Hopewit

Can I use that word here?? It was a weekend with many occasions calling for the word, Anabaptist , a shibboleth of sorts signaling a body of faith and understanding that need no longer be enunciated. Values that are assumed. A standard on which the thought and conversation at the Mennonite Church Canada Assembly leaned heavily. We were Anabaptists, and we all knew what that means. Well, what does it mean? Semantically, it’s a 16 th Century designation tacked on to a growing sect of radical reformers, a group that came to be distinguished as those who discard their infant baptism and “re-baptize” (or ana-baptize) each other as adults capable of making the thoughtful choice to follow Christ. We still baptize our members as adults, but there’s more to the cloud that is Anabaptism than that: we don’t bear arms (most of us), we preach salvation as an individual matter and we believe that service to our neighbours and those in need is central to the Christian walk. We abho...

If you were telling the following story as a Hollywood movie, whom would you get to write the screenplay? Whom would you choose to play Jesus, the pharisee, the “woman in that town who lived a sinful life?” Luke 7: 36-39; 44-48 36 When one of the Pharisees invited Jesus to have dinner with him, he went to the Pharisee’s house and reclined at the table. 37 A woman in that town who lived a sinful life learned that Jesus was eating at the Pharisee’s house, so she came there with an alabaster jar of perfume. 38 As she stood behind him at his feet weeping, she began to wet his feet with her tears. Then she wiped them with her hair, kissed them and poured perfume on them. 39 When the Pharisee who had invited him saw this, he said to himself, “If this man were a prophet, he would know who is touching him and what kind of woman she is—that she is a sinner.” 44 Then he turned toward the woman and said to Simon, “Do you see this woman? I came into your hous...