If God's word isn't the light guiding my feet, then what's the point?

[The Following is a sermon I gave at River of Life Fellowship in Kitchener on August 4, 2013, probably one of the most well received sermons I've ever given. The Anabaptist history I share is oversimplified, Polygenesis and Muenster aren't really addressed, but hey, I was only given 15 minutes]

I often think that I am one of the luckiest people alive, I get to study the bible full time. I get to explore this book over and over and over, there's so much to be studied in here,

Think about it, an Infinite Creator, God, has revealed Godself in this book, it so fantastic, and there’s so much to explore.

People end up studying just a small section their entire lives.  I know people who just study Old Testament, or the Prophets, or the role of women, or atonement theory, their entire careers as biblical scholars.

However, If I just spend my life reading the bible, about penal substitution atonement theory, Gnosticism, or amillenialism or some other theological concept, and it doesn't impact my life, If God's word isn't the light guiding my feet, then what's the point?

But this isn't just my story.

River of Life Fellowship is part of a conference of churches called Mennonite Church Eastern Canada, which is itself a part of a larger denomination called Mennonite Church Canada. As Mennonites we trace our historic roots back to the Radical Reformation of the 16th Century.

In 1517, Martin Luther started the Protestant Reformation, and tried to change Christendom to be more biblical, soon his reformation spread from Germany across Western Europe. In the city of Zurich Switzerland the leader is Ulrich Zwingli. Zwingli has gotten the city council to support his reforms and ended the practice fasting during lent, allowed clergy to marry, and removed images from the sanctuary. Eventually about half of Switzerland would join his reformation.

It is now the 1520s as part of his reformation he had young people study the bible together. One group of these people was led by Conrad Grebel, Grebel along with Anna and Felix Manz and George Blaurock amongst others, got together to read the scriptures. As they read the scriptures they became convinced of a couple things.

1. That Baptism was a sign of commitment to the body of Christ

2. That You had to be able to make the decision to follow Jesus for yourself, that just because you are a citizen of an area, that doesn't mean you automatically have the same faith as everyone else there.

 And because of these convictions that they should cease the practice of infant baptism.

However when they brought these beliefs to Zwingli and the Zurich city council, they were told to shut up

The City Council couldn't agree to this idea because they used Infant Baptism records as a way of knowing who citizens of the city are, and consequently who they could tax. If they didn't have these records, then they wouldn't be able to tax properly.

However, because they couldn't find evidence in scriptures to support this practice, this young bible study group couldn't support this practice, and because they believed that Scripture should be the guide for their lives, they knew that they couldn't stay quiet. So they continued to challenge the city council on this issue.

Eventually on January 21, 1525 they were told that if they didn't stop their arguments, that they would face imprisonment.

That night, at their bible study, they were trying to figure out what to do, when George Blaurock, a man known for his passionate quest for the truth turned to Conrad Grebel and asked for God's sake to baptize him with the true Christian baptism upon his faith and understanding. After Conrad baptized him, George went around the room and baptized the rest of the group. And with this they broke with the official reformation, and started the Swiss Branch of the Anabaptist movement.

This wasn't an act of rebellion, but rather they were trying to be faithful to what they read in scripture

This young group continued to read scripture, and as they read the scriptures their paths were shown to them, Harold Bender, a professor of History between world wars one and two refers to their ideals as the Anabaptist Vision: The Anabaptists were reading Scriptures, and their paths were being shown to them, they could see what God wanted from them:

 Bender posited discipleship, i.e., following Jesus in life and under the cross, as the essence of Anabaptism, especially by comparison with Protestantism. He contrasted discipleship to faith (Luther), the first leading to patterns of Christian life, the second to theology.

Jesus is the center of the Anabaptist vision. They saw Jesus is the center of the Scriptures, Jesus is the one the Prophets promised would come, who would reconcile the world to its creator. Jesus is the one who died and saved us, Jesus is the one who calls us to come and follow him. And they saw that following Jesus meant changes to their lives

They saw that following Jesus meant a new church, with voluntary membership you aren't just a Christian because your parents were, you are a Christian because you've made that decision yourself

 Love and nonresistance applied to all human relationships. They looked at the Sermon on the Mount, and saw lessons about loving your enemy, and praying for those who persecute you,

They saw the message of giving to the needy, and not being showy about their religious activity.

But the Anabaptists also learned that Following Jesus isn't going to be popular, the new group of Anabaptists were immediately persecuted,

Like the Psalmist says 110 The wicked have set a snare for me,

    but I have not strayed from your precepts.

111 Your statutes are my heritage forever

within a short period of time, this group of Anabaptists were persecuted and in less than 5 years they were all dead, but because they took seriously the call of Matthew 28: Go into all of the world making disciples, baptising believers in the name of the father son and holy spirit, as a movement they lived on.

