John 20: 24 Now Thomas (also known as Didymus, one of the Twelve, was not with the disciples when Jesus came. 25 So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord!”

But he said to them, “Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.”

26 A week later his disciples were in the house again, and Thomas was with them. Though the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!” 27 Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe.”  28 Thomas said to him, “My Lord and my God!”  29 Then Jesus told him, “Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”

 

I read the following story in Sojourner’s Magazine long ago, back in the time when apartheid was yet the law of the land in South Africa. It comes from South Africa, and concerns a dream that a man had.

Now I am careful about not putting too much stock in dreams. If I took all of my dreams seriously, I would believe that I could fly, or that pizza grows on trees, and that I never showed up for my high school algebra class, the final exam is today, so if I fail it, that would put my college and seminary degrees in doubt, too.

Some dreams are not worth believing in.

But this dream struck me and stayed with me, even though it wasn’t mine. In this South African person’s dream, he died and went to heaven where he saw Jesus. He knew it was Jesus because of the scars on his hands, his feet and his side. So he asked Jesus, “If this is heaven, and we’re all supposed to have glorious, eternal resurrection bodies like yours, why does your body still bear the scars of your crucifixion?”

After all, Jesus’ body was still bearing the scars when he encountered the Apostle Thomas one week after his resurrection. Its a valid question because if our prayers for long, worthwhile lives are answered as we hope, then I don’t know how we’ll get through this life, in this world, without some sort of marks and scars. Both the external, physical scars, plus some internal, emotional scars. So, will we still be wearing our scars in the fullness of God’s kingdom?

Before I give you the answer that Jesus gave this man in his dream, I’ll mention some of the other answers that people have given over the centuries to that question, Why does the Resurrected Jesus still bear his scars? One saint from the Middle Ages said that it was so that, on the Day of Judgment, his scars would be Exhibit A of the evil in the world, and would thereby condemn his enemies. They may indeed have that effect, but I don’t think that saint was feeling particularly cheery or charitable on the day he wrote that.

Other saints said that it was to silence the false teachers who taught that God was not really incarnate in Jesus in such a way as to actually engage in the dirtiness, dangers and difficulties of this life, who said that Jesus was only a sort of ghostly projection from heaven acting out the Passion story as a sort of parable of an other-worldly spirituality. And only those who are wise enough and truly initiated would get the meaning of this charade, but not if we took the cross and crucified flesh literally. God forbid that, through Christ, he would so submit himself to the fullness of the human condition that he even experienced real physical and emotional suffering! That would be beneath God, they say.

Well, as for that idea, Jesus bearing his scars would have a dampening effect. But I don’t think Jesus still bears his scars for the sake of a theological argument that I don’t think is going on in heaven as I speak.

In Thomas’ case, Jesus was wearing his scars so that he would know that before him stood the very Jesus who had been crucified, and who died, and who was now alive and well and in the flesh.

That’s a sign similar to the white tab in the front of their black collars some pastors and clergy wear, or to the wedding or engagement ring that people wear. Each of those signs speak of a history that went into the wearing of that ring or that collar. They also speak of an ongoing, enduring commitment. So the wounds of the Risen, Eternal Jesus speak of a history of an involvement and a solidarity with us that was also costly and painful. Costly, like the missing finger I noticed on a commercial fisherman when I was 12 years old. Like most young kids, I couldn’t restrain myself from asking, “Oooh, Mister–What happened to your finger?” My dad nudged me with his elbow but the old fisherman didn’t seem to mind. He smiled, held up his hand and said, “I picked up a pike by the head to clean it, when I thought he were dead, but he weren’t.” Pike have very sharp teeth.

To the old man along Lake Erie, that missing finger seemed to be a badge of honor. I’ve noticed the same thing over the years with some farmers, millwrights, welders, mechanics, carpenters, fire fighters, lumberjacks, soldiers, construction workers and other skilled workers, artists and crafts persons who work with dangerous tools, in dangerous conditions. While none of them would have wanted the burns, scars and missing fingers, toes or even limbs they have sustained over the years, they sometimes treat those scars as badges of honor and signs of solidarity with their trade, and with other people in their trade. And they sometimes like scaring little kids like me with them.

With that I think we’re coming closer to the reason why the Risen, Eternal Jesus still bears his scars, or at least why he did for Thomas. Because we all bear scars of one kind or another.

