At the end of this month delegates from around Mennonite Church USA will be meeting for the Special Session of the Delegate Assembly in Kansas City.  Delegates typically meet during church wide biennial conventions on the odd years, but last year…Covid.  So we’re meeting in person over four days on Memorial Day Weekend this year.  CMC gets two delegates plus a youth delegate, so Katie Graber and I, plus Eve Miller will be representing the congregation. There are four resolutions on the table.  For Justice in the Criminal Legal System names our system in the US as “promoting violence and punishment, not reconciliation and peace.”  It lays out ten commitments for all levels of church life to make that involve education, relationship building, divestment, and advocacy.  The Accessibility Resolution  affirms the vital gifts of people with disabilities and invites the church to “remove the barriers to belonging in architecture, communications

Our spring review of the CMC directory got me curious: Of the folks now listed in the directory, what is the ratio between those who were part of the church when I came on board (nearly nine years ago) and those who came after me?  A nonscientific flip and tally through the directory revealed that it is right at 50/50.  I don’t know the national statistics on this, but this dynamic seems like an inevitable aspect of healthy congregations in areas where people are on the move.  I suppose each member could do the same exercise, with yourself as the line of delineation between who is “old” and who is “new.”  Stick around long enough and you’ll be on the old side of the balance.  It can happen in less than a decade!  Are you at 20/80, 70/30, something else? My 50/50 point coincides with our Membership Sunday this weekend. 

This year Holy Week and Easter overlap with the Jewish Passover and Muslim month of Ramadan.  Because Ramadan is on the lunar calendar this is rare.  This means about 4.3 billion of the earth’s nearly 8 billion people, well over half, are currently within a sacred time.  On Monday Congregation Tifereth Israel on Broad Street hosted a BREAD meeting.  During Rabbi Skolnik’s welcome he noted that when Jews celebrate Passover they are asked to do so as if they themselves were the ones enslaved in Egypt and delivered out of bondage.  This personal and collective experience informs their commitment to living lives of justice and mercy. Ramadan has significant overlap with how Christians approach Lent.  It is a time of fasting (during daylight hours) and inward spiritual work – clarified by many Muslim leaders as the true meaning of the word jihad .  In addition, it is a season of

Thinking about our Lent theme of Turn/Return has me reflecting back on one of my favorite movies, The Prestige.  It is a movie about rival magicians played by Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale, set in late 19th century London.  Explained by one of the characters, the movie takes its title from a convention in magic that holds that any magic trick consists of three acts: the pledge, the turn, and the prestige.  In the pledge, the magician shows you something ordinary.  At the turn, the magician makes this ordinary thing do something extraordinary like disappear. The third act, the prestige, is the hardest because it is the real payoff.  It is not enough to make something disappear; you have to be able to bring it back. Part of the reason I love the movie so much is because of the surprise ending, so I will try my best not to

The possibility of return holds a powerful grip on the human psyche and in our mythology (by which I mean foundational stories we tell about ourselves).  The two most prominent biblical examples of return I can think of involve The Garden of Eden and Jerusalem.  The first portrays a pristine original human condition – a garden of innocence and abundance that was lost in our collective coming of age through the eating from the tree of knowledge.  The second took hold after the Judeans’ exile to Babylon and the destruction of their holy city Jerusalem.  Hebrew prophets and various Psalms give voice to the longing to return to Jerusalem. The myth of return runs strong in our national politics as well.  The former President’s motto to “Make America Great Again” implied there was a time of greatness in our history to which we must return if we are to preserve