Editorial

When we gather each Sunday to worship the Triune God, we proclaim that God is in charge, which means that we are not. In doing this we follow an early Anabaptist belief in self-surrender (“Gelassenheit”), offering ourselves in service to God.

The implications of such worship can get lost in the maze of issues we encounter. Then comes a witness that helps make it clear.

One evening at the Sept. 18-20 meetings of the Executive Board of Mennonite Church USA (see page 19), we met with leaders from several Mennonite congregations in Philadelphia. Someone asked Tuyen Nguyen, pastor of the local Vietnamese Mennonite Church, to tell about an experience he had some 15 years earlier, when he wasn’t a pastor but a member of that congregation.

During a worship service, he said, a man ran into the building, chased by another man, who carried a gun. Tuyen saw that the man being chased could not escape, so he stepped between him and the man with the gun. He did this without much thought, but his action grew out of his understanding that Jesus absorbed the violence of others in his own body, and we are to do the same.

The man with the gun stopped and pointed the gun at Tuyen a moment, then turned and left. Later he came back and talked to Tuyen. Some months later this man gave his life to Christ, was baptized and joined the congregation. The man he had chased that day was his father.

Tuyen told us, “We can be peaceful because God is in control.” By control, it was clear, he did not mean that God controlled every movement each person made. Each actor was free to act as he chose—the chaser, the chasee and Tuyen, who chose to stand between them. He meant that we are not in charge; God is, and we do not have to make things come out right. We are instead to surrender ourselves to God’s Spirit and in the way Jesus taught.

To be honest, we don’t like that word control. And if it means that whatever happens is God’s will, I don’t like it either. I don’t believe God gave Jeanne (my wife) cancer or caused her to be losing her eyesight. I don’t believe God wills that 32,000 children die each day from hunger and preventable diseases.

I also have to admit that I don’t have the power to fix those problems. I have abilities, and I need to be responsible to practice those in a way that glorifies God and shows love to all God’s creation.

Do I do that best by acting frantically, as if the world’s well-being depended on me? Or am I more faithful by practicing Gelassenheit, surrendering myself to God. Jesus exemplified this by emptying himself, “taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness” (Philippians 2:7).

Jesus shows us what it means to be human—and it doesn’t mean being in control. It means giving oneself in love. And it may mean, as Pastor Tuyen said, absorbing the violence of others in our body. We can do this, he said, because God is in control. And God’s control is not one of domination but of Self-giving love.

I spoke with Tuyen after the meeting, and he kept repeating this phrase. Rather than seeing that as a restriction on our freedom, he seemed to see it as a freeing notion. Seeing God, not ourselves, as in control frees us from fear, from the need to save ourselves. It helps us live in the reality that only God can save us—or anyone. Only God can bring ultimate good.
Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT) has adopted the slogan “Getting in the way,” which is exactly what Pastor Tuyen did. His wasn’t a well-thought-out strategy (not that those aren’t useful). He responded out of an ingrained belief—call it intuition—that our lives, and our deaths, are in God’s hands, not ours.

Whether or not we follow Ronald Sider’s plea to expand CPT, we can learn from the example of its workers, who daily offer themselves—their bodies and their safety—in service to others. And we can offer ourselves to one another—to our friends, our neighbors, even our enemies—because God is in charge. At least, that’s what we say when we worship.