An Anabaptist Heritage/Reformation Sunday Sermon Based on Jeremiah 31:31-34 and Revelation 21:1-27
Gerald J. Mast, First Mennonite Church, Bluffton, October 25, 2020
A few years after the Apollo 11 astronauts planted an American flag on the moon, the great Mennonite revival preacher Andrew Jantzi came to my home church and preached a sermon that I never forgot. He told a story that did not appear in the news coverage of the moon landing, because, as he said, NASA was desperately trying to keep it a secret. According to Jantzi, when the astronauts landed on the moon they undertook an unreported experiment: they deployed a large telescope and pointed it out into space where they discovered a giant cube hurtling toward the earth from only a few light years away. The astronauts were able to measure this cube—which they found to be exactly fifteen hundred cubic miles in size. Jantzi said the astronauts also could tell how fast this cube was travelling and they calculated it would arrive to earth within five years. Obviously, this was the holy city, the New Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God, and it was going to hit us before I could even grow up and get a driver’s license.
Remembering the fake news of Jantzi’s New Jerusalem cube calls to mind another worrisome New Jerusalem story from deep in our Anabaptist past. On February 24, 1534, the Anabaptists residing in the north German city of Münster won all of the seats on the city council during a landslide election, an unlikely event that confirmed for them that the New Jerusalem was arriving in their city. But this Anabaptist electoral victory in Münster turned into a catastrophe of terror and death. We don’t tell the story of Münster Anabaptism very often in the Mennonite church because it challenges our preferred narrative, which is that our faith ancestors were all harmless pacifists who were unreasonably and violently persecuted by their Catholic and Protestant neighbors. When we remember Münster, we can begin to understand why Christendom was so terrified of Anabaptism, why we might have been terrified of Anabaptism, had we lived in the sixteenth century. On this Anabaptist Heritage Sunday, only a week before a consequential American election, let’s remember what happened in Münster, and how Menno Simons renewed a peaceable Anabaptist faith from the dustbin of that disaster. Our story begins ten years earlier with Anabaptist beginnings in the Swiss Reformation at Zurich.
SWISS ANABAPTISM AND THE PEASANTS WAR
In the beginning, in 1524, an argument was brewing between a group of young activists and the Zurich city council over the reform of worship practices in the city church. This argument became focused around the question of infant baptism just as the German peasants were preparing for armed insurrection against the nobility. The peasants, inspired by Martin Luther’s call for the priesthood of all believers, demanded more social equality and the right to choose their own pastors; they wanted tax revenue reallocated for the common good, and they wanted to restore the public use of forests and pastures.
In January 1525, in direct defiance of a law passed by the Zurich City Council, Conrad Grebel, along with his friends Felix Manz and George Blaurock gathered in the home of Felix’s mother Anna Manz, along with their dissenting friends, to offer and receive baptism upon confession of faith, thereby repudiating the baptism they had received as children. This choice of obedience to Christ, which was at the same time an act of civil and religious disobedience, is rightfully considered to be the beginning of the Mennonite church, and of all churches that claim an Anabaptist faith heritage.
We sometimes forget the chaos and violence of the context in which this momentous baptism ceremony took place. Across southwestern Germany, peasants were presenting demands to political authorities, including to numerous city councils, and gathering momentum for armed revolution. Peasant bands occupied monasteries and stormed castles. In Weinsburg, they burned down the castle and brutally killed over seventy landowners by forcing them to run a gauntlet of pikes. Although many peasants repudiated the violence at Weinsburg, Luther was so outraged that he wrote a blistering tract against the rebel peasants, calling them instruments of the devil intent on stealing property and destroying society. Luther urged the princes to send their armies to put down the insurrection, famously stating: “Stab, smite, slay, whoever can.” The princes did send their armies to stab, smite, and slay, killing nearly a hundred thousand peasants by the end of the conflict.
