Matthew 13:52
Good morning friends,
it is good to gather in worship with
all of you today!
I hope that this Sunday morning finds
you well!
We have a special occasion today-
Today, as you know, we are celebrating
the 40th anniversary of the founding of the St. Louis
Mennonite Fellowship, our little congregation here. It was in January
of 1975 that a small group gathered in Edgewood Children's center for
the first worship service of a new congregation.
This is the first of at least two
events LCG has planned this year to acknowledge this milestone. We're
also hoping to invite back parts of our family who have moved away in
a more formal weekend of celebration later in the spring.
It's an important part of the rhythm of
life to mark these kind of anniversaries, to engage our memories and
connect with the things that have gone before, to remember that we
are part of something a lot bigger than just a momentary community-we
are part of a great cloud of witnesses, part of an institution built
before us and that will last beyond us.
Our scripture text this speaks to the
value of both remembering our history and claiming our new
directions. After telling a bunch of parables, like the one about
the farmer who goes out to sow his field, and throws the seed in
different kind of ground, and the one where he talks about the weeds
in the field that are left until harvest, Jesus asks his disciples
who have heard these stories to commit themselves to bring treasures
both new and old out of the storehouse.
That I think is the heart of the
gospel-to tell an old old story in a new way for a new community.
And I think that this is one of the really special things we get to
do at anniversary celebrations-these moments like this Sunday give us
an opportunity to bring out treasures that are special occasion
things-the fine china, the heirloom pieces, and give them a day in
the sun. This is an opportunity to turn aside from the novel, and
focus on the core things that make us who we are. And in the same
way that birthdays or wedding anniversaries give us the opportunity
to celebrate those that we love, and in the very act of celebrating
them, remember why we love them, so too are we called to remember
today where we have been so that we have a better sense of where we
are going.
So what sort of old and new treasures
might we dig out this morning? I did a little summary of our history
this summer while we were working on visioning, so I don't want to do
that again. Instead, I want to reflect on an even older treasure.
Because the story of SLMF begins not
just when the congregation started worshiping in January of 75.
Instead, it starts with Fern and Barry Heib, in 1972, who came to St.
Louis to organize people with Mennonite upbringings here in the city
of St. Louis to gather together. They started a book study, which
began January 15th, 1973, based on the book The
Anabaptist Vision by
Harold S. Bender.
And this is the old treasure that I want to start with.
How
many people have heard of The
Anabaptist Vision?
That's about what I was expecting. It's not that well known these
days. But for a generation of Mennonites, it was the most important
piece of Mennonite writing.
Harold
S. Bender was a Mennonite leader, and a professor at Goshen College
and the Goshen Seminary. After World War Two and the stress the war
put on the church, he saw Mennonites beginning to acculturate-to come
in contact with broader American society and ask what exactly it was
that justified their continued existence as a distinctive group, and
at the same time get swept up in the great religious tumult of the
time, torn between fundamentalist and liberal forces that were
sweeping the country. And his response was an essay, called The
Anabaptist Vision https://www.goshen.edu/mhl/Refocusing/d-av.htm,
which was designed to remind Mennonites of their theological roots,
and call them back to their historical legacy that superseded the
contemporary conflict.
Or at least that's the pop-culture telling of the story. James and
Steve might correct me a bit where I exaggerate.
Bender's focus was on three distinctive Christian virtues that he
believed were the legacy of the first Anabaptists in Switzerland,
brought faithfully to the United States by their descendants, the
Mennonites.
First: That discipleship is the essence of Christianity. As Conrad
Grebel, one of the founders of Anabaptism wrote, “so today, too,
every man wants to be saved by superficial faith, without fruits of
faith, without the baptism of test and probation, without love and
hope, without right Christian practices, and wants to persist in all
the old fashion of personal vices.”
Second, that the church a community of believers. That the church is
made up of only the people who want to be there is so obvious to us
today as to go without saying. But it was not that long ago that the
assumption was that every person in a town would be part of the
church, baptized at birth, married in the church, and buried in the
church cemetery, regardless of what they believed or how they acted.
