Christina Moss
Good Morning. For those of you who don’t know me, which is most of you, I wanted to start by taking a minute to introduce myself. My name is Christina Moss, and I’m a friend of Pastor Kandace’s. I attended Stirling Avenue Mennonite Church, where she was a member at the time, while I was finishing a PhD in Anabaptist history at the University of Waterloo. And so I was excited when she reached out to let me know your church was taking part in the Anabaptism at 500 worship series and asked if I would be willing to be a guest preacher for the week on Renewal through Trust and Yieldedness.
Yieldedness is not a word we hear or use very often, and to be honest it’s not really a word that historians of Anabaptism use much either, because we tend to just default to the original German word Gelassenheit. So what is Gelassenheit? It’s a term with a lot of different meanings. I think if I want to get one common meaning across the easiest thing is to show you how it appears here, in the German version of a prayer that will, I think, be familiar to most of you. “Gott, gib mir die Gelassenheit, Dinge hinzunehmen, die ich nicht ändern kann, den Mut, Dinge zu ändern, die ich ändern kann, und die Weisheit, das eine vom anderen zu unterscheiden.” Does anyone recognize this prayer? If you need a hint, you’ve probably seen an embroidered version of it somewhere in a bathroom or living room. It’s the Serenity Prayer. So Gelassenheit, here, is about accepting the things you can’t change. But it’s a word that has had several different uses and meanings through the years, so what I would like to do today is to talk first about what Gelassenheit meant for our Anabaptist ancestors and then to take some time to think about what Gelassenheit might mean for us today, in our particular context.
The first early Anabaptist to talk much about Gelassenheit was a man by the name of Hans Denck. Denck was very heavily influenced by medieval German mysticism, and he carried a lot of its concepts over into his own writings. For medieval mystics, Gelassenheit was about losing yourself in the face of the vastness of God, so that in forgetting yourself you might finally attain union with God. Denck and other sixteenth-century added new layers of meaning to the word. Gelassenheit became about discipleship—joyfully accepting God’s will and seeking to follow God’s commandments. Gelassenheit also came to mean a ready acceptance of suffering as a path toward purification. Hans Hut, who was baptized by Hans Denck and went on to introduce Anabaptism to large parts of South Germany and Austria, developed what he called The Gospel of All Creatures, which basically held that all creatures can be saved—that is, can be transformed into the version of themselves God intended, through suffering. Just as wood suffers to become a house, so humans, if they are willing to suffer with Gelassenheit, can be purified through suffering.
And the early Anabaptists certainly did suffer. Following the imperial edict of 1527, being baptized a second time—as the first Anabaptists were, since their parents had baptized them as infants, though they of course did not consider that first baptism valid—was punishable by death in most jurisdictions where the first Anabaptists lived, though they were sometimes able to seek protection from a few more tolerant local rulers. Thousands of Anabaptists were executed in the sixteenth century, and thousands more were banished from their homes, or had their property confiscated, or fled in fear for their lives before the authorities could catch them. The sources that tell us about these Anabaptist martyrs are definitely most interested in telling the stories of the heroes of the faith, so, although I’m sure many wrestled with doubt, or fear, or anger at the unfairness of it all, the Martyrs’ Mirror and other collections like it don’t really emphasize that. But we also know that at least some Anabaptist martyrs met their death with a calm, confident sense of peace, trusting that God would preserve their souls, that the sacrifice of their lives would not be in vain. Some even sang hymns as they went to their deaths. Menno Simons also wrote a tract in 1555 titled The Cross of Christ, in which he encouraged Christians to practice Gelassenheit—or, as he would have called it, since he wrote in Dutch, leijdzaamheid.
For the Hutterites, who found a refuge in Moravia for nearly a century, Gelassenheit meant obeying God’s call to give up private property and share all things in common with other believers. They considered this to be one of the five greatest differences between themselves and the world, along with belief in infant baptism, celebration of the Lord’s Supper as a memorial meal, refusal to participate in war in any way, including payment of war taxes, and the necessity of separation in cases where a believer was married to an unbeliever. When a believer truly surrendered to the will of God and stopped thinking of themselves, they were able to let go of the things they owned and make sure the whole community had enough. The Hutterites took this very seriously, and those who were found to have secretly held on to a portion of money or property for themselves were cast out of the community. Even as important an early Anabaptist as Wilhelm Reublin was cast out of their community when he was found to have retained some property for himself.
