For The Record

Submit birth, marriage and obituary records online.

Personal Ads

Meet new friends today!

Advertising

Put your message in front of 33,000 readers.

PDF documents on this site require the free Adobe Reader:

Get Adobe Reader

2007-11-06 issue:

An army of love

Editorial

by Gordon Houser

Print Article

No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lampstand.—Matthew 5:15

Mennonites have had an uneasy relationship with “the world.” Our history includes a strong emphasis on nonconformity. We’ve tried to follow the command, “Do not love the world” (1 John 2:15).



True, that word does refer at times to the evil system that opposes God. It can even refer to the Roman empire, with it worship of the emperor and other gods. But “world” (“kosmos”) also refers to the created world, and Scripture says that God loves the world (John 3:16). And we, as imitators of God, are to love it as well. The tricky thing—and a major issue we will continue to face as a church—is how to love the world without being swallowed up in its ways.

While our identity is not to be found in the world but in Christ, we still live in the world and are called to be faithful servants in it. We may ask ourselves if our historical tendency to avoid or fear the world has made us too hesitant to interact with it and offer our gifts for its good.

Jennifer Davis Sensenig calls on us to recognize that we live in a Superpower nation, just as Joseph did in Egypt. And, like Joseph, we are to use our gifts for the good of the nation where we find ourselves, for the good of the world.

She describes these gifts as a second language. Our first language is the language of faith, our identity in Christ and fluency in the Christian mother tongue. But we also learn languages such as “restorative justice, medicine, arts, community organizing, agriculture, business, computer technology, pedagogy and therapy, among others.”

If we follow Joseph’s example, not to mention Jeremiah’s challenge to “seek the welfare of the city” (29:7), we will seek to use these gifts as a way of loving our world.

In her July 4 sermon at San José 2007, which is adapted here, Sensenig uses the Bible’s scandalous (to us) imagery of combat gear to call us to action. “We stand as one body in a Superpower nation,” she writes. “We are an army of love, with truth telling as our belt, justice across our chest, wearing sandals of peace, headgear of salvation and packing the Word.”
Even though we live in the most powerful (by the world’s standards) nation, we are not to live by those standards. Sensenig writes, “God does not call us to preserve our wealth or our status but to give our lives for others.”

Mennonites have always been good at service, but I wonder how much of it has been a paternalistic kind of service that does not recognize the gifts of those we serve.

Lisa Schirch is a Mennonite who uses her second language of peace building to teach at a military academy. As we exercise our gifts in the world, can we learn that those we may have tried to separate from also have moral concerns and gifts to offer us? Can we learn not to hide our lamp under a bushel basket but let it “shine before others so that they may see [our] good works and give glory to [our] Father in heaven” (Matthew 5:16)?

As we live out our faith in the world, we will discover our own shortcomings and how we may be complicit in realities we’d prefer blaming on others. Schirch learned that she must not only oppose militarism but unjust consumption. She points out that too many of us are addicted consumers and that war is a means of defending our consumer-based lifestyle. Thus, she writes, “simple living [is] a vital element of global security.”

At San José 2007, delegates mandated a study of “national identity” issues. If we are to love the world as God loves, we must recognize that we live in a Superpower nation and use our gifts as sacrificial soldiers in God’s “army of love.”

That may sound strange to our pacifist ears, but stranger, and worse, is hiding our lamp under a bushel basket.—gh

Reader Comments

Add Comments