After the bloody end of this revolution, the Anabaptist movement that had begun in Zurich with a clandestine baptism ceremony in the home of an unwed mother became the main vehicle for expressing the social demands of the peasants, now in localized and mostly nonviolent networks. In the village of Zollikon, only a few miles from Zurich, Anabaptist dissenters formed their first congregation in the wake of the Zurich baptisms, famously breaking the locks off the doors of their homes to express their commitment to the gospel of peace and to sharing their possessions. Across Switzerland and South Germany, and eventually to the north all the way to the Netherlands, dissident congregations began voluntarily reorganizing their worship and social relationships in accordance with the teachings of Christ and the early apostles.
SEPARATION AT SCHLEITHEIM
In 1527, a group of leaders from these emergent Anabaptist congregations met at the little Swiss border town of Schleitheim to articulate their convictions: baptism is for people who confess their faith; the Lord’s Supper is for those who are living justly and peacefully with one another; those who betray the congregational covenant are to be excommunicated, not executed; followers of Christ should speak the truth without swearing oaths; the faithful church must separate from the structures of power and iniquity in the world and reject the use of the sword for either policing or military purposes. The Schleitheim Brotherly Union made one small concession on the sword: while the sword was outside the perfection of Christ, in the hands of a magistrate, it could be used by God to maintain the social and legal order. But this is why a genuine Christian could never be a magistrate.
In the coming years, this distinct articulation of two-kingdom theology became the dominant approach by which peaceful Anabaptist congregations defined their relationship to the Christian governments of Europe who for the most part were trying to exterminate them. Within this dualist framework, Anabaptists taught that spiritual equality, sharing resources, and loving enemies were faithful practices of the Christ-following congregation, but they did not apply these teachings to the vast wealth of the nobility or the lethal powers of the magistrate, who were regarded as acting outside the perfection of Christ, and therefore also outside the discipline of a faithful Christian congregation.
ANABAPTIST RULE IN MÜNSTER[1]
As Anabaptist convictions spread to North Germany and the Netherlands, they were filtered through the charismatic preaching of an evangelist by the name of Melchior Hoffman, who claimed that the time of the new covenant prophesied by Jeremiah had arrived, that in baptism every believer now had the law written in their hearts. He also prophesied that Christ would return and set up the New Jerusalem in Strasbourg, a prophecy that led to his imprisonment and the banishment of Anabaptists from Strasbourg. As magistrates throughout Europe increased their persecution and execution of Anabaptists, Hoffman called a halt to outward baptism and Lord’s Supper ceremonies, emphasizing that the inner spiritual realities they signified were more important anyway.
While Melchior Hoffman languished in prison, a Haarlem baker he had baptized named Jan Matthias gained influence among Melchiorite Anabaptists in Amsterdam. Matthias lifted Hoffman’s ban on believers baptism and announced that the time had come to take up the sword of vengeance in order to help usher in the victorious return of Christ. He sent out messengers to proclaim his message, to baptize new believers, and to form congregations of covenanters—those among whom the new covenant had been fulfilled in believer’s baptism. Among these messengers was a young tailor from Leiden, Jan Bockelson, who took the urgent message to Münster, where he converted and rebaptized the city’s Lutheran preacher, Bernard Rothmann. Soon Rothmann was preaching Anabaptism and community of goods from the pulpit, teaching that all who were rebaptized should give up their wealth and share their possessions in common, so that there would be no more poverty and hunger in the city.
When back in Amsterdam the prophet Jan Matthias heard of this development, he proclaimed Münster to be the New Jerusalem and packed his bags to go there. Soon Anabaptists from all over North Germany and the Netherlands began making the journey to Münster. As migrant Anabaptists arrived in Münster, mass rebaptisms were underway and redistribution of property had begun, creating pressure for unconverted Catholics and Lutherans to flee the city and for Anabaptist partisans to become the majority. This demographic upheaval is partly why the Anabaptists in Münster won the city council elections in February of 1534, much to the chagrin and great concern of the city’s Catholic territorial ruler, the Prince Bishop Franz of Waldeck, who began assembling an army to besiege the city.
