So, I was very happy at a recent Virginia Mennonite Conference delegate assembly when we affirmed the work of the Peace Committee (led by Nicholas Detweiler-Stoddard and Spencer Bradford) to print anti-war ads in our local newspapers.

I have to admit, this sort of thing makes me proud to be a Mennonite.

For those outside the Mennonite community, you should know that the Virginia Mennonite Conference is one of the more conservative conferences in our denomination (MCUSA). For Mennonites, however, to be conservative about the tradition is to be clear about our historic position of peace. Our Mennonite conference takes seriously our mission to conserve the church’s tradition of proclaiming the peace of Christ.

From the window of the nursery I can see the cemetery that stretches across the hill alongside the church — a field planted with rectangular stones to mark the graves of the faithful: Stauffer, Newcomer, Reiff, Funk. A couple of centuries of weather have made the older headstones undecipherable. Mennonites settled here along the Beaver Creek in the middle of the 18th century. I imagine some of the jagged and blackened gravestones honor the dead from those years. The life of this church rests on the foundations laid by those who now populate the field of graves. “We are born of the dead,” Robert Pogue Harrison writes in his book The Dominion of the Dead, “of the worlds they brought into being.” We are clothed with the faithfulness of the past: cherished histories and memories, cultures and traditions that invite us to a fresh experience of the same old gos­pel. Anabaptism is not a set of disembodied principles or core convictions. It is the legacy of the dead handed down to us in real places, through particular congregations and specific people.

I also preached a sermon about Mt. Zion: Life of the Dead.

The Bible study before the Sunday morning worship service of Iglesia Menonita Luz del Evangelio turns into a passionate sermon.

A discussion of the story of Esther becomes a call to live as the pueblo de Dios amid forces that seek to destroy the church.

Haman, the villain in Esther’s story, becomes a name for political leaders and immigration enforcement agents who sever the body of Christ by taking away “los hermanos y hermanas del pueblo que no tienen papeles” — brothers and sisters who are undocumented residents.

But, like the Jews in the story of Esther, “tenemos que orar“ — we need to pray because some demons require prayer and fasting. Yet no matter what happens, the pueblo of God can have faith. “Porque tenemos un abogado en el cielo, a la diestra del Padre” — we trust in Jesus Christ, our heavenly immigration attorney, arguing on our behalf, defending our citizenship in the pueblo of God.

Among the various metaphors for describing the saving work of Jesus, we now have another: our Lord the immigration attorney, “el Abogado en el cielo.”

Here’s some local media coverage of our worship service and protest: “Protesters hold demonstration,” and “Taking the Cross to the streets.”

And here’s an excerpt from the short sermon I preached at the detention center as a Cary police officer kept telling me to stop preaching and leave the premises:

This chair here will remain empty as a sign of all the bodies that the department of Immigration and Customs Enforcement have hidden from us, the bodies that law enforcement agents have torn from our communities and our families in the middle of the night, the bodies that they have ripped away from our churches. By refusing to let us wash the feet of the people hidden in their detention centers, the federal government has dismembered the body of Christ, they have torn apart the church, they have pierced and severed the body of Jesus.

They played the national anthem for the first time in the school’s history this past Tuesday at a baseball game. And I found a way to preach about the event for Palm Sunday. Here’s a passage from my sermon:

“The stone that the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone.” The rejected Jesus is the chief cornerstone of a new society that welcomes those on the underside, those that the world considers ungrateful traitors, like Jesus. This new society shows hospitality to the social waste of the world, the alienated and rejected: those who are in the world, but not really of the world because they aren’t card-carrying members of society, they are unnecessary to the world’s progress.

Jesus has invited us to build a new society—the kingdom of God—that welcomes the unwelcomed, that takes the people rejected by the builders of this world and includes them as chief cornerstones in a new community, the community of Jesus, the community of the rejected One, the community of the cross.

So, to get back to Goshen… Let me leave you with two questions for our time of discussion and discernment. How would playing the national anthem help us to welcome the people rejected by our world? How would it help any Christian community be a people who witness to the cross of Christ, which is what it means to welcome God’s love in the world?

Most of us don’t want to remember what King didn’t want us to forget: that the racial violence that birthed colonial America is remembered in the genetic code of U.S. power. Amnesia doesn’t change the past. Repressed memories always come back to haunt the forgetful. This land is populated with the ghosts of genocide. “Our nation was born in genocide when it embraced the doctrine that the original American, the Indian, was an inferior race,” King wrote in his 1963 book, Why We Can’t Wait. In a speech in December 1967, King described how this initial racism unfolded: “While they refused to give the black man any land, don’t forget this, America at that same moment … was giving away millions of acres of land in the West and the Midwest to white peasants from Europe.” King continued: “Never forget it.”

Here we are God: the same building, the same time of the week, with the same people. We are here because we can’t remember your promises on our own—that you promise new life, redeemed life, holy life, abundant life. God of life, breathe through us the life of your Holy Spirit—your comforting and forgiving Spirit. Surround us in your loving embrace, flowing through our sisters and brothers sitting next to us, in front of us, behind us, across the room from us. These are the people who show us that you, O God, will never leave us nor forget us.

