THE SHEPHERD
April/May, 2002
                                                
ON EXPOSITORY PREACHING AND SHALOM COMMUNITY CHURCH

    When I was enrolled in an evangelical Seminary, I was required to take three courses in preaching.  I was taught a method of preaching called “Expository preaching.”  Recently, evangelical Hadden Robinson defined expository preaching as “the unfolding of the text of scripture so that one can see the meaning of the text and then see how it relates to people’s lives.”  The basic idea is that in the sermon the speaker is to explain the text.  We are to listen to what the Bible has to say, and the speaker is to bring out [my father uses the word ‘unfold’] the meaning of the text.   
    If Shalom uses the lectionary as we are doing for Lent and I also practice “expository preaching” it means that every three years or so we will end up studying the same story.  If we keep it up, with our present audience, in thirty years we will have exposited the story of Mary Magdalene [the Easter sermon for Sunday] ten times.  Perhaps that is one reason evangelical churches do not often use the lectionary.
    I was thinking about other ways ‘to do preaching’, or whatever label we would use to describe this part of our service.  We could share biographies of Christian leaders, do historical studies, have people write short stories, share ‘testimony’ of where we are experiencing God in life.  We could assign Sunday morning editorials such as “The sins of Enron” or “How to apply the ‘Nash Equilibrium’ [A Beautiful Mind] to Christian ethics.”  Perhaps we should consider simply reading scripture on a Sunday morning without the exposition, or on the other hand, we could practice community exposition of the Biblical text.   
    My favorite professor for preaching was John Stott, an Anglican evangelical from London.  He said that preaching was a ministry of building a bridge between Scripture and the contemporary world.  When someone once asked Karl Barth how he prepared his sermons, Barth answered, “I take the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in another.”
    Your thoughts are welcome.  [e-mail is pjversluis@msn.com ]
Paul
 
 
             GETTING TO KNOW YOU:
Who has taught first, second and third grade and is now a carpenter?
 
Who was born one of the great infants of the province of Ontario, although she checked into the world 3 weeks late?                         
Who can translate English into Italian and another language with ease, and what is the other language?                                                
(If you do not know the answers to these questions, you  have 2 months to find out.  The answers will appear in the next Shepherd, Along with more questions.  
 
CHRISTIAN RESPONSES TO WAR
 
Don T
    If there's anything we Christians do well, it's split with our brothers and sisters.  So perhaps it's no surprise that Christians passionately disagree with one another about war.
     The earliest Christians were nonresistant, focusing on Jesus' teachings about loving one's enemy and returning good for evil.  But the peaceful Christian became an endangered species after Constantine's conversion in  the 4th century.  Constantine went to war carrying the
emblem of the cross and the motto:  "By this sign we conquer."  With the union of church and empire, only Christians could serve in the Roman army.  A few centuries later, killing the infidel Turk (and other enemies of the Cross) became a sacred duty for the Christian during the Crusades, and Christians slaughtered and ravaged with ferocious zeal.
     In the centuries since, authorized killing of evil ones has been the Christian way.  Nations invariably claim that God is on their side in wars.  In the world wars of the 20th century, God was a presence on our side, of course.  In military actions, the cry was "for God and country."  It was "praise the Lord and pass the ammunition."  It was "God is my co-pilot."  General Eisenhower's account of the war was "Crusade in  Europe."
     Americans not wanting to participate in our various crusades were considered traitors, especially during World War I, at a time before conscientious objection to war became somewhat tolerable to government.  Those who refused to serve in the army were savaged by authorities, resulting, for example, in several deaths among Hutterite prisoners and leading to the complete removal (temporarily) of Hutterite colonies from the U.S. to Canada.
     How can sincere Christians get the New Testament so wrong?  Well, as usual with debates about Scripture, it depends on how you look at it.  If Christian soldiers read, without a contextual interpretation, the well known passage in Romans 13 (1-7), they could find grounds for their military service.  In those verses, Paul tells the Romans to obey their rulers, who are ministers of God.  Furthermore, many of the church fathers,  Athanasius and Ambrose, for example, supported war against the enemies of Christendom as praiseworthy and righteous.  And the greatest of the fathers, Augustine, articulated the concept of the "just war," claiming that, under the authority of legitimate rulers, "Roman soldiers are in the service of peace and justice" and that in war "soldiers really serve the cause of peace and the common good."
     Christian justifications for war are everywhere.  The Westminster Confession (Presbyterian), for example, reads:  "[Christians] ought especially to maintain piety, justice, and peace, according to the wholesome laws of each commonwealth, so, for that end, they may Lawfully, now under the New Testament, wage war upon just and necessary occasions."
    Over the years in which Christians followed and reinforced the "just war" tradition, dissenters have been few.  The Waldensians, the Moravian Brethren, St. Francis and his followers, and then the early Anabaptists sought to keep alive and emphasize those teachings of Jesus that focused on submissive peace.  They pointed especially to the Sermon on the Mount and gave less attention to those teachings and examples of assertive resistance (the cleansing of the Temple, the chastising of the Pharisees, the threat that he came not to bring peace but a sword, the rebuking and casting out of evil spirits, the unabashed opposition to religious authorities).
     Like our Anabaptist forebears, we Mennonites and Brethren also want to dissent, to stand apart, along with other peacemakers, from the vast majority of Christians who support war against the evil axis or whatever evil is next identified by our leaders.   But it is curious and ironic that even within our tiny minority having allegiance to the peace of Christ, we are not wholly at peace with one another.  Consider the opposition that some people see between nonresistance and pacifism.
     Nonresistant folks, such as the Old Orders and certain non-denominational plain groups, look to Jesus' teachings about a suffering love that prays for its enemies, withdraws from the world, and refuses to participate in actions of the state.  Pacifists, on the other hand, engage in political processes and seek by direct action to promote peace.  The nonresistant groups think pacifists have betrayed the Gospel.  Here is a harsh judgment from a Mennonite tract:  "Unfortunately, Satan has a counterfeit for almost every blessed doctrine of our Lord, and in this instance the counterfeit is pacifism."  The pacifist has "a very hazy view of God," is a "whistling optimist" arguing that "the world (and the Church) is getting better and better."  This accords, the writer adds, with the pacifist's concept of evolution.  The writer also fears that pacifists, in joining forces with various peace groups are permitting themselves to be unequally yoked with nonbelievers or Christians of the wrong kind and to contribute to ecumenicalism.  He repeats his conclusion with emphasis, "Let us make no mistake, pacifism is already here, in our very midst."
     Pacifists don't much like nonresistant folks either, thinking that they hide their heads in the sand (or lights under a bushel), are complicit with evil by failing to oppose it, and do not follow Jesus' instructions to  actively witness in the world and assist the downtrodden.  They quote Jesus in such verses as:  "Go ye therefore, and teach all nations ... teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you."
     So here I am, late in life, still trying to decide whether I'm nonresistant (as most Anabaptists say they are), a pacifist, or what?  Ah, the  complexities of the simplest subjects.  Sigh.  Life is not easy.