Around 1610 in Württemberg, in what is now southwest Germany, the Anabaptist Margaret simply refused to go to the parish church to take part in the Lutheran Mass.  Instead she insisted on going round to her neighbors’ houses to talk with other women about God’s love.  With Margaret’s help, the neighbors would talk about God in their kitchens.  The authorities were outraged at this. They interrogated Margaret, whom they called “stiff-necked”, and chained her to her kitchen floor so she couldn’t go to the neighbors’ kitchens.  But this did not stifle Margaret.  The criminal records of her town report that over the next eleven years Margaret escaped from her chains no fewer than 21 times and went right back to her subversive testimony-giving. And 22 times they locked her up again

As I said earlier we started to love our enemies. Dirk Willems, another Anabaptist was thrown in jail. But eventually he lost so much weight that he was able to squeeze through the prison bars and escape. As he ran away, he crossed over a frozen lake, his captor behind him.

Because Dirk had lost so much weight the ice could hold him, but it broke under the weight of his warden, and he fell through. Dirk could have kept going and be in the clear, but instead he turned around and pulled the man from the ice. Dirk was re-arrested, and killed because he took love your enemies seriously.

 When we started living out our faith, we had to defend our actions with words. Our persecutors had to take to cutting out tongues before they burned us at the stake because even when we were about to die, we couldn't stop preaching the good news. Many people came to a radical, deeply personal belief in Jesus Christ because of the lives and testimonies of our martyrs.

The Swiss Anabaptists met people in France, Germany and the Netherlands who believed the same thing, and they started sharing preachers, and ideas, and worked together, but everywhere they faced persecution.

My Ancestors moved west in the hopes of freedom crossing over the Atlantic and ended up in Pennsylvania before moving here to Ontario, Others moved west into Russia, where they were joined by those from the Netherlands where they stayed until they were forced out in either the soviet revolution or world war two, and again ended up in Canada, the united states and surprisingly Latin America.

But through this time, we developed a hermeneutic, a way of understanding scriptures, where scripture gets interpreted within the community. We see this here in river of life where we are in a discussion on the act of communion

But we also do this in the broader church as well.

In 1527, two years after the first adult baptism, Anabaptists met together and wrote a document called the Schleitheim Confession. Where together they expressed the truths they were reading about in scripture and how they wanted to live this out.

Since then there have been numerous times where we have done this, and in 1995, Mennonites from across North America wrote this book, the Confession of Faith in a Mennonite Perspective.

This book is significant because a few years later the two conferences that wrote it, the GC and MC churches actually joined into Mennonite Church Canada, based on the fact that they shared these convictions.

In it they wrote "We acknowledge Scripture as the Authoritative source and standard for preaching and teaching about faith and life, for distinguishing truth from error, for discerning between good and evil, and for guiding prayer and worship. Other claims on our understanding of Christian faith and life, such as tradition, culture, experience, reason, and political powers, need to be tested and corrected by the light of Holy Scripture"

The Most recent attempt at group interpretation of scripture was by the Mennonite World Conference in 2006, as a global church we have agreed to, among others these shared convictions:

God is known to us as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, the Creator who seeks to restore fallen humanity by calling a people to be faithful in fellowship, worship, service and witness.

Jesus is the Son of God. Through his life and teachings, his cross and resurrection, he showed us how to be faithful disciples, redeemed the world, and offers eternal life.

As a church, we are a community of those whom God's Spirit calls to turn from sin, acknowledge Jesus Christ as Lord, receive baptism upon confession of faith, and follow Christ in life.

As a faith community, we accept the Bible as our authority for faith and life, interpreting it together under Holy Spirit guidance, in the light of Jesus Christ to discern God's will for our obedience.

The Spirit of Jesus empowers us to trust God in all areas of life so we become peacemakers who renounce violence, love our enemies, seek justice, and share our possessions with those in need.

Each time, we write a document like this, we are saying this is the truth we see in the scriptures, and we are committing to live it out.

Today we live in a much different World than the 16th Century Anabaptists, instead of a world where everyone is a Christian, and the biggest fight is which type of Christianity to be a part of, we now live in a world where few are Christians. Skepticism is all the rage, Richard Dawkins book, the God Delusion has sold over 2million copies. People look at the past and see all of the skeletons in our closet. Wars fought in the name of the prince of Peace. People killed for not believing in the one who died for us. Even the Anabaptists have a checkered past,  at times our biblical literalism meant that some Anabaptists took the teaching to have faith like a child t mean they should literally behave like a child, going goo goo ga ga, and playing with infants’ toys. At another time,  Anabaptists in Munster took to violence to bring about the kingdom

People are going to keep ridiculing us, and are going to keep looking for ways to shut us up. They don't want to hear the good news, the radical news of Jesus Christ. And so will do anything in their power to silence us

But worse than skepticism is Apathy. Most people would rather sleep in, or go for brunch than come to church on Sunday.

 We now live in a world where biblical literacy is very low. Where if I said, even in a lot of churches turn to the book of Elijah, people would start flipping through their bibles, before realizing that Elijah doesn't have his own book. He's part of the book of Kings.

When our faith becomes that of the Psalmist, whose feet is guided by the light of scripture, even though he faced much suffering

When our faith becomes that of the Anabaptists, who read the good news of Jesus Christ, and start to live it out in their daily lives. Responding to God’s word even in the midst of persecution

When our actions and our words point to the good news we read about in scripture

We will see a new reformation,

One as radical as the Anabaptists, our forbears

One where people will see our good works and say I want to follow Jesus too.

And the world will know that Jesus Christ is Lord.