As our passage this evening from Isaiah says, you are a mother who can’t forget her nursing child. And like hungry children, we will continue to cry out, because we hunger and thirst for your righteousness, for your justice, for your peace and mercy. God, may your reconciling grace flow throughout the earth.

This weekend we pray for your grace to move in people and places we aren’t used to praying for since we are a peace church. We aren’t used to praying for soldiers; we’re not used to remembering them. But, as it says in Isaiah, you are a God who remembers—and that means we should too, even if it’s confusing and strange.

God, tomorrow is Memorial Day. And when our country remembers the women and men who serve in the armed forces, we also remember them. We pray for all those people who have been taught to do things that no human being was ever meant to do: to kill. God heal them. They have wounds too—deep wounds, down to the soul. Wounds that make it difficult to return from war and love their spouses, and children, and friends; wounds that make it difficult to be loved, to receive love. When they kill, they also kill parts of themselves. Presidents and generals and recruiting officers don’t tell them that. In your great mercy, make a way for life to have the last word, not death; a way for grace and peace, for justice and forgiveness.

We pray that your Spirit would fall upon all flesh; and when your Holy Spirit falls, we ask that we will be moved toward repentance and forgiveness, toward the joy found in reconciled peoples, toward peace and mercy, toward your kingdom.

And that’s why we pray the prayer your Son taught us to pray, “Our Father…

According to Acts, hope is a people’s movement. As I say at the end, Power and Hope can’t be abstracted through representation—it’s ours.

It will probably make more sense if you read the sermon… Hopefully.

Disclaimer: this isn’t really about Obama in particular. It’s about election politics in general. More importantly, it’s about our true hope. As Nicholas Lash has taught me, Christianity is an iconoclastic movement—that is, we point out how images and icons lead us astray. (Paul Murray’s essay on Lash is a decent place to start.)

Title: Hope—a verb.
Date: May 4th, 2008
Texts: Ps 68:1-10, 32-35; Ac 1:6-14; I Pet 4:12-14, 5:6-11; Jn 17:1-11.

Nests and hope. That’s what I preached about the last time. I told you about the blue birds who moved into the birdhouse in my front yard near the road. I described how they show us what hope looks like in our world today. Despite all the dangers, all the threats to life, those birds still build nests, right smack in the middle of it all. That’s what birds do; they build nests that provide space for the birth of new life. And that’s what we do; we surround each other with the love of Christ, we sustain each other with the Holy Spirit, we offer one another the embrace of God’s love. We are God’s nests of hope, nests for the birth and re-birth of life, abundant life, life upon life. We show, with our lives, how hope is a verb—it’s something we do through the power of the Spirit. We become a reason for hope.

Well, my neighbor told me this past week that he saw a cat climb up that blue bird house in the front yard while Katie and I were in France. Apparently the dangers birds face are more real than I imagined—as real as a cat reaching it’s deadly claws into a nest of baby blue birds. My neighbor scarred the cat away before he left for work. But in the evening, when he got back, he peeked into the bird house and found that all the baby birds were dead. The cat killed them all and left them. The nest of abundant life turned into a grave.

What can I say now? I felt pretty good about my hopeful sermon about nests and abundant life. In fact, in my completely unbiased opinion, I thought it was one of my better sermons over the past few months. I felt good about that hope—and ya’ll gave me reason to believe it because of your care for one another. But, reality has a tendency to get in the way of hope and rain on our parades of hope. That nest, full of abundant life, gets killed. Reality stinks.

So now what? My bird house isn’t a sign of hope anymore. Dead baby blue birds—that’s all I see when I look out my front window. And it’s a lot of what I see when I look at the world; and it’s what I see in the lives of some of my friends—completely hopeless situations.

(pause)

When will hope happen? When will the promises of abundant life be realized? When will the kingdom come? In Acts, after Jesus’ resurrection his followers ask him a question: “So Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?” (1:6). Jesus has been raised from the dead and he’s hanging out with his disciples. The disciples are looking around the room, maybe even whispering the question to each other. They’ve witnessed some crazy events—incredible stuff just happened in Jerusalem. Their friend and leader, Jesus, was killed. No one expected that to happen. They all thought that Jesus was going to establish this kingdom he kept on talking about. Finally a time for peace, for justice, for restoration, for healing. The kingdom of God come to earth.

But then comes Easter, and something even more unexpected happens—the tomb is empty. How can this be? Jesus comes back. Is it really possible? He’s alive. Completely unexpected. This stuff just doesn’t happen. But there he is: Jesus, alive, eating and drinking, talking and sitting.

They are all gathered together: the resurrected Jesus and his followers. Now is the time. This must be the moment we’ve been waiting for, the disciples whisper. It’s here. We’re on the verge of the kingdom.

They get serious and turn to Jesus, “So Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?” We’ve been waiting for this Kingdom, the Reign of God, the Day of the Lord, they tell Jesus. Is it going to happen now? We’re ready. Let’s do it, Jesus.