WELCOME to a brand new person:
    Micah Alan Sk        
 
Born Feb. 23, and weighing in at 6 pounds, 12 ounces.

Congratulations and Best wishes to    Titus Kg and Joy Kn who announced their intentions to spend their lives together.  A wedding date has not been set.
SABBATH SERIES
Nelson S
    Apparently, I talk about the Sunday of my childhood.  That is what Ruth said when she asked me to talk about them…again.  And I am happy to do so…again.  They were usually not dramatic or eventful, though a cow once stepped on my bare foot, so that I could only wear a house slipper over my bandaged, bloody foot to church that Sunday evening. Yes, we went to church in the evening, as well as the morning. I grew up a farm boy on the Saskatchewan prairies; my father was also the pastor of our rural, Mennonite congregation.  Sunday was a day of rest; only essential chores were done: milk the cows; feed the livestock; separate the cream and put it in the icehouse. But no more that that; certainly no field  work or machinery repairs.  The far-fetched notion set forth in some churchy magazines that even farm machinery benefited from a day of rest once got some consideration in our house.  
    But it was not rest that I wanted or needed on Sunday. Indeed, the occasional compulsory nap time probably had more to do with my parents yearning for an hour’s tranquility than with any real value to me. No, what I wanted was companionship, the company of the cousins and friends who populated my school and church, but who lived too far away for weekday playtimes. Good Saturday planning would be to telephone a friend to come home with me after church; or, if fortune smiled, accept someone’s invitation to do the same I liked church well enough, though that was not a question I considered. I went; it was what we did. Sunday School was fun; singing; the lesson story and activities; the boys on one side of the table, girls on the other. Worship hour was more in the endurance category, though singing, children’s stories and some sermon anecdotes engaged me. Occasionally, something memorable happened; once, while we stood for a lengthy closing prayer, old Allen Cressman fainted and toppled sideways like a felled tree into the center aisle. I think father finished the prayer, though he probably shortened it.
What I wanted came after the last Amen. We were farmers, and we owned the church building. No one was in a hurry to leave. There were no soccer games, no rehearsals, no tee times to get to. No custodian on duty with the meter running. After church was play  time. While the Dads stood on the lawn and talked, and while the Moms . . . I’m not quite sure where the Moms did whatever they did . . . we, the children, played: in the parking lot, in the old barn, in the basement of the church, in the trees, through—more quietly—the cemetery, in the ditch by the road along the front of the church. Someone once found a full beer bottle among the empties tossed there to tease this sober congregation. Someone else, who knew more than I did then, suggested that we might give it to Stuart Karn. 
    Eventually, children were called and departures began. If I had not already made plans with a friend, a last minute effort might still save the afternoon from lonely tedium. I should say that my parents enforced an egalitarian ethic in all of this: no turning down a less desirable invitation, and then later accept a more sought after one. Thus did I learn that not only could I have a reliably good time with Fred Toman, but I could have a good, even racy, time with   Loyal Biehn.
    Another Sabbath pattern I recall more from my teen years, spent in the city of Edmonton, Alberta. Our family moved there when my father went to pastor the young urban congregation begun there a few year before. After church, people were often invited to our house for Sunday dinner: guest preachers, visiting church officials, voluntary services workers from the outposts scattered in the remote towns beyond the city, students in town to study at the university, and the occasional Mennonite-your-way types. I’m talking about the noon meal: Sunday dinner was the big meal of the week; oven stuff: scalloped potatoes, roast chicken or beef, pie or cake for dessert. My father, having completed the duties of the week and the morning’s sermon, was relaxed, hungry and talkative. The conversation was animated, wide ranging, often about church affairs and faith issues. Often, I stayed to listen and participate.
