In Lieu Of Flowers

Sisters Maggie, Fannie Mae and I at a
little family gathering yesterday.

I feel over-the-moon blessed this morning for the gift of another birthday, a beautiful-beyond-words day to celebrate 79 years of life.

I've already had more than enough birthday wishes, congratulations, cards and cakes to highlight my welcome into a rural Oklahoma family of two loving parents and seven older siblings on a Friday afternoon so many years ago. And yesterday I got to be with my two remaining sisters, both of whom live in Virginia, and the two of us made a long distance call to our only remaining brother, who lives in Costa Rica and who just celebrated his 88th.

So join me in any or all of the following:

- Do a random act of kindness for a loved one--or a complete stranger.

- Offer heartfelt thanks to God for undeserved grace and blessings, and especially for family, friends and good neighbors.

- Intercede and act on behalf of millions of people enduring suffering and hardships.

- Spend some quality time with someone who needs your extra love and attention, starting with your loved ones.

- Make a generous donation to a good cause of your choice. Here are a few of mine:

http://www.gemeinschafthome.org/ (Gemeinschaft Home roof project)
https://donate.mcc.org/ (Mennonite Central Committee refugee relief)

One Of My Ancestors Was An Unaccompanied Minor

Ships like these carried many of our
forebears to the new world.

Reading about month-long northward journeys of refugees fleeing violence in places like Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras reminded me of the youthful flight of one of my own maternal ancestors.

We don't know the exact date of his birth, nor the names or history of his parents, but my great great grandfather Christian Nisly (or Nüsli, meaning a small nut tree;-) came to the port of Philadelphia in 1804 from Switzerland at only 16 or 17.

We know few details about his voyage, or whether he was accompanied by any relatives, but in migrating here he was completely separated from the rest of his family, never to see them again.

What would have motivated someone so young to leave all behind for an uncertain future in the new world? Most likely he and his Anabaptist family made this difficult choice to avoid his being drafted into the Swiss army, which regularly supplied mercenary troops to fight frequent wars in neighboring lands. As followers of Jesus opposed to killing people for any reason, this may have seemed like least awful option.

On the perilous month-long journey, young Christian and his fellow voyagers endured the hardship of a severe storm that damaged their vessel as well as experiencing the terror of being detained on the way by a hostile pirate ship of some sort, although we only have his sketchy notes to base this on.

Young Christian worked for an unrelated Zug family in Philadelphia for several years to pay for his journey, then moved to frontier Somerset County in western Pennsylvania, where he met and married Sarah Miller. There he was ordained to the ministry, and later moved to Holmes County, Ohio, where they raised a family of 14 children. He died there at age 73 in 1848.

Their youngest son Abraham and family moved to Indiana and from there to a new Amish community near Hutchinson, Kansas, a pioneer town then only 12 years old, in 1883, after his second wife Dinah died. Just two years later he himself passed away at age 61. He and Dinah's oldest son Eli, my maternal grandfather, was left to look after the remaining members of his family. 

At 19 Eli and another young male friend had traveled by freight train to Hutchinson, accompanying five train car loads of horses, farm implements and household furnishings belonging to their respective families. Over the first winter on the prairie, the two families lived in a single makeshift shack and used twisted bundles of grass and cow chips for cooking and keep themselves warm over winter.  

At age 23, and soon after his father died, Eli married my grandmother Fannie Troyer, then only 19. Fannie, whose mother had died when she was only 13, had responded to a call to go to Kansas to do housework for second-time widower Abraham Nisly while only a teen. After marrying Eli, Fannie bore 13 children, the ninth of whom was my mother Mary.

As I reflect on these parts of my family story I wonder about the impact of all the traumas the Nisly clan experienced through multiple premature deaths and many migrations. And I’m sure many of your immigrant family stories contain the same elements of both great hardship and great blessing.

Here are links to more family stories:

https://harvyoder.blogspot.com/2017/03/a-1742-journey-on-francis-and-elizabeth.html

https://harvyoder.blogspot.com/search?q=a+man+of+sorrows

Legal and Moral Are Not The Same

Jesus represents the ultimate level of moral development.

Much of the national debate on immigration seems to be about what is legal and what is illegal, and therefore can never be tolerated. Our president has said his hands are tied regarding any changes in refugee policies unless or until Congress acts to change existing immigration laws he is sworn to uphold. To his credit, he later determined he could accomplish this impossibility and mandated more humane policies by executive order.

A couple of questions: 

1. Is everyone who crosses a border without a passport (i.e., an actual asylum seeker) thereby committing an illegal act? Fortunately, our nation actually has legal and constitutional provisions for providing refuge for people whose lives are in danger in their country of origin.

2. If accepting endangered refugees were in fact illegal, should it be? Again, America has historically seen itself as a place of welcome for oppressed people and for "huddled masses yearning to breathe free."  

3. Should "legal" be the primary basis for judging what is moral and right? Looking back, we agree that slave laws and Jim Crow policies, for example, while legal, were anything but moral. And all martyrs, with the exception of victims of mob lynchings, have suffered and died at the hands of authorities who were carrying out some fully legal mandate. They defended their acts of torturing and killing believers because they were judged, by law, as bad people committing criminal offenses.

