Canadian Mennonite
Volume 9, No. 17
September 5, 2005
In Christ all things hold together
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The following sermon—based on Colossians 1:3-4, 9-20—was preached by John Rempel, assistant professor of theology and Anabaptist studies at Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary, and associate director of the Institute of Mennonite Studies, at the centennial celebrations for Rosthern Junior College (RJC), Rosthern, Sask., on July 31. For more RJC news, see the LocalChurch page.
A hundred years is a very long time in the life of a school. Each year and each class gathered here adds a layer to the centennial birthday cake. We have gathered here to taste all the layers of the cake—the people and events that have made RJC into an enduring institution, an agent of God’s grace in shaping the minds and inspiring the visions of generations of students, and through them, church and society in western Canada.
Retracing the steps of the past is rewarding because it brings to life the ideals, struggles, failures and achievements that have worked together for the good we now celebrate. As I read Education With a Plus, Frank Epp’s history of Rosthern Junior College, I was astonished at the tenacity of those teachers, ministers, parents and students who went against the grain in each generation and refused to give up on the dream.
Over a year ago I received a letter from Geri Baltzer on behalf of the Centennial Worship Committee. The invitation was an opportunity to get to know the story of a sibling Mennonite institution, striving with us at AMBS, to make Christ relevant to church and society. She said that much of the weekend would be devoted to memories of the past. What the planners wanted on Sunday morning was a vision of how RJC might enter the future inspired to prepare young people to take responsibility in church and society in the spirit of Jesus.
We live in a time of thrilling, but also confusing and overwhelming, change. We ask ourselves, in the midst of this tumult, how we find a stance toward the world that is neither a retreat into a fortified Mennonite sphere in which we provide only for our own, nor such an uncritical embrace of society around us that our salt loses its savour. I want to sketch out a vision of Christian identity that finds its way between these extremes.
The letter to the Colossians was written to people who were tempted by many gods and authorities, as we are. Paul writes that it is only in Christ that all things hold together, only in him that the fullness of God was pleased to dwell. These are audacious words in a pluralistic society!
What led me to this passage for this occasion? It’s grandeur! Paul confesses nothing less than Christ as the clue to the meaning of history. In Christ the purposes of God have become known. His light is more powerful than all darkness. In his presence we recognize, but need not despair of, our frailty. Like Paul, we know that we are earthen vessels, clay jars. It is not we who bring healing to ourselves or to the world; it is God’s transcendent power in us and through us.
But how are we to recognize this transcendent power at work in everyday life? The hardships and perplexities of day-to-day existence dull our awareness of the wonder of God’s intervening presence. Even when we don’t feel it, Paul reminds us that we already belong to a new reality. We have been rescued from the power of darkness and transferred to the kingdom of God’s beloved Son.
As we read on, we see the grandeur of the text unfold. In Christ, all things in heaven and earth were created. Paul goes from one amazing claim about Christ to the next. Reading through this passage is like climbing higher and higher on a mountain.
I once had the enormous thrill of visiting Nepal, the land of breathtaking peaks. We asked villagers whether there was a way for people without training as mountain climbers to get a view of the highest peaks. They gave us directions to Nuggarkoat, the lowest mountain directly opposite Mount Everest. I will never forget the ecstasy of arriving at the tip of Nuggarkoat at sunrise on a cloudless morning and having my breath taken away by the sight of the mythic mountain.
Nuggarkoat is an image for the church: it is the place from which we glimpse God’s grandeur. The sun is an image for Christ—in him God’s purposes are disclosed. Everest is an image for the kingdom—it is the final, shimmering outcome of those purposes.
To put it into Paul’s words: In Christ, all things have been created. In Christ, all things hold together. In Christ, all things are reconciled.
Mennonites have rightly placed great weight on Jesus’ earthly ministry, teaching and death. We believe that Jesus’ life is the pattern for our lives. What counts is living his kind of life amidst the conflicting demands of our existence.
