Acts 1: 1) In my former book, Theophilus, I wrote about all that Jesus began to do and to teach 2 until the day he was taken up to heaven, after giving instructions through the Holy Spirit to the apostles he had chosen.3 After his suffering, he presented himself to them and gave many convincing proofs that he was alive. He appeared to them over a period of forty days and spoke about the kingdom of God. 4 On one occasion, while he was eating with them, he gave them this command: “Do not leave Jerusalem, but wait for the gift my Father promised, which you have heard me speak about. 5 For John baptized with water, but in a few days you will be baptized with[b] the Holy Spirit.”6 Then they gathered around him and asked him, “Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?”7 He said to them: “It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by his own authority. 8 But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”
Before I begin this message, I’d like to coach us again in the proper West African response to a blessing. We’ll need it when the message ends. It’s the Arabic version of Amen, Amina!
Last week, we heard the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., about the need for an “International Association for the Advancement of Creative Maladjustment.” I spoke about how Christ is making us “creatively maladjusted to racism, tribalism, nationalism, militarism, materialism, hedonism, and more” as he adjusts us to his New Creation, “the transformed world” that God is making anew. This morning I return to Dr. King’s call for an“International Association for the Advancement of Creative Maladjustment,” but I will focus on the International part. For this is the Sunday that our partners in the Mennonite World Conference have invited us to observe World Fellowship Sunday with other Mennonite churches around the world.
That international focus itself makes us “creatively maladjusted,” because we humans tend to think in more local, tribal, racial and nationalistic terms. Like when Jesus’ own disciples asked him, in verse 6: “Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?” In other words, “Is now the time when you’re going to defeat and destroy the Romans and make Jerusalem the political and economic center of the world, in place of Rome? With ourselves as the CEO’s and head honchos? And on behalf of our own people and nation? Hunh, hunh, now, please?”
After all that Jesus had taught them, after all that they had seen and tasted of their own failure and falsehood, of their own weakness, cowardice and confusion in the Garden of Gethsemane, and at the Cross of Calvary… Are they still hanging on to some last little shreds of the illusion of personal, national and ethnic supremacy, privilege and power over others? How subtle and stubborn are such temptations and tendencies. The disciples have forgotten that God had told Abraham that “all nations would be blessed through your descendants.” They had instead come to expect that “all nations would simply bless Abraham’s descendants.” That’s not unique to them, by the way. All people of all tribes, nations and groups are tempted by such idolatry.
Denominations and churches can fall for it, too.
But Jesus here is putting God’s project with Abraham and Sarah back on track, to make a new Israel from among all nations, a new Israel that will fulfill Abraham and Sarah’s calling to bless all nations, when he says to them, “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”
Those words, that plan, “Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and the ends of the earth,” provide the outline for the rest of the Acts of the Apostles. It also gives us a thumbnail sketch of the whole history of Christian mission. And it gives us a springboard to think about the Mennonite World Conference today. For it was 492 years ago, from this coming Thursday, January 25, that the first so-called “Anabaptisms” or “re-baptisms” of George Blaurock, Felix Manz and a few others happened in a home in Zurich, Switzerland. They wouldn’t have called those baptisms a “rebaptism” or “Anabaptism” in Latin. They would have said, “Our first baptism, as infants, didn’t count, because we didn’t consent to it; if anything, we probably wailed in protest.”
But soon, under the influence of powerful Anabaptist preaching in homes, caves, boats, and anywhere else they could get a few words out before being arrested, thousands of Swiss, German, Dutch and Moravian converts agreed with them and followed them in the officially criminal activity of “Anabaptism.” They were about the only Christians at the time carrying out Jesus’ words, to “be my witnesses… to the ends of the earth.”
For a few centuries afterward, the Anabaptists also seem to have forgotten those words, until the late 19th Century, when they started being witnesses to Jesus again among Cheyenne Indians, in India, Indonesia, the Belgian Congo and East Africa. Another burst of Mennonite service and mission activity after World War 2 brought about new Mennonite churches in Latin America, Ethiopia, and major cities in North America. Now, more than half of the world’s Mennonites live in what we call the Global South, as you can see from this image:
In that image you see how God is continuing to create a new, united humanity, united in a shared faith, hope and love, by breaking through the limits of our racial, tribal, and nationalistic ways of thinking, like what the disciples demonstrated in verse 6. And like a lot of people still demonstrate today, as the old dragons and demons of nationalism, militarism and racism are blatantly on the rise and on the march, all over the world, and not just here. A recent gathering of Mennonites in Switzerland explored this resurgence and revival of racialized and tribalistic nationalism, and how to respond to it. Mennonite theology and history call us to be peaceful and productive residents within all nations, even while our heritage and history challenge those idols of racism, nationalism and tribalism. We love our neighbors and our countries, but Anabaptist beliefs and history remind us that we are citizens first and forever of that eternal kingdom which the Holy Spirit is convening and creating out of people from all nations, from Jerusalem to Judea to Samaria and to the ends of the earth.
One of the ways that Mennonite World Conference displays and develops this global, Christ-centered citizenship, is through its deacon commission. One of those deacons you see pictured here: Pr. Siaka Traore, of Burkina Faso. Here you see also his wife, Claire, and their daughter Fidelite, and their sons, Samuel and Joseph. The church that meets in their courtyard is also celebrating Mennonite World Fellowship Sunday today, eight hours ahead of us.