There are of course physical scars like what my father has on his weather predictor knee. You can still see the straight line across it, from where he fell and broke it in his youth. Sixty years later, it tells him whenever the barometric pressure is dropping and a storm front is coming. You can tell its going to be really bad if he needs his cane. Among any group of people you can find scars from surgeries, injuries, assaults, accidents and sometimes just plain foolishness, like the ones people get on their arms from trying to pull catfish out from holes in the river bank. Or those we might see on people in America’s Funniest Home Videos.

More like America’s Most Painful Home Videos.

Fortunately, very, very few people today have the same scars that Jesus bears. But there are plenty of other kinds of scars. Because Becky’s parents regularly hosted international military officers at Fort Leavenworth, I once saw the round bullet scars on the arms and hands of two soldiers, at the same dinner table one day with us. They discovered that they had gotten their scars at the same battle. And they were from the opposing armies. Their response, when they discovered that they had been shooting at each other, was joy and relief that they were both alive to tell the tale. And they both agreed that the war they had fought in was pointless.

I’ve met other soldiers who bear scars we cannot see, except, perhaps, in the high rates of homelessness, drug and alcohol problems and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder that they often suffer. And I’ve heard some of their regrets and guilt over what they had to do to survive. For that I blame most the people who put them in that position. Then there are the people who witnessed these things and who are still dealing, years later, with the trauma, fear, loss, anger. And guilt for having survived when others did not. Like a family member for whom the events of September 11, 2001 brought back long dormant memories and emotions from bombing raids on his German home 60 years before.

Not only might we bear scars from things that people have done to us, there can be self-inflicted scars from things we have done to ourselves and others. If anyone is taking suggestions for the next winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, I would recommend the inventor of the eraser or the Delete key. A lot of people have been spared a world of hurt from things that were almost said or sent, but, Thank God, they were not.

But my one gripe with this inventor is that he or she did not make an eraser nor a Delete key for time and events. Unfortunately, we can’t erase nor delete all the things we do or say. Every choice is like driving a nail into a board. We can go back with a claw hammer and pull each one out. In the same way, we can repent and confess our sins and obtain forgiveness. But just as the hole remains after we pull a nail out of a board, so do some scars remain, even after forgiveness, even if only in the form of memories. All things can be forgiven, but not all things can be forgotten. And like the Holocaust, some things must never be forgotten. We need the memories to serve as warnings against our powers of self-deception.

And there are some scars people have gotten for love. Like the burns on the hand of a man I knew who rescued his sister, whose clothes had caught fire. Or the surgical scar of a woman who contributed a kidney to her sister. Or the numbers tatooed on the arm of a Dutch woman who spent time in a German concentration camp for hiding Jews from the Nazis. Those examples are getting close to the reason for Jesus’s scars, and the reason that he seems to keep them.

Among my most treasured possessions is this tiny little round button from Poland, about 30 years old, with a red flag on it and the word, in Polish, “Solidarnosch,” or “Solidarity,” the Polish labor union that brought down Communism, peacefully. There was a time when wearing that button could get one imprisoned, tortured, or worse. A labor activist here in the U.S. gave it to me, and I think it had been smuggled out.

More than that button can ever be, Jesus’ wounds are his badges of solidarity with us. Jesus’ scars are proof of his love, of his 100 per cent commitment to us and to our human condition. Just as wearing this word, “Solidarnosch” cost many Poles dearly, so those badges of solidarity cost Jesus dearly. But they bought him something, too. Something priceless, treasured and cherished more than the ease and comfort that he gave up in exchange:

You.

Through love, then, the scars he suffered from people’s hatred and brutality have been transformed into something beautiful, noble, and strong. The gaping red evidence of his chosen weakness and vulnerability has now been transformed into signs and symbols of an invincible and victorious power, so that he is not just the Lamb of God but also the Lion of Judah, no longer the Passover Victim but the Resurrection Victor.

That, then is the journey and the possibility before all of us. Its too late for any of us to get through this life without wounds or scars, physical, emotional or spiritual, self-inflicted or otherwise. But I know someone who has proven that he can transform all wounds and scars from signs of shame and weakness into badges of love, honor, strength and triumphant faith. Thanks to Him, we don’t have to remain victims, nor villains. We are “more than conquerers– victors– through him who loved us” enough to share our scarred and broken condition. By forgiving and being forgiven, by trusting and loving, by repenting and returning, we too can overcome our past and make of our wounds signs of solidarity with all other sufferers and strugglers in this world. In that way, maybe we will bear our scars forever, like Jesus does. But they will be testimonies, and trophies, not of things that overcame us, but of things we overcame.