There are things to admire about these historical understandings of Gelassenheit, but there are also pitfalls and possible extremes we want to be careful to avoid. I always like to say that church history is not a rule book. We are not obligated to do or believe anything simply because Anabaptists who came before us did or believed it. It is the responsibility of every generation of the church to see how others in the past tried to follow and obey God in their own contexts and then to discern once again, in community and with the guidance of the Holy Spirit, how to follow and obey God in their own context. Think of it, if this helps, as variations on a recipe. Let’s say you’re trying to make cabbage soup, or gingerbread, perhaps. It can be really useful to look at old recipes that have been in the family forever, or even historical recipes from cookbooks published hundreds of years ago. We can get ideas for ingredients or techniques we had forgotten about. But we may find that parts of the recipe no longer apply. We work with electric or gas stoves instead of wood burning stoves, and we can control their temperature much more precisely. We have access to different and new spices, some of which might work really well. If you’ve ever had ginger cookies made with Chinese five spice, it turns out they are delicious. We have different ingredients that are considered everyday and affordable versus special and expensive. And maybe some of our friends and family members are celiac, or lactose intolerant, and insisting on including a particular ingredient just because our ancestors did can cause them real harm. I’ll stop belaboring the analogy, but I think you get the point. It’s okay to read things about historical Anabaptism and have concerns about how well they will translate to our context.
Here are some concerns I have about Gelassenheit. I worry that willingness to suffer might turn into idolization of suffering, to the point that people almost feel they have to seek it out if they want to become better people. I worry that, when they do face suffering, they would force themselves to be cheerful or resigned and try to rush through very real and natural grief or anger because they worry that it’s not a faithful response. I worry that, when we talk about telling people to surrender to God and to God’s will, we end up in practice making them surrender to another human’s picture of God and interpretation of God’s will, and when we tell them not to lean on their own understanding that might be misapplied as getting them to ignore their God-given intuition and swallow any concerns they might have, because who are humans to argue with God—though, if we take into account the stories of some of the heroes of the Hebrew Bible, God doesn’t seem to really mind getting into arguments with people. And I worry that, for some people, Gelassenheit might turn into retreat, a passive acceptance or resignation in the face of everything that is wrong with the world. I guess all these things are God’s will. What can you do but shrug and move on? I don’t believe this is a posture God wants us to take towards a suffering world.
But just because Gelassenheit can be misapplied doesn’t meant that it’s useless for us as Mennonites today. So what might it look like to practice Gelassenheit here and now, in our context? There is no question for me that any form of Gelassenheit we practice is going to have to be active, not passive. Obeying God and following God’s will is going to mean seeing and engaging with the suffering of the world, and making the world a better place. But the suffering of the world is so vast, and there is so much to be done. We can easily burn ourselves out trying to fix it all. So maybe Gelassenheit can look like doing a manageable amount of work, even if it seems small, and trusting that it won’t be in vain, that God will make that work bear fruit, even if it takes time, even if we don’t end up seeing the results of our labour for ourselves. And it means trusting, too, that God is working in the world in so many ways besides just our own labour, prompting other people all over the planet to do their own small part to make the world better. The day after the US election I was feeling very down, worried and sad for my friends living in the States, afraid for what the results might mean for the world as a whole. And I went looking at the lectionary texts for that week, and one of them was Psalm 127: “Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain. Unless the Lord guards the city, the guard keeps watch in vain. It is in vain that you rise up early and go late to rest, eating the bread of anxious toil, for he gives sleep to his beloved.” The things that are broken about our world seem so deeply entrenched that it’s tempting to either ignore them altogether or to try to throw yourself into trying to fix all of it as fast as you can. But if you try to do the latter, you will burn yourself out long before you ever reach the finish line. It’s a marathon, not a sprint. So don’t get stuck eating the bread of anxious toil. Do your own small part of the work and then make time for rest, make time for joy, and trust that God is going to keep building that house all the while. Or, to borrow the metaphor from one of today’s Scripture passages, abide in the vine. You aren’t going to bear fruit all the time. Nobody does. To everything there is a season. But trust that the vine is there, supporting the branches, giving life to all of it, both in the seasons of bearing fruit and in the seasons of rest.