In this next slide you see the whole of the Mennonite World Conference Deacon Commission, with members from Europe, Africa, North and South America. Their mission is to “focus on the welfare of the churches within the Mennonite World Conference, particularly in times of duress, and offers listening, prayer, encouragement and support to churches feeling the need for brothers and sisters to ‘walk with them’ in their particular need. The commission promotes the attitude and practice of service and mutual aid among member churches by means of visits, teaching and materials.” Their visits have taken them to places like Panama, where international logging companies are displacing native Indians, many of whom are Mennonite. They’ve also been in Peru, after some recent major flooding destroyed the homes, farms and churches of Mennonites there. And to the Democratic Republic of Congo, where Mennonite Churches have been caught in the crossfire of a conflict that has displaced thousands of people.
I recently asked Pastor Siaka to share a report about the Deacon Commission with us. Here’s what he says from a recent email: « Thank you for giving me the opportunity to greet my brothers and sisters in the faith. We rejoice in having the same faith, the same Savior and Lord, and in knowing the struggles in our walk with the Lord, to have the same hope and the joy of anticipating being together surely with the One who lives forever. I will begin with some information on the Democratic Republic of Congo, excerpted from the report I had sent earlier, when I was there. It would take too long to go over all the difficulties that our partners there experience. They simply say, “Thank you for your many responses which sustain us.” My trip there occurred within the duties of the Deacons’ Commission, of which I am a member. It has been nearly a year since a crisis between different tribal groups and the Congolese government broke out. This crisis is taking place in a part of the country where there is a large majority of Mennonite Christians. From it has come about violent events that have led to so many deaths and to the displacement of thousands of people. We get some sense of this situation from our brothers and sisters, from Christian organizations, and from the world press. It was, therefore, in the line of our duty as members of this Body which suffered to come alongside them to express our compassion, our love and our solidarity, while encouraging them through their long journey through these difficult events.
We were at Kikwit [in the Congo], more than 500 kilometers from Kinshasha, (next slide) to visit the refugees. Their testimonies were gripping. The widows who wept. One of them showed us a photo of her husband while he was alive, another from when he had been beheaded by the militias known as the ‘Kamuena Npuesa.’ That without speaking of women who had been violated, of whom some were pregnant because of these rapes [next slide]. Briefly, we came to enter into the difficult situations that many of our brothers and sisters are living through. Please pray for the churches and organizations which bring them support. Pray for these vulnerable people, that they might regain their autonomy and no longer live under the status of ‘displaced persons,’ that they might be reintegrated into families, so that they no longer live in camps like refugees, but may live with host families. This gives just a small idea of that which brought us to the Congo.
“Thank you for your prayers and support. This brief report and the situation in West Africa, with repeated attacks from terrorists, leads us to take seriously the theme of the Sunday of World Fellowship: ‘The Holy Spirit Transforms Us.’ In light of these struggles, which for the most part are connected spiritually with forces of darkness, we address our prayers to God, that God might transform the lives of those who are instruments of evil. The work of the Holy Spirit does not happen only within the life of the church, but also in the lives of those who persecute Jesus Christ, or the person created in his image.
“I would also like to thank our God for the fellowship that exists between some Muslim and Christian families. During the upcoming marriage of our daughter, Fidelite, my Muslim parents and relatives will be involved as much as my large Christian family, and great will be our joy.”
As another example of the kinds of relationships that can happen between Muslim and Christian family members in this setting, Siaka adds: “I’d like to recount a story….that illustrates the work of the Holy Spirit in someone’s life. Not far from us in the city of Bobo-Dioulasso is an Apostolic Church whose pastor is Alphonse Bassolé (the name he took after his conversion). He was a Muslim before his conversion, but he lived a very loose, libertine life, doing whatever he pleased. He was also a Rastafarian. He did not have a good reputation in his neighborhood. Then he heard the Good News of Jesus, and accepted Jesus into his life. Over time, a visible transformation took shape in his conduct. He stopped wearing pants with torn-up knees, his hair was no longer all ragged and disorderly, and he became a wise and respectful young man.
“Then some other Muslims from the neighborhood gathered and went to the home of Alphonse’s father, to ask him how could he, as a good Muslim, accept his son becoming Christian? They demanded that he prevent his son from going to church.
“The father had a unique reply. He said, ‘Well, when my son was living here like a fool, smoking drugs and wearing torn, ragged clothing, no one among you ever came to counsel him to change his ways. Now that he’s become a respectful, honorable person, you expect me to yank him out of that path? Never! I will not do it.’ And that’s how some Muslim parents react to their children becoming Christians. Here we see the transforming power of the Holy Spirit, and a Muslim father is able to see it. God’s name be praised!”
In Siaka’s testimonies we hear about how God’s Holy Spirit transforms individuals, like himself and Pastor Alphonse. Even how God’s Spirit works outside the church, to prepare people to recognize and receive Christ. We also hear how God’s Spirit is transforming many peoples into one, global people, “a creatively maladjusted people,” to be a blessing to people of all nations, as we testify to Jesus “from Jerusalem to Judea to Samaria and to the ends of the earth.”
Siaka ends his report to us with these words, “Our greetings to each and everyone of you, and Thank You for your fellowship that is not limited to the abstract, but which also goes to concrete expressions [we at Zion have supported three years’ worth of young women’s seminars and a livestock project in Burkina Faso]. He ends with this greeting: “Happy World Fellowship Sunday! At the end of his email, Siaka switches to the Jula language (because it’s so close to his heart that he wants you to hear it), and writes this blessing: “MATIGUI KA AW DEME, KA DIMANSI DIMA DI AW MA.” Or, “May God help you and give you a pleasant Sunday!” To that blessing we all respond with…..AMINA!