Anabaptist History and thought part 2 HPMF October 20, Born from the Exploitation of Peasants

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1 Anabaptist History and thought part 2 HPMF October 20, 2013 Born from the Exploitation of Peasants Matthew 13:31-33, He put before them another parable: The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that someone took and sowed in his field; 32 it is the smallest of all the seeds, but when it has grown it is the greatest of shrubs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches. 33 He told them another parable: The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed in with three measures of flour until all of it was leavened. 44 The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which someone found and hid; then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field. 45 Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls; 46 on finding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had and bought it. This week we conclude our brief, two-week series on Anabaptist History and thought looking at the context and thinking of the movement that happened 500 years ago that gave birth to Mennonite thinking. One of the questions I was asking myself this week is why did I think this was such an important topic to spend a few weeks on? I sort of pushed Worship Committee on this, that I thought we should spend a Sunday or two each year specifically reflecting on Anabaptist history and thought. But, as I was rereading class notes and articles, I was asking myself, why did I want to talk about this, again? In looking to history in Christianity, what we are doing (I think) is looking to secondary sources to help us understand and interpret. In studying history and other disciplines you have primary sources and secondary sources, primary sources being the original documents we have from people involved in a particular situation [letters, laws, first-hand accounts of historical events, etc]. Secondary sources are then reflections on these primary texts someone s later

2 conclusion or synthesis of these writings. Often the secondary sources work to help us understand or make meaning of the primary sources. In my view, as Christians the Bible is our primary source. This is our most original source, it is the source that we give the most credit to the source that we are trying to understand and apply to our lives. Much of Christian history, then, serves as a secondary source for us. Looking to the lives and thoughts of Christians throughout the ages how they sought to apply the message of the Bible to their life and in their context this helps us to reflect on and (hopefully) apply the Bible to our own lives. When I constantly show you early Christian artwork for example, this is a secondary source it gives us a little window into what those first Christians thought, to scenes and stories they found valuable. Or when we talk about practices of the first Christians, this is a secondary source a way that we see a group of committed people trying to apply these teachings of Jesus. The same is also true of these first Anabaptists in the 1500s, they are a secondary source for us, a source that we look to in hopes of better understanding the life and teachings of Jesus. We look to what these zealous reformers did for a window into how a particular group of people sought to be faithful to the God that they met in Jesus Christ. So now to our secondary sources! I think one of the mistakes we often make in reflecting on history is forgetting that each movement in history has a context of its own, it does not just appear out of nowhere it does not spring forth from nothing. Movements are born within a particular time in history. This is of course true of the Reformation. The reformers like Martin Luther and John Calvin they were

3 trying to respond to particular issues and concerns of their time; they were not trying to start a whole new religion or trying to split the universal church. They were trying to reform the church, trying to help shape and guide the church to make it more relevant for their time; trying to help the church be more true to the God they were meeting in the Bible seeking to help the church better live out its mission on earth trying to help the church be the church. It is not usually the Reformers themselves who decide they are too radical and must go and start their own thing it is the established group/church that determines these people must go, that they are too radical, that they are causing too many issues and problems. So, to greatly over-simplify things, in the time of the Reformation (and still true in many ways today) different groups had a different emphasis, a different slant on how they best understood God, or, as I put it last week, a different face of God that they were trying to lift up. For the established Catholic church in Europe (at that time, the church), the belief was that God was most fully known in the sacraments: in the taking of Eucharist (the blood and body of Christ), in baptism, in marriage in these sacraments rightly administered and taken, God was most fully known on earth. For Luther, this was not quite enough, not quite the whole picture. Traditional Protestantism believed that God was most fully present in the sacraments and in the faithful preaching of the Word of God. This meant that people needed to hear and understand the Bible in their own language so that they, themselves, could understand the grace of God. For the Anabaptists this still was not a full enough picture, they believed that God was most fully present in the lives of disciples that God was most fully seen in the faithful life of disciple. For this movement it was not enough to take the sacraments or have the word of God faithfully

4 preached and taught, one had to live out the teachings of Jesus on a daily basis. This was their emphasis, the face of God they were most trying to elevate. In later movements, this was still true different groups elevating a different experience of God. The Amish: believing that God is most fully present in a holy and pure community of disciples. Pentecostals: That God is most fully present in the work and movement of the Holy Spirit. Evangelical movement: That God is most fully present in the moment of conversion. These various starting points naturally impact what happens moving forward they still impact us today, as we work from these assumptions. So where did this emphasis come from for Anabaptists? How did this different face of God start to emerge for them, for, as I said, these reforming efforts do not just spring forth from nowhere. This is where things have changed a little bit in this view of history. When I took an Anabaptist History and Theology class in seminary, some things had changed from when I took it ten years earlier as an undergrad (I didn t know that history could change, but apparently it can). Anabaptism sprung up in various regions in Europe, all about the same time: Switzerland, southern Germany, in the Alsace region of Germany (French/German border), and in the Netherlands. The common thinking used to be that all Anabaptism somehow traced back to Zurich, Switzerland and this group of people.

