Grace and Truth: A word from pastors

In 1981, my wife, Marilou, and I went to Calcutta, where we spent three and a half months volunteering with Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity. It was an experience that changed our lives.

We both grew up in the Assemblies of God. We have many happy memories of those days and remain grateful for what we learned about Jesus, things that continue to influence our faith. What was missing, though, was an appreciation for the scope of Christian mission.

What we learned growing up was that it was our obligation to tell people about Jesus and to encourage them to accept him as their Savior. Jesus was the answer, we were told. All we were called to do was to tell others about Jesus so they could be saved.

While we were taught to be personally generous and loving to those in need, I don’t recall any discussion of larger systemic or societal needs, such as racism, poverty or violence. Such evils, we believed, were simply the result of sin, for which personal salvation was the remedy. Talk of service in other parts of the world was focused solely on taking Jesus to “the uttermost parts.”

To be fair, these are memories of my youth and may not represent the full picture. What I can say, though, is that what we learned in our home congregation in no way prepared us for our time in Calcutta.

That summer we encountered poverty on a scale we’d never imagined: People begging on every street corner. Children hanging out by the YWCA, hoping for someone to buy them a meal. The size and energy of a massive city, noisy, loud, strange to our Lancaster-raised minds.

Neither were we prepared for the beauty of the people we met. For the communion we experienced with Christians, Hindus and Muslims. The generosity of those street children who took whatever food we’d bought them home to be shared with their families. The fierce commitment of the Missionaries of Charity. The passion of the city and finding that Christ was there long before us.

We came home changed, confused. We had no language—theological or otherwise—for what we’d experienced.

The individualistic religion we’d carried with us was too small to make sense of what we’d seen and learned. How can we say that Jesus loves the little children and not care how they live? How can we say that Jesus is the answer when the questions being asked were beyond our experience?

So it was that we discovered Anabaptism, a tradition that certainly calls us to speak the good news of Jesus wherever we go. A tradition that encourages us to invite others to “taste and see that the Lord is good.” But a tradition that calls us to do more than speak the good news. A tradition that calls us to incarnate that good news through the works of our minds and our hands and our feet. A tradition that understands mission to be more than getting people saved but is also about offering ourselves to the world around us and in every way. A tradition that understands that how we live and how we love is as important as what we believe and what we say; that incarnation is not something once and done but is instead our highest and constant calling. A tradition that helped us make sense of our time in Calcutta and has shaped us ever since.

We discovered we could love and be loved by our Hindu and Muslim friends without insisting that they accept Christ first. We could not only tell the good news but hear it spoken by new friends in accents quite different from our own. We could make the connection between our faith in Jesus and systemic issues and work in Christ’s name toward a more just and peaceful world. We could see ourselves as part of a much larger work of God than we’d ever imagined, one not bound by human prejudice.

When people ask how we became Mennonites, Marilou and I say it was God’s will. And we mean it. God used our time in Calcutta to make us Mennonites. And we are grateful.