Canadian Mennonite
Volume 11, No. 02
January 22, 2007
Letters
This section is a forum for discussion and discernment. Letters express the opinion of the writer only, not necessarily the position of Canadian Mennonite, the five area churches or Mennonite Church Canada. Letters should address issues rather than criticizing individuals and include contact information. We will send copies of letters referring to other parties to them to provide an opportunity to respond in a future issue if their views have not already been printed in an earlier letter.
Please send letters to be considered for publication to letters@canadianmennonite.org or to Canadian Mennonite, 490 Dutton Drive, Unit C5, Waterloo, ON, N2L 6H7, “Attn: Letter to the Editor.” Letters may be edited for length, style and adherence to editorial guidelines.
Trust in God should be a unifying factor
I have appreciated Robert J. Suderman’s efforts in helping us become a missional church, his determination to understand our very diverse congregations, and his series of reflective articles (Oct. 2, page 5; Oct. 16, page 6; Nov. 27, page 10). In re-reading the last one—“Unity and diversity in the church”—I separated what he observed as the six unifying beliefs from his call for mutual “trust that will allow us to move towards greater openness.”
The good news of God’s reconciling love through Jesus is all about us trusting and obeying God, but, sadly, Suderman did not find God-ward or interpersonal trust among the top six priorities of Mennonite Church Canada. It sobers me to find that trust in God’s grace no longer is a top characteristic of my denomination.
While imitating Jesus’ social actions receives priority, without humble trust that can become legalistic, sterile and fractious.
Yet as I read Menno Simons and recollect the multiple western Canadian congregations of my youth, trust in God determined our expressions of discipleship, personal and social behaviour, service and evangelism, integrity and marriage commitments.
Admittedly, even our God-ward trust may be unnecessarily shallow and unproductive if it is not preceded by an awareness of our brokenness and a repentant desire to be restored to the person God intended for us to be.
Could it be that we need to focus more on the transforming potential of God’s Spirit within the lives of repentant and yielded people? Or has Satan used our sophistication and affluence to blind us to our self-sufficiency and idolatry?
With sadness, I failed to read that MC Canada held a belief in a believers’ church with believer’s baptism, mutual caring and accountability, non-conformity to secular priorities, and the ethic of love, peace and non-resistance as a priority. I hope they reached the Top 20.
Mennonites ‘show off’ their wealth, charity
I am not a subscriber to Canadian Mennonite, but a friend of mine passes on her copies after she has read them. I read the many very interesting articles, and although I am not a church-going Mennonite I am at heart very much in sympathy with many of their tenets of faith and pacifism—though I question their neutrality because they spout it with their mouths but I am not sure when it comes to their economics.
I am proud of my Mennonite ancestry, but the Sept. 4 cover photo and story (“Camping ministry the beneficiary of record harvest”) left me speechless. It went against all my parents’ teaching of humbleness and quiet giving. That harvesting effort was done to “show off” our wealth and brag about how much charity we dispense.
Congratulations to Will Braun for so mildly admonishing the despicable action (“Full-throttle fundraising,” Sept. 18, page 13). Keep on “pricking the balloon” of the breast-thumping Mennonite Christians.
Faces tell the story of hope and despair
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They have kind faces—some of them—open even. They’re young, boyish, younger now than my sons. They should be playing soccer or wielding bats and hitting home runs. But they’re not. They’re wielding submachine guns and percussion grenades, and they’re playing a game that’s deadly for both sides.
They are the Israeli soldiers that I have come to accept as part of the landscape when I return each year as a Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT) reservist to Hebron in the Occupied West Bank of Palestine.
I ache for them. They don’t want to be the oppressors. They see what it does to them, and what it does to those they have power over.
Like the man who bears a huge goose egg on his temple. His hands shake slightly as they move over his face, trying to wipe away the memory and the headache from the concussion he sustained when these same soldiers with the kind faces invaded his apartment in the heart of the Old City. The soldiers took the man and shoved him repeatedly against the metal door, his head crashing into it again and again. He had no defence against this violence.