And that leads me to the answer that Jesus gave the man who asked him, upon meeting him in a dream, “Why are you still bearing your scars?”

Jesus did not give him a direct answer. Instead, he asked the man in return, “And where are your scars? Was there nothing, and no one, worth fighting for?”

At first blush, NATO’s military actions in Libya look and sound like Exhibit A of a just war: 1) it aims to protect innocent people, and 2) with proportionate means. If NATO’s actions do not escalate beyond that, it would be an historical exception. It may also be a step in the development of a global strategy of policing against genocide. These are some of the arguments that justify the current NATO action by just war standards, some of them, at least. For this is not  3) a defensive war carried out on our own territory. Nor is there 4) a near guarantee of success.

But no one in NATO or Washington seems to be calling this a “war.” Its a “kinetic action.” And that is only one mystery, hinting at dishonesty and self-delusion, among others in this war. Mystery surrounds the roots of this war as darkly as it does the outcome, if wars can be said to have outcomes. More often, they are flare-ups of enduring conflicts over resources, security, territory and status, such as the Western European war that we can trace from before the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 through World War II, or the war from the Korean War through the civil wars of Africa, Asia and Latin America, as expressions of the Cold War.

But war it is, however limited the aims or the means. And like most wars, there was violence before the shooting began, violence, at least, of a political, economic and social manner. Libya has long had its own share of inter-tribal violence, in the forms of blood feuds, revenge-and-honor-killings and favoritism for the spoils of government and oil. How much tribalism fits in to either the rebellion or Qadafi’s reactions is hard to say, but the current military stalemate between eastern and western Libya, and the differing levels of support for the rebellion in each side of the country, would tend to point in that direction.

Then there is Qadafi’s violent enmeshment in global structures of violence. Qadafi has long been a bad neighbor, in addition to being a bad ruler, most notably by his likely bombing of the Pan Am jet over Lockerbie, Scotland. But he was also implicit in other conflicts, such as the civil wars in Chad and Liberia. Which leads some to suspect that there is an element of “payback” in NATO’s recent “kinetic action.” But for such crimes there are economic and political sanctions, which have only been applied in a chaotic on-again/off-again fashion against Qadafi over the years. I take the humanitarian concern of NATO governments and our president, expressed for oppressed and endangered Libyans, at face value and honor it. But until recently, the world seems to have been more interested in Libya’s oil than in Libya’s people.

The bigger picture of the current Libyan conflict is that NATO air strikes are destroying NATO heavy weapons that NATO countries (Italy, France, Germany, etc.) sold to Libya, purchased with money from the sale of Libyan oil to NATO countries that was stockpiled in NATO member-nation banks. Given that this money and these weapons allowed Qadafi to misrule his nation with impunity, was that not a form of violence that made Qadafi’s own violence against his people possible, and NATO’s violence nearly inevitable?

My nation is the world’s largest arms merchant as well as the world’s largest consumer of oil. That is not a recipe for a happy outcome, nor is it sustainable. How many other wars and “actions” are brewing, and soon to explode onto the scene, under similar causes and circumstances?

Once a dictator like Qadafi starts bombing, shooting and strafing his own people, and threatens to show them no mercy, pacifists and peacemakers like myself must not pretend that the world is not faced with a dilemma, fraught with unintended consequences, whatever our actions, or non-actions. But those who make the calls and push the buttons for war must not pretend that there are no dilemmas, nor any risk of unintended consequences, either, despite the typical militaristic sloganeering. A simple review of history shows that any war, any day, is rooted in the military solutions, or victories, of previous years. Somebody then needs to raise the difficult questions and bear prophetic witness about where and how we are sowing the ground for more military violence by means of economic and political violence, as was the case with Libya. Generals, presidents, arms merchants and manufacturers don’t tend to do that. Someone must do it for them, and before them, even when it requires the kind of courage and exacts the kinds of costs associated with soldiering. For it is that, another kind of soldiering, that is called for—one done with bread, not bombs, on our knees in prayer, not on the march with guns, with acts and words of love, not weapons of hate. And somebody needs to push ahead the art, science and wisdom of peace-keeping to at least the same degree that we have so madly developed the art and science of war-making. That somebody is the church of Jesus Christ, the Prince of Peace, who said, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God.” Lets not let the brutality of Qadafi, nor the boosterism of our governments and military establishments, push us off that costly higher calling.

Pastor Mathew Swora

by Joshua Kielsmeier-Cook

[Note: We welcome Joshua Kielsmeier-Cook as a contributor to Emmanuel Mennonite Church's weblog. The following essay and reflections continue his sharings and contributions to our church's recent retreat at a Community-supported Agriculture farm late last September--Pastor Mathew Swora]

“The LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it.”

