Loren Swartzendruber: Forming Faith to What End?

August 31, 2008
Matthew 16:21-28

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It was a hot, humid night in the middle of the summer, 1966. George R. Brunk, II, was holding meetings 4 ½ miles north of Kalona, within sight of the Cheese Factory. I was 16 years old, sitting about ½ way back, near the center aisle, on the right side. My Dad was on the platform with a Men’s Chorus, singing prior to the sermon.

The sky started to turn dark blue, then almost black. Some of the men in the chorus got a little nervous; George walked over to the edge of the platform, took a look out to the southwest, came back and told the men to keep on singing. One of his last comments was something like, “Keep on singing men, this tent has never blown down.” At least, that’s what my Dad told me later.

We all started running for the cars. The big center poles started snapping off like toothpicks, the entire tent slowly floated down on the chairs, and rain was pouring down. Amazingly, the only reported injury was one scraped knee as a person scrambled out to her car. It could have been far worse. The next morning I went with Dad to help clean up the mess. They took down what remained of the tent, and for the remaining days of the meetings, we sat outside in the open air.

One or two nights later I responded to the invitation to follow Jesus. You can’t go through an experience like that as a teenager without asking questions about life and death. I have no memory of George “using” the experience inappropriately—we didn’t have to be told that life is tenuous. The unexpected can happen quickly.

What I do remember is that I knew I wanted to be a follower of Jesus—without knowing what all that might mean for the future. I’m sure there was an element of fear involved in my decision. Within a month I joined a membership class and was baptized later that fall.

The question that you and I have to answer every day is, “Who is this Jesus that we choose to follow?” Where does Jesus lead us?

The primary Gospel text for this morning, the last 8 verses of Matthew 16, answers those questions in a way that jars the mind. Up to this point, Jesus has been performing miracles: Matthew 14—he fed the five thousand, walked on water, healed the daughter of the Canaanite woman, feeding four thousand people.

And, as if that isn’t enough, the Pharisees and Sadducees test him by asking for a sign from heaven.

Notice what happens to Simon Peter within a space of just 7 verses. He goes from having the nickname “Rocky” to being called “Satan.” One minute Jesus tells him, “On this rock I will build my church,” but as soon as Jesus reveals that being the Messiah means death, Peter is no longer a “Rock” but a stumbling block. Of course, we don’t really know if this move from hero to goat took place in a few minutes or over a period of time. This isn’t the first time that Peter experiences a sudden change of direction. In Matthew 14 we read the story of Peter walking on the water—so long as he keeps his eyes on Jesus—but he sinks like a rock when he focuses on the wind rather than on Jesus.

All we know for certain is that Jesus turned things upside down. Use whatever metaphor you want: Jesus threw them a curve, he threw a monkey wrench into their way their way of thinking, he messed with their minds. It was certainly not the direction the disciples were expecting to go.

What if either Barack Obama or John McCain would make a speech tomorrow—something like, “I’ve been trying to convince all of you that I’m the one to lead us into a better future. I’ve made thousands of speeches, I’ve spent millions of dollars, all in the effort to persuade just 51 percent of the voters that I have the answers to the country’s problems.”

“But, here’s the real deal. For some reason you’re just not getting the message. As of today, right now, I’m no longer campaigning for the presidency of the United States.” If you’re a Democrat you’re going to have to vote Republican and if you’re a Republican you’re going to have to vote Democratic.

As unlikely as that may seem, what Jesus said to his disciples was even more unlikely. “I’m going to Jerusalem, the most dangerous place for me to go right now—not for the purpose of becoming Commander in Chief—but so that I can be put on a cross and be killed.” “And by the way, if you want to follow me, you’ll have to take up your own cross.”

As Fr. Daniel Berrigan put it, “If you want to follow Jesus, you had better look good on wood.”

The people of Jesus’ day would have known that bearing a cross was a life and death matter. The cross was an instrument of torture and death. In our day Jesus might tell us that to follow him means that we will experience water-boarding and eventually drowning.

We’ve all played the game of follow the leader. We did it as children. And we’ve had the experience of following the leader who took us into places we didn’t want to go. Under branches, through dark places…

Every year at Iowa Mennonite School we had a day in the fall where we’d go to a local farm to play games and to compete in various contests. One year some of us competed in a cross country run of about 3 miles. It was not a well marked course and somehow the leader got off course and all of us were climbing over a barbed wire fence. (I’m sure the leader was Tom Yoder, first cousin of Mary Glick. Actually, he probably did not mislead us, but was so far ahead that someone else got lost.) By the time I got there I was a little too tired and caught my right leg on the top of the fence, ripping a gash about two inches long. I still have the scar to show for it. It was a case of following a leader who took us where we didn’t want to go.

How do we apply the hard teachings of this text to our particular time and place? Of course, we can all identify the “little crosses,” in our lives. And we all have them. It may not be a good idea to name them publicly in Sunday School class! It could be a little threatening.

