1 Peter 2:4-10; Hebrews 12:1-3
I remember when I first became aware of and excited about the Hebrews 12 passage and images we just heard. I was a high school youth if you can believe it. It was the theme verse for a cross Canada Youth Assembly called Great Trek, with its theme for the week – ‘Run the Race!’ Great Trek was a cool idea. It was a gathering of Mennonite youth held in Thunder Bay, Ontario in the summer on the campus of Lakehead University. I was at the second one that happened in 1984. I think there were a couple more that happened later in Banff before it ran its course. The neat thing was that everyone took the train to get to Thunder Bay. One train literally started in the East from South Ontario with Ontario youth, and another train started in the West from Vancouver, BC, stopping to pick up youth in Calgary, Regina and Winnipeg before both trains met in Thunder Bay – West meets East! – like a Grey Cup final. I hopped on a different transfer train in Edmonton to make my way south to Calgary to join the rest of the Alberta crew, and then we joined this ever enlarging train heading East. The time on the train was amazing, as more and more youth met each other and went up and down the train cars, talking, playing cards, joking, laughing, hanging out, and getting to know each other. Thinking back, I pity the Via Rail staff. This was the first time I remember baking peppernuts myself beforehand– a whole gallon ice-cream pail full for the trip – the small little cookies I talked about last Sunday night from my growing up Christmas traditions. It made me more popular than warranted. When we arrived in Thunder Bay, there was a whole week of worship, music, workshops, activities, group games, and late night fun. I loved meeting peers from across Canada. And somehow this ‘Run the Race’ theme and image captured my imagination for the week. One of the optional activities was even a long distance run to the Terry Fox monument, which I regretted a few kilometers in when I was basically running by myself, out of breath, wondering when it would all end and if I would indeed have enough perseverance. My memory is that the Hebrews 12 theme urged us to follow Jesus with the full energy and dedication and purpose you have in running a race, and that there was this whole cloud of witnesses surrounding us and cheering us on – our parents, our sponsors, our church, generations of faithful followers – looking out for us and being our biggest cheerleaders. I remember this still, years later. I also remember one particular workshop about what it meant to be a Mennonite, led by a Mennonite who grew up in Africa – I can’t remember the country anymore. But I do remember his name – Abuhaka Tafawa Bulawa. He started his workshop by sharing his name, and saying that this was a Mennonite name! You are Mennonite Christian through the choice of faith, not by any sort of Ethnic background. That was radical for 1984 from my little Russian Mennonite enclave. This was an expansion in my concept of the body of Christ and part of this week that expanded my vision of church. The group worship was powerful – the singing, the gathering of new friends and community, the inspiration of all the workshops and sessions. The whole week was an experience for me of being a part of something much bigger than myself, of realizing that I was a part of the larger body of Christ that extended way beyond my own local church experience in Edmonton. I had caught the buzz! This week, I have been visiting with my cousin Tim Wiebe Neufeld, who grew up in Hamilton, Ontario and is now the Executive Minister of Mennonite Church Alberta, who flew out for the MCEC Spring Gathering, together with his wife Donita, originally from Didsbury, Alberta, who I knew growing up, and has also been a pastor and now works for MCC. Both of them were at Great Trek, although they didn’t know each other then, but I spent time with each of them in separate groups – and over supper on Wednesday night we shared together some of the memories of that time. Each of them also remembered this Run the Race theme – with Tim even remembering there was a song composed by Paul Dueck to go with the theme. We were a part of something much bigger than ourselves – the body of Christ.
This was not the only time growing up that I was in broader church conference settings, but this was probably the most striking and one that I was very self-conscious and self-reflective about. I was what you could have called ‘a conference kid.’ My parents attended almost every Canadian Conference, dragging us kids across the country. I was put in the kids programs or youth programs, and several times those happened at the local Mennonite camps – Camp Squeah in BC, Shekinah in Saskatchewan, Moose Lake in Manitoba – plus many years as a camper and then camp staff a Camp Valaqua, our Alberta Mennonite Camp. I was also at conferences in the States – Bluffton, Ohio (who knew?), Estes Park, Colorado. Each of these gave me that sense of being connected to a larger people of faith. At most of these, I would also end up meeting my relatives and my cousins that are scattered across the Country, and yes, there were a bunch of other conference junkies in this family system of multiple pastors. It might be a disease. As adults, a number of us Neufeld cousins frequently meet up at these conferences, and even this past Friday night, we did our traditional late night post conference Neufeld Cousin Run, randomly finding some restaurant and mostly laughing and telling stories. We must be getting old – several checked out and it was only 3 of us in the end. My young adult life was also very much shaped by being a part of Mennonite Institutions – I was to college and university at what was then called Canadian Mennonite Bible College in Winnipeg, and then Conrad Grebel here at University of Waterloo, and then did my seminary training at AMBS in Elkhart, Indiana. Each setting was a rich experience of learning and community and certainly life and faith shaping.