Genesis 2:15

The focus of Emmanuel’s annual church retreat this year was Local and Sustainable: Faith and Food. The synergy and interplay betweeen these four themes has become for me a constant conversation betwen the land, the Church, God, and myself. For two seasons I have worked at a small organic vegetable farm in the St. Croix river valley. As a reselft of working with the land, I have a strong God-given desire to explore the primal (by this I mean first and basic) relationship that humans have been placed into with the earth. The above verse is the foundational description of this realtionship. It is my desire that we, as Emmanuel and the Church universal, understand this primal realtionship and execute our primal vocation in light of this understanding.

From the beginning, followers of God have understood that our primary (by this I mean first and foremost) vocation is unity with the Godhead through an ever deepening unification and identification with the divine. The God-human, Creator-creature relationship begins with God’s act of creation and it is here that I want to begin the focus of this essay. In verse 7 of the creation account in Genesis 2 it is written, “the LORD God formed the man of dust from the gorund…” and he became a living creature. According to Ellen F. Davis, an Old Testament scholar at Duke University, the Hebrew word used here for “ground” is adamah, from which the name Adam is derived. Adamah can be taken to mean the land, the whole earth, and/or the fertile soil. God’s act of creation inextricably and purposefully binds us in relationship with the soil as the material of our genesis.

There are two active elements used in the creation of humanity, the breath of life and dust from the ground. God, the divine active agent in creation, chooses the fertile soil to be that which God animates with divine breath to become Adam. I want to venture as far as to say that the soil in this story has qualities of a mother in the creative function it is chosen to perform. The soil is made fecund by the breath of God. There seems to be a foreshadowing of Mary’s role as mother in the birth of Jesus, the second Adam, as the ground here gives birth to the first Adam. Biblical writers use mother language quite often when refering to the land, especially the land of Zion (Ps. 87:5, Is. 66:10-13, Is. 65:17-18, etc.). This language is not meant in reference to a pagan Mother Earth but it is language used of a fellow creature, the land, made fruitful by God’s breath of life in order to conceive us. This elemental connection between humanity and the fertile soil must lie at the heart of our renewed sense of identity and vocation as creatures. We must not stop here, at our original connection with the land, but it is necessary for us to move forward towards an understanding of our continued relationship with this elemental component of our identity.

As the creation story of Genesis 2 continues, the fertile soil is shown as not only elemental to our identity but also to our existence as nourisher and revealer. The story continues as the LORD God plants a garden in Eden and places God’s new creature into its physical reality of ecological beauty and abundance. Here, God casues “to spring up every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food” (Gen. 2:9a). Again, by God’s hand, the land is made fruitful, this time in order to meet our needs as spiritual and material beigns. The trees of the garden are not only “good for food” (material) but “pleasant to the sight” (spiritual). Humanity is bound in relationship to the land by the nourishment it provides for our bodies and also by the revealation it provides for our spirit. God is revealed by the land as a God of love, for nourishment is born of love, and a God of truth, for what is beauty if not truth? Ultimately we are placed in the bosom of a fellow creature, the land, from which we receive double: nourishment and revelation. It is from the fertile soil that we were brought into existence and from its divinely seeded fruitfulness we continue to exist. God has bonded us together with the land in intimate ways that we have begun to forget and ignore. When this primal relationship is forgotten how can we remember our primal vocation?

Let’s return to the verse used to open this essay, “The LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it” (Gen. 2:15). To begin to understand the vocation given to humans in this verse we have to see that this vocation was not circumstantially isolated to the garden nor an accidental arrangement due to lack of foresight but an intentional and divine calling. The concrete reality of God’s action in the formation of the vocation “to work it and keep it” is evident by the verbs, took and put. First, God takes, removes, the man from some original state or location of creation. When we take something it is always intentional, whether we are aware of our own intentions for not. We can assume that God is infinitley self-aware and acts with full intention when God takes the man. Secondly, God puts the man in the garden of Eden. God removes man from somewhere in the primeval milieu of creation and with intent places him in the garden. What purpose does God’s activity here at the dawn of all being hold for us? The question posed by God’s activity in the beginning of the sentence is answered by the latter half of the same verse; “to work [the garden] and to keep [the garden].”

