‘Welcoming’ Peace in Pentecost
The Acts 2 story of Pentecost has not been one of the traditional scriptures Mennonites have turned to when we talk about our Peace position. We turn to the Sermon on the Mount, to the Gospels, to Romans 12, and even to some of the Old Testament passages that point toward God’s vision of peace, like the Isaiah 2 passage from last week of turning swords into ploughshares, or the Abraham and Sarah hospitality story we started this series with. We have generally been a pretty practical, hands on, daily life, kind of people, and we turn to solid, practical and ethical passages to guide our peacemaking. That is all fine and good. But today our Peace Series brings us to Pentecost. We don’t always know what to do with the Spirit, and with Pentecost. The Spirit is unpredictable, fluid, impulsive, and may lead us and surprise us and change us in ways that are both unsettling and yet ultimately, life-giving and essential to a life of faith. Arnold Snyder, retired Anabaptist history professor at Conrad Grebel, reminds us in his little resource ‘From Anabaptist Seed’ (C.A. Snyder, Pandora Press, 1999) that the Holy Spirit was key to the early Anabaptist movement. It was the power of the Holy Spirit that brought together communities to read and interpret scripture and bring them into a new radical understanding of faith. It was the ‘regenerated’ who led the movement and the Spirit who led them into discipleship, peacemaking and bearing fruit in everyday life, not the other way around. The Anabaptist movement at its heart was a movement of the Spirit! It was a Pentecostal moment and movement in the best sense of that word. That is how the church grows and changes and becomes relevant and alive again in every generation. It is the moving of the Spirit. As Diana Butler Bass writes about Pentecost ‘Acts tells a story of deep human connection, of how a powerful God transforms each one of us, and how the Spirit remakes the world.’ (A Beautiful Year, St Martin’s Publishing Group, 2025, p.213)
Pentecost is the transformational event for the people of God, for the followers of Jesus, that inspired them to be the church in the world, and to make a difference in the world. Jesus, their leader, had been crucified, and been resurrected and appeared for a short time with the disciples, before his ascension into heaven. The future of this Jesus movement was at a tipping point, fragile, uncertain of where to go and what to do next. It was in this in-between, waiting time. And then, when they were all together in one place, there was a violent wind and tongues of fire rested on each head, and they were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability. Butler Bass comments about how political this was – this was at time of Empire, and peoples divided. (Ibid, p.219-222) To suddenly speak and understand each other’s languages, to be at peace with each other, come together in unity, and to dream together a new world, a new way of being in the world, was radical and threatening. They were no longer afraid of Empire. They operated out of a different set of values. We learn a little later on that they shared their goods together, and took care of each other. There is a spirit of inclusiveness. We hear in the Cornelius story of Acts 10 that ‘God shows no partiality, but that anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to God’ (Acts 10:34). Peter quotes the prophet Joel, that God will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, all peoples, and that the young shall prophesy and see visions, and the old dream dreams. This is the imagination that allows for God’s Shalom, God’s peace to take centre stage, for people to come together, for insiders and outsiders to share a common vision and purpose, for all to be included. Pentecost is a peace text and a story that keeps bringing new life through the Spirit to the people of God.
Most recently here at SJMC, I think about this peace series that we are in, and our Peace Day a few Sundays ago. This whole series has felt Spirit-led. It started with one letter, passed on to the congregation, that ignited a whole movement and momentum here at SJMC. We made a big pivot in our worship plans. A group imagined a whole Peace Day, filled with stories and activities – some of which taken us out of our comfort zone. It has been wonderful. It has brought us to name our core commitments as a people of peace, and ask tough but good questions about what this might mean for us today, in our current world. It is changing us and transforming us. That’s what the Spirit does.
10 years ago, on Pentecost Sunday, May 16, 2026, we as a congregation also witnessed to the moving of the Spirit in our midst. It was 10 years ago that we received our new LGBTQ Welcoming Statement in a Sunday morning worship service, through a ritual of pouring water into a tall cylinder and naming out journey and commitments as a congregation. In your bulletin, you can read the full statement and the commitments we made together as a congregation about what it would mean for us to live into our Welcoming Statement. Let me simply read the core statement out loud:
‘Grounded in God’s universal love, we are a community of faith growing into our calling to be the body of Christ. We welcome people who are LGBTQ to participate in the life and ministry of our congregation.’
