The Place to Start: an Ascension Day Reflection

We’re just a few days removed from Mother’s Day. On top of the piano Rose has placed the cards she received from our boys. The tulip the restaurant gave her is beginning to wilt and the chocolates that greeted her on Sunday morning have long been consumed (mostly by the boys who presented the gift!).

I’m sure Rose would agree that the most precious of these memories of earlier this week are three simple words written by one of our sons… 

“I love you”

As a parent I know the effect these words have on me – I melt right to my emotional core. But I have also seen the effect that these powerful words have on grandparents, close friends, extended family members, and even complete strangers. A rush of tears, a broad smile, stunned silence, laughter, a hug…

The expression of love can change a mood, redirect a conversation, end an argument, restore hope, offer healing in brokenness, and shine great beams of light into even the darkest day. Is it any wonder that this is where Jesus wanted his disciples to begin? This is the place to start… “

A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.” (John 13:34, NIV)

Jesus spoke these words on a Thursday, but it was a Thursday very different from the celebration of this Ascension Thursday. It was a Thursday on which all hell would break loose and show its fury. The events that John and the other disciples were about to witness would be anything but filled with love. And yet the journey which Jesus choose to take through those days is for us a display of perfect love.

Within 24 hours of that Thursday, Jesus the Christ – rabbi, teacher, friend – would be nailed to a cruel cross. The disciples would be scattered – one was already on his way to betray him, another would deny him, all of them would run. But even so, just before these final events of Christ’s passion, Jesus spoke of love… “as I have loved you, so you must love one another”

Now jump ahead to the celebration that we mark as Ascension Day. Many of us likely won’t gather for a worship service or Ascension related celebration today – maybe you did in the past?

For us this is a day of celebration! A few years ago in the daily devotional Our Daily Bread, W. H. Griffith Thomas suggested, “The ascension is not only a great fact of the New Testament, but a great factor in the life of Christ and Christians, and no complete view of Jesus Christ is possible unless the ascension and its consequences are included.” And Richard De Haan continued in the same devotional: “Think of it! Jesus not only died, but He rose from the grave, went back to the Father, and is interceding for us right now.  And He is coming again.” (I think there should have been an exclamation point at the end of that sentence!)

As followers/disciples of Christ, the Ascension is a reminder and an invitation to celebrate knowing that Christ is risen victorious – the victory has already been won!

For those first disciples, these 40 days since Easter Sunday – since that resurrection morning – have been a whirlwind of trying to figure out what exactly is going on. They have received convincing proof that yes, their Lord has indeed been resurrected from the dead. They have eaten with him, been encouraged by his “presence” with them – they did note that something was different! But even so the disciples are unsure of what to make of all of this. In Acts 1:6 after Jesus reminds them of what he has told them several times before they still ask, “Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?”

Immediately after Jesus responds by commissioning his followers to be his ambassadors throughout the world…he is gone! Taken up into the clouds leaving the disciples to stare in stunned silence…

I imagine John standing there amongst his fellow disciples, mouth open, staring up at the sky. I wonder what the disciples were thinking just then, just before those angels appeared. Maybe it was something like:

Okay, what do we do now?

Where do we go from here? 

How do we keep this going? 

Where do we start?

Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria…the ends of the earth…that’s huge

After the angels appeared to the disciples there on the Mount of Olives, Luke skips over the disciples reaction. Instead he merely comments that they walked back to Jerusalem, about a days journey. And when they arrived, about 120 followers of Jesus, went up to the room in which they were staying and immediately began to have a prayer meeting.

The first act of this gathered body was to mutually encourage each other by staying together and committing themselves to prayer before any decisions were made or any course of action taken – they began by showing love one to another.

“Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.  By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” (John 13:34-35)

This is the place to start.

The example of Christ’s love which endured a cross serves as the anchor, the starting block, the foundation for the church. The challenge/command to love one another permeates all that follows in the New Testament, including the worship life of the early church.

In Acts 2 following the anointing of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost the church formed around the singular action of showing love one to another, holding their possessions in common and sharing with one another so that no had a need. By Acts 15 when the early church was faced with the challenge of what to do with all these converts joining them – people from different ethnic backgrounds, across cultures, crossing all dividing lines – the church responded in love even setting aside the rules, not to accommodate, but rather to live out Christ’s command to love one another.

In 1 Corinthians 13, Paul writes… “If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.” (v.1-3)

In 1 Peter 4:8, Peter writes… “Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins.”

And in 1 John 3:11, John sums up the starting point for the church: “This is the message you heard from the beginning: We should love one another.”

When the disciples returned from the Mount of Olives, probably still scratching their heads and wondering how they would accomplish this great mandate which Christ gave to them, they took as their starting point a community based upon love. From that starting point, in community and with the help, encouragement, and counsel of the Holy Spirit the church grew and grew and grew some more…

Through persecution, trail, suffering, threat of death and even the tortured death of leaders like Stephen, the community based upon love prevailed. Through love – the love they first showed one to another – these followers of Jesus got the attention of their neighbours. And the early church understood that love could redirect a conversation, end an argument, restore hope, offer healing in brokenness, and shine great beams of light into even the darkest day.