4. Are there precedents in the Bible for doing things that are illegal but which are just, moral and even mandated by our faith? There are of course many such examples, such as the midwives who refused to dispose of male babies, Moses' parents who hid their male child, young Babylonian captives like Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, and Jesus himself as he appealed to a higher law in his observance of Sabbath and other well established rules of his time.

5. At what level of  Kohlberg's stages of moral reasoning do most of us operate as churches and as individuals? This could be a fruitful conversation to have, as to whether we make our decisions largely from a human "law and order" perspective or from the perspective of a people governed by the heaven-headquartered Kingdom of God. See  https://www.acpeds.org/kohlbergs-theory-of-moral-development

Bear Left, Then My Place Is On Your Right--You Can't Miss It

Here's how roads were laid out where I grew up
as a young child.

When our family moved to the Shenandoah Valley from eastern Kansas in the 40's we had to get used to people giving us directions in terms of 'going left' or 'turning right' rather than referring to points north, south, east or west. The latter made sense in parts of the Midwest where rural roads are laid out like city blocks of a square mile each, but for finding one's way among winding roads in the Virginia countryside, not so much.

When it comes to locating each other's ideological and faith positions, we need to avoid creating caricatures of people as being located simply as a part of "the left" or "the right". As someone has wisely noted, that all depends on who we are standing beside.

As believers, we need to think instead of "above" or "below", and to discern together what is in line with God's will and what, by contrast, represents short sighted and near sighted earth-based wisdom. In other words, what does it mean for us to sincerely pray that "[God's] will to be done on earth as it is in heaven"?

God's people seek to orient themselves by having a common compass set to their pole star, then seeking the best means possible toward their desired ends--as as in "doing justice, loving mercy and walking humbly with our God." 

But to polarize, stigmatize and stereotype others because they may not all use the same language or apply their faith in exactly the same ways as we, then lump one group (the left) with Hamas and the other (the right) with Hitler is just not rational or helpful. 

My Eight Rules For Posting On Social Media

As a frequent user of Facebook, I want to be accountable for observing the following Eight Commandments: 

1) Separate people from their positions, then address positions without attacking persons.

2) Avoid attaching labels to others they do not choose for themselves (leftist, fascist, socialist, racist, liberal, conservative, etc.).

3) Never engage in derogatory name calling (idiot, stupid, ignorant, crazy, hypocritical, etc.).

4) Affirm others' valid points.

5) Treat others with the same courtesy and respect you expect of them. 

6) Never imply that people with whom you disagree are less intelligent or less worthy than yourself. 

7) Avoid the use of generalities like, "always", "never", "forever", "all the time", etc.

8) Post only statements that can be verified by reliable, fact-checked sources.

From Mere Meeting Places To Holy Spaces

This was the plain meeting house of our family's congregation from 1946-54.

My earliest memories of church go back to eastern Kansas, where I recall our Amish congregation meeting at our house when it was our turn to host. Straight benches without backs were brought in by horse and wagon and packed into our living room and dining room area. I remember the slow songs in German and two ministers speaking for a total of 1 1/2 hours, followed by a simple meal of coffee, hot soup and crackers and home made bread.

Everything seemed long, drawn out and solemn for a five year old, much as I always liked getting together for this weekly social event at someone’s house. I’m sure nothing about the format for the service had changed much for generations. There was clearly something in these people’s Anabaptist DNA that had them keeping things simple, and not conforming to worldly impulses to build elaborate buildings with fine furnishings, stained glass windows, elevated pulpits and robed preachers and choirs.

When we moved to Virginia when I was 6 we did have a simple Amish church meeting house, with a long, tin roof shed built next to it for all the horses. Inside the meeting space there were unvarnished pine benches, with backs, on an unvarnished pine floor. The ministers spoke from a plain pine table on the same level as the congregation, to women sitting on one side and men on the other.

From its beginnings at Pentecost, the Jewish church in Jerusalem continued to meet at the temple for certain acts of worship, but met in each others homes for the “breaking of bread,” fellowship and prayers (Acts 2:46). New Testament references to the “church in your house” are found throughout the New Testament. In Acts 20:7-8 we have an account of believers at Troas meeting in an upper room of a house on the first day of the week to “break bread” and to hear the traveling missionary Paul speak with them. But normally each member was to bring “a hymn, a word of instruction, a revelation, a tongue, or an interpretation” (I Corinthians 14:26).

Christian understandings about holy spaces were that the resurrected Jesus represented the very presence of God, and that the congregation was the living and breathing 'house' which God inhabited. Jesus himself stated that the Jerusalem temple would be destroyed and replaced by his resurrected body (John 2:19-23). The apostles affirmed that “in Christ all the fullness of the Godhead dwells bodily” (Colossians 2:9), and that believers are the new “temple” in which God lives (I Corinthians 3:16, Ephesians 2:19-22, I Peter 2:4-10). 

