Speaker: Caleb Schrock-Hurst
Bible Passages: Jonah 3:1-5,10; Mark 1:14-20
Summary: One of the main things we are after as Christians is community — right relationship with God and with those around us. Martin Luther King Jr. worked for these things from a Christian perspective, highlighting that forgiveness is at the heart of Jesus’s ethic. When we have visions of whole and thriving communities, and we work towards them with forgiveness, this is where God is found.
Good morning everyone! It’s really good to be with you after a few weeks away.
As most of you know, I’m only quarter-time with Daniel’s Run, and also work half-time for Virginia Mennonite Conference. I share this because I’m often on the road in that role, preaching in other churches. Last Sunday I preached at Warwick River Mennonite Church down in Newport News, and I’m happy to bring greetings to you all from them. It’s a congregation where I didn’t know that many people, so I was really happy when, after the service, the worship leader came up to me and said — “oh, if you’re at Daniel’s Run, do you know Tig?” She was a student of Tig’s at Bluffton — Tig actually officiated her wedding.
I really love visiting different congregations, partially because of fun connections like this; but also, these visits give me a lot of hope for the broader church. Even in our fairly small conference, we have churches that worship in three languages, with worship styles from four-part harmony to only praise and worship music, from informal to extremely liturgical. More broadly, we in the Mennonite and Anabaptist family, are a globe-spanning movement bound together by our goal of following the prince of peace.
And more than just following Jesus alone, we as Anabaptists seek to follow Jesus together, in community. While we do follow Jesus as individuals, personally on the path of redemption and life that following Jesus offers us, we also seek to follow Jesus together — meaning we understand Jesus’s offer of peace and wholeness isn’t just about redeeming and healing ourselves, but also about redeeming and healing others, and that we need each other to know how to do this work; we believe following Jesus means becoming agents of reconciliation and peace in the world; or to use Paul’s language, ambassadors for Christ.
I’ve quoted him before, but it’s worth repeating — Palmer Becker, in his book Anabaptist Essentials, describes Anabaptism as the following — Jesus is the center of our faith, community is the center of our life, and reconciliation is the center of our work. So, it’s sort of these three things we’ll be talking about today — but we’ll be doing so in the context of racial justice, one of my core roles with VMC; this is timely, since last Monday was Martin Luther King Junior day.
Before we dive in with some thoughts on Dr. King, I also want to highlight one other milestone — today is the 499th anniversary of the beginning of Anabaptism, when Conrad Grebel baptized George Blaurach in one of the first adult baptisms since the days of Saint Augustine over a thousand years earlier. So, forgive me for my digressions into peace, community, and Anabaptism in this mostly racial justice-focused sermon; but it is no accident that these themes fit hand in glove, because Anabaptism was and is a movement to restore the church to its original vision — following the prince of peace, wherever and however he leads. Anyhow!
So, today I want to talk about three things — community, forgiveness, and vision. As Dr. King often reminded, beloved community — where people of all nations, tribes, and races are known and understood — is our end goal as Christians, and I believe forgiveness and vision are two of the most important things that we need to remember to help us get there.
So — let’s start with a few more thoughts on community; and who better to think about community with than Martin Luther King Junior.
Dr. King is, in some ways, a curious figure. I am overjoyed that he is now a national hero here in the United States — I think he’s probably the closest thing to an internationally famous Anabaptist theologian and politician we may ever see — and of course, his messages of Christian non-violence and community didn’t emerge from a vacuum, but rather from the rich and faithful soil of the Black American church.
Anabaptism and the Black church bear much in common — both emerged from societal marginalization, seeking to reclaim faithful Christianity and a peaceful Jesus from places where Christianity had lost its way.
Our Anabaptist spiritual ancestors reclaimed Jesus as bigger than any one institution, nation, or empire, emphasizing that choosing to follow Jesus meant a free and substantive choice to reject the coercive violence of the world in favor of the kingdom of God.
And, of course, in the United States where black american Christianity began to emerge, white churches didn’t preach Jesus as a liberator from slavery, but rather used the bible to support systems of racial discrimination. The black church reclaimed Jesus as the suffering, peaceful liberator as he is in scripture, calling out the hypocrisy of white Christians who praised Jesus on Sunday and enslaved fellow Christians on Monday.