When the Anabaptists won this election, they experienced it as miraculous, a sign of God’s favor. And so they installed a Lutheran businessman turned Anabaptist as their mayor and took over the city completely, even as the armies of the Prince Bishop gathered outside the gates. In the ecstasy of the Anabaptist electoral victory, the prophet Jan Mathias claimed that Jesus would return in April on Easter Sunday to judge the ungodly and to bring an end to the present age. On Holy Saturday, Jan Matthias rode out of the city, followed by twenty Anabaptist soldiers, to confront the Prince Bishop’s armies. The Bishop’s soldiers ran the prophet through, dismembered his body, and put his head on a pole outside the city.
Inside the city, on Easter Sunday, there was a great disappointment. Not only did Jesus not return to rule the world from Münster, but the prophet whose leadership they trusted was dead, with his head on a pike. At this time of crisis, Jan of Leiden, the messenger Jan Matthias had sent to Münster—stepped into the breach. Jan of Leiden proclaimed himself the king of Münster and declared a theocracy in which biblical law was followed and applied by a royal court of twelve elders. The new king instituted the death penalty for acts of greed, for blasphemy, for cursing the city’s leaders, for dishonoring father or mother, and for adultery and same-sex relations. He established polygamy as the biblical form of marriage, he married Jan Mathias’s widow, and he took fifteen more wives for himself, eventually beheading one of them in the public square when she disobeyed him. He also organized a formidable military force of sixteen hundred disciplined Anabaptist soldiers in defense of the city. Jan’s preaching from the Old Testament inspired a fifteen year old girl, Hille Feicken, to follow in the footsteps of the biblical heroine Judith, who seduced the Assyrian general Holofernes and cut off his head. Emulating Judith, Hille put on a beautiful dress and marched out of the city into the military camp of the besieging armies with the intention of assassinating the Prince Bishop. When a deserter from Münster revealed her plot, Hille was tortured and beheaded, maintaining her Anabaptist faith to the end.
Despite Jan of Leiden’s considerable political and military skills, he was ultimately unable to prevent the conditions of misery and starvation produced by the siege. Eventually, another deserter opened a gate to the prince-bishop’s army. The army sacked the city, torturing and executing its leaders, and placing their broken bodies in cages that were famously hoisted into the St. Lambert church tower—where they still appear today as a warning to all religious and political fanatics.
MENNO’S NEW JERUSALEM POLITICAL VISION
All over Europe, people were captivated and horrified by the spectacle of the Anabaptist kingdom in Münster and its ghastly outcome. Among those watching with sorrow was a Catholic priest in the little Dutch village of Pingjum named Menno Simons. He was sympathetic to the Anabaptist cause but hesitated to give up his comfortable position as a parish priest for a life of risk and poverty. It is perhaps one of the most unlikely events in Anabaptist history that the cautious Menno decided to join the Anabaptist covenanters through baptism right after the fall of Anabaptist Münster, when the Anabaptist cause was most discredited.
Not long after baptism, ordination followed, and during the next several decades, Menno’s leadership helped to transform Anabaptism across Europe into an evangelical movement defined by the gospel of peace; his vision and writings were so influential that pacifist Anabaptists everywhere eventually became known as Mennonites, both in his own North German and Dutch context, but eventually also worldwide. That is why our congregation is called a Mennonite church, even though it was founded by Swiss immigrants whose direct spiritual lineage lies more with Conrad Grebel than with Menno Simons.
Menno repudiated the violence of the Münsterites but he did not abandon their vision of the New Jerusalem realized here on earth. Embracing the social teachings of the Anabaptist covenanters, he advocated tirelessly for what he called a “true evangelical faith” that “clothes the naked, feeds the hungry, comforts the sorrowful, shelters the destitute, returns good for evil, serves those that harm it…and becomes all things to everyone.”[2] In those who practice such a faith through the power of the Word of God and by the authority of their baptismal covenant, the New Jerusalem is descending from God out of heaven, Menno taught.