The word church (ecclesia, assembly) was used only for the community of believers, never for a building in which they met. In fact there is no mention of any special building for Christian worship in the New Testament, and no elevation of clergy to special positions above that of other members of the congregation. All believers were seen as priests, and elders were a part of the 'laos' (from which we get the tern 'laity', meaning, the people), appointed by the laying on of hands to lead the called out people of God.

In a later development, and as new congregations were formed in a given city, a piece of bread from the communion service of the bishop (lead elder or overseer, the “episkopos”) was sometimes sent to other churches to add to their eucharist bread as a symbol of their unity. As time went on and churches grew in size, some believers’ homes were renovated or added to for exclusive use as meeting spaces, but prior to 200 A.D. there is no evidence of any buildings of a unique Christian character actually constructed for that purpose. And whereas in both pagan and Jewish worship practices priests carried out sacred rituals in spaces separate from the rest of the congregation, Christian leaders met with their fellow believers around a common table in ordinary household-type settings.

Early on, some Christians in Rome gathered in underground burial places called catacombs, and even built some of these for the burial of their own dead, including, of course, those who had died for their faith. This they could legally do, and they were able to include chambers in the catacombs that could be used for safe worship spaces and for the veneration of martyrs. Some Christians even organized themselves as funeral guilds to give them added protection and for the right to have common property such as burial chapels both under and above ground. These developments further led to the concept of holy spaces for Christian worship.

Meanwhile, more elaborately furnished homes and funerary chapels were being built in other places, including baptistries, round or polygonal structures used for baptismal ceremonies. By the end of the third century, numerous “houses of the church” (domus) were being built along the lines of existing house architecture of the time. These were never referred to as temples, but by the fourth century, the term basilica began to be used for some of these, a basilica being a special hall built by an emperor for public use. Some of these were destroyed during various waves of persecution of the church, but some were later allowed to be rebuilt.

As time went on, more elaborate liturgies and the increased elevation of the office of ordained clergy led to the development of the a “presbytery” at the front of these buildings, usually a raised area with a special chair for the bishop, along with other members of the clergy, and often separated from the rest of the congregation by a low wooden railing. Within that area was a special table for the eucharist which later evolved into an altar with closed sides. There were sometimes additional rooms for the instruction of new believers, a baptistry and a confirmation room, a dining room for meals offered for the poor, a vestry to store vessels, and sometimes a library. Additional rooms for storing food or clothing for the needy were not uncommon, and eventually some even included offices and living quarters for the clergy and their staff. This was all before Christianity was officially recognized as an approved religion.

Altar of the Crucifixion in Jerusalem's
Church of the Holy Sepulchre

After 313 A.D. and the rise of the emperor Constantine, elaborate church structures were built all over the empire, projects that were promoted, financed and furnished by Constantine himself. This emperor, though not officially a Christian until he was baptized on his deathbed, sought to restore the 

glory of Rome through erecting lavish monuments to the Christian faith. This ushered in a new era of extravagant and expensive temples associated with Christian worship, a far cry from the humble house church origins of the faith, and in seeming contradiction to what Jesus, the apostles, and the first Christian martyr Stephen (Acts 7:44-50) taught about the need for sacred spaces for worship.

Much of the information in this essay is from a paper I wrote as a seminary Church History 505 requirement in 1993, "From House Church to Church of the Holy Sepulchre."

We Need 'Cities Of Refuge' Not More Border Walls

Should we provide havens for those whose lives are in danger?

There was one picture in the Bible story book we had at home that struck special fear in me as a child. It showed the sheer terror in the face of a man fleeing for his life to a city of refuge, his avenger in hot pursuit, as in the illustration on the left.

The Bible story was based on a passage in Deuteronomy 19 in which designated sanctuary cities were to be provided as safe havens for those who might have accidentally caused someone's death and which resulted in some family member of the victim seeking revenge.

Today millions of refugees around the world are fleeing in similarly desperate ways, including many from gang-ridden neighboring countries like Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador to the south of us. In most of these cases, however, they are not in flight because they have caused harm to others, but because they are in danger of being murdered due to gang corrupted governments (traditionally supported by our country) which are unwilling or unable to rid themselves of drug-financed cartels who make life increasingly unbearable and unsafe.

Not only do many of these people deserve to have 'cities of refuge' to flee to--in Central America itself as well as along our southern border--but 'underground railroads' to help them find their way to such sanctuaries.

I just got a copy of the book, "When Humans Were Sold As Chattel" compiled by William A. Good for the local Long's Chapel Preservation Society, that describes some of the heroic work of conductors and hospitality providers for the underground railroad that helped countless slaves fleeing with their families to freedom in the north and in Canada prior to the Civil War. The parallels are striking, with African-American families in the South making heroic efforts to stay together and find a decent and safe life for themselves, and with compassionate people of amazing courage and at great sacrifice helping them along their way.

Present day versions of underground railroads and cities of refuge could be a part of an answer to our refugee crisis, and would be a far better and more humane investment than pouring countless billions in more border walls.