I’m sure that some of us have faced the potential reality of our own death. In most cases, in our society however, facing death is usually not the result of our decision to follow Jesus. That doesn’t mean it isn’t challenging or life-changing. I do think it is a fundamentally different reality if our brothers and sisters in Iraq or Zimbabwe or Ethiopia are facing death because of their faith in Jesus—than if I face death because of a health crisis.

So, I come back to the difficult question of how to apply the hard teachings of this text. Let me offer just one possibility—one that I realize is very risky. And, I realize it doesn’t apply to all of us in the same way. If you want to challenge me or push this out further, come to the Faith and Issues Sunday School class discussion later this morning.

It is no secret that those of us who believe that following Jesus means we do not participate in war are not popular in our culture. To be advocates of nonviolence and to refuse to bear arms, as a matter of faith, is to be ridiculed and even reviled. At best, we are viewed as naïve, at worst—it is far worse! If any of us doubt the anger of people directed our way—sometime I’ll show you some of the messages I’ve received.

If you are, as I am, totally committed to nonviolence because of my understanding of what it means to be a follower of Jesus—then I wonder how it is that we as parents are so protective of our children that we can’t imagine letting them go into harm’s way for any reason, including that of serving the church. I’ll put it even more strongly—I think it’s a major undermining of our witness if I do not support my sons and daughters to follow Jesus into danger when my neighbor is willing to support his children to fight for my freedom.

I know this is very uncomfortable for us to contemplate. As parents we are wired to protect our children—and that’s a natural instinct. To be sure, it is our responsibility to protect them when they are small and vulnerable. From day one, however, we have to acknowledge that we are not fully in control. Every parent has experienced this on one way or another. Some of you have experienced the most excruciating loss of life—the death of a child. There is no way that I can fully comprehend that agony.

So, I do not offer this idea lightly. But, here’s the reality. Our friends and neighbors regularly allow their sons and daughters to go into harms way because they believe in the cause for which they are sent. They do not love their children less than we do. Like us, if they could do so, they would rather sacrifice their own lives than to send their sons and daughters.

What if the church in North America was so committed to the way of nonviolence and peace that we would say to the world, “Following Jesus is costly. It is a cause so compelling that we are ready to die for the church? What if we were so crazy as to say, “I’m not willing to have my son or daughter die for the nation, but I am ready to support him/her in service to the church, no matter how dangerous that may be?” I think that would be more faithful to the teachings of Jesus.

This summer we experienced the death of an April EMU graduate, Matt Garber. He was a nursing major, Bible and religion minor, and a gifted musician. He died on July 1 and the memorial service in Elizabethtown PA was on July 10. Two of his siblings had been planning to visit him in Costa Rica before he was to return home after a summer of mission service. Their parents, Todd and Debbie, supported them in the trip to Costa Rica, just days after Matt’s memorial service. Many parents would have been very reluctant to allow other children to leave home so soon. In my mind, their witness was powerful.

When I spoke with pastors Barbara and Phil about choosing a theme for this morning, I was given complete flexibility. I had considered speaking on the question of Christians and politics—it’s a subject that I enjoy thinking about and is on all of our minds these days. One thing I’m sure we can agree on—these next two months are going to be very interesting. I’m grateful that Phil will be doing a series this fall on how we should live as Kingdom citizens (see the bulletin insert for the list of sermons and texts). They told me I could choose a “Church School” theme, or something related to our vocation and work, relative to Labor Day Weekend. Or, I could simply go with the lectionary texts. I chose to go with the lectionary text, but it caused me a lot more angst during the week than any of the other options would have required.

As Phil has told us occasionally, when we are confronted by texts “we don’t like” we’d probably better pay close attention. I don’t like the idea of taking up a cross. It certainly isn’t a theme that one hears frequently on Christian radio or TV. It’s not a feel-good kind of message to deliver. The easy way out would be to focus on our “little crosses.” Jesus was talking about a real cross and physical death. Of course, the story ends with the resurrection! More than once during the week I was reminded of the old saying, “It is the preacher’s job to comfort the afflicted and to afflict the comfortable.” You can be assured, I afflicted myself this morning.

I pray that what I’ve offered will stimulate us to further conversations and to more faithful living.



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Ross Erb: Clinging Tightly, Holding Lightly

August 24, 2008
Matthew 16:13-20

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Matthew 16 has some interesting events recorded in it.
You read them and you start to think that this bunch guys called disciples just are not the brightest bulbs in the chandelier!
In fact, as you read you get the sense that even the smart ones of the time,
the teachers and preachers, were not as smart as they thought they were.
To recap, Chapter 16 starts with some Pharisees and Sadducees trying to test Jesus,
asking for a sign.
Jesus uses the maxim “red sky at night, sailors delight, red sky at morning, sailors take warning” to point out that they can tell signs of coming weather,
but they cannot read the signs of the times.
Now, these were the teachers and professors, and the preachers and theologians of Jesus time. This would be like Jesus saying to me, or Pastor Barbara, or your Sunday School teacher,
or even a seminary dean (just for an example)
that they, we, don’t know as much as we think we know.
Then, as Jesus walks off,
he warns his disciples to beware the yeast of the Pharisees and Sadducees.
Instead of connecting the dots and realizing what Jesus was talking about,
the disciples think Jesus is mad at them because they forgot to pack a lunch.
So Jesus has to set them straight as well.
“Haven’t you learned from the feeding of the 5000 and the 4000?
The problem here isn’t with bread, it is with poor teaching!”

