I value tradition and love structure. I like lists and clean lines, delineated boundaries and predictable expectations. I’ll admit, ‘going with the flow’ isn’t exactly my strength.
I also like to think that changes in mind and thought are at times difficult for everyone, and I would have liked to see the faces of the Jewish people upon hearing Jesus’ explained ‘sign’ for his actions in the temple as described in John 2:13-22.
Racial Healing Task Group
First published in The Mennonite 2010-09-01
What does it mean to acknowledge and lament the injustices of the past and wrestle with the reality of continued racism?It’s hard sometimes for me to see the ways I perpetuate racism. This is uncomfortable. It’s not my intention.
As we on the Racial Healing Task Group shared meals and stories with members of the Intercultural Relations Reference Council (IRRC), we heard difficult things. We listened as our sisters and brothers told of their regular experiences of racism.
Dividing walls and hostilities abound in the stories of Anabaptist suffering and African American slavery. On one hand, the intolerance of magisterial authorities in Europe excluded Anabaptists when they chose counter-cultural expressions of faith—believers’ baptism, voluntary church membership, disengagement from the state, Jesus as lord and model, the Sermon on the Mount as normative. In Catholic, Lutheran, and Swiss Reformed regions, the sword of the state became the instrument of the church in its bloody ritual of discipline. As a consequence, Anabaptists were hunted, arrested, imprisoned, tortured, and some were executed by beheading, drowning, or burning. Authorities banished them from their homes and their properties confiscated.
On the other hand, Africans were stolen from their homeland, bound in chains, transported across the torturous Middle Passage, and sold to the highest bidder in the Americas. Savers, traders, and planters used the Bible in justification—the curse of Ham in Genesis 9, the patriarchs’ use of slavery, and the submission texts of Paul. The economic benefit of slavery, hugely profitable, outweighed all other concerns. They were whipped, maimed, and tortured, all made legal by the Slave Codes of both the North and the South.
Anabaptists were strangers and aliens in their own lands; enslaved Africans were strangers and aliens in a foreign land.
Photo by Chris Marquardt 2003
Written February 2010
4:44 a.m., I am awake.
First thought – the church.
I am dreaming, but I am awake.
I see tables overturned.
There are paintings and writings on them.
One has the famous picture of Dirk Willems.
Some have writings about Anabaptist deportations from Bern in the early 1700’s.
Another one has a date, “1711” with boats that say “Ritter Company” on them.
Others narrate migrations of Mennonites from all over Europe to America.
I walk a few blocks. It is hot.
Tables have been overturned all over.
I am in Phoenix.
I am awake!
Read how the story unfolds from Saulo’s dream. Also read Saulo’s invitation to demonstrating our true citizenship.
Overturning Tables | Volteando Mesas 