So when we started planning for this worship series on “The Things That Nourish”, and especially when I realized that I was preaching at the end of the MCEC Spring Gathering weekend at Rockway, I realized that a big thing that has truly nourished me over the years has been being a part of the larger church – being connected in so many ways to the larger body of Christ. This has been a big part of my spiritual journey, what has fed my soul. Mostly today I want to share stories. Because of my growing up, my family, and because of my profession, I have had so many opportunities to be present at these larger gatherings. But even if you have never been to a single conference, and your worship experience has been mostly here in this congregation or in a few local churches, you are connected much broader than you might even imagine. We are connected by the hymnals we use, by Sunday School curriculum, Rejoice devotionals, through worship resources, through our 4 congregation Junior Youth program or the recent youth exchanges with Faith Mennonite in Leamington or TUMC in Toronto, through our youth or young adults attending schools or camps, through pastors trained in our schools, and pastoral searches supported by MCEC – more than all that, we are connected by a common identity and theology and peoplehood that feeds and nourishes us and binds us together.
It was fun to sit down with Nelson a few weeks ago to plan this service – he was the perfect worship leader, himself being a part of so many larger conference settings and being so passionate about it. You will have to ask him about the key roles he and people like Sam Steiner and others played in the formation of MCEC – Mennonite Church Eastern Canada, out of the 3 different Mennonite conferences in Ontario and Quebec, and then his role on the North American committees around integration in the mid-1990’s as the two major Mennonite denominations integrated and then dividing along country lines into Mennonite Church USA and Mennontie Church Canada. I was there at Wichita, Kansas in 1995 for the final vote on Integration and the Confession of Faith – there with another young adult friend delegate and we each tried to raise our hands in the main sessions to second a motion – one of us, I can’t remember who, finally seconded the last motion to thank the organizers for a good week.
In 1st Peter we read that ‘once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people. Once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.’ Peter also writes that we are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession. It is this larger vision of being a part of the body of Christ – not just as individuals, but as a whole people. You belong to something much bigger than yourself – and are connected to this whole body of believers across the world and across time. It is like the Hebrews image of the Cloud of Witnesses. What connects you is not your ethnicity, your common geography or life experience, not even that you are friends with everyone else and know everyone – quite the opposite, you are deeply connected to people you do not know, but who share the same commitment to Christ. Peter says you are God’s own people ‘in order that you may declare the praises of the one who called you out of gloom into a marvelous hope.’ There is a wonderful larger vision here. Peter is writing these words to the early church struggling to figure out their identity and purpose. A major issue and often dividing point at that time, was how to be church together coming out of such vastly different histories as Jews and Gentiles. As the Believers Church Bible Commentary on 1st Peter points out (1-2 Peter, Jude, Erland Waltner, Daryl Charles, Herald Press, 1999, p.73-81) Peter is using imagery right out of Israel’s history – chosen people, holy nation, terms that had been sometimes been used in exclusive ways to set Israel apart, as something special, and he extends the application to include believers in Asia Minor who are mostly of Gentile background. The commentary states ‘Peter’s emphasis is not on contrasting the Old Israel and the New Israel, but rather on declaring the inclusiveness of the true Israel of faith….they are as Gentiles a reclaimed and restored people… having experienced the restoring, life-giving and transforming mercy of God in Jesus Christ, the living stone, on whom they are being built into a community of hope’ (p.77-79). Vastly different people come together in Christ – all a part of the same body.
Peter uses the image first of a living stone – the Stone rejected by humans but chosen by God. But then also the living stone that builds us all into a spiritual house. It is this strange but enticing image of putting together something so hard, solid, and seemingly immovable as stone, with those stones actually being living, breathing, life-giving – a vibrant spirituality – totally transformed.
Do some of you remember the song ‘Living Stones’? – (sing) ‘Living stones, living stones, to build up the Kingdom living stones.’ The 1979 Sing and Rejoice Supplement. For me that song is intimately connected to Welcome Inn Community Centre and Church, where I did 2 years of Mennonite Voluntary Service, lived in a unit house with other young adults, and came face to face with the issues of poverty and injustice in this beautiful lower income neighbourhood in the North End of Hamilton. It felt like we sang that song almost every Sunday in worship. It was a hit. And yes, the tune is catchy, but I think it was because the folks there knew that something special was happening when this diverse and motley group of people were gathered together as church – as one in Christ, as living stones building this wonderfully beautiful and diverse people of God. From my Middle class Mennonite upbringing, the experience of a low income church radically changed my concept of church, and yet, after awhile, I realized that Welcome Inn, with its shared leadership, its high congregational participation in worship and decision-making, its love of community and discipleship, was thoroughly Anabaptist. There were key shared values that went beyond differences in worship styles, music, piety and income.
