Photo: Drew Hart speaks during the closing adult worship session at the Mennonite Church USA convention. Photo by Vada Snider. 

In the final adult worship service of the 2017 Mennonite Church USA convention, Drew G.I. Hart, assistant professor of theology at Messiah College in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, reminded those gathered that the week’s theme, “love is a verb,” does not just call Mennonite Church USA to work beyond the church but within as well.

Hart discussed his own discovery of Anabaptist theology and the ways he realized, as he has traveled to speak in communities across the church, that what Anabaptists preach isn’t always the same as the behaviors that get enacted in Mennonite communities.

“I’ve been able to see the concrete ways love failed to be lived out,” he said.

Hart talked about a “diseased and disordered love” in the church, love that is limited so that “certain folks can be properly loved and others are partially loved, often around lines of Mennonite identity.”

“There is a long history of Mennonite Church USA putting an asterisk by our love,” he said. “So that some belong and some can find intimacy and others cannot.”

Hart named some concrete examples. For instance, Florida is home to a number of large Latino/a Mennonite communities, but these congregations and individuals were not as visible in worship, the delegate assembly or the Future Church Summit historical process. “In this lack of representation, were there obstacles that had not been overcome? Was there some kind of diseased and disordered love?”

Hart referenced a story told by Erica Littlewolf, a member of the Northern Cheyenne tribe who grew up on a reservation in Montana and attended White River Cheyenne Mennonite Church in Busby, Montana. Littlewolf talked about the arrival of Mennonite missionaries in her context and noted that as attendees at White River, she and members of her community were “recipients of only some of these services.” She said members of her community were not invited to participate in Mennonite colleges or given access to other denominational institutions and services.

And Hart referenced a conversation with Leonard Dow, former pastor of Oxford Circle Mennonite Church in Philadelphia, about the ways the Mennonite church used to raise large amounts of money to support primarily white Mennonite individuals who registered as conscientious objectors against war. “Why are we not willing to invest in communities of color in that way?” he said.

“Love is a choice we have to commit to,” he said. “I’m reminded by Anabaptists about the importance of this, but I don’t look to Mennonites to see that on the ground.”

Hart said that when he thinks of love in action, he thinks of his cousin Lisa, whose parents were murdered when an armed intruder broke into their home. Lisa was present in the house during the intrusion and survived because her grandfather happened to visit the house and was able to rescue her. As Lisa grew up older, she embodied radical love by going to meet with one of the men who committed the crime in order to extend forgiveness.

“Love is always calling us to see people’s full humanity and not to demonize,” said Hart. “What does it mean for us to become that kind of beloved community? Our flourishing is bound up together.”

Referencing Luke 4, Hart reminded those present that love in action looks like Jesus. Jesus said, ““The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor” (v. 18-19).

“Jesus was embodying love in very real, practical ways,” said Hart.

Hart ended his sermon by telling a story about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference’s work in Birmingham, Alabama. In 1963, SCLC leaders were struggling to figure out the way forward. People were not responding to the movement in the ways they had hoped, and they were running out of funds to bail out individuals who had been imprisoned while protesting. Easter weekend was approaching, and SCLC leaders, many of them ministers, were debating what they wanted to do. Should they go home to worship with their communities and congregations or should they stay and continue the work in Birmingham?

At one point during the conversation, Hart said, Dr. King left the room. When he came back in, he had traded his usual plain black suit for a blue work shirt and blue jeans, signaling, as Hart said, “That we’re going to embody the sign of the Good Friday story. We’re going to put ourselves in harm’s way on behalf of our neighbors.”

The group of leaders went out, marched and were all arrested.

“How are we going to put on our old blue jeans and not just continue on with religiosity?” said Hart. “We can put on blue jeans and fight for Shalom.…And move from diseased and disordered love to Jesus-shaped love. Go and love.”

After Hart’s call to action, worship leader Sarah Bixler invited attendees to take time to reflect on the week.

“Our hope as worship planners was that you would not leave here the same as you were before,” she said. “Has God showed you a new sense of call to ‘put on blue jeans’? Let’s recognize the places where our love is diseased and disordered. … And think, How is God leading me to enact God’s love in my life and in my spheres of influence?”

Attendees were invited to write down a concrete way that God was leading them to enact God’s love on a magnet that they could take home as a reminder of their calling and commitment to love.