5 These three guys (Conrad Grebel, Felix Mantz, and George Blaurock the blue coat ), who were students of Ulrich Zwingli the reformer of Switzerland (the Martin Luther of Switzerland). These students started to disagree with their teacher, thinking that he was not going far enough in his reforming efforts that he was being too political, that as he tried to bring the whole city and surrounding regions slowly into forms of change, he was compromising too much. In the country they began teaching against baptizing infants and, even worse, against paying their mandatory tithes. Eventually these three, with others, completely broke from Zwingli and the state church. The belief had been for some time that all of the Anabaptist movements somehow trace back to this first movement in Zurich. Historians were not sure exactly how this happened, but that somehow this first group had influenced the other movements that sprung up elsewhere in Europe. But now, many historians now believe this was not the case. Rather, they believe that these movements sprung up largely independently of each other. What historians has seen and noticed is that where most of these pockets of Anabaptism started are also places where the Peasants War was very active. In there was a movement among peasants for social change, to improve their desperate situation as peasant farmers and laborers. The common people worked the land for a Lord, serving as vassals in a feudal system. There began a movement among peasants to improve their situation, to demand some basic rights (like

6 permission to hunt and fish on public lands; to be able to name their own pastor; to only pay in tithes what is needed to support their pastor and the poor amongst them not to pay for more than this) fueled by preaching of prophets who assured them that God was on their side and that God would deliver them, they took up arms in a revolt. This was not one large scale war, but a bunch of smaller battles that happened throughout the Empire; there were five main regions where this happened, a violent revolt for political, social, and economic justice. It was a revolt backed by religious ties and undergirded by religious language. These battles were essentially large groups of peasants who were revolting against their local lord. And as these peasants with farming tools went up against trained armies with armor and weapons, as you might imagine, they were pretty much massacred (between 100, ,000 died). What historians have started to notice is that most of the regions where Anabaptism emerged where also places where the Peasants revolt took place. They can trace numerous influential Anabaptist leaders that were also involved or impacted by the Peasants War: some as leaders, some who actually fought, and others who simply witnessed the slaughter. So there is this strong tie that has been seen between these peasants who were fighting for justice and the later Anabaptist movement, a movement of nonviolence. So, again, I come to the question of why does this matter? What are we to gain from looking at this secondary source what are we to learn for our own place and time? I don t know that I have one clean and direct answer for us, but I think there are some things in here that are worth noticing, worth paying attention to.

7 1. This helps us to see the commitment to nonviolence in a new light. We know that at least some of these leaders first tried to bring about social change through the use of violence. They saw the failure of this, the great and tragic failure. This changed them. It did not change their commitment to the needs of the poor and oppressed, but it made them reexamine Jesus words about love for enemies made them reexamine their methods. We know that for some of them, their commitment to nonviolence was not just theological, not just biblical, but also born from experience it was practical. I think there is something there for us to notice there. 2. We also begin to understand the focus of discipleship and daily living in a new way we begin to see where this emphasis came from. This movement was started by a group of people that were intimately connected with the working poor those whose lives were being greatly harmed and damaged by the present religious systems. These leaders could see that a faith did not make sense if it was not comforting the afflicted, if it was not helping to ease the suffering of the poor amongst them. They bore witness to the ways that religion was exploiting the poor they wanted to help change this, to reform such a system. I think there is something there for us to notice there. 3. Another thing we see in this version of history is how our understanding of faith and how to live it out is a fluid thing. It will move and circle around, it will learn from failure even the very worst kinds of failure. It must adapt and change. We must be willing to examine our failings in open and honest ways, and seek to move forward from them. This is another piece we should notice.

8 4. Finally, I think what we discover in this connection is the same thing we discover in the pages of the gospels, that when we ask, where then is God? in all of this we find the same answers we find in the gospels 1) The pages of scripture 2) where two or three are gathered in the name of Christ 3) with the poor. Professor of New Testament Mary Schertz concludes that the gospels tell us again and again that God s ear is bent toward the widow, the orphan, the foreigner. I believe this is what this secondary source of history is also trying to tell us our faith must be connected with the most vulnerable, it must be in dynamic relationship with the most vulnerable; it must be shaped from this place. So, as we seek to write our own secondary sources with our daily lives as we think about people one day looking to our lives as ways to understand the Bible let us not forget to learn from those who have gone before us, leaving us their examples of faithfulness, of discipleship, and even of their tragic failures. May the Spirit of God infuse our own lives with such a longing to be faithful to the God we meet in Jesus Christ. Amen. Sending Blessing And now, may the God of all the peoples of the earth go with you as you leave this place empowering you to see the world through the eyes of God, So that you might be part of the world s healing this day. Amen.