By contrast with the coercive violence that built the New Jerusalem at Münster, though, the authentic New Jerusalem visible in the life of the covenant community is first and finally and all the time a community of peace. Here is Menno’s distinct and eloquent statement of two-kingdom theology:
“The scriptures teach that there are two opposing princes and two opposing kingdoms: the one is the Prince of peace; the other the prince of strife. Each of these princes has his particular kingdom and as the prince is so is also the kingdom. The prince of peace is Christ Jesus; His kingdom is the kingdom of peace, which is his church; His messengers are the messengers of peace; His Word is the word of peace; His body is the body of peace; His children are the seed of peace; and His inheritance and reward are the inheritance and reward of peace. In short, with this King, and in His kingdom and reign, it is nothing but peace. Everything that is seen, heard, and done is peace.”[3]
For Menno, the gospel of peace defines the faithful church. As he put it: “we who were formerly no people at all and who knew of no peace are now called to be such a glorious people of God, a church, kingdom, inheritance, body, and possession of peace.”[4] Or in the more familiar language of the hymn that is taken from this text: “We are people of God’s peace, as a new creation; a new covenant of peace binds us all together.”[5]
In Menno’s political theology, this defining commitment to peace as the will and way of God and of God’s people goes higher and deeper than the Schleitheim Brotherly Union, with no room for the lethal violence of God-ordained magistrates. For Menno, the call to the peace of Christ comes to “emperor, king, and commoner.”[6] And by contrast with Schleitheim, Menno accepted Christian magistrates, calling them not to leave their posts but “to do justice to orphans and widows, to the poor, despised stranger and pilgrim; to protect them against violence and tyranny; to rule cities and countries justly by a good policy and administration not contrary to God’s Word, in peace and quiet, unto the benefit of the common people.”[7] Menno was explicit in opposing capital punishment for any purpose. In his words, “it would hardly become a Christian ruler to shed blood.”[8]
Menno’s political vision is thus committed to peace on all fronts, whether from below with those who advocate for social justice or from above with those who administer legal justice. The New Jerusalem he envisions is a home being prepared by God in the congregation of Christ and extended in the world wherever the peace of Christ is offered and received, thus proclaiming a present and coming homeland where all may dwell in peace.[9]
JERUSALEM AND BABYLON IN JOHN’S REVELATION
In our sanctuary we feature two prominent images of Jesus: one as the Good Shepherd surrounded by sheep, holding a lamb in his arms; the other as the one who stands at the door and knocks. These are metaphors for Jesus, of course; he is not literally a shepherd and when he knocks, he knocks figuratively at our metaphorical heart’s door. Today I want to call our attention to another figure of Jesus in our church, found in a window up in the balcony: this is the image of Jesus that defined Menno’s political vision and that John lifted up in the book of Revelation, the image of Christ the Lamb, who takes away the sin of the world.
In the apocalyptic narrative of John’s Revelation, this Lamb, who was slain, is the one who has conquered, and who has become the ruler of the New Jerusalem. In this story, the Lamb defeats the beastly powers of Babylon—the mighty city of the empire, through the blood of the cross. Babylon is code language for the Roman empire, but Revelation 18 describes realities of Babylon that persist today: a concentration of wealth among the rulers and merchants, the practice of deception and manipulation, and the use of violence to suppress any resistance: “in you,” John writes of Babylon, “was found the blood of prophets and of saints, and of all who have been slaughtered on earth” (Revelation 18:24).
