Editorial

This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.—John 15:12,13

There are many ways we can give life to each other. Earlier this month, Betty Roth Weaver chose to give life to a colleague by donating a kidney. During this Thanksgiving season, Weaver’s commitment to another person in the church reminds us of one of our greatest blessings: the sisters and brothers who form our faith community.

Jesus did not ask us to love each other. He commanded it. For Mennonites, who usually bring a work ethic to every dimension of discipleship, we seldom assess our obedience to this commandment. Maybe it’s because it’s in the air we breathe. Like fish that take no notice of the water in which they swim, we are oblivious to the strong communitarian ethic in which we swim.

Weaver’s donation is a form of mutual aid. Mutual aid among Anabaptists is a distinctive. At the national, churchwide level, we have another mutual aid accomplishment for which we can also give thanks: passage of The Corinthian Plan.

Against the economic headwinds generated by the Great Recession, Mennonite Church USA delegates called for and got a health access plan that will provide insurance for many underinsured and uninsured pastors. We have published letters from some who consider this plan a half-measure—why not provide a health access plan for all members? But we must start somewhere, and this inspiring achievement may be the foundation upon which even greater mutual aid can be built.

Let us give thanks for each leader, congregation, agency and institution that helped make this happen. We know that the added cost may mean fewer resources for other important efforts. But The Corinthian Plan is also about donating our kidneys—vital resources—to each other. It is a tangible, measurable, verifiable way that we are fulfilling Christ’s commandment.

Our usually unrecognized communitarian impulses can lead to exclusivity. But in his Leadership column, Mennonite Mission Network president Stanley Green describes a way for us to apply our natural community-building instincts at the missional edge of the church.

“From imposition and objectification of the ‘targets’ of our mission,” Green writes, “perhaps we can also imagine new ways of being in mission. Beginning around the midpoint of last century, Mennonites took seriously the need to reflect the example of Christ in their encounter with people of other cultures. That approach can best be described as accompaniment.”

For the past year, the ministers at our congregation, College Mennonite Church in Goshen, Ind., have employed a phrase that means the same thing as “accompaniment.” Repeatedly we hear stories of members who “sit at the table of the other.”

There is something counterintuitive about this for Mennonites accustomed to providing potluck meals and then inviting others in. Now we are the ones sitting at meals provided by others’ hospitality. This is “accompaniment” and a way to love others who may become part of God’s kingdom.

After interviewing Weaver and Krissie Boss, the woman who would receive Weaver’s kidney, I began to see the strength of our communitarian practices in many places. Grace and Truth columnist Isaac Villegas provides another example with his usual eloquence.

“God’s grace is an invitation to get mixed up with a bunch of ordinary people,” Villegas writes, “and realize you love them—and to come to know this love as what God feels like.”

This Thanksgiving, let’s thank God for each other—grateful for the bonds of fellowship within our local faith communities as well as within Mennonite Church USA. In doing so, we realize a measure of our obedience to Christ’s commandment to give life to each other as friends.