I also think that, while joyful acceptance of suffering might be a bit much to ask, Gelassenheit can help us develop emotional resilience in the face of our own suffering. None of us need to go out of our way to seek out suffering. It will find us—it’s part of the human condition. And when it does find us, we don’t need to rush to convince ourselves that it’s a blessing in disguise, even if it does turn out to be one in the end. We can be sad. We can be afraid. We can be angry. We can bemoan the unfairness of our situation. But if we stay stuck there, we might miss out both on small joys we can find in the present and on greater joys we might find in the future. Gelassenheit means trusting that God, our good parent, is holding us even now and will bring us through even this, and that everything we are able to do to move ourselves toward hope and healing matters, whether it’s going to therapy, reaching out to loved ones and asking for help, or even just going for a walk, drinking a glass of water, or getting a full night’s sleep.
Some of you, when I say, hold on to hope and trust God will just go ahead and do that, and you will feel better, and I think that’s wonderful and I wish I had your brain. But my brain, and maybe this is the case for some of you too, can get caught in some really anxious and unproductive loops and telling myself to snap out of it and trust God doesn’t really do the trick. So if you need a few more concrete suggestions to ground yourself, I offer this somatic resilience toolkit by Kai Cheng Tom, a Chinese-Canadian writer, artist, and mental health community worker. Here are five things you can have on hand to turn to when you find yourself stuck in a place of anxiety or despair:
- One physical action that helps your body feel resourced. Maybe that’s drinking a glass of water, or taking a nap, or going for a walk, or putting on your favourite song and enjoying a three minute dance break.
- One sentence, saying, or quote that helps you to feel hopeful. One that I come back to, personally, is something that Roberson Mbayamvula, who was my pastor at Hagerman Mennonite Church when I lived in Markham, says often: everyone can hear a tree falling in the forest, but no one hears the sound of new trees growing, and still they do.
- One thing that you can ask for from others when you’re struggling. Maybe that’s a hug, maybe it’s a listening ear while you vent, maybe it’s a distraction so you don’t have to think about your problems for a minute, or maybe it’s something practical like an hour of childcare so you can get out of the house and have some time to yourself.
- One compassionate action you offer those around you when they are struggling: are you the friend who brings food? The listener? The one who sends encouraging mail? The one who shows up to help fold the laundry that’s been piling up forever?
- And finally, one small way to contribute to positive social change. No one has the time or resources to fix every issue, but what is one issue that matters to you? And what is something you can do about it, whether that’s volunteering time, or donating money, or calling and emailing your city councilor, MPP, or MP. Stepping away from the big, overwhelming weight of everything that feels wrong and finding something small but concrete to do can be so helpful.
And as for surrendering to God’s will, and not leaning on our own understanding, Gelassenheit doesn’t have to mean ignoring our intuition, but it can be helpful to recognize times when our very natural, very human reactions are not serving us. Fear, for instance, is a very normal reaction to everything that is wrong with the world, but it tends to bring out the worst in us. It makes us suspicious of others, tempts us into us vs them mindsets, and encourages us to hoard to make sure we have enough rather than live generously so everyone can have enough. It keeps us stuck, and makes it difficult for us to envision a future that is better than the present we’re living in now. So maybe Gelassenheit means allowing God to move us beyond that first instinctual reaction of fear, into hope and into perfect love, love for ourself, for others, and even for our enemies. One of my fellow Stirling congregants recently introduced me to the work of Dr. Elin Kelsey, who talks about the importance of hope for spurring meaningful climate action. If all we feel is despair and gloom, we will give up, but if we feel hope that a better future is possible that hope enables us to take action for change. And, I might add, when we allow God to move us beyond fear and into love, we can invite others to join us in that better future.
Ultimately, for me, Gelassenheit means making peace with my human limitations and finding hope despite them because God is bigger than those limitations. I am small, and the universe is big. I am only going to be able to do relatively small things for the world, and I am going to do them imperfectly and inconsistently because I am human. But that’s okay, because God is God, and God is going to take my small and imperfect efforts and join them to the small and imperfect efforts of other people, and God is going to make something beautiful out of those efforts, even if I don’t see it right away. I can do my part and then step back, rest, and let God do God’s part.
Resources consulted:
Robert Friedmann, “Gelassenheit,” Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online, https://gameo.org/index.php?title=Gelassenheit&oldid=162946.
Chronicle of the Hutterian Brethren, Plough Publishing House, 1987.
Kai Cheng Tom, Somatic Resilience Toolkit, https://www.instagram.com/kaichengthom/p/DCCXsGSuWC1/