We have an engaging Seekers class happening this season. Eight people plus Josue and I, have been meeting to talk about Anabaptism and living out faith. At one of our first meetings I mentioned the definition of Anabaptism that Mennonite theologian and author Palmer Becker coined and that Mennonite Church USA has been using. This caught people’s attention.

Jesus is the center of our faith.

Community is the center of our lives.

Reconciliation is the center of our work.

This three point definition is a lot catchier and easier to remember than the 24 articles of the 1995 Confession of Faith in a Mennonite Perspective. It is easier even than the seven articles from the first Anabaptist confession, the Schleitheim confession of 1527.

This summer we will be exploring these three phrases, devoting two Sundays to each of them. We will have a Sunday focused on each statement – Jesus, community, reconciliation –  and then look at each statement again. Hopefully by August 11, the last Sunday of the series, you will be comfortable speaking, and owning, this short statement of faith and life.

Palmer Becker uses “the center” as he defines these three aspects of being Mennonite. Jesus is the center, community is the center, reconciliation is the center. Some years ago, when there was a lot of turmoil in the Mennonite world, (but everything is hunky-dory now, right?) there was a lot of talk amongst pastors and leaders contrasting the centered set with the bounded set. The centered set means that there is something at the center that draws us together – in this case Jesus. The bounded set means that we are held together by boundaries that surround us. Pastors and leaders are encouraged to worry less about the boundaries and more about what draws us in. And it can be hard to focus on the center when there are renegades on the edges that insist on challenging the boundaries and breaking the rules.

Boundaries are important, make no mistake. We need boundaries to keep ourselves safe, to keep our children safe. The boundaries we include in our safe congregation policy are not arbitrary. They are well thought out and protective. The pandemic gave us a chance to try out some new boundaries, that 6 foot social distancing rule that was meant to protect us. Some people were determined that the six feet rule was an unnecessary boundary and they refused to observe it. Other folks, some with compromised immune systems, needed and appreciated that boundary. It was helpful for their physical and mental well-being.

You might think of some boundaries you have had to draw to keep yourself healthy – emotionally, physically, spiritually. Maybe there are people or activities that you choose to avoid, topics of conversation that just aren’t worth your energy. You draw a boundary and you don’t engage. It is not always easy to draw boundaries. It takes discipline to make them and discipline to stick to them.

On the other hand, sometimes in the church, we spend so much energy and attention on boundaries that we lose sight of our priorities, what is at the center. Palmer Becker points us to centered set thinking when he says Jesus is the “center” of our faith. We are drawn to the center, we look to Jesus, and we don’t spend a lot of energy on the outer boundaries. This is a different way of thinking for those Mennonites who grew up with clear boundary markers like plain clothes, black bumpers, baptism class at 13, shoofly pie and verenika. Sometimes the boundaries are important, especially at the beginning of faith. But now, 500 years into Anabaptism, we can probably afford to shift our thinking. We can focus on the life of Jesus as the center.

While Jesus is of course central to Christianity, the Anabaptist approach differs a bit from mainstream Christianity. For example, it is not unusual for visitors to ask why we don’t have a cross in the sanctuary. If I am feeling defensive, I make sure to tell the questioner that there are crosses – carved in the ends of each pew – and “sometimes we have one on the table.” But usually I say that as Mennonites we focus less on Jesus’ death on the cross and more on how he lived his life. Jesus as the center of our faith is informed by Jesus’ ministry and what he taught. We are less focused on the last days and hours of Jesus’ torture and death, and more focused on Jesus’ life, the healings and teachings, the parables and stories that Jesus tells.

It is not that we don’t recognize Jesus’ suffering and death. We read and know that tragic part of the story. And we know that suffering is part of the ongoing experience in the world, even among members of the church, sometimes suffering is even caused by the church. Suffering and death are real. The suffering and death present in our lives, in our families, in the world, can be overwhelming. We don’t deny that suffering and death are part of the human experience or part of Jesus’ experience.

But to focus on the cross and Jesus’ death, to say that Jesus’ suffering saves the world, comes awfully close to saying that the suffering of people, and the planet, is purposeful. That it is intentional. It is too easy for those who have power to say that those who suffer are in communion with Jesus, that suffering is redemptive. This is an abuse of power and an abuse of the Jesus story.

Can we derive meaning from suffering and death? Absolutely. And that can be transformational. To understand and imbue suffering with meaning is a mature step of faith. But suffering and death is not the purpose of our lives, nor was suffering and death the purpose of Jesus’ time on earth. To put Jesus’ life at the center gives us guidance for how to be part of responding to suffering.