So what does this all mean for us on Ascension Day?

If “the ascension is…a great factor in the life of Christ and Christians”

If we in fact believe that Christ has not only conquered death, but has returned victorious to the Father, is interceding on our behalf, and will one day soon return

Ascension day invites – but also offers the challenge – to rediscover the place to start…

Creating stellar programs and offering a decent sermon, supporting MCC hard at work helping earthquake ravaged Nepal, even telling the world about this amazing story of a Saviour who has ascended to the right hand of the Father…all of this is empty and meaningless if our neighbours don’t see the genuine love that we have for them…that we have for one another…

Here in North America we have unfortunately allowed the church to become almost synonymous with guilt, condemnation, and judgement. We have allowed our society to define love as sexualized, private, hidden, and entirely none of your business!

A number of years ago the Carpenters had a hit song titled “What the World Needs Now” and the opening stanza suggested that…

What the world needs now is love sweet love,
            It’s the only thing that there’s just too little of.
            What the world needs now is love sweet love,
            no not just for some but for everyone.

If we can rediscover this love…

A love that endured a cross,

conquered the grave,

and ascended victoriously to intercede on our behalf…

A love that crossed boundaries of ethnicity,

culture,

politics…

A love that even set aside the rules so that love would not be sacrificed!

Then I think in love we have the opportunity to shape conversations...

To offer a real hope…

To invite the broken, the hurting, the disenfranchised, the proud, reckless, abandoned, dirty…

To invite our neighbours, friends, sisters, brothers, children and parents…

We have the privilege of sharing and shining the great beams of the love of Jesus Christ into even the darkest situations/struggles/circumstances.

Just before Jesus ascended into heaven he gave his followers a mission mandate to start at home, but eventually reach out to the world. It is our privilege to continue on in the footsteps of Christ and the early church that faithfully lived out a love for one another which impacted the world.

For us to continue, this same love needs to be fully embraced in the church, carried into our homes, and lived in our everyday lives. The victory and celebration of the Ascension was made possible because of 3 simple words which God has written on each of our hearts…

“I love you”

And just as those 3 simple words have changed your life forever…

This love – this starting place – has the power to change the world.

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Discipleship as a Path to Peace

I recently read Just War as Christian Discipleship:Recentering the Tradition in the Church rather than the State, by Daniel M. Bell Jr. 

I will admit that the book bugged me and I profoundly disagreed with the authors conclusions. At the same time, the role of discipleship in shaping a peace witness within a culture apparently intent on violence, continues to stir within me. Even though I disagreed with his conclusions, I deeply appreciated the way in which Bell wrestled with the implications of Christian discipleship within his argument for Just War. I think Bell offers the Mennonite/Anabaptist faith community a worthy example of how we might wrestle with the implications of discipleship for a witness to peace.

            Much of my thinking around this topic of discipleship has been heightened and clarified by my experience in Ethiopia in the month of March. Engaging with pastors and church leaders, I was curious about the tremendous growth the church in Ethiopia continues to experience even twenty-five years after state sanctioned persecution of the church ended. Several themes began to emerge.

            First among these themes was a regular recitation of the memory and lessons learned by the persecution. Everyone over the age of thirty could relate experiences of what it was like to be an underground church. The measures used to ensure safety and secrecy are recalled with the fondness of nostalgia, but also a lesson for what the church could experience again at any moment. There is recognition among the leaders that the state offers no guarantee of safety to the church. Policies of the state, already a precarious maze to be navigated, could shift at any time. As such the church prepares itself for a time when the situation may not be as good as they currently experience. This preparation leads to the second theme.

            Discipleship is at the heart of the practice of the church. When I asked pastors about the focus points of their work as leaders in the church, the response was at first surprising. Most of the pastors I spoke to mentioned that they would preach as little as once, and maybe twice per month. Preaching and Sunday worship was not the central piece of their ministry task. The gathering of the faith community on Sunday is vital. However, leadership of the various aspects of Sunday worship are divided among a wide array of leaders who together give spiritual direction to the life of the congregation.

            Central to the pastoral role was the task of ongoing discipleship. When persons indicate a desire to explore faith in Christ, they are immediately invited into a discipleship process. On a weekly basis, new believers meet with a pastor or elder for an hour long discipleship time. With the Gospel of John as their curriculum, the leaders guide new believers towards baptism (there are more than 15,000 people preparing for baptism on an annual basis in Ethiopia). After approximately four to six months which includes some instruction on the meaning of baptism and the Lord’s Supper, the new believer is invited into the waters of baptism.

            However, baptism only indicates a move from one phase of discipleship to another. The baptized believer continues to meet with the pastor or elder for another year which is focussed on training in church doctrine, structure, vision and mission of the church. This year of instruction further evolves into ongoing, weekly discipleship discussions in small groups and one-on-one exploring questions focussed on living as disciples in the home, your place of work, within the community and beyond.