That brings us up to the verses you just heard from Chapter 16.
The group is walking along and comes to the district of Ceasarea Philippi.
Jesus asks who people think he is, and he gets some pretty standard answers.
People think he is the reincarnation of one of the great teachers of Israel’s past,
someone like John the Baptist or Elijah or one of the other prophets.
I can only imagine that Jesus is kind of cringing inside as he asks
“Who do YOU say that I am?”
He knows the track record of this group.
Based on that, I don’t know why Jesus would expect Simon Peter to blurt out,
“Hey, you are the Messiah, the Son of the living God!”
And in fact, I’d guess that Jesus’ head snapped up and he said,
“Whoa, where did that come from?
Simon, you didn’t come up with that answer on your own,
God gave you that knowledge!”

I can’t help but think that if Jesus had asked the disciples that same question the month before,
or the week before,
maybe even the day before,
Peter would not have had the same answer,
he would not have come up with that bold statement defining Jesus.
Back in Matthew 8, after Jesus calmed a storm while out in a boat with the disciples,
they ask, “What sort of man is this?” They were not sure about Jesus then!
Then they get a bit clearer understanding in Matthew 14, when, after Jesus walks on the water,
Peter says, “Truly you are the Son of God.”
He’s starting to get it.

It’s over the course of time
that the disciples come to a fuller understanding of the person of Jesus.
They were not wrong when they started following him
because he was a compelling teacher, or a charismatic leader.
As they began to see more of who Jesus was, they had to re-evaluate what they “knew”
and eventually they came to catch a glimpse of Jesus as the Son of God.
The TRUTH of who Jesus is does not change as the disciples grow in their understanding of Him. They simply begin to see more of the truth.

Truth is a tricky concept, and it is interwoven into our understanding of faith.
It is frequently referenced in the Scriptures (about 450 times),
and indeed as a child I sang 2 Timothy 2:15, which told me,
“Study to show yourself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed,
rightly dividing the Word of Truth.”
In John 8, Jesus tells the Jews who had believed in him,
“If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples;
and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.”
He also says in chapter 14 of John that he is “the way, the truth, and the light.”

But these days we are not content with looking at Jesus as the truth.
We want to get more specific than that,
we want to be able to say, “this statement is truth; this fact is truth.”
Indeed, our claims of “truth” regularly divide us.
We are no longer content to live with mystery and ambiguity.
In this age of science and reason, we need to claim the truth!
I am reminded of the courtroom scene from the movie, “A Few Good Men”
where Tom Cruise yells, “I want the truth!”,
and Jack Nicholson yells back, “You can’t handle the truth!”

Hmm, perhaps we are all like Tom Cruise (there is a fanciful thought)
well, except for the looks, the money, the fame…
in that we are crying out that we want the truth.
And to be honest, we all think that we have the truth.
We think that we are, in matters of faith,
reading the Bible correctly, and interpreting it correctly,
or perhaps not interpreting it but accepting it at face value,
and that anyone who reads the Bible differently is wrong.

And of course, in today’s world,
the Bible does not speak directly to many of the issues that we face.
The result is that we can argue and splinter.
A current example is the debate over creation, evolution, or intelligent design.
We get heated up over this issue.
If you are a firm creationist, then the theory of evolution is heresy.
If you are a proponent of evolution,
then the two creation stories in Genesis are merely quaint fairy tales.
And if you are either a creationist, or an evolutionist,
then you might view those pushing the idea of intelligent design as having sold out
to either sloppy theology or sloppy science.

This is not unique to today.
Not so many years ago, we KNEW that the world was flat.
We KNEW that the sun and the stars revolved around the earth.
Theologically, we KNEW that women could not preach or pastor a congregation.
The list could go on and on.
Many of our understandings of the physical world,
many of our understandings of what it means to be followers of Jesus,
and to be Christ’s church, have changed over time.

I Corinthians 13:12 says,
“For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then we will see face to face.
Now I know only in part;
then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known.”
What does it mean to us that we are only seeing an incomplete or distorted version of the truth?
Science makes advances almost every day it seems,
and new knowledge reconfigures how we understand this world, God’s creation.
Is it possible that we are also having the same thing happen as we continue to study the Bible?
Again, Isaiah 55:8 says
“For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways my ways,”
declares the Lord.
We do our best to diligently and faithfully read and interpret scriptures.
Anabaptists have long held that this happens best in the context of the faith community.
I cannot go off and read the Bible and form my own understandings
without also testing those understandings with my brothers and sisters in the church.