It was during those years that our VS unit took a road trip to Mennonite World Conference 1990 in Winnipeg, Manitoba – and that vision of church and peoplehood expanded even further for me. We are a part of a global, inter-cultural church that enriches us, challenges us and enlarges our vision – that vision I had glimpsed already in Thunder Bay so many years earlier with meeting Abuhaka Tafawa Bulawa. It was many years later, in 2009, that I attended Mennonite World Conference in Asunción, Paraguay together with our SJMC youth Ben Smith, part of the !Explore pastoral intern Program for high school youth. 2 experiences stand out for me. One was a huge group worship service, 1000’s of Mennonites from across the world in this large centre, all singing and praying and worshipping – and then having communion. Ben intentionally sought me out as his pastor and mentor, so that we could share his very first communion together, just weeks after his baptism in this sanctuary, but shared now with this global Mennonite church. It still gives me shivers. Then on the Sunday, we were randomly scattered through the city to attend local congregations – and I ended up in a small little church at the end of a dusty road with 20-30 people worshipping in Spanish – there was singing and Scriptures and prayers and a sermon I couldn’t understand, with a little potluck afterwards – and I felt totally at home – knowing that these too were my people, and I was their people. ‘Once you were no people. Now you are God’s people.’ So often for me it has been in shared worship that I have known deep in my soul that I am part of a much larger body of Christ – worship at large conference gatherings across Canada and North America, sharing worship in French and Goun at the Benin Bible Institute and other Benin settings, worship with other pastors in retreat settings, Forest Church experiences, Singing and worshipping at the Laurelville Music and worship weekend, a week of meditative musical worship with mostly young adults from around the world in the ecumenical Taize Community in France, happening upon an All Saints Day Catholic Worship service in a huge Cathedral in Rouan, also in France, singing around a campfire with youth, church camping worship, attending ordination services of pastoral friends and colleagues in other congregations, worshiping over the years in a number of different MCEC congregations, our cluster Labour Day worship, worshipping around a canoe trip campfire with a group of Inter-cultural pastors after a long day of paddling, sharing our church picnic worship with our friends from Grace Lao, being called upon this very week to lead the funeral service for Grace Schweitzer at Erb St Mennonite, while being on call for their pastor travelling for vacation – this sharing we do within MCEC – because we are one body.
This weekend I have been at the MCEC Spring Gathering, along with a number of us from SJMC. I thrive in these gatherings. I love the people and relationships, the worship, the larger vision, the buzz of energy. Sometimes I wonder if as a collective group, we are losing that sense of being bound together as a larger church body, as a conference. We are a part of an individualistic society. There has been a shift to focusing locally, with congregations keeping more of their finances closer to home. Even our language around church has shifted to emphasize the local congregation as the primary form of church. And yet, we risk being impoverished and becoming too inward focused. We risk our very church nutrition– a church diet lacking in the rich and varied nutrients needed to be a healthy church. As Brent Horst has sometimes reminded us, our ‘Beyond Ourselves’ category in our Spending Plan is really a misnomer. We are MCEC, MC Canada. It is not beyond us, it is us. We are just as much a part of what happens in the larger body, as what happens here locally.
The MCEC Gathering this weekend was anchored in the Hebrews 12 text. Friday night was a fully inter-cultural worship celebration, with Fanosie Legesse preaching on this text. MCEC is an inter-cultural church! Fanosie told stories from Ethiopia and from MCEC. He framed so well how much Change is happening in the Church right now. He said we were on a Marathon, but a Marathon with Jesus leading us to navigate the change we are experiencing. He led us so well into the whole weekend of sharing, testimonies, budgets, the new MCEC Strategic plan, stories from many partners, table conversations, and a vibrant open mic time, that went 30 minutes past its allotted time because so many people were speaking from their heart and care so deeply about this expression of the church. It reminded me of our vibrant conversations here at SJMC over the last months in our discernment process. We care about the church. I was struck by outgoing moderator Arli Klassen’s opening words Saturday about what this weekend was about, especially as we got to the business – to discern and make decision ‘about our beloved church.’ This is our beloved church, whether it is MCEC, Mennonite Church Canada, Mennonite World Conference, the Ecumenical body of Christ around the world, or St Jacobs Mennonite Church. I left the weekend feeling full and satisfied, like after a great meal, fully nourished, fully renewed to be the church of Christ in our world. In our worship response time after worship, we will watch a short MCEC video and share some more stories and insights from the weekend, and have a chance to hear your stories of how you have been nourished, fed, enriched, by being a part of the body of Christ – whatever form that may have taken.
Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us… You are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession. Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s People. We are One in the Spirit. Amen.