Today, on another Pentecost service, we are marking and celebrating this congregational journey and how the Spirit has moved within us.
Last year, I was approached by Lisa Freeman, who grew up in this congregation, daughter to Don and Barb Freeman. Lisa has been a scholar and invited me to write an article about our SJMC congregational journey and process, as she works to edit a larger book on Mennonite Queer experiences and stories, something she hopes can be published soon. So, I spent time going through all of the Leadership Council minutes, the congregational memos, the piles and piles of materials from those years, the outlines and resources, and surveys and all the correspondence. It was a thick file! We did a lot of good and hard work and discernment! I also checked the draft of the article I wrote for Lisa with Leadership Council and with the original Discernment Committee on Sexuality that helped lead the process. For this morning’s sermon, in a much shorter form, I want to share and remind us of that story, and some of the observations along the way.
So, a bit of history: In 2009, Mennonite Church Canada began a process called ‘Being a Faithful Church (BFC) to discern questions of faithfulness in the church, especially as they relate to human sexuality. It was a long 7-year process, with a final report and recommendation presented and approved by delegates in Saskatoon in July of 2016 that ‘we create space and leave room within our body to test alternative understandings… and to see if they are a prophetic nudging of the Spirit of God.’ – again, that Spirit language as the conference signalled a more accepting posture towards LGBTQ folks. BFC gave us a larger nationwide context to have our own SJMC conversations in those years. That was a gift to us. We are a conference-oriented congregations, and so we participated in most of the steps along the process.
There were sessions on the paths and ditches of Biblical interpretation and our own session early on that we named ‘Taking our Temperature,’ where we named some of our own history around issues of sexuality, from head coverings to women in ministry to what was a very divisive issue for us in the 1970’s around divorce and remarriage, and a desire to not repeat what had felt like an unhealthy and hurtful process then.
Where we really got going with conversation was from 2014-2016. I would call the first stage in 2015, after our background work , ‘Listening and Learning,’ where we held a 6 week Sunday School series with adults and youth on different relevant topics, did some biblical work, heard stories, helped host the Ted and Company play Listening for Grace, and shared a sermon by all 3 pastors that named the issues, and the ‘hope that we here at St Jacobs and the broader church can discern together with respect, dignity, openness, sensitivity and love.’ At the last Sunday school session, there was as strong desire expressed to not only continue the conversation but also move to a more active process of discernment. As we wrote in a Leadership Council letter to MC Canada ‘…Once the conversation was open and on the table, significant passion was released… We are grateful that these conversations have remained open, honest and respectful. The significant majority voice expressed through our process named a deep sadness and regret at the loss of LGBTQ individuals and couples from the church and longed for the church to be a place of welcome and inclusion for these and others.’ Leadership Council then formed a task force, the Discernment Committee on Sexuality (DCS), to lead a more formal discernment process at SJMC.
So we began a second stage, in the Fall of 2015, that I would name as ‘Listening and Discernment.’ We moved our time of conversation to Sunday evenings, and always began with a simple supper, eating together around tables, and then a time of worship, singing and prayer, before entering various conversations, sitting around a circle in the Gathering Room. We lit the dancing oil lamp and invited the Spirit’s presence. There was lots of room for congregational engagement, feedback and good listening. We distributed an extensive Congregational Survey on Sexuality, with over 100 responses, a very high rate of return, and a clear direction that emerged. We finally got to the point of drafting a welcoming statement, which was brought back to the congregation on one of these Sunday evenings for feedback and further editing, and eventually approved by Leadership Council on April 7, 2026, and embraced by the full congregation in that Pentecost Sunday worship service. As it says in Acts 15, coming out of the council of Jerusalem, ‘it seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us.’
As I reflect back on those years and on our process then, there are some of my observations about that time and about what it has meant for us to live into this commitment – what I might call our Third Stage – ‘Living into our Commitments.’