In 1978, Alexander Solzhenitsyn addressed the graduating class at Harvard
and he told them:
“Harvard’s motto is ‘Veritas.’
Many of you have already found out and others will find out in the course of their lives
that truth eludes us if we do not concentrate with total attention on its pursuit.
And even while it eludes us,
the illusion still lingers of knowing it and leads to many misunderstandings.”

It is the second point that caught my attention.
It is so easy to forget that we are not seeing the whole picture from God’s vantage point.
It is so easy to forget that we do not know all that God knows.
And when we forget, when we hold too firmly to what we think is TRUTH,
to the illusion of truth,
then we have misunderstandings and we begin to divide into camps.

Our faith is full of mystery.
Michael Card wrote about this and talked about the mystery of Christ.
It is not that Christ is a mystery only to non-believers.
No, Christ is a mystery to those of us who believe and have committed our lives to him.
How do we explain the virgin birth, the Trinity, grace, prayer, the Cross, the Incarnation?
Oh, we try, we have theories and explanations.
But in the end, all of this is beyond at least my ability to fully understand.
So I, and I would suggest WE,
are not so different from the disciples.

God is continuing to reveal greater and greater portions of the TRUTH to us.
Jesus is THE TRUTH.
We can cling tightly to that!
Jesus is the touchstone that we keep coming back to in our faith.
Jesus centers us and through His words and deeds gives us direction.
Beyond that, as we read and apply the scriptures,
we look to God to continue to give us new insights and understandings
into His Word and His Will.
In the meantime, we need to hold lightly those things that we KNOW,
remembering that now we know in part.
It is only after we leave this world to be with God in glory
that we will know fully, even as we are known fully.

That is a scary idea for most of us,
thinking that the things that we know and believe are perhaps not completely accurate.
Does this mean that we have to doubt everything?
I don’t think so.
I’m not suggesting that everything should be up for grabs.
We continue to believe and understand as we do.
We just allow for the fact that we may not know the whole truth on a matter.

Paul wrote in Romans 12 that we are not to be conformed to this world,
(and here I would like to suggest that this could mean that we not believe that we have a corner on the truth)
but to be transformed by the renewing of our minds,
so that we can discern what is the will of God –
what is good, and acceptable, and perfect.

This morning we marked milestones
as our children and youth enter into new stages of their education.
Not just in school, but at home and here at church,
their minds are being shaped, renewed as new knowledge is instilled.
It is an exciting time, I hope, as new ideas and understandings open up to them.
They see the world in different ways, and they see themselves in the world in different ways.
But Paul was not writing only to the children and youth of the church in Rome.
All of us, whether young or old, need to continue to be transformed by the renewing of our minds.
As this happens, some of what we KNOW, may need to be re-evaluated.
At times it may feel that everything is shifting.
Then we need to go back to THE TRUTH, to Jesus.
We need to get centered once again in our faith, and then look at what these shifts are.
That is when we test things out in the context of our faith communities.
Holding lightly to what it is we believe to be true does not need to mean that we believe any less.
It just means that we understand God to be active,
not just in the world, but in His body, the church.
God has, and will, continue to reveal more and more of Himself, of his Truth, to us.

So, on this “Back to School Sunday,
perhaps we are all needing to be reminded that we are still learning,
still being transformed by the renewing of our minds.
May we all be open to the movement of God,
as we continue to discern what is good, and acceptable, and perfect…
as we discern more and more of God’s Truth.
Amen.



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Lawrence Yoder: Turning to the Foreigner

August 17, 2008
Matthew 15:21-28

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Turning to the Foreigner
Isaiah 56:1, 6-8; Psalm 67; Mt. 15:21-28;