    Those are my stories. Now, what might be the lessons, the take homes for our inquiry into Sabbath?
Our pastor, Paul, spoke about the possibilities of Sabbath. He described is as a time when we turn our attention away from our work life and towards our spiritual life, to the life of our souls, as a time to exercise our spiritual life.
I suggest the rest we give ourselves as Sabbath is  not about doing nothing, about respite from labor.  It is about exercise that restores; recreation that creates and re-creates.  We are a congregation, we are denomination—Mennonites and church of the Brethren people—who root the practice of faith in community.  The Sabbath possibility I see is this: in knowing one another, in sharing our daily lives, we build and maintain faith.
    It is this that I see going on in this tale I’ve told.  Beyond an afternoon of play with a friend, I was being formed in and for the community of faith.  After these people led me in singing and taught me in Sunday School, they welcomed me into their homes.  I ate dinner, played where they lived, helped with barn chores, and ate supper, before going back to church and then home.  I knew these people and they knew me.
    The dinner table conversation of later years modeled the importance of the issues of church and faith practice, furthered my spiritual formation, and taught me the good pleasure of inter generational companionship.   Hospitality offered and hospitality accepted is a Sabbath possibility.  It is active, painless, and age appropriate.  I commend it to you , whether for Sunday afternoon, or extended to a Saturday evening dinner or a Wednesday coffee. 
         
We look forward to hearing from Arlene and Paul Sh when they return from their visit to Sara who is teaching in  Zambia for one year. 

QUESTIONS FOR NEXT MONTH
Do you turn off the water when you brush your teeth? 
 
Who teaches tennis  professionally to folks of all  ages? 
 
How many people in our congregation were born in or on a continent other than North America?
HAPPENINGS:
 
Thousand Villages Store:
     Titus chaired a second meeting to consider the possibility of opening a store in Ann Arbor.  This meeting was attended by some  two dozen people, of which six were Shalom folks.  There was a high level of interest in action and a beginning steering committee  of volunteers was formed to plan one more informational meeting.  Both Titus and tom are on this committee.  At that meeting, with perhaps even broader representation,  an on-going steering committee will be chosen to begin more concrete planning.
     MCC wisdom states that the average time from the first meetings until a store is opened is eighteen months.  It has been done in six months.  Late summer or very early fall is the recommended time to open since Sept. to Dec. are the best sales months. 
     The next meeting is going to be held on April 16 at 7:30.  The location to be announced.  Look for it in the bulletin. 
 
INTERFAITH HOSPITALITY NETWORK:
    This is the organization that houses home- less families and assists them with finding housing. Our church  has for several years been assisting with meals and staffing evenings and nights for a week in the summer.  This year we are committed to the week of  June 23.  They also have a number of weeks that have not been adopted by a church, and I will from time to time send an e-mail or put a note in the bulletin regarding other needs.  Please consider these as well.  I will also be putting dates of orientation in the bulletin.  If anyone wants more information or has questions, e-mail or call me.  
  Gertrude Wn, IHN Coordinator.        
 
    One focus of the Peace and Justice Interest Group has been to support and encourage each other to wrote letters to the leadership of the country. 
     This from an article by J. Daryl Byler, director of the MCC US. Washington office: “The only hope for not expanding the ‘war on terror’ with more military strikes, according to one staffer (in Congress), is if the religious community ‘gives cover’ for members of Congress to take a courageous stand. ‘The religious community is the one group that could make a difference with Congress’ she said.”