And how does Jesus respond? Verse 7: Jesus says, “It is not for you to know the times that the Father has set by his own authority.” It’s a strange reply. Jesus doesn’t say yes or no. Jesus won’t give them the knowledge they want. The disciples don’t get an answer that they can rest on. Their questions aren’t settled; they’re aren’t put at ease. No. Instead, disciples are given a task.

Verse 8: Jesus goes on, “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” Those are his last words. The disciples want to know if the hope of the kingdom has arrived, and Jesus answers by telling them to receive the power of the Holy Spirit to be witnesses, to go, to proclaim, to be God’s kingdom.

It’s all about who… Who will establish the kingdom? The disciples are waiting for Jesus to make it happen: “Lord,” they say, “is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?” And Jesus turns that “you” around and says, “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes… and you will be my witnesses.” Jesus refuses the mantle of their hope for change, and instead sends the people on their way to spread this message of hope, of good news. This is your task; be my witnesses; be my hope for the world.

If the kingdom is all Jesus’ responsibility, then the disciples are off the hook. Once they help put Jesus in power so the kingdom can finally get started and hope will have a chance, then the disciples can take a back seat and watch Jesus do his work. No, Jesus says. I’m entrusting the work to you. “You will receive the power.” Hope is not someone else’s job.

Yes, this is about politics. And yes, I’m taking some cheap shots the presidential campaigns. But I can’t help myself since political leadership and power for change is exactly what’s at stake in the disciples’ question: “Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?” As we all know, lord, is a common way to address a leader, the person with power. And kingdom is political organization—a regime. The disciples are waiting for the regime change.

Now, please don’t mishear me. I’m not saying that Jesus is our president and that means we can’t vote for another one. I’ve heard interesting arguments about that, but they aren’t mine, and that’s not what I’m trying to say.

All I’m saying is that I think Jesus calls us out; he identifies our temptation to think change is always someone else’s job. Once so and so is elected, then… No. For us, hope came two thousand years ago. And it has a name: Jesus. And this Jesus, God’s hope for the world, has passed his mantle to us. That’s what this talk of the Holy Spirit is all about. The Holy Spirit is the enlivening power of God that was present in Jesus throughout his ministry, and now present through us.

In his first book, Luke tells us all about how Jesus is God’s healing love for the world. And then Luke continues the story in his second book, Acts—The Acts of the Apostles, as it’s been called since the 2nd century. And in Acts Jesus continues his work of hope, his work of change, of justice, peace, love, solidarity, unity, reconciliation, salvation, liberation, eternal life—Jesus continues this work through us, in you.

You have received power, the power of Jesus, through that same Holy Spirit that hovered over Mary when Jesus was conceived, that same Holy Spirit that sent Jesus into the wilderness, and that same Holy Spirit that empowered Jesus to proclaim good news for the poor, freedom for prisoners, sight for the blind, liberation for the oppressed.

Then Jesus leaves, and tells us to keep the work of hope going. He distributes his power to the people. The kingdom is a people’s movement—and that means it’s profoundly personal, the power of the Spirit of Jesus moving through your life, as hope for the world. Power can’t be abstracted through representation—it’s ours.

This may stretch an analogy too far, but I’ll say it anyhow: Jesus is the president that wins the election—he’s victorious—and when he’s about to take the office, the throne, he bows out, he disappears and says, “You will receive the power; it’s your job to give someone reason for hope.”

And if you’re looking for a place to start the job, to embody God’s hope, to change things, Psalm 68 gives us some clues. Verse 5 talks about parenting orphans and protecting widows. Verse 6 says that the work that God is up to in the world is to give the hopeless a place to live and make prisoners prosperous.

To be a Christian means that we have received a task. It’s not a job we can hand over to someone more qualified or more charismatic.

And the good news is that Jesus prays for you; we are not left on our own; our power is not from ourselves—it’s the Holy Spirit, continually breathed into our lives through the prayers of Jesus. In John 17 we hear Jesus praying to the Father, “I am asking on their behalf; I am not asking on behalf of the world, but on behalf of those whom you gave me, because they are yours.”

Jesus never ceasing to pray for us, that God will sustain us, that we will receive the strength and power of the Spirit. Jesus is now a life of prayer, utterly devoted to you. Our hope is named Jesus Christ; and Jesus is currently at work hoping that we will continue his mission, through the power of the Spirit.

Last week during a Q & A time with presidential candidate John Kerry at the University of Florida, a student was violently forced from the event. It’s absolutely crazy. Sure, the guy seemed a bit annoying, and his questions were a bit long-winded. But such violent repression?... and sending painful electronic currents through his body while pinning him to the floor? Who knew words could be so threatening to those with power…

It’s also completely absurd to see a student, armed with a book, come across so threatening to a police force. It’s also completely absurd to see the crowd, and John Kerry, simply allow the violence to happen right in front of their eyes without stirring from their seats.

Check out the videos here.