Jesus says two things during his ministry, which seem to be in conflict with each other. Several times he says that he was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. But he also gives strong teaching and bold examples of reaching and caring for foreigners.
As he does this, he draws examples from Old Testament prophets about receiving foreigners and even giving them first priority. The Isaiah passage we read contains the phrase, which Jesus recited when he drove the merchants and moneychangers from the temple, from court of the Gentiles. “’My house shall be called a house of prayer for all nations,” he said,“ but you have made it a den of thieves.”
But when Jesus selected his twelve disciples in Matthew 10 and sent them out to carry on the very ministries that he himself was doing—healing the sick, cleansing lepers, expelling unclean spirits and announcing the arrival of the kingdom of God—Jesus gave sharp, clear instructions: “Do not go to gentile areas or Samaritan towns; go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”
With these seemingly conflicting messages, it is not surprising that Jesus’ disciples were having trouble getting his message clear in their heads. They would seem to catch one thing, but completely miss the mark on the next. And the Pharisees and other Jewish leaders were increasingly testy about what Jesus was doing and saying.
So, as our gospel reading tells us, Jesus withdrew and went north to territory of Tyre and Sidon, in the area of Syria and Phoenicia. We often get the impression that this excursion of 100 miles or so was mainly for rest and relaxation—a sort of vacation. Maybe so.
But back at the beginning of his ministry in Matthew 4, it is reported that Jesus’ fame spread throughout Syria and they brought to him people suffering from all kinds of diseases and he healed them all. Maybe Jesus wanted to get up there into the territory where all those Syrians had come from. What was it going to be like when all those foreigners were invited to enter God’s arriving kingdom?
All through the gospels we have to deal with the question of how much did Jesus know about what was going to happen and when did he know it. Our tendency is to assume he knew it all from the beginning, but the gospel stories suggest that he learned some things along the way—through his encounters with different people.
Perhaps the reason Jesus wanted to focus on the Jews during the central part of his ministry is that his work—his teaching and ministry, and especially his coming suffering, death and resurrection—were very much a continuation and fulfillment of the story of God working with his chosen people in the Old Testament. When the fulfillment of that history was finally worked out and understood in the Jewish context, then the whole story could be carried and shared with every people and nation.
But most of the Jewish people of Jesus’ time were strongly prejudiced against foreigners. As they saw things, generally speaking, there was no place in God’s kingdom for gentiles and foreigners. They didn’t think right. They didn’t act right. They didn’t eat right. They didn’t dress right. They didn’t know the right things. They didn’t believe the right things. They were unclean. They hadn’t undergone the right ceremonies and rituals. They hadn’t experienced the right things. Jews surely did not expect much of such people. Neither did Jesus’ own disciples.
So, in our gospel reading today, what would be the point of Jesus going up north into the gentile areas of Tyre and Sidon if it were not for rest and relaxation? As it happened, they were apparently still on the way when a Canaanite woman of the area came up to Jesus crying out, ‘Son of David! Have pity on me! My daughter is tormented by a demon.’ But Jesus says absolutely nothing in response to her.
Perhaps Jesus had just been getting into the relaxation mode. Maybe he thought no one would know or recognize him there, although their somewhat unusual dress as Jews likely betrayed them. Could someone tell that Jesus was a Jewish rabbi by the way he looked? Or, perhaps things were operating as Jesus explained in the Gospel of John, where he said, When I’m speaking, “I only say what I hear my Father saying.” And in performing his works of power, he said, “I only do what I see my Father doing.” Perhaps these quiet moments of no response from Jesus were moments of watching to see what his Father was doing and listening to hear what his Father was saying.
But in those quiet moments, it did not take very long for his disciples to make some conclusions about the situation. They urged Jesus, “Send her away! Don’t you see the commotion she is making, shouting after us!”
Now Jesus does respond, and his response seems to be something that came up often. It was partly something he intended his disciples to hear, but also partly something addressed to the woman: “I was sent to the lost sheep of the house of Israel!”
But the woman rushed forward and fell at his feet and cried out, “Help me, Sir!” Jesus now responds with words that seem surprisingly crude and even cruel, something you might expect from some of the more xenophobic Jews: “It is not right to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs!”
Now if someone would speak to you or me in this way, I’d hate to predict how we would respond! But not this woman! Immediately she replies, “You are right sir! Yet even the dogs get to eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table."
Perhaps it was this interchange that opened Jesus’ eyes so he could see what his Father was about to do. Or perhaps Jesus took things this far so that his disciples would see reflected in stark, bold relief what their typical Jewish attitudes were really like.
Either way, through the response of this pagan Canaanite woman, Jesus hears what his Father is apparently already up to. Jesus does not have to cast the demon out of this woman’s daughter or heal her in some way. He simply says, “What amazing faith you have! Let it happen just as you wish!”
Do you remember what happened when Jesus told this kind of story back in his own hometown—a story of God healing gentiles? They got so furious at him that they hauled him out of town and nearly threw him over a cliff. Hopefully, though, through this experience in Syria-Phoenicia, Jesus’ disciples were catching some glimpses of what this gospel of Jesus—this Kingdom he kept talking about—would finally turn out to be.
The gospel of the kingdom that Jesus was proclaiming would be open to all. In fact pagan foreigners who were only hearing it for the first time might find it easier to understand and accept than pious Jews, who were used to the narrow, restrictive vision they had been hearing and living for centuries. I hope we can all get a clear grasp of how it might be that the pagan foreigner might be more able to see to the heart of Jesus’ gospel than those who had been good Jews all their lives. Perhaps we, who have been in church all our lives, need to hear the testimony of the foreigner who is seeing the light of God’s love for the first time.