When CPT responded to an urgent message and arrived at his apartment, he had just been taken away by the soldiers. His three small children, now left alone, were huddled, terrified, in the window ledge on the top floor. The mothers in our group absolutely insisted that the soldiers guarding the entrance let us by to get to the children.
I ache for the Palestinian parents who are helpless to stop the nightmares for their children—or to stop their own nightmares. As we sat with the family the next night, they showed us the kitchen window that the soldiers smashed the night before, and the lock on an interior door the soldiers had destroyed with a crowbar. They showed us where all their clothes had been dumped from the wardrobe and flour poured on top before they were trampled.
They have faces that are cynical, their innocence lost. They toss stones at soldiers or at us. These are the children who are paying the price of the illegal Israeli occupation. Their reality is erratic school hours or none at all.
They have faces that show the worry beneath the smile. For the first time ever, our Palestinian partners have put words to their worry; their thread of hope is fraying because they have not received a salary for seven months now. Nor have doctors, nurses, teachers and civil servants.
I ache as I hear them say, “We are hungry. We have no salaries, we have no food, but we are not hungry for food. We are not hungry for money. We are hungry for freedom. You see me smiling, but the smile is on my face only. It is not in my heart. In my heart is the pain.”
But I rejoice at the sign of hope and determination evidenced by the joyful celebration of marriages and births in Hebron. I rejoice at the courage and determination of Israeli peace activists next to me, as together we pull on the cable that rolls the last of the three huge cement blocks off the road leading to farmers’ fields, their market and to the school. It is symbolic only, because all too soon the military return the blocks to their former position.
I rejoice that the message of our solidarity through these actions—and our presence and our witness to their suffering—is received. And so I keep returning to Palestine as a part-time CPTer to patrol the streets of Hebron, accompany the school children past the militant settlers and Israeli soldiers, join other international and Israeli peace activists in actions like helping with the olive harvests, removing roadblocks, and joining with Palestinian volunteers to get football games organized for the street children so that they have a healthy outlet for their energy and their feelings of frustration.
Again and again I am strengthened by their hope, their resilience, their love of their land. And I pray for a just peace for this unholy, precious, torn Holy Land that I have come to love.
Backwards days
Outside the box
I vaguely remember high school but flashbacks do haunt, what with the revival of fashion trends that should have been left forgotten and repented of in the 1980s. Mark my words, spandex is just around the corner. Flee while there is still time.
One other clear recollection is “backwards days,” an awkward attempt to concoct camaraderie by calling everyone to live with tags forward. As if this would create school spirit and reconcile “head bangers,” “nerds,” “preppies,” “jocks” and “non-participant cynics” (guess which camp I was in).
Backwards days. Sounds like today in the life of the North American church. Our backwardness, however, has nothing to do with the way we tend to evaluate relevance. It is not related to dress codes or lack thereof, music styles, or with our propensity to jump on trendy—or anti-trendy—political, sociological or cultural bandwagons. We tried marrying the broader culture (the liberal experiment), imitating forms of the broader culture (the evangelical experiment) or running from the broader culture (the conservative experiment). Each attempt at relevance, so convinced of its “forwardness,” has only become inconsequential, even laughable. The church has it backwards and an outside voice is calling our bluff.
Recently, the CBC’s Mark Kelly lived for seven days in the world of “evangelical” Christianity. Although he spent most of his time analyzing and periodically ridiculing only the American version—and specifically the youthful and kitschy elements—he made one statement that ought to disturb any named “Christian.” Kelly’s fearful assumption that led him deep into the heart of Texas was that Christians are bent on taking over the world. What he discovered alleviated his fears, for he found these “Jesus freaks” trapped in their own religious sub-culture, a spiritual ghetto, a parallel universe within the Milky Way. His unknowingly prophetic statement was this: “I would not have known what their world was like if I had not stepped into it.” There it is, my friends, the disturbing indictment of our backwardness.
