A Simple Path

“The Simple Path:
Silence is Prayer
Prayer is Faith
Faith is Love
Love is Service
The Fruit of Service is Peace”

-Mother Theresa 

I’m leading worship at Eigenheim Mennonite Sunday morning but most of the work is being done by others, including first-hand impressions of Haiti by recent visitors to this “unpeaceful” country. The overall topic for the morning is Witnesses to God’s Peace, a somewhat enigmatic theme unless we first of all decide how God would define peace. Sometimes we define it (on God’s behalf?) quite narrowly as being the state of personal quietude coming from being reconciled to God through Christ’s life, teaching, death and resurrection. Sometimes we define it more socially, culturally as the harmony that precludes interpersonal conflict: wars, dissension, discrimination, or the multitude of “isms” to which humans are so vulnerable.

Perhaps it’s a mistake to separate them. Perhaps we do the teachings of Christ a disservice when we split the two. Perhaps they’re intertwined: personal quietude (German Gelassenheit, perhaps) equips us to be instruments of reconciliation among persons, among communities, between nations. Conversely, the absence of an anchor--such as an undying commitment to following the pacifist Jesus--means we’re ill-equipped to the work of reconciliation because we ourselves live lives unreconciled, uncentered.

That’s somewhat theoretical. We know that many who claim Christ as their centre choose never to take the step toward engaging in the actual practices of reconciliation. Pierre Berton’s The Comfortable Pew addressed the decline in church participation in 1965; the promise of personal quietude can become the exclusive reason for being a church member; the revolutionary nature of Christ’s gospel for some of us, some of the time, may even feel like a threat to the orderly peacefulness of Christians getting together to sing hymns, read scripture and go to lunch together. But the comfortable pew may also sound the death-knell for the church. A church without a purpose and a task is like a hammer in a place with no nails; “what’s the point?” upcoming generations are always bound to ask.

Tommy Douglas said that “It’s never too late to make the world a better place.” But that makes little sense if a) the fate of the world holds diminished interest for us since “we’re bound for the promised land,” or b) we’re embedded in the pessimism that surrounds us, namely that humanity in its totality is a lost cause.

Mother Theresa probably clarified peace-making better than I can: “The Simple Path: silence is prayer, prayer is faith, faith is love, love is service, [and] the fruit of service is peace.” In other words, it begins with quietude, it journeys through service and in that service, peace blossoms. It’s a “simple path,” not a complex process.

This post is early; not the usual Sunday morning because it contains an invitation. Eigenheim Mennonite begins its Sunday with “Sunday School,” a time when adults gather in a circle and work quite deliberately at understanding and practicing “The Simple Path,” although we probably won’t call it that. Really, that’s what every church congregation is about . . . or ought to be . . . and like others, our comprehension is never complete, consensus isn’t always reached, our efforts sometimes misguided or “mispracticed.” But if you’re with Tommy Douglas’s “It’s never too late to make the world a better place,” or if you long to embrace a better understanding of Mother Theresa’s Simple Path, we invite you to join us. Sundays, 10:00 to 11:00, worship 11:00 to 12:00. You will be warmly welcomed! 8 Minutes west of Rosthern on 312.

"Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God." (Matthew 5:9)