Pastor Jin, a visitor from China, was just warming up his preaching at Rosthern Mennonite Church in Saskatchewan when he said he wanted to tell a story that had changed his life.

While in the Chinese merchant marine, he served on ships all over the world. It was a rough life: He had encounters with organized crime and always had to watch his back. He experienced the same feeling later in his career as he climbed the ranks in the Communist Party.

A dramatic conversion led him to become a pastor, with an opportunity to study in South Korea.

But he never understood Jesus’ teaching so clearly until he heard a story from a Korean pastor. It went this way:

There once was a man jailed for his faith. He found a way to escape by tying rags together and lowering himself out of a window. As he ran across a frozen pond, his captors pursued him. Just as he thought freedom was in his grasp, he heard the ice crack and turned around to see the jailer fall into the water.

By this time, most of the congregation recognized the story of Dirk Willems, Anabaptist martyr.

But Pastor Jin thought he was telling them something new. He continued:

The man turned around, saw the jailer in the water, went back and pushed his head under the water to make sure he would drown.

The congregation gasped.

“No!” Pastor Jin said. “That’s what I would have done. That is what my whole life taught me: Get them before they get me.

“But this man did something radical. He saved his captor. He gave up his freedom and later his life because he knew that following Jesus meant loving his enemies.”

Pastor Jin said this story opened his eyes to see following Jesus in a completely new way.

“Jesus wasn’t just talking about some spiritual or philosophical love of enemies,” he said. “He was talking about a practical, pull-them-out-of-the-water love of enemies. This shook me to the core. I needed to go back and reexamine all of Jesus’ teachings, because this was real-life stuff.”

Pastor Jin had heard the story of Dirk Willems from Kim Kyoung Jung, then director of the Korea Anabaptist Center in Seoul, South Korea. But he hadn’t known the connection between the Korean Anabaptists and the Canadian Mennonites.

Pastor Jin isn’t alone. As I visit Anabaptist-Mennonites across Asia, one of the most common pictures I see in homes and offices is the image of Dirk Willems saving the life of his enemy. This is their story. It takes on an added significance for a church at the margins of society as they live the reality of Jesus’ radical teaching to love your enemies.

Jeanette Hanson is director of International Witness for Mennonite Church Canada.