core or maybe crumbles altogether (often for very good reason) and we look for authority somewhere else. In the Great Reformation, for Luther and for the Anabaptists, the old source of authority, which came from the pope in Rome, was discredited and no longer trustworthy. Stories of corruption, hypocrisy, abuse of power were rampant. Reformers and Anabaptists turned to scripture instead for their source of authority.
It’s been about 500 years. We are in the midst of one of those times of great upheaval. If the pattern holds then does it mean that we need to throw out the bible as a source of authority for us? If we look back at the Great Reformation, the Holy Roman Catholic church did splinter into a variety of Protestant churches (Lutheran, of course, Reformed–Presbyterians, Methodists) and the Anabaptists of course (Mennonite, Baptists, Missionary). But the Catholic Church did not die out. It went through its own reformation and renewal, and continues all over the world today.
So we are not ready to throw out the bible as a source of authority, but instead look at ways that its place in our church might be renewed. When Chip and I met to plan this service, we were impressed by the role the bible played in the Anabaptist movement. One of the most notable things about this story is that “Bible studies became crucial hearths for the Anabaptist movement” (Osborne, 45), first in the original Greek, but then in their own language. The doctrine of sola scriptura meant that the bible was the only authority, and that it was accessible to all, even those without a sophisticated education. “The authority to read and interpret Scripture, guided by the Holy Spirit” meant that they “could establish a scripturally faithful church on their own” confident that “they were faithfully following Christ as disciples. They were willing to follow their convictions even when doing so might lead to exile, imprisonment, or death” (Osborne, 54). That is radical stuff.
This morning our theme is renewal through story. The peasants and the Anabaptists found fuel to spark renewal in the bible. So, among the many stories we could have chosen from the last 500 years of Anabaptist/Mennonite tradition, Chip and I said, what if we turn to that story–the bible story for the source of our renewal in 2025? The story of Jesus as told in the NT Christian Scriptures, and the story that shaped Jesus as told in the OT Hebrew Scriptures.
Jesus Through the Lens of Scripture
The texts we chose this morning all have to do with foundations. Something that offers stability, structure, and a framework on which we can build. Foundations have to do with priorities, with where we place our loyalty and trust, with where we centre authority.
- Luke 4 – where Jesus reads scripture in the synagogue is a story about Jesus describing his mission by reaching back to his own scriptures, the Great Isaiah Scroll, to an image of Jubilee – a vision of mercy, justice, liberation. But Isaiah relates back to an even earlier passage in Leviticus where there are more details about what the Jubilee year is supposed to look like. For Jesus, it was the foundational image for the kind of community he began to shape and build. And it was grounded in the scripture that Jesus knew.
- Luke 6 – At the end of his Sermon on the Plain, in Luke’s gospel (corresponds to the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew). Jesus summarizes his teachings with the parable of the wise builder. Those who take Jesus’ teachings to heart and put them into practice are laying a strong foundation on which to build their life. Storms, challenges and difficulties are inevitable in this life but Jesus’ teachings are a foundation that can hold–they provide grounding and stability. You can stand on that foundation and face whatever comes.
- 1 Corinthians 3:11 – Here Paul, writing to a church in a unity crisis, where there were divisions over who was the most important leader among them, claims Jesus Christ to be the only foundation on which the church can be built. This was a favourite text of Menno Simons, a key leader in the Anabaptist movement. There is always the danger in any church that our loyalty and allegiance goes to a person, a leader, a style of music, clothing style, certain family names, a certain way of interpreting the bible, ethnic/cultural foods, favourite brand of farmer’s sausage…but the bottom line is we find our foundation, our grounding, our centre, our essence, our seed (reference the live painting Kandace is doing), our core, and our unity, despite our differences, in the person of Jesus.
Invitation to Renew our Relationship with the Bible
So, like the early Anabaptists, I am inviting us today into a renewed relationship with the story – the bible. How would you describe your relationship with the bible? For some of us it is a source of comfort, guidance and inspiration. Others have a more uncomfortable relationship with the bible. Maybe they feel shame for not knowing it better. Or maybe they are disturbed by some of the things they find in it. Some might find it puzzling, perplexing or intimidating. Some might deem it ancient and irrelevant. So why might I suggest a renewal of our relationship with the bible? Why would I encourage us to keep centering scripture in our worship and preaching? Why gather in small groups and read the bible together?