Dr. King emerges from this tradition — where suffering is known, and a better future is sought through sacrificial love. But Dr. King is completely mis-remembered when he is remembered as a non-controversial, easy to swallow, beloved American prophet. Make no mistake — Dr. King, was a pacifist, yes, but he was also calling for significant change, and speaking truth to power that power did not want to hear. Dr. King was a problem for white America, calling out complicity and silence, particularly of white moderates, and he was eventually killed for his advocacy for equality.
But we must not forget another piece of Dr. King’s context — in the 1950s and 60s, it was absolutely not clear that Dr. King’s vision of a non-violent path forward would win the day. King’s jostling to be a leader of the civil rights movement took place in a crowded field of competing visions — and some of his rivals, like Malcom X, didn’t want to seek reconciliation with white America at all, but rather advocated for Black Americans to head on their own path.
Dr. King, however, was absolutely uncompromising in his vision of a better future for everyone — black people and white people alike: he knew all too well that racism hurt black people in myriad ways, and we must never downplay or forget these disadvantages, many of which are still with us; but Dr. King also reminded that racism ends up hurting white people too, teaching white folks that it is okay to act as if some humans are not created in God’s image. Dr. King insisted that the beloved community was multiracial and would benefit everyone — and he was equally uncompromising in his methods of reaching this goal. He knew that violent means do not birth peaceful ends. To borrow some of his most words: “hate cannot drive out hate — only love can do that.”
King often spoke about the ‘ends’ that the civil rights movement should be after — and it is, I believe, these same ends that we must be after today, as Christians, Anabaptists, and, yes, also as citizens in an election year. It is his focus on this end of love — this vision of a beloved community — that we should stay focused on today.
Hear this quote of Dr. King from 1957:
“Love is creative and redemptive. Love builds up and unites; hate tears down and destroys. The aftermath of the ‘fight with fire’ method…is bitterness and chaos, the aftermath of the love method is reconciliation and creation of the beloved community. Physical force can repress, restrain, coerce, destroy, but it cannot create and organize anything permanent; only love can do that. Yes, love—which means understanding, creative, redemptive goodwill, even for one’s enemies—is the solution to the race problem.”
Today, we have to ask — have we reached this vision of a beloved community? We should of course recognize and celebrate the incredible progress towards racial integration and harmony we have made in the last 50 years, from the end of segregation to the election of a black president, and now vice president. As a nation, however, we still clearly have a long way to go, as income and wealth gaps, unequal treatment by police, and de facto segregation and redlining continue to prevent the formation of the beloved community.
While we recognize the progress we’ve made, we must continue towards the goal of forming a beloved community of all nations and races and not become distracted, or take for granted the gains we’ve made in the last two generations. Community cannot exist where there is not communication, and listening, and the work must go on, particularly when societal forces like polarziation push us to distrust other people.
We, as a multi-ethnic church community, can continue to serve as an example of that “understanding, creative, redemptive goodwill” which Dr. King suggested moves us towards the beloved community. And the church, a global family of every tribe and tounge, should serve as a community of understanding and forgiveness — forgiveness of ourselves, and forgiveness of others, on the path towards God’s shalom.
This brings us to our second point — one of the things that makes any community possible is forgiveness.
Some of you might remember I shared a whole sermon on forgiveness here a while back — I believe it was my first sermon after joining pastor Tig on the team here at Daniel’s Run — so this section should hopefully ring some bells; but if not, all is forgiven.
Christians, I believe, should be forgiveness people — after all, we have been forgiven by God through grace, and now we should reflect that Grace of Jesus outwards to others. When we remember our brokenness and our need for God — if we are in touch with our weaknesses and sins — what can we do but offer grace and forgiveness to those around us? As Paul put it in Colossians 3, we must Forgive as the Lord forgave us. Forgiveness, since we’re all flawed, is part of what makes any relationship, and community, possible.
But forgiveness isn’t always easy, or non-controversial. This is part of why Dr. King had a variety of opponents within the black liberation movement — because he wanted to forgive the myriad harms against the black community, both formal and informal, rather than seek retribution for them.