What we sometimes forget is that the reality of Christ is greater and nearer than his years in human history. Christ is our window to God. Through him we look into the mystery of love. Christ is also God’s window to us. Through him we grasp the meaning of being human.
As Christians become more and more a minority in North American society, and as we make our way in an increasingly complex and divided world, we are tempted to conclude that the God of the Bible is too small to provide enough love to go around.
But listen to Paul: “Christ himself is before all things and in him all things hold together.” The molecules of the biosphere, the institutions of culture, the thoughts of the mind! Paul declares that in the man from Judea everything God has made coheres. In him, everything God intends for the cosmos is summed up.
If we open ourselves even a little to this stupendous claim that Christ is the tangible and unifying presence of God in the world, the intimate reality that grounds the life of the church and of each believer, we gain a fresh perspective on the baffling antagonisms of the “culture wars” of our time.
As mainstream Mennonites in Canada and the United States assimilate, our identity moves from that of a separate, homogeneous religious culture to full participation in a multi-cultural, multi-religious, multi-ideological society. Here, partisan loyalties pull our small church in many directions and pit us against one another. Liberal Mennonites follow one credo, conservative Mennonites another.
If we were clearer about the centrality of the Christ, “in whom all things hold together,” many other convictions and experiences that divide us would be negotiable. In order to find the way of faithfulness we need the whole Christ—social activist, teacher, redeemer, living presence.
Right now in Mennonite Church Canada and USA, we pick the parts of Jesus we like. Some choose Jesus the redeemer, who brings us to heaven. Others follow Jesus the prophet, who brings heaven to earth. The New Testament offers us the whole Christ, the one who is all these things.
Each faction in our church follows a Christ who is too small, smaller than the picture the Bible gives us of him. Some of the issues we fight about are really proxies for the suspicion we have of each other’s view of Christ, but are unwilling to address plainly. If we could agree that the Christ we follow is bigger than all our favourite parts of him, many of the agonizing questions—about different worship styles, views of homosexuality—and arguments about the mission of the church would lose much of their sting.
I’m not talking here about dissolving all the convictions we hold into a happy haze. But I am saying that if all of us made ourselves accountable to the whole Christ, we would have enough of a shared faith to trust one another in working the other things out.
The world is desperate for people with convictions they are willing to live for and die for. Let us make this centennial a turning point in which we confess humbly and nonviolently that Christ is the way, the truth and the life. It is that foundation which makes a life of sacrifice possible and worthwhile. When we live that way, Muslims are not our enemies, consumerism is not our god, and the environment is our sacred trust.
As of yesterday, RJC’s first century came to a close. Today, the sun rises on a new century of educational challenge. We have climbed the mountain of nostalgia and been rightly inspired by the myriad ways Rosthern Junior College has shaped the lives of generations of individuals and the wider life of MC Canada.
But soon we will descend from the heights of remembering and envisioning, to return to the flatlands where love has to wear work clothes. As we go, may we be guided by the down-to-earthness of Jesus, our fellow-activist, as well as the grandeur of Jesus, God’s intimate presence, wherever the call to ministry leads us.
As we go, let us remember that this reality is big enough to encompass all our conflicts and all our dreams. Let us follow in the footsteps of the teachers, ministers, parents and students of RJC, who went against the grain in their generation and refused to give up on the dream of living as if the reign of God is present now.
No one who believes that will be put to shame. Amen.
Mennonites on the threshold
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As a child growing up on a farm, I had no shortage of play spaces. I could climb the maple trees in the front yard, play hide-and-seek in the barn, and explore the big, bushy gooseberry plants beside the house.
Then there were the more distant corners of the property: the evergreens on the other side of the river and the fence rows along the farthest field. The most daunting place was just beyond our property where there was an overgrown dirt road—a road that wasn’t marked on any map—that headed off toward who-knows-where.
So it was that I discovered the peripheries, the boundaries, the forbidden zones of life. Yet, along with the danger I discovered opportunity. I discovered that it is precisely at the periphery that I sometimes get the best perspective on things.