These two verbs, work and keep, carry almost as many possible meanings in the Hebrew as they do in English. All of the following discussion on the maning of these two Hebrew verbs comes form Ellen Davis’ book, Scripture, Culture, and Agriculture. The verb work in Hebrew most frequently means to “work for someone, divine, or human, as a servant, slave, or worshipper.” Much less frequently but in the surrounding context of the creation story, work means to work on or with something, usually the land. We know that both understandings of the verb work are necessary in our continued existence on the land. It is impossible to continually work the land and expect its continued fruitfulness without at the same time working for the land. I think we can embrace the verbal ambiguity and comprehend work in this context as fitting both possible understandings. Our God calls on us to both work the land and to work for the land.

The Hebrew verb for keep adds even more to the rich ambiguity and content of our God-purposed vocation. Commonly, this Hebrew word is translated as “keep” as in, for example, a flock, or a household, or a brother. More frequently, the translation is “observe” as in observing the world to gain understanding, or observing moral statutes or justice, but mostly to “observe/keep” the commandments of God. I believe that the ambiguous meaning of this verb is purposeful and is meant to help us recognize that we are charged to keep the land, as a sibling or a spouse, but also to observe the land to gain wisdom and to keep the divine limits of it. Perhaps we are called from the beginning to not only keep the commandments of God but to also keep the limits of the land. Today, the Church’s understanding and keeping of the limits of the land are more necessary than ever as the land is forced to produce more and more. As human population continues to mushroom we need to seek more creative ways to maintain the land and its fruitfulness that we depend on. In the end, we are charged by the Creator to work and keep the land, a fellow creature upon which all life depends. We, the Church, must not fall short of our divine vocation.

Now the questions begin, slowly at first but gaining momentum. How do we at Emmanuel Mennonite Church live fully in our vocation? I want to repeat the hope I expressed at the retreat, that this vocation will become a core part of Emmanuel’s identity. We will learn, talk, pray, and act our way into being faithful to our primal vocation. There aren’t any easy answers. We all know the wonderful admonitions to eat local, buy organic, grow a garden, get to know a farmer, etc. that are circulating in our culture today but our fulfillment of this calling must run in a deeper current. This deeper current is defined by relationship, commitment, reciprocity, sacrifice, and above all love. We must love God; we must love God’s creatures and as I have tried to communicate in this small essay, we must love that creature that makes up so much of what, who, and where we: the land. I pray that we might recognize the divine createdness of the fertile soil and come to honor and love it as we have been called.

THOUGHTS ABOUT “INTERNATIONAL BURN THE Q’URAN DAY” AND RELATED AFFAIRS

Though I’m Christian, not Muslim, I am just as distressed at the idea of the proposed “International Burn the Quran Day” as I would be if it were “International Burn the Bible Day.” But that’s precisely what Pastor Terry Jones and his church, the Dove World Outreach Center, of Gainesville, Florida, have proposed as a way of observing the next September 11, 2010, the ninth anniversary of the terrorist attacks (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IS5AuRgeoAE): burning copies of the Quran.

I’ve studied the Quran (or at least an English translation of it) and my supreme loyalty is still to the Bible. Yet I offer the Q’uran respect similar to what I offer my Muslim friends, just as most of them respect me and my Bible. This seems a fair and reasonable exchange. If Pastor Jones and the Dove Outreach Center wish to help people come to know Christ, as is his stated goal (mine too), will they gain a fair hearing by such a threatening and provocative act of flagrant disrespect? Or is his a magical world in which he expects respect, but he doesn’t have to give it?

In his interview on CNN, Pastor Jones recites a litany of charges against Islam, such as forced conversions, terrorism and lack of freedom. I’ve also heard Muslims recite litanies of historic grievances against Christians, going back to the Crusades and to old and contemporary forms of Western colonialism. Their reasoning is so similar, they must either both be right, or equally mistaken. To me, Al Qaeda is to Islam as the Ku Klux Klan is to Christianity. Both appeal to one religion or the other, and both are perversions of it. So, just as I would not want myself and my sacred scriptures discredited by association with the Ku Klux Klan, we must make the same distinctions when relating to all who call themselves Muslim. I know, love and respect all the many Muslims in my life. And I haven’t met an Al Qaeda jihadi yet.

I’d like to take Pastor Jones to meet some of my Muslim friends, including the Muslim family in West Africa that effectively “adopted” Becky, our daughters and myself, without requiring us to become Muslim. They even said we could host prayer meetings or a church on their property. That may not be as unusual as Jones thinks.