But Dr. King knew the truth here — Forgiveness is a partner of confession, and confession is a partner of restitution. True forgiveness often can’t take place until wrongdoers have repented, admitted their error, and course-corrected. Active nonviolence, done right, exposes the need for repentance without causing additional harm — and hopefully pushes wrongdoers towards confession and a new way of living. In confession, we acknowledge that mistakes have been made, harm has been done, and relationships have been broken. We as Christians should lead the way in forgiving — but we should also lead the way in confessing and living something new; confessing our failures, passive and active, to God, to other Christians, and to broader society, so that we can then work towards the beloved community.
And of course, forgiveness and confession are central themes of scripture — they are certainly central to the story of Jonah.
Now, if we read Jonah primarily for the big fish, we’re going to miss a lot of the point. Beyond the fish, what is the story of Jonah about?
Forgiveness, I believe, is the central topic of Jonah. The verses we read together today are when the Ninivights repented, and God forgave them — but, oddly, this moment comes in chapter three of a four-chapter book. Why is this moment — what should be a great moment, when one of the great capitals of the world suddenly repents and proclaims for Yahweh — not even at the culmination of this book? Why isn’t this event a major event in the bible?
To understand this, we need to step back for some context. Nineveh was the capital of the Assyrian empire — and while Nineveh was at the opposite end of the fertile crescent from the holy land, in the north of modern day Iraq and has become the modern city of Mosul, the arm of the assyrian empire extended so far that it was the Assyrians who conquered the northern kingdom of God, Israel, in the days of the prophets, leaving the kingdom of Judah shorn of its sister nation to the north. The Assyrians policy for non-assyrians was cultural extermination, as happened to the northern tribes of Israel. The Assyrians were so brutal to the people they ruled that the harsh exiles dispensed by the empire of Babylon and the colonial policies of slow assimilation by Persia and Greece were tame by comparison — in our modern schema, perhaps we can imagine the Assyrians as having a reputation somewhat like ISIS — universally opposed by all.
How does knowing this background impact our reading of Jonah?
It means, that when we read Jonah, and God calls Jonah to go to Nineveh, we should know it means Jonah is being called to what he probably thinks is the darkest den of evil on earth. Jonah doesn’t just reject God’s call to Nineveh in the first two chapters of the book and run the other way randomly — he was scared out of his wits that he may be killed on this mission — and subconsciously, he was likely worried his preaching may succeed, and God may end up forgiving Jonah’s mortal enemies.
And in the verses we heard this morning we see just this come to pass — Jonah’s preaching is wildly successful, but rather than be happy, Jonah is unspeakably angry — in fact, he is heartbroken that God has softened the heart of these people that have been his people’s enemies for generations. Rather than praising God for this dramatic miracle, Jonah is angry at God, insisting that God still needs to destroy, not forgive.
Jonah, I believe, has lost the plot. Jonah is so sure he knows what justice is — and is so sure that that justice would be fire and brimstone and destruction — that he has lost sight of the humanity of the people he was preaching to. Jonah’s anger, and fear, and hatred, have blinded him to a core character of God — that God wants to, and is able to, forgive and reconcile even those we see as completely lost.
Knowing this — where are the places today where we are like Jonah? Are we still following Jesus’ command to pray for those who persecute us, and loving our enemies; or, like Jonah do we run in the opposite direction when we’re asked to interact with people we disagree with and fear? Are we worried God might actually work miracles of repentance and forgiveness through us? And are we angry and afraid when God forgives people we would rather see punished?
Sometimes, we are like Jonah — but other times, we may be like the citizens of Nineveh; citizens of an empire they likely didn’t think about all that much, but who had grown wealthy as their empire expanded and tribute flowed in from faraway lands. I imagine many of the citizens of Nineveh pled ignorance to their nation’s actions — and this is an ignorance I believe we cannot share.
As this relates to racial justice, we must acknowledge how white folks like [many] of us here today have received many of the benefits of the system of slavery and racial oppression. Yes, Mennonites and Christians of many stripes have often resisted these worldly systems of domination fiercely, and at other times we’ve passively shrugged our shoulders.
This passive shrug, I believe, is no longer an option — if we continue to seek the beloved community as shown by scripture and Dr. King, we need to be active in confessing the ways we’ve benefitted from unjust systems, and seek the forgiveness of those we’ve wronged.
