Text: Psalm 1:1-3, Revelation 21:1-6
Speaker: Joel Miller
Among the many decisions for the committee that compiled our Voices Together hymna was which hymn to put first. Symbolically, and practically, VT 1 sets the tone for VT 2-849. Their choice, which we will sing later, was “Summoned by the God Who Made Us.” It’s a familiar tune that works well with different styles – a capella, or accompanied with a piano, organ, or worship band. The text is new, for us. It’s about God bringing together a wide range of people. The chorus says: “Let us bring the gifts that differ, and in splendid, varied ways, sing a new church into being, one in faith and love and praise.” CMCer Katie Graber says the hope was that many people could “see themselves” in this song.
I wonder if the committee that compiled the Psalms – the hymnbook of the people of Israel – was asking a similar question. Symbolically and practically, Psalm 1 sets the tone for Psalms 2-150. Unlike VT 1, Psalm 1 draws a sharp line between the righteous and the wicked. There are those who delight in the Instruction of the Lord, and those who do not. That theme does track through the Psalms. But like our opening hymn, Psalm 1 offers something familiar, something anyone, anywhere, can understand and see themselves in. The primary image of Psalm 1 is that of a tree, planted by streams of water. It’s fruitful. It’s leaves are green.
It’s the same image found at the beginning of scripture, in the Garden of Eden, where the Tree of Life grows near a stream that flows out to water the whole world. And, although that Psalms committee wouldn’t have known it, it also shows up at the end of the Christian Bible. The book of Revelation closes with an angel leading the way to the river of the water of life that flows from the throne of God, where the tree of life produces fruit each month for the healing of the nations.
Psalm 1 is a prayer that every person and community would see themselves in that thriving, healing tree, growing by the water.
Throughout this Anabaptism at 500 series we’ve been going upstream to consider the sources of this river we call Mennonite. We’ve heard from those first student radicals who violated the law by re-baptizing themselves. We’ve remembered Dirk Willems who loved his enemy by pulling his pursuer out of icy waters. We’ve considered how Menno Simons rejected the violence of other Anabaptists and shepherded congregations toward a Sermon on the Mount faith. We’ve seen how Margaret Hellwart spread the faith despite attempts to keep her chained inside her home. We’ve seen the river split with the Mennonites and Amish going separate ways.
As we’ve done this I’ve been well aware that we’ve focused much more on where this river has been than where it is now. It’s important to know our stories, but most people join a church community for what’s happening now and not just hundreds of years ago. So for this final Sunday, our All Saints/All Souls observance, we consider where we are right now.
For this, I offer another story, quite a bit more recent. Staying on theme, it involves trees – a forest of people – and streams. Although you’ll have to wait for it.
In 2015 our national denomination, Mennonite Church USA, met in Kansas City for our every-two-years Convention. Conventions include worship, seminars, youth programming, and delegate sessions for hearing reports and voting on resolutions. Congregations and conferences across the country send representatives.
This was the fourth Convention where Pink Menno had a strong presence. Pink Menno started in 2009 when the Convention was at the Columbus Convention Center, just down High Street. Pink Menno was a group of queer Mennonites, mostly young adults but all ages, who were tired of being talked about rather than talked with. They were tired of being invisible within how the church did its discernment. So they had an idea. What if we all wear pink? And not just us, but anyone who supports us. Hard to be invisible when you’re wearing a bright pink shirt. And these Pink Mennos, as they called themselves, had another idea: Let’s not just wear pink, let’s sing. Together. From our hymnal. In the Convention hallway. Right in front of the doors to the delegate sessions when the 100s of delegates are filing in and out of session. Maybe people will notice us. Maybe some people will join us.
Pink Menno did this in Columbus in 2009. And in Pittsburgh in 2011. And in Phoenix in 2013. And they did it again in Kansas City in 2015. And let me tell you, people noticed. And many people joined. And some congregations decided not to send their youth to conventions anymore. And some congregations decided to leave the denomination altogether. But in Kansas City, in 2015, most conferences and congregations of Mennonite Church USA were still present.
And there was a delegate resolution put forward by several congregations that proposed a way forward. It was focused on forbearance. Forbearance meant we recognize we’re all at different places in our theologies of sexuality and gender and we’re willing to give our congregations space for working this out without making any denomination-wide pronouncements one way or another. It was nowhere near a queer-affirming statement, but it opened up some space. And it passed. And this was good news.
But there was a second resolution. This one was put forward by the denominational board. And it contradicted much of the forbearance resolution. It reaffirmed an older statement that pastors can’t officiate as weddings of same-sex couples. It called on conferences to not credential gay clergy. And it called for a review of any conference that did. This resolution… also passed, and to bring it real close to home, Pastor Mark’s credentialing here by Central District Conference prompted the first and only review, after which people agreed these reviews were a bad idea after all.