We have undone the incarnation. We have put in reverse the forward nature of God, for we only behold the glory of God in the face Jesus Christ turned our way. God is only known because of his forward and fleshly advance. Grace courts us aggressively. We are only Christian because he first loved us. Jesus humbles himself and moves into the neighbourhood smelling of sheep, sawdust and salvation.
We, however, declare “everyone welcome” on signs outside our buildings, congratulating ourselves for putting the onus on others to come to us, challenging them to incarnate themselves in our peculiar world with its codes, inside jokes and family ties. We bang our heads creating ways to make “outsiders” comfortable if they come our way, but do we consider what it means to have the attitude of Jesus, who was a servant of another kingdom whether debating in the temple or wining and dining with tax collectors?
We have it backwards—expecting people to move our way, or secretly hoping they won’t—and seem no longer blown forward by the Spirit into this cursed yet still beautiful world, a world God so loved that he sent forth the only begotten. Jesus sacrificed much to get comfortable in our clothes, yet we ask people to get comfortable only in ours.
How can backwards days end in your neighbourhood?
Pie in the warming sky
New Order voice
I stepped down from a little 20-seater plane onto the tarmac at the Winnipeg airport. It was a windy December night four years ago and it was the moment I quit air travel. My feet have remained on or near the ground ever since.
I had arrived at a point where the geo-political and climatic consequences of oil dependence were too stark to ignore. My conscience was telling me it needed a break from the gas-powered, upwardly mobile lifestyle. Plus, I kind of wanted to see if I could do it. Remaining grounded seemed like an intriguing experiment given that climate change will, sooner or later, force significant lifestyle changes upon us all.
I’m not saying I’ll never fly again or that no one should ever fly. It’s not that simple. But I do think the faith community should have something to say about flying, and, more generally, about the oil appetite that air travel epitomizes.
The Church of England does. Last July, the Bishop of London said, “Making selfish choices such as flying on holiday or buying a large car are a symptom of sin. Sin is…living a life turned in on itself where people ignore the consequences of their actions.”
I wondered what Mennonite leaders have to say about flying, fuel and climate change. So I asked them.
“We haven’t taken any actions at this point to curtail travel,” said Jack Suderman, speaking for the MC Canada office, which does, however, “constantly evaluate” air travel. Suderman pointed to a summit being planned with MC USA for July 2008, at which the ecological agenda will be “front and centre.”
The story at Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) is similar—strong on awareness but less decisive on concrete action. A day before he flew to Akron, Pa., on MCC business, binational board chair Ron Dueck said ecological concern “is definitely a factor” in planning how MCC functions. He mentioned as potential considerations, reduced frequency of fly-in meetings and the possibility of more overseas programming being done by local partners.
Jim Cornelius, who heads the Canadian Foodgrains Bank—in which Mennos are key partners—said he can imagine making significant changes to address climate impacts. The organization has started purchasing food closer to the point of need, rather than shipping it from Canada, thus reducing transportation and fuel use (although ecology was not the main motivation behind this switch). As further steps to consider, Cornelius mentioned a reduction of office size, a full energy audit and the purchase of carbon offsets.
None of the responses I heard seemed at all satisfactory. None gave me hope that Mennonites will lead society—or even keep up with society—in terms of a caring response to the climate crisis. None offered a daring, provocative comment like that of the British bishop. None of the organizations even have targets for reducing climate impact, although Dueck said targets “should be part of our thinking.”
Leaders at our church agencies are much like the rest of us. They’re having a tough time even daring to ask what big change might look like. Together, I believe we need to be honest about the current reality we all face, as grim as it may be. And then we need to trust for the grace to imagine not only conferences, brochures and new light bulbs, but the grand possibility of experimenting with big change.
For the next “New Order voice” column I will go back to the same people and ask them to each imagine a 50 per cent reduction in their organization’s climate change impact over the next five years.