Even in St. Louis today, there is a huge population of Catholics who
have a complicated relationship with the mother church, neither truly
in nor comfortably out.
Third, Christians are called to peace-to an ethic of love and
nonresistance as applied to all human relationships. Pilgram
Marpeck, a wonderful leader of the early Anabaptists wrote “All
bodily, worldy, carnal, earthly fightings, conflicts, and wars are
annulled and abolished among them through [the] love of Christ.”
And while historians have a wonderful time reflecting on the ways
that this was, and was not an accurate reading of exactly what the
early Anabaptists believed, I'm struck by the ways that this
vision-the vision of a church of believers who come together to try
and live faithfully in peace remains core to who we are today.
This treasure is one that is deeply rooted in the DNA of our
congregation.
That
group gathering in January of 1975 had a lot of
difficult decisions to make in those early days-
Just for example, the name “The St.
Louis Mennonite Fellowship” was tricky- there was a vigorous debate
between church and Fellowship, before we decided Fellowship sounded
friendlier.
But organization followed organization,
and by the end of February, 1975 we had created a statement of
purpose. This is a treasure that we don't bring out too much anymore,
the membership covenant is our more common centering document, but I
thought it was fascinating when I read it again this week, so you get
to hear it too:
So listen to these words from our past-
We are a group which shares Christian
beliefs. Our purpose is discern and to follow Christ’s teachings in
our present situations. We propose to affiliate with one or more
Mennonite Church Conferences. We will meet for worship, discussion,
fellowship and service. Leadership responsibility will continue to be
shared by group members.
Along with this, there was a list of
Beliefs:
Believer’s Baptism: Baptism is an
outward sign that a person has made the decision to follow Christ.
Separation of Church and State: A
Christian obeys the state as long as this obedience does not conflict
with allegiance to Christ and His church.
Pacifism: Christ taught us that we
should live in peace with all men. A Christian will do all in his
power to prevent harm to any person.
Church Discipline: Members of the body
of Christ have a responsibility for mutual support and admonition in
an effort to help each other realize more fully the life style of
Christ.
Separation from the World: We are aware
that following Christ’s teachings is not always in harmony with
contemporary culture. A Christian does not conform to contemporary
culture to the extent that it interferes with his life of commitment
to Christ.
While this is not a document that we
use these days, I think this holds up quite well, 40 years later! In
fact, I think that these first values continue to shape us as a
congregation. We've grown and changed a lot, but these founding
principles still ring true.
Shared lay leadership is still key to
our structure, with LCG and congregational meetings driving our work,
and we still have a willingness to let people into the structures of
power. Believer's Baptism remains important to us-we preach that
Christianity is about our choice to embrace God, as well as God's
unconditional love for us. Pacifism continues to be a guiding
light-the violence embedded in the American system is a common
refrain in prayer and preaching. And we are still concerned that
contemporary culture conflicts with our commitment to Christ. And in
all these things we do together, we continue to try and live out
mutual support and encouragement, sharing meals and stories and
moving help and the like, as we try together to remain faithful to
Christ's calling in our lives.
Which brings me to the new
treasures-because I'm excited to see what the next 40 years has to
offer for SLMF, and how we're going to continue to live out the
vision that we have of the church-a community of believers who have
come together to try together to live faithfully in Christ's way of
peace in a world of violence.
I am excited about you all-the group of
people that God has called together in this place, and the ways large
and small that we are shaping together ourselves and the city of St.
Louis. We keep coming up with new treasures all the time-the church
song, fun church retreats, engaging Sunday School classes, service to
our community, caring for each other in times of grief. And I am
excited what treasures we will put together in the years to come.
There are many things that will happen
in the world around us in the next 40 years-I expect the increased
secularization of society will continue to advance, we'll have to
figure out what that means for us. The polarization in our country
certainly could get worse before we figure out how to talk to one
another again. I hope our reluctance to get involved in partisan
politics serves us well. The challenges of global warming will be
much more evident in 2055 ago than they are now. I am curious how we
will adapt to the challenges ahead.
But I am confident that the vision that
we share, the treasures that we have received, and those that we pass
on will continue to hold us in good stead in the days to come.
No comments:
Post a Comment