Within this practice, peace is understood as a natural expression of discipleship. Imitation, following and learning the model of Christ are understood as critical to the Christian life. Disciples are given regular opportunities to witness to their faith through tangible ministries of caring for the widows and orphans, but also by being a peace witness in an increasingly hostile environment that has seen radical imams find their way into the Mosques of Ethiopia. I did not hear consensus across denominations on the question of peace and pacifism, but there was agreement that peace is central to the expression of discipleship. Some of these conversations struck me as similar to the rationale Bell used to argue for Just War while agreeing that the way of Christ constituted a call to peace.

Finally, the church thrives in the recognition that the people of peace flourish in Christian community. This conviction is lived out in the practice of church planting. The Meserete Kristos Church is a church which plants churches. As churches grow by reaching out to their neighbours and actively engaging their community, the church pays careful attention to its local expression. Once twelve couples are identified in a given community, village, or neighbourhood, a new church is planted to address the local need for ongoing discipleship. While my experience is only a snap shot of the church, I am convinced that it will be difficult to find a commuter church. The church is a local expression of community. Believers worship together, but they also work and live together in the same community, neighbourhood, or even city block. In this way Christian community and the integrated practices of discipleship, become part of daily practice as believers are in near constant community with one another.

I am still processing my experience in Ethiopia (this reflection paper is part of that processing). A challenge that cross-cultural experiences such as these present is how we might translate the Ethiopian experience to the context of southern Ontario. Some of the Ethiopian experience will likely not translate at all. However, I am more convinced than ever than the church is called to an intentional focus on discipleship.

As much as the Mennonite Church speaks of peace as central to the gospel, discipleship must be our central practice. If it is our conviction that Christ calls us to a way of peace, we cannot leave expression of this faith to the Sunday sermon or the Sunday school room discussion. The church must reclaim the model Jesus offered of gathering small groups of believers who are invited into intense learning, following and imitation that leads to transformation.

I am afraid that we have too often relied on assumptions of biblical knowledge and theological awareness, assuming that the people in the pews know, believe, and live what is being presented in times of corporate worship. If we dig deep enough, we soon realize that even in a hyper-connected social media driven culture; faith has become largely privatized and focussed in individual expression. As a community driven Anabaptist church, a focus on discipleship will challenge the pervasive individualism of our surrounding culture. I believe it will also offer an incredible freedom to find a safe space to express questions and challenges of faith in a discipling environment.

If Daniel Bell can so intensely engage the question of discipleship in order to argue for Just War, surely an Anabaptist/Mennonite faith community can appreciate the opportunity of making a similar exploration of discipleship focussed on the peace of Christ.

(Adapted from a paper I wrote for a course at Conrad Grebel University College - TS691 War and Peace in Christian Theology) 

The Fear of the Lord

When you hear the word freedom, what are the images that come to mind? Many of us likely begin by thinking of freedom as a hopeful escape from something. Freedom from worry, bills, or the traffic light at Main Street and Wallace (here in Listowel) that seems to stay red much too long!

There are also amazing stories of freedom in the Bible: Israel being freed from slavery in Egypt (Exodus); Daniel in the lion’s den (Dan. 6); both Peter and Paul miraculously freed from prison (Acts 12, 16). My hope is that we also experience our discipleship journey with Christ as offering a release from those things that would seek to bind us.

I wonder if the images change for you if we think of freedom as beginning with “the fear of the Lord”. We often describe “fear” as an unpleasant emotion that might be caused by the belief that someone or something is dangerous, likely to cause pain, or appears as a threat. We definitely do not think of freedom and fear as synonymous with one another. However, the writer of Proverbs describes “the fear of the Lord” as “the beginning of knowledge” (1:7); “the beginning of wisdom” (9:10); prolonging life (10:27); and the fountain of life (14:27)…the list goes on. These texts are not about being afraid of God but rather an invitation to know the awesome power of God and to understand who we are in the face of God. It is wisdom that invites us to experience freedom by placing God at the centre of our personal universe.  

If you are up for a challenge, read through the book of Proverbs and note the instances where you find the phrase “fear of the Lord”. But don’t stop there. Look for references to wisdom at the same time. Do the definitions change when you bring these themes of freedom, wisdom and the fear of the Lord together?

A 16^th century Anabaptist hymn which reflects on wisdom in the context of persecution – a place that would feel extremely distant from freedom – offers this profound understanding of wisdom and the fear of the Lord in all of life…

If you would have wisdom in your heart, / hold it high in honor / since it is a noble possession indeed. / It gives birth to life. Wisdom is a bright light / through which divinity can be perceived. / It teaches how to recognize his glory. / Wisdom is simply the Holy Spirit, / the pure and clean power of God. / Do not let the gift be taken from you.

Experiencing wisdom and “the fear of the Lord” as freedom from all that would seek to hold you back can have a profound effect on how you live your faith in Christ. Have you given God the throne of your heart? The Holy Spirit invites you into “the fear of the Lord” and there you will find freedom.

(Published in the Listowel Banner - May 13, 2015)