Simply put, if we choose to follow Jesus, the bible is how we learn about him. To know Jesus we look to the NT story of his life and his early followers. The NT is our primary source. To understand him in his Jewish context we also read the OT, the Hebrew scriptures that shaped who he became. One of my favourite ways to engage with the bible is experiential reading–putting myself into the text, using my imagination to experience the text through all my senses, and encounter the characters. Inevitably, I find people who, though they are distant from me by centuries, relate to my human reality. There are feelings, experiences and truths that transcend time and place. We can find ourselves in its pages, whether we are insiders or outsiders, whether we are the oppressed or the oppressor, whether we feel despair or hope.
It is not easy. There are parts of the bible that make us very uncomfortable. The bible has been used over the centuries to justify all kinds of horror inflicted on others. There are some pretty wide cultural chasms to cross from NT times until now. How can it still speak to us? But if we stick with the text, if we face the parts of it that make us uncomfortable, if we wrestle with it, allow it to speak and to read us, it does give us blessings beyond measure. It is worth the effort.
Derek Suderman, professor at Grebel, suggests that in our approach to the bible we try to avoid 2 ditches. On the one side, the temptation to place the bible “above” us and so all we are to do is understand and submit to its truth, even difficult and troubling texts. This is a conservative tendency. The other ditch is to sidestep difficult material and in doing so place ourselves over the bible, effectively eliminating the difficult and troubling texts. This is a liberal/progressive tendency.
Instead he suggests we take our cue from our Anabaptist predecessors, and dedicate ourselves to following Jesus in life, including reading the bible he read (the OT). Not rejecting any texts out of hand, recognizing that any part of Scripture may hold a divine word for faithful disciples in certain times and places. A text I may find horrifying, about a vengeful and angry God may speak comfort and hope to someone living through terror and trauma. And I can ask myself, for whom might this text express good news?
The Anabaptists printed small pocket sized commentaries of key bible verses, organized by topic, that they could carry around and consult or share from. Court records from that time period show that most of the Anabaptists who were arrested and imprisoned, quoted from scripture in their defence.
I like to remind myself that the bible is living and dynamic. It is always speaking into new cultural contexts. And I like to remind myself that Jesus read the Hebrew scriptures. These are the texts that helped to shape him, convinced him that non-violent love was the right path. And so back I go to the text to learn more about how Jesus was formed and informed by his scriptures. It is interesting to note that scripture often wrestles with itself. It doesn’t always agree with itself. Sometimes it offers a new perspective on another part of scripture, and Jesus himself did this. So it is a deep, rich reservoir to which we can return again and again for living water that gives us life.
Reading the bible has the potential to change and transform us, and the world we live in. There is a reason why the German princes tried to silence Luther. Why the magistrates in Zurich banned bible study. They were threatened by groups of ordinary people reading the text. Not only was bible study undermining their authority, but it was calling for changes to the social, political and cultural systems that had been in place for 1000 years, based on Jesus and his teachings. When people encounter the living word they are changed. If they get a taste for the Jubilee kind of community Jesus is building, they can see what is possible, they can see that there is a different kind of story, a different kind of community that is more fair, just and sustainable, where the hungry are filled, the sick are healed, and the oppressed are set free.
On the eve of the inauguration of one of the most polarizing figures in US history, maybe the most faithful thing anyone can do is gather together with some other ordinary people and invite the Spirit to guide them as they read the bible and learn, and be formed into people that look and sound and act like Jesus.
When I was teaching at Rockway we had an annual conference with Mennonite educators from across Canada and the US. I remember so clearly when bible teachers from a conservative part of one US state said they couldn’t talk about the social justice aspect of the gospel in their bible classes. If they used that kind of language they would be accused of being communist sympathizers, and risk losing parent and constituency support. Instead, they said, we simply invited our students to read the gospels, and let Jesus speak for himself.
Conclusion
So let’s continue to gather and read the bible in community, with the guidance of the Spirit. It’s what we do when we plan worship. It’s what we do each Sunday in worship and worship response time. And it’s what Don Penner is inviting us to do this afternoon, and two more times next month.
Of course, reading and interpreting the bible together is risky because we might come to different understandings. Mennonite groups have often split over different interpretations. I would argue that if we stay in community and wrestle with the text together, and wrestle with our different perspectives, we will be blessed and changed. The bible is a living and breathing document. It is new each time we enter it. It speaks to our age even if it doesn’t know what a computer is or what AI can do. We are less likely to go off the rails if we have a variety of interpretations and perspectives to wrestle with than if we all think the same way. Maybe it’s better if we eat a variety of types of farmer’s sausage too!
When Chip was my group’s mentor in the TiM program for new pastors, he often encouraged us to summarize something in 6 words as a way to consolidate what we were learning. So here is my six word sermon. Spirit inspired Scripture readers encounter Jesus. That was a recipe for renewal 500 years ago, and it is a recipe for renewal today.