So, count me as a conscientious objector to International Burn the Quran Day on September 11, 2010. We have, as a nation, more and better grieving to do about the events of that tragic day, nine years ago, if we are to break out of the cycle of victimhood, vengeance and violence. The wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and the burning of the Quran are part and parcel of our entrapment in aborted and misdirected grieving. Doing something as vindictive and disrespectful as burning the Quran, in order to poke Muslims in the eye, the vast majority of whom had nothing to do with the events of that day, will lead to no one’s healing, including our own. Quite the opposite. Respect and reconciliation will go much farther toward healing the wounds of September 11, which were felt just as strongly in the Muslim community of America, as among non-Muslims.

Similar errors and attitudes are at work over plans for a newer, larger Islamic center in Lower Manhattan, near the site of the World Trade Towers attack. My thoughts: outside of the people of Manhattan and their elected and appointed city officials, its no one else’s business. There may be reasons related to zoning laws and civil safety codes that would argue for or against it, same as if a church were proposed for that site. Religion (or which one), however, should not be a deciding matter in the case, unless we want to start a precedent of legalized religious preference and persecution. We Mennonites should be familiar with where that leads. Our experience has taught us instead that the Holy Spirit has more powerful means of convicting and convincing people than what human laws and regulations can ever provide.

More importantly, what does it say about us that a proposed mosque has become a major national election year issue? Besides fear of Muslims and Islam, it also indicates ignorance. There are already thousands of Muslims living, working and worshiping in Lower Manhattan, with plenty of mosques there even now. Furthermore, the imam and potential builder of the proposed Islamic Center is a Sufi Muslim. Sufism is the most peaceful and universalistic sect of Islam, the one least likely to inspire, recruit and send forth armed jihadists and suicide bombers. In fact, Sufis are more regularly targeted for persecution, violence and murder by Al Qaeda types than are Christians and Westerners, at least by number of successful attacks and body counts.

It all comes down to this: Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Wiccan freedom of religion (and atheist freedom from religion) is our freedom of religion as well. Respect for Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Pagans and atheists is tied up with our respect as well. Respect does not mean agreement, nor is it to be confused with postmodern relativism, the belief that all beliefs are equally true, that they all lead to the same destination. They aren’t, and they don’t. To say otherwise is not even respectful to any religion and its adherents. But respect is indispensable to a Christ-like way and witness in the world. In this fearful post-9-11 age, it could even distinguish us.

Pastor Mathew Swora

This latest round of clergy sex and cover-up scandal could help usher in the next big thing: a Reformation Point Three. I think Reformation Point Two has been underway already in the globalization of the church and the emergence of the Church of Asia and Africa. We think of Reformations as basically theological movements. But I wonder if they aren’t just as much about power, and the breaking down of mental, institutional and social fortresses, so that the power within can be dispersed, shared,  and multiplied, as it was meant to be. Even the great theological councils and creeds, perhaps even the formation of the Canon, may have happened in part as reactions against the abuse of power, and to establish or affirm external standards of faith and conduct by which to hold leaders and authorities accountable to the people whom they are to serve and empower. Popular imagination holds heretics like Marcion in the 5^th Century A.D, who tried to eviscerate the Canon of everything Jewish, as renegade heroes fighting for our freedom to think for ourselves (the prequel to The Da Vinci Code). But their brands of faith required at least as much faith in themselves as orthodoxy requires in its sacred scripts. And that without the stringent moral standards of the scriptures. Or the accountability of other believers, living or dead.

As I talk with unbelievers, one common reason they cite for not believing is not so much the beliefs themselves (they often believe things that require at least as much faith), but the church’s abuse of power, politically and economically, as well as sexually. A Reformation Point Three would recycle some of the original Protestant and Anabaptist criticism of entrenched, hierarchical, institutionalized religious power. It would also take us back to an apostolic understanding of church leadership, as a tool for the maturation and empowerment of all believers, even to the cultivation and multiplication of power and leadership. In the kingdom of God, those are not zero-sum schemes; Holy Spirit-given power and leadership grow with the sharing. And that takes us back to the model of leadership and power exercised by Jesus, who gave himself away to the ultimate degree, so as to share his life, power, mission and authority with his disciples.

In a Reformation Point Three, we will relearn how to minister and witness without the kinds of power and prestige that the church hierarchy was trying to protect with its cover-ups. That kind of power and prestige are going, going…..gone even as I type this. That will lead to new/ancient and more grass-roots forms and shapes of church, operating against social headwinds of mistrust and contempt. Again, nothing new in our history. The setting, in fact, for some of our finest moments.

April 7, 2010

Pastor Mathew Swora