Michelle Armster preached at the opening joint worship for Kansas City 2015. (Photo above by Vada Snider).

She told the stories of five women from history: Mary and Martha; the crippled woman healed by Jesus in Luke 13; Maeyken Wens, an early Anabaptist martyr; and Amanda Berry Smith, a former slave and evangelist.

These stories remind us that the Jesus movement is costly, Armster said.

Armster is director of Mennonite Central Committee Central States.

Of Mary and Martha’s story, she said, “Traditional interpretations of this Scripture have pitted the women against each other and that’s not right.”

Instead, Armster shared what she sees when she reads that story: “Mary and Martha learned the teachings of Jesus and were sent beyond that house church … to actively participate in this Jesus movement.”

Of the woman who was crippled for 18 years, Armster said, “The story calls me to pause. How many times and how many ways that we continue to do this in the church? We are more concerned about piety and we forget the promises of Jesus.”

Jesus confronted the economic, social and political institutions and demanded transformation for all people, she said.

“We can no longer be a the quiet in the land when a young man walks into a church and murders people in a Bible study … or when education is being replaced by the prison industrial complex.”

She closed with: The Jesus movement is not for the “comfortable, the satisfied or the insider.”