Can We Revive Augsburger's Mennonite Dream?

Menno Simons' most quoted text was "Other foundation can
no one lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ."

In the 1970's David Augsburger, as speaker on the Mennonite Hour, wrote a widely acclaimed piece called “The Mennonite Dream,” as follows:

From the beginning in 1525 through the present, Mennonites have pursued a dream,

• That it is reasonable to follow Jesus Christ daily, radically, totally in life.

• That it is practical to obey the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7), and the whole New Testament, literally, honestly, sacrificially.

• That it is thinkable to practice the way of reconciling love in human conflicts and warfare, nondefensively and nonresistantly.

• That it is possible to confess Jesus as Lord above all nationalism, racism or materialism.

• That it is feasible to build a communal church of brothers and sisters who are voluntarily, disciplined, and mutually committed to each other in Christ.

• That life can be lived simply, following the Jesus way in lifestyle, in possessions, in service.

Sixteenth-century Anabaptists, forebears of today's Mennonite, were not all of exactly the same mind, but generally embodied the above as what it meant to be followers of Jesus. True communities of faith were not simply to affirm certain correct beliefs but were to actually apply the teachings of Jesus to their daily lives. 

Most of today's heirs of that legacy profess the same vision, but I wonder whether our "dream" even remotely resembles those of our spiritual ancestors.

I must ask myself, "Am I moving toward, or ever further away from, the Jesus who is all about good news for the poor, release for the captives, and relief for the oppressed? Or am I/are we becoming ever more a people of wealth and privilege who see ourselves as benefactors who do lots of good but who remain entitled to all the comforts and conveniences of well-to-do North Americans?"

Adam M. L. Tice wrote the lyrics to the following award winning hymn, “The Church of Christ Cannot Be Bound” based on Menno Simons’ well-known quotation: “True evangelical faith cannot lie dormant. It clothes the naked, it feeds the hungry, it comforts the sorrowful, it shelters the destitute and serves those who harm it. It binds up that which is wounded.”

It is hymn #392 in the new Mennonite hymnal Voices Together:

The Church of Christ cannot be bound
by walls of wood or stone.
Where charity and love are found,
there can the church be known.

True faith will open up the door
and step into the street.
True service will seek out the poor
and ask to wash their feet.

True love will not sit idly by
when justice is denied.
True mercy hears the homeless cry
and welcomes them inside.

If what we have, we freely share
to meet our neighbor’s need,
then we extend the Spirit’s care
through ev’ry selfless deed.

The church of Christ cannot be bound
by walls of wood or stone.
Where charity and love are found,
there can the church be known.

“The Church of Christ Cannot Be Bound”

Text by Adam M. L. Tice, © 2005 GIA Publications, Inc. All rights reserved.

Reproduced by permission of GIA Publications, Inc. Any further reproduction requires permission from the publisher. For congregational reprint licensing, contact ONE LICENSE: http://www.onelicense.net

Here's an interesting postscript from Elwood Yoder's recent history of the Trissels Mennonite Church, where Augsburger served as pastor for much of the time he was the speaker on the Mennonite Hour:

"Twenty years after he left Trissels, while in an office at the Claremont School of Theology, from where Dr. David Augsburger earned his Phd, a stranger heard David's voice and asked if he was "David Augsburger." The man remembered Augsburger's voice from a radio broadcast twenty years earlier. While traveling across Oregon by car with his parents, the family had the radio on and happened to be listening to Augsburger's "Mennonite Dream" program. That night, in that car, the man told David Augsburger, "I became a Mennonite."