Forty years ago I was in seminary, about ready to begin my last year. It was during the war in Vietnam, and Shirlee and I were feeling called, as we put it in those days, to do something positive in Asia.
When we learned that MCC was looking for a seminary graduate to teach in the Mennonite seminary in Indonesia, we began to feel God calling us to go. We were rather surprised to learn that these churches had been started in the 1850s and were growing rapidly in the midst of a strongly Islamic community.
We accepted the assignment and went to New York City to study Indonesian language at Columbia University while we waited for our visas. Since most of people in Indonesia are Muslims, I decided to take a course in Islam as well.
It was a whole year before our visas were granted. When we arrived, we were busy getting settled, and soon we were more busy getting started with teaching.
On Kartini Street where we lived, almost everyone was Muslim. We soon got to know these people—Pak Simin, the Electric Company technician and his wife and children lived next door. Here is a relief made by their son, Nandar. Pak Soehadi with his wife and children ran the hotel on the other side. Dr. Koerman and his wife lived right across the street. These were all ordinary, polite Javanese Muslims.
There was a big mosque on the square in our town two blocks away. Soon I was thinking about going to the mosque to learn to know the Imam and some of the other leaders. But first I asked Pak Djojo, the leader of the Muria Javanese Mennonite conference. I was a little surprised when he said, “Oh, I don’t think that would be a very good idea.” I wondered, why would he want me to stay away from the Muslim leaders. Virtually all of our neighbors are Musim. My barber and my tailor are Muslims. About a million Muslims lived in our county. But he was wary of us associating with Muslim leaders.
Now we need to realize that Pak Djojo was an extraordinary man by any measure. He was a remarkable pastor and church leader. He was a scholar and an excellent teacher. He could speak six modern languages, including English, Dutch, German and French. He had an European theological education. He was also a scholar in Javanese language, literature, culture and religion. Later on, when I was doing my own research on the culture and religions of Java, Pak Djojo was my mentor. He sometimes went with me on my field trips introducing me to leaders of non-Christian groups. I thought, “How is it that he is happy to introduce me to these other religious leaders, but he does not want me to relate to Muslim leaders?”
But as I did more research into the history of the churches there, I learned about some very difficult and painful things that happened between Christians and Muslims. The Muslims felt that the Dutch, who ruled Indonesia for 350 years, gave unfair support to Christian missions. So at the beginning of WWII when the Japanese invaded and occupied Indonesia, forcing the Dutch to leave, some of the more radical Muslims seized the opportunity to try to forcibly convert Christians to Islam. They rounded up Christian pastors and leaders and treated them very badly. They destroyed Tayu Mennonite Hospital. They destroyed the finest Mennonite church building, which had been constructed of teakwood, as well as several others. They beat up Mennonite pastor Surat Timotius and threw him into a well. They attacked the Mennonite leprosarium at dawn and killed the Dutch missionary pastor ministering there, who looked about like me.
As I interviewed people and gathered these stories, I began to feel like I understood better why Pak Djojo was uneasy about relating to Muslim leaders and why he was hesitant for me to do so. He was probably also worried about my safety. So I continued to follow the example of Javanese Christians not to develop close relationships with Muslim leaders.
As I reflect further, I believe that many Christian leaders and members of that generation were traumatized by what they experienced. Feelings of fear and terror might arise at any time and interfere with any idea of developing relationships with Muslim leaders.

After we completed our ten years of MCC service, we went to graduate school and then began to teach here at EMU. We also began to look for short-term opportunities to return to Indonesia.
One such opportunity arose in 1997, when I was asked to prepare a revised edition of the history of the Muria Mennonite Church. On our way to Indonesia, we meet a Javanese woman named Yayah, who turned out to be a scholar returning from graduate studies in conflict resolution at the University of Massachusetts. She was a professor at Surakarta Muhammadiyah University. She invited us to come and visit her university. We decided to accept her invitation.
The day of our visit maybe 15 professors met with us for several hours. Our discussion ranged over many different topics. It was a very interesting and eye-opening experience. You might say “heart-opening” too. I think we had been infected by some of the residual fear of the church leaders and had often allowed it to guide our behavior. But now we were learning in a very direct way that there are many Muslim leaders and academics—and not only moderates—who are very open to conversations and relationships with Christians, including foreign Christians like us.
We looked for more opportunities. In 2004 when we took a tour group to Indonesia, we spent part of one day in a traditional, moderate Islamic boarding school. You can ask Cal and Freda Redekop, Ed and Millie Stoltzfus, Glenn and Mary Kauffman or Ed and Edie Bontrager about that experience. We also visited some of the oldest Islamic centers on Java.