But en route to our envision community of justice, we must not overcorrect, going through the world calling down fire on other communities — this is to make the same mistake as Jonah. Rather, we must go about our lives handing out invitations to a better way — confessing our own sins, and moving toward the vision of the beloved community with forgiveness and confession.
And this brings us to our final point — a final tool that sustains community: Vision.
I’m thinking a lot about vision these days. Church sociologist George Barna defines vision as “articulating a preferable futue.” Vision can be used pretty loosely to mean — what are our goals? What is our vision for the future? Where are we headed as a community of faith? These are questions that we should check in on regularly — if we cannot name where we’re going, and where we’ve come from, we probably won’t get where we’re trying to go. As followers of Jesus, we are likely to be led astray from the wonderful, surprising, humble way of Jesus if we can’t name all of these things as our guiding stars. Naming and moving toward healing and wholeness as taught by Jesus is what allows us to resist violence and coercion in all its forms.
To help us think about vision, I want to just briefly bring in the Mark scripture we read today.
If you’re like me, you were taught in school to look for a topic sentence — or, also like me, if you don’t have the time or energy these days to read a whole book or a whole news article, you might just look for the core message, or core vision, of whatever you’re reading.
This passage might just be that topic sentence for Jesus, as understood by Mark. Jesus’ vision is simple: ““The time has come,” Jesus said. “The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news!” This vision is so compelling that it gets simple people like you and me — fishermen, not kings and queens — to leave their lives behind to follow Jesus.
This, perhaps a bit like the Jonah story, has been told and retold so often we might miss that this is part of what Mark is saying with this story. Jesus isn’t just asking Simon and Andrew, and James and John, to quit their work for a day — he’s asking them to abandon their family businesses, and the lives they’ve known, for a future where people turn from their evil habits and understand that God has come into their lives, now. Jesus’s vision, God’s vision for his people, is that through us God will bless the world; healing the sick, releasing the captives, and binding up the wounds of the broken.
Today, some 2000 years later, we in the Mennonite Church articulate this call from Jesus as follows: “God calls us to be followers of Christ, and by the power of the spirit, to grow as communities of grace, joy, and peace, so God’s healing and hope flow through us to the world.”
It is this vision — of churches that are vessels for healing and hope — that can sustain us as communities of reconciliation; racial reconciliation, reconciliation between the rich and poor, reconciliation between man and woman, and so much more. If God is for us, who can be against us?
So — we’ve talked community, and Dr. King’s insistence that what we’re after is true peace and mutuality between each other in the form of beloved community; we’ve talked forgiveness, and it’s partner confession, as being a central glue that makes that beloved community possible; and we’ve talked vision, how important it is to keep our eyes on the vision of what Jesus taught and modeled. But you’d be correct if you’re still asking yourself — so, Caleb, what should I do?
Let me close by offering a few thoughts.
First, we can confess our mistakes, and share that we believe in love, forgiveness, and peace, not hatred and fear. We must remember and share our vision as Christians, and Anabaptists, students of Jesus, Paul, Dr. King, and so many others — that God desires healing and wholeness via reconciliation with God and our neighbor. We can go through life asking — are the people we encounter, and the organizations we are part of, agents of confession, forgiveness, and reconciliation? Or do they use fear, hate, and judgment to try and accomplish their goals?
Second, we can prioritize relationships. We must remember that change comes individually through relationships, particularly in these polarized days. Condemning others, rather than confessing our own failures, is more likely to lead to further polarization than a change of mindset — what actually changes the minds of those we disagree with is love, and friendship, and patience.
Finally, we make change by showing grace to ourselves and those around us. It is radical in these days to be a community of grace and forgiveness — rather than fearing the other, and fearing failure, we should be clear that we have often and will often make mistakes — but it is by God’s grace that we all still live and breathe, and it is by God’s grace that we keep moving forward towards the beloved community.
Pray with me — God of Jonah, God of Martin Luther King, God revealed in Jesus: make us channels of your peace. Convict us to rend our hearts, and not our garments; show us how we may walk towards racial justice, towards healing and wholeness, and towards you, for ourselves and for all. Amen.