Just because we have Jesus as the center of our faith doesn’t mean we ignore the suffering that often happens at the boundaries. It means that even as we focus on Jesus, we keep some attention on the boundaries – because that is the space that Jesus himself occupied, where Jesus did his work. As a poor Jewish man living under imperial Rome, Jesus carved out a place for himself as he traveled the edges of society.

In Mark’s gospel today, Jesus travels to his hometown synagogue with the disciples trailing after him. People are amazed at Jesus’ teaching but their amazement is not admiration. Instead, they see his ordinariness, that he is the son of Mary (no mention of a father.) The people know his brothers by name – and they know his sisters, who are not named. In some translations it says that the people take offense at Jesus. How dare he come and preach to them. Other translations say that Jesus being the hometown boy is a stumbling block for the townspeople. They just can’t see how this common person from among them can point to anything holy.

Either way we read it, Jesus is not well received by the people who know him and his family; the locals refuse to be impressed. Jesus recognizes their reluctance; he understands that a prophet is not honored in their hometown.

Sometimes hometowns are happy to claim the people that leave and make it big. (Think Girl Named Tom, the Liechty siblings from Pettisville, Ohio who won The Voice competition on TV. The Mennonite community is happy to claim and brag about them.) But prophets? Prophets shake things up, disturb the status quo. (Think of African American theologian Vincent Harding who called on his fellow Mennonites in the late 1960s to expand the peace position. Harding said, the peace position should include working against racism. He was so disappointed in the response, in the resistance, that he left the Mennonite church for 40 years.) People who are comfortable do not want to be made uncomfortable – which is often the job of a prophet, to speak the uncomfortable truth.

Jesus is the unacceptable prophet – and is practically unable to do the healing he is accustomed to providing in his itinerant ministry. So he and his disciples go on their way to other towns and villages. Jesus does not create a fuss, pouting or shouting about not being accepted. Instead Jesus instructs the disciples on how to do the ministry that is central to his life. (Does Jesus imagine that one of disciples will be an accepted prophet in his hometown some day in the future?)

Jesus’ prophetic vision is not about accumulating all the power for himself. In this passage in Mark’s gospel, Jesus encourages and empowers the disciples to find their own strength, their own connection to God. And through this connection with the Holy they can spread healing and the possibilities of restoration to others. Jesus sends his disciples out, not alone, but with a partner. They are commissioned to heal, anoint and bring peace to troubled souls.

Jesus knows from his experience in Nazareth that not every place will welcome the disciples. His instruction to take nothing but a walking stick creates a kind of vulnerability that centers the humanity of the disciples. Or is this the sign of a prophet, that they carry only a staff and look powerful – but helpless? Is this the way to get people to invite them into their homes? Is this the way boundaries are broken down, by seeing each other as humans first, by recognizing the vulnerabilities in others – and in ourselves?

Jesus tells the disciples to stay in one house per village. This allows them to get to know their hosts, build up some relationships among the people, instead of moving from house to house each day. And if the people do not accept them, the disciples are to leave. They don’t need to spend their energy there. They are to shake the dust from their feet and move on to the next place. It’s as if Jesus says “stay centered on your work; don’t get distracted by the blocks that some people might put up.”

Reading these instructions, I wonder why Jesus doesn’t want the disciples to be more persistent. I wonder if there is something about shaking the dust from their feet that is sort of like a curse. It is translated as “a testimony against them.” It reminds me of the tradition in some Muslim, Hindu and Buddhist cultures where it is disrespectful to show the bottom of your foot. Is Jesus’ impatience showing here? Or is simply Jesus saying, don’t worry about it, just move on and go to the next town. Stay centered on your work, on your calling. You won’t connect with everyone.

So Jesus is the center of our faith. But that doesn’t mean that we put on blinders and see only the radiant Jesus. No, with Jesus as the center of our faith we look around to see what Jesus saw, to walk where Jesus walked. We blur the boundaries that might be protective for those who hold power but are damaging for those who are kept out by the boundaries. With Jesus at the center of our faith, we risk being rejected just as Jesus was.

We don’t see it in the Mark 6 passage that we heard today but Jesus also responds to and interacts with people who have power, the religious leaders. He doesn’t spend all his time with those who are impoverished. When those with power venture to the edges where poverty, poor health and unpredictability are, Jesus meets the powerful there, in their humanity. Jesus responds to their needs if they come in good faith. This is good news for those of us who travel with more than a walking stick. We too can meet Jesus when we venture to the edges where he hangs out.

Just as Jesus’ first followers didn’t always understand him, we may also misunderstand. We may disagree about what it means to follow in the Jesus way, to have Jesus at the center. We are human; we will likely get it wrong sometimes.

Yet we are bold to say that Jesus is the center of our faith. And we will likely find him on the edges, at the boundaries, healing and offering hope. May we find the courage to humbly join him.