Instead of broken bones, I’d rather see our Mennonite community inviting strength and courage as we explore our thresholds together.
I believe the Holy Spirit is working within our Mennonite communities to bring a heightened sense of our peripheries, our “thresholds.” It’s not really up to us to build the thresholds in the first place; that’s what God does. And I believe that God is working to change us from within by urging us beyond what we think are our boundaries.
“Being on the threshold” has two seemingly contradictory meanings. On the one hand, to be on the threshold is to be standing on the doorsill, the entryway from one room to another. On the other hand, “threshold” also refers to an upper limit, a ceiling beyond which something becomes unbearable or impossible.
A scholarly textbook might refer to this as a “dialectic”—a circumstance defined by two opposing forces. Perhaps we can simply see it as a healthy tension in our lives. Part of what happens at “threshold moments” is that the more we push the limits, the more we confirm what is at the core. In terms of human communities, there are times when we realize that those on the periphery actually embody more of the identity of the community than we want to admit.
Think of the early Anabaptists whose identity was based on their radical opposition to the most entrenched church practices of that time. Even within the Anabaptist movement, some of the most powerful advancements in theology came as a result of the preaching and writing of some who were seen as radicals, perhaps even lunatics.
And yet the fascinating thing about Anabaptist history is that the whole project was about getting back to the roots of Christian faith—ranging far and wide in order to return to the core. Our spiritual forebears defined the traditions and set the boundaries while simultaneously breaking new ground for the sake of faithfulness to the gospel.
If we look to the early Christians, they too were regarded as peripheral and treasonous, even though their intention was to reinvigorate the central truths of the Jewish faith. Jesus himself was the “pioneer and perfecter” of calling people back to the centre—being in faithful relationship with God—while at the same time eating with outcasts, ministering on the margins, and proclaiming bold new truths about loving enemies and overcoming evil with good.
Our history is punctuated with these threshold moments in which the impetus for healthy church growth comes from more than reiterating popularly accepted views.
To bring all of this close to home, I find that those who are regarded as being on the periphery of today’s Mennonite community are often providing the most helpful perspective on what being Mennonite is all about. I find that the radicals are the ones who are testing and confirming the issues that are central to our faith.
So the Confession of Faith in a Mennonite Perspective will probably undergo some fascinating changes when we more fully understand the perspectives of our Mennonite brothers and sisters who are pioneering new forms of nonviolent social change, who are promoting environmental sustainability, or who are challenging our theological horizons. These apparent peripheries will allow us to clarify and strengthen our core identity as Christians because they are, in fact, at the core.
Our peacemaking ministries provide a very tangible example of a current threshold not only for Mennonites, but for Christians in general. For example, I’ve talked to folks who are surprised that the “radical” work of Christian Peacemaker Teams is actually sanctioned by our Mennonite churches.
Paradoxically, the gospel of peace—as much as it seems to push the limits—is also the core of our faith. God’s work in the world is the work of overcoming evil with good, transforming violence and rectifying injustice. This was the core of Jesus’ ministry.
Today, our peace work takes us back to the core, and yet it takes us to completely uncomfortable places where we stand on street corners with prayer vigils, put ourselves out there with letters to the government, and call for peace when many other voices call for war.
I believe that our current vocation as a Mennonite community has a lot to do with how we embody the gospel of peace. I agree with those who point out that our “quiet in the land” chapter has now drawn to a close, and that the coming years will see us much more actively involved in bringing healing and hope to our communities.
By the power of the Holy Spirit, our sticking close to home will be in our taking the peacemaking message “out there” with gusto. I’d like to see our Mennonite community inviting strength and courage for the road ahead.
Incidentally, that overgrown road near our farm didn’t hold me back forever. I remember times when I biked clear through to the other side of that “scary spot,” and then I found beautiful farmland with even more places to wonder about and explore.
Yet, as much as I needed to expand the horizons, I also found myself more and more intrigued by what adventures could be had right around our house. The going out was connected to the sticking close to home, and in that truth—grasped only later in my life—there was something of the grace of God.