The image I want to end this story on occurred in the wide, long, Kansas City Convention Center hallway right outside the delegate hall after that second vote. Pink Menno had anticipated this result. They were there, as usual, only rather than singing they were silent. Like, completely silent. And rather than gathering in the round off to the side, they had positioned themselves about an arms length apart, across the full width of the hallway, with others equally spaced in rows behind them just as deep as it was wide. Each row was staggered with the one in front of it. They called this the Pink forest. If this is hard to picture, then this is all you need to know. With the delegates meeting at the end of a hallway, the only way out was weaving one’s way through the Pink forest, where one would come face to face, if one would dare look in their eyes, with the very church folks directly impacted by the contradictory resolution the delegates had just passed. The Pink forest wasn’t blocking anyone from leaving, but I can tell you it created a psychologically stunning presence that I will never forget. All those queer Mennonites, standing tall like silent unavoidable trees.
The Psalmist says of those who delight in God: “They are like trees planted by streams of water, which yield their fruit in its season, and their leaves do not wither.”
I want to speak to the traditional Mennonites among us. First, I should clarify what I mean by “traditional Mennonites.” As we’ve been learning these last two months, the Mennonite movement was born out of the conviction that faith is a conscious choice. The original, traditional way of becoming an Anabaptist and Mennonite was to have a non-Anabaptist upbringing, and then, at some point in one’s adult life, to come face to face with the call of the peace-loving, justice-pursuing, soul-healing Jesus, and to join the other trees already planted by that Anabaptist stream.
If this is you, our traditional Mennonites who have come into the church from elsewhere, I would like to offer that Psalm 1 is about you in a way that might not immediately register. Before this week, I’ve always heard Psalm 1 as talking about a tree that’s grown up by a river. Like, that’s where somebody planted the seed, or where it landed from the parent tree, and now it’s growing in a pretty sweet spot. Lucky tree.
Not the case.
The Hebrew word for “planted” shows up all over the Old Testament, but Psalm 1 uses a different word. The Common English Bible has the better translation. “They are like a tree replanted by streams of water.” This tree didn’t start here. It’s a transplant. This is what Psalm 1 is talking about. Traditional Mennonites are Psalm 1 people, transplants from other places, who enrich the air and the soil by the stream where they’ve been replanted.
And I’m sure an ongoing question for traditional Mennonites is “where, exactly, have I been transplanted?”
If this is you, I want you to know that you have been transplanted by a stream where the trees are still coming to terms with the Pink forest around them. Only we’ve come to see that it’s not just the queer folks the church has ignored for too long. This forest includes Indigenous people who lived on this land before us. It includes folks with disabilities. It’s Black folks whose stories have been marginalized. It’s a stunningly beautiful diverse forest already living out those words of Voices Together 1, “Let us bring the gifts that differ, and in splendid, varied ways, sing a new church into being, one in faith and love and praise.”
You should also know that the river that flowed in 2015 has since split off several times over the last decade such that those of us who remain in Mennonite Church USA are quite a bit fewer than before. And those who remain are more and more committed to not just tolerating, but celebrating and being led by the rainbow forest.
Now for you non-traditional Mennonites, by which I mean those raised in an Anabaptist church and still here. Those who can perhaps trace family lineages back to those who built church institutions, and migrations, and maybe even a martyr or two. You non-traditional Mennonites who have been in the church your whole life by birth and by choice, are also connected to Psalm 1 in a way that might not immediately register. And again, it’s a translation issue that I didn’t know about until study this past week. That word for streams of water where the trees grow, isn’t the common word for river. Instead, it’s the word for canal. This isn’t about a natural river flowing out there in the wild. It’s about an irrigation channel. And those take planning and work to build and maintain. Canals and channels are examples of human intentionality and nature harmonizing to create new possibilities, to build fertile soil where once there was only desert. And this is the gift you nontraditional, lifelong Mennonites offer. Your lives and presence and commitment and unpaid labor has kept this channel open. You’ve helped extend it into dry places where other trees can flourish.
A better translation of Psalm 1 would be “You shall be like trees, transplanted by irrigation channels.” This is about a dynamic relationship of new trees bringing their varied and splendid gifts, and the keepers of the channel. That’s what makes for a thriving church that’s willing to learn, and adapt, and make repairs, and grow. And of course before they know it those new trees will be asked to serve on a committee and lead worship, and thus, quickly become, fellow keepers of the channel.
There’s a final note for all of us to keep in mind from this metaphor. Which is that we may be the trees, and we may be the canal workers, but we are not water. That would be God. That would be Spirit of Life which cannot be contained or restrained in any one riverbed. Our little canal is just that. Whether it be Mennonite World Conference, Mennonite Church USA, or Columbus Mennonite Church, we are just a tiny container for something that cannot be contained. We’re part of a little channel that we get to grow beside, for a while. The canal provides a shape for the water to take, but there are many canals, and there endless forms the water takes in this world.
On this All Saints/All Souls Sunday, we give thanks for all those who first dug this canal out of hardened ground. We give thanks for keepers of the channel who have extended its reach and repaired its walls. We give thanks for Pink Menno and others who have shown us that our channels have been far too narrow. We give thanks for transplanted trees who continually propel us to be a more just and loving church.
And we give thanks for the water. The source of all of life. Water that was around long before Anabaptism began 500 years ago, water that will outlive all of us. Water that can’t be contained in any single riverbed. Water that flows from the Divine source, into our world, through our lives, through the generations.
Thanks be to God.