But last year, when we began to plan for my sabbatical year, we noticed that MCC had a position open for a professor in some area of theological studies to teach in a new inter-religious Ph.D. program called ICRS, which means Indonesian Consortium for Religious Studies. It is sponsored jointly by a state university, an Islamic university and a Christian university. The faculty are Muslims and Christians, as are the students. Each course is taught by a team of at least one Muslim and one Christian.
Islam is by far the largest religious community in Indonesia. Christianity is the second largest, with something less than 9 percent of the population. Since our visit to the Muhammadiyah University in Surakarta, I had been thinking more and more that Christians need to find more ways to build relationships with the Muslim people around them. This seemed like an opportunity to do that. So we accepted the assignment.
I was assigned to teach a course on the History of Religions in Indonesia since 1945. My colleagues in teaching the course were Syafa'atun Almirzanah, who is professor of comparative religion at the Islamic University, and Bernie Adeney-Risakotta, the director of the program. We taught the course together, each of us responsible to lead five of the 15 three-hour sessions.
It was my job, for instance, to lead the session covering the slaughter of a million or so suspected atheist-communists by the Army and radical Muslims in 1965 and 1966. I led another session covering the rapid growth of the Christian church in the same period. Amazingly the 8 Muslim and 5 Christian students in the class and the professors were able to work their way through often very difficult inter-religious issues with hardly a sign of conflicted understanding.
This culture of friendship between Christians and Muslims was carried over into a Mission Conference at the Christian university, in which two Muslim scholars were among the six key speakers. It was carried over also into a half-day consultation on Christian and Islamic mission (which is called da’wah).
Building good relationships between people of different religions does not mean setting aside essential elements of what we believe, but rather living out clearly and explicitly God’s special regard for outsiders and foreigners. Just imagine what will happen when more and more Christians get into the flow of what God is doing and saying.








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Barbara Moyer Lehman: Caught between faith and doubt

August 10, 2008
Matthew 14:22-33

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Some of us remember the Beatles first film that came out in 1964 called, A Hard Days Night. And of course the lyrics of that title song, “It’s a Hard Days Night and I’m working like a dog...” There may be days when we could echo the sentiments of that song....hard days, long nights, difficult summers. Life isn’t always easy. Sometimes we feel like we are being smacked around. Another song whose words might be more familiar to some of you than a Beatles’ song, says it this way, “when the world is tossing me like a ship upon the sea,”. That, too may be descriptive of what we feel like.
When I read the gospels and the events of Jesus’ ministry packed into 3 years, I imagine that some days and weeks were long, hard, and exhausting. In Matthew’s gospel, chapter 14 we see two examples and references to Jesus’ desire for solitude, for prayer, for time to regroup. He didn’t always get that time.
In chapter 14, verse 13, he withdrew in a boat by himself to a deserted place, but the crowds followed him. When he stepped on shore, they were there. He had compassion and healed them. He didn’t send them away, telling them to return another day. His day was not over, for then we have the story of the feeding of the five thousand. He had to multiply fives loaves and 2 fish and somehow try to feed this multitude.
THEN Jesus tries to find some solitude again. Beginning with verse 22 of Matthew 14, we hear the gospel text for today.

(Recite Matthew 14:22-33.)


This story is told in all 4 gospels. Matthew is the only one that includes the part of Peter attempting to walk on water. It s a story that addresses danger, fear, faith and doubt. It is an epiphany at sea. Christ appears on the water to the disciples. Christ is present to them in the midst of the storm.

“It is a parable of salvation,” one writer stated. At the time Matthew’s gospel is written, the church is being persecuted. There is fear, confusion, suffering.
When people are living in those conditions, they are looking for something to grasp, to hold on to in the midst of suffering, in the midst of the storm. It is not a story that mirrors only the 1st century church. The same could be said for the church in the 16th century during the reformation. Our Anabaptist ancestors saw and experienced much suffering and persecution. They too needed to hold on to something, as women and men were being martyred for their faith. Did they understand that even as they were burned at the stake or tortured in other cruel and inhumane ways that Christ was present to them, that Christ was with them in their storm?
It’s our story for the 21st century! We want to believe. We want to be strong and calm and courageous, but sometimes we find ourselves moving back and forth between faith and doubt, sometimes focused on the storm and allowing it to take over our lives, sometimes focused on Jesus and feeling relatively calm and centered. Too often we feel caught between the two...faith and doubt!

In Peter we see both strength and weakness, faith and doubt, much like we see in ourselves and the church. He was obedient and trusting enough to step out of a perfectly good boat into the storm, when Jesus said, “Come”, but then lost focus, noticed the strong wind and turbulence beneath him, took his eyes off Jesus, and as he felt himself sinking, cried out in desperation, “Lord, save me!”

It’s the cry you and I might have muttered in some form at some point in our life time. Lord, save me. Lord, have mercy. It’s the cry of someone in need. It’s the cry of the community in distress in every age. It’s the cry of desperate men and women around the world!
Jesus hears the cry. Jesus has compassion. Jesus shows mercy. Jesus delivers his community and saves/redeems us from those storms and raging waters and our sometime weak, feeble and faltering faith.

When we read the gospel accounts of Jesus’ ministry, we find delight and encouragement in the stories where the blind see, the lame walk again, demons and evil spirits are cast out, health is restored. This story also ends happily. Peter is saved from drowning, the wind is calmed, those in the boat acknowledge who Jesus is and worship the one who saved him.

But what happens in real life when we know that things don’t always end well or happy? When the ending isn’t good or even okay? Life can be hard, very hard. Many people feel battered around. And for some it seems that no matter what they do, they continue to get slammed over and over again. They are rowing hard, but going nowhere! They can probably understand well the phrase in this passage, “for the wind was against them.”