- Overall, by the grace of God, I think SJMC managed to create a good, healthy and open process, with lots of good communication with the congregation. We took our time and tried to give opportunities for everyone to be heard, even as some did not participate as much along the way. It was not a perfect process. We didn’t always agree with each other. Some people may not have felt heard. Yet, I would name it as a gentle process, which fits the nature of this congregation at this point in our history. There is strong trust of leaders, and our leaders led in wise and respectful ways, with an emphasis on good listening. It was key for us to eat together around tables, to worship and pray together, and to sit in a circle.
- It was also hard work. At times it was tiring; at other times invigorating. For some the process took too long, for others, they would rather we did not engage with this. It was a pretty vulnerable time, with people willing to share openly and honestly from their hearts. There were both tears and laughter along the way, and a level of mutual trust. I remember one of our seniors commenting that they did not really understand the direction we were going, but that this was still their church – unity was more important than uniformity. We continue to be a congregation with a diversity of thought and try to hold that diversity, even as we claim our corporate commitments. For the most part, people stayed with the process and with the congregation, even if they personally came to a different position, although over time, especially through the pandemic when we could not meet in person and the bonds of worship and community loosened, some chose to leave, while others have found SJMC and made a home here because of our commitments.
- It is important for us to recognize that Queer folks have always been a part of us, part of our congregation, and a part of many of our families, in our past, and today. This is not an us and them, but rather a we. During the process, we also became aware that several folks from our past were paying attention. Some shared their stories; others did not. Some talked only to pastors. There are still hurts from the past, wounds people carry, and also a gratitude for the congregation now becoming welcoming. Our youth and young adults were also paying close attention to the process. Many participated in the sessions and filled out the survey. In the years since our statement, several have openly named themselves as LGBTQ+, including my daughter. Church has generally been a safe place, and I shudder to imagine what could have happened to them if we did not become a welcoming congregation. I also recognize that hurt and misunderstanding can still happen, whether consciously or unconsciously – it can be subtle, and we do not always live into the fullness of our commitments. There may be times when someone does not feel welcome, even when we have a Welcoming Statement. We are a very human community, which the church always is, and is it only through the grace of God and the moving of the Spirit that the church continues to grow and learn.
- In the 10 years since our statement, we have continued to grow into what it means to be a welcoming congregation. This has happened in mostly quiet and incremental ways. SJMC is not a ‘virtue signalling’ congregation; we don’t tend to be ‘out there,’ creating a scene. It is that quiet in the land culture, that we have been challenging ourselves with in this peace series and in our more public Peace Sunday. Sometimes, we may have been too quiet. In hindsight, our process 10 years ago really only talked about the ‘LGB’ part of LGBTQ, with little mention of trans-gender experiences, something much more in the news and common culture today. And so we keep learning. As we have tried to live into our statement, we sometimes falter and fail and fumble around, not getting it right. Yet we continue to grow and learn, and I think our statement is much more owned and even taken for granted now. It is one of the things people in our congregation tell others when asked to describe who we are. LGBTQ folks simply participate naturally in congregational life, and leadership and worship, with no big deal made about it – I like that. I am grateful that we came to a clear and specific statement as a congregation that gives us as pastors clarity on how to respond to things like baptism/membership, marriage requests or involvement in congregational leadership. An SJMC pastor officiated at our first same sex wedding in June of 2023. It has been assumed in pastoral search processes, that new pastors need to be at an affirming place personally. It was the affirming stance of the congregation that gave Kandace the courage last June to share her own journey into an identity as Queer. Her vulnerable sharing has opened up a safe place for others to explore questions, and share their own stories and experiences, and is a gift to the congregation.
And so we continue this journey together. I ended the article I submitted by saying ‘I am proud of our journey as a congregation, and grateful to be a part of this faith community.’ That still holds true. At the same time, I am convinced that it has only been possible because of the movement of the Holy Spirit, that can make all things new. The Spirit helped us listen to each other, helped us hold each other in love, helped us when we fell short or hurt each other, helped us see visions and dream dreams. As we will sing, helped us ‘colour outside the lines, taking us to places we have never been before, opening doors to worlds outside the lines.’ (VT 582) This is what Peace has looked like here and it is appropriate to celebrate this on another Pentecost Sunday. May the Spirit continue to lead and guide our congregation. Amen.