Storms come out of nowhere and wreak havoc in our lives, literally and figuratively. And when we are in the midst of the storm, we imagine the worst. Everything is dark. Nothing is clear. The hurdles are huge, the barriers seem insurmountable. The disciples were terrified. They cried out in fear. For them they saw what they thought was a ghost.
Our storms, our ghosts can sometimes paralyze us. They change us overnight or in one second. A tornado skips over one town and slams into another. Lives are saved, lives are destroyed. A young man drowns while swimming. Several others swim to safety. An accident claims the lives of 4 high school teenagers, one survives.

I have no easy answers for what we do when things don’t go well or end happily, but I have a few observations out of my own experience and study.

1.) I know that it is the same Jesus who sometimes miraculously saves us from the storm, as is the Jesus who compassionately draws near to us in the storm!!! Jesus draws near to those who are hurting. Jesus comes to us in the storm, sits and suffers with us. Sometimes we say things like, “God must have been watching over me,” when we narrowly miss being involved in an accident with our family. But I also believe God is present with that family who is hit by a drunk driver on the highway and loses loved ones or has to deal with long term rehab because of injuries.

2.) I know that Jesus sometimes calls us to step out in faith, to exercise our ‘faith muscle’, even when it seems unreasonable, or even when the outcome is unclear and the future is uncertain! Peter took a risk. He stepped out of the boat. He wanted to be obedient. When he wavered and took his eyes off Jesus, he began to sink. His faith faltered when the wind was rough, but at least he tried. He was willing to risk. Too many of us are caught between faith and doubt. If we never make that step or attempt to, our faith muscle will weaken, shrivel up and die.
In 1983 John and I, with our two sons, moved to Elkhart ,IN. It was a huge step, a big risk. We had been living in Union City, IN for 4 years. John was teaching high school math and physics. I was an ‘at home’ mom for 3 of those 4 years. But I took a plunge, and at John’s suggestion enrolled at Earlham School of Religion, a Quaker seminary on the campus of Earlham College. Why? I don’t really know? John thought I might enjoy taking seminary classes. I wasn’t sure what to do now that both boys were in school. I thought, why not? For a year I drove the 45 minute drive 2-3 days a week to take a full load of classes. At the end of that year, two things became clear. 1.) I loved seminary classes and wanted to continue. 2.) I wanted to finish my degree and do that at a Mennonite seminary....AMBS in Elkhart. (Sorry EMS folks. I didn’t even consider EMS. It wasn’t on my radar screen at that point.) What wasn’t clear was how we were going to do this, what I would do with a seminary degree, and what was the future for me as a woman in the Mennonite church with a seminary degree. Nevertheless we felt led, and “stepped out of the boat.” After being in that small Ohio town for 4 years, where there was no Mennonite church or community, we longed to get back to something familiar. We packed up, moved to Elkhart. We soon found a small house to rent. John had no job. For that first year that I attended seminary full time, we lived off of our savings and what John earned as a substitute teacher, which wasn’t much. His home church in Berne gave me some money for seminary. By the second year, John had a full time teaching position and we felt settled again.

Steve Brown spoke to us a few weeks ago. Thursday night at conference he preached and said, “We need to step out into places where we have never been and do things we have never done before.”

For me, my years in seminary were just that,...new places, new things, a huge risk. I have no regrets.

3.) Sooner or later, the storm ends.(usually ends) But when you are in the midst of the storm, it feels like forever. Some day the sun will shine again. But when you are in the storm, you may not believe anyone who tells you that, that things will get better. You may not want to hear it. It certainly isn’t anything that should be said tritely or lightly.

4.) When you are feeling battered around, one needs to find ways to take small, small steps forward to get out of the storm. It’s the hardest thing to do when you don’t feel like doing anything. It’s part of the process of exercising our faith muscle. It’s trusting that God will be there for us, sitting with us until the storm has passed.

In this story from Matthew, Peter represents the risk taking of faith. In our stepping out of the boat and taking risks, what sometimes may seem like failure, in the end we discover has refined and deepened our faith. In the process we are drawn to Jesus more fully.
When we read the words “of little faith”..you of little faith, it is never used of unbelievers, but rather in Matthew’s gospel, it is admonishing those who are believers but fail to draw on their faith. People like you and I who get lazy about exercising our ‘faith muscle’.

I read this quote, “Christian existence is indeed one of faith mixed with doubt. Only by God’s grace can doubt be kept subordinate.”

If we feel caught between faith and doubt, maybe even trapped, let us ask ourselves, “what is holding us back from ‘stepping out of the boat’? What are we afraid of? If we have taken some risks and found ourselves sinking, like Peter, maybe we need to ask, “what caused us to lose focus? when did we take our eyes off of Jesus? what was so tempting, so attractive, that we lost our way?”

When we are floundering in that turbulence and caught in the storm, let us hear loud and clear the words of Jesus to his disciples, Take heart, it is I. Do not be afraid.” Let us see clearly before us that Jesus reaches out to us. He takes our hand. He calms the sea. He quiets the wind.

Truly he is the Son of God!.




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