By contrast with the greed and violence of Babylon, the New Jerusalem of Revelation 21 offers an image of the human future defined by at least three generative political qualities. The first of these is an inclusive vision of the common good. New Testament scholar Ben Witherington III points out that the 1500 cubic miles of the New Jerusalem corresponds roughly to the size of the known world at the time John was writing.[10] The New Jersualem, in other words, is concerned with the thriving of all who dwell on our planet. And, as a cube it incorporates not just land and sea, but also sky and climate, reaching fifteen hundred miles into the sky. The wealth on display in the city is not possessed by merchants and rulers; rather it is found in the commonwealth of the city’s infrastructure shared and enjoyed by all: jasper walls, bejeweled foundations, pearly gates, and golden streets. This city has open borders; the kings of the earth come and go and bring the honor and glory of the nations into it. The New Jerusalem is therefore not a sectarian colony of heavenly purity but a multicultural cosmopolis of worldly diversity. And on the throne of the city is the Lamb, the one who came not to be served but to serve, the one who makes his home among us, who wipes away our tears, who gives water to the thirsty, and who makes all things new.
Secondly, the New Jerusalem is a city of truth. The Lamb is the light and the nations walk by this light. Fake news and conspiracy theories have been banished; no falsehood is permitted. God has put God’s law within everyone, written on our hearts.
Finally, the New Jerusalem is a city of peace; the Lamb on the throne has made peace with the Lion. The deathly powers of war and violence have been destroyed and thrown into a great pit and the book by which the Lamb rules is the book of life.
Dear brothers and sisters, here is what we may learn from our challenging Anabaptist heritage and from John the Revelator’s startling and colorful vision. The New Jerusalem is not a threatening cube hurtling toward us from outer space; it is not a city we build with coercion and conspiracy and propaganda; it is not a place we discover and claim like Columbus planting a cross in the New World or astronauts planting a flag on the moon. The New Jerusalem is the bride of the Lamb, already being prepared for the Lamb’s marriage supper. This holy city is the church of Jesus Christ; it is we who have been baptized and who have been raised to new life in Christ, we who are bound by a new covenant of peace.
As people of this new covenant we prepare for a national election next week that will have consequences for the political order of the earthly nation we inhabit. Our history teaches us that elections can confuse us and lead us to forget who we are. Let us remember that we are people of God’s peace. As partisans of the Lamb we know that the only politics with a future is a politics of the common good; the only politics with a future is a politics of truth; the only politics with a future is a politics of peace. Indeed the only politics with a future is the politics of the Lamb. Let us proclaim this New Jerusalem vision defined by commonwealth, truth, and peace, in all of our earthly stations: our households, our neighborhoods, the office, the classroom, on Facebook, and, indeed, in the voting booth. And, dear brothers and sisters of the covenant, let us follow the Lamb wherever he goes. Amen.
BENEDICTION
Hear these words from Menno Simons: “If you are the city, the New Jerusalem, then you must be obedient unto the King of that great city, namely Christ. If you are the branches, then you must bear fruit like that of the vine. If you are the vineyard of the Lord, then you must beware of the foxes. If you are a temple of the Lord, then you must submit unto your High Priest. If you are the ark of the covenant, then the tables of the covenant written with the finger of God, that is the commandments of God, must be engraved in your hearts, that all people may read that you are an epistle of Christ.”[11] Amen.
[1] My account of Anabaptist Münster follows the dramatic story narrated competently in Paul Ham, New Jerusalem: The Short Life and Terrible Death of Christendom’s Most Defiant Sect (North Sydney: Penguin Random House Australia, 2018). See also Anthony Arthur, The Tailor King: The Rise and Fall of the Anabaptist Kingdom of Münster (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999); and Willem de Bakker, Michael Driedger, and James Stayer, Bernard Rothmann and the Reformation in Münster, 1530-35 (Kitchener, Ont.: Pandora Press, 2009).
[2] Leonard Verduin, trans., The Complete Writings of Menno Simons (Scottdale, Pa.: Herald Press, 1956), 307.
[3] The Complete Writings of Menno Simons, 554.
[4] The Complete Writings of Menno Simons, 555.
[5] “We are People of God’s Peace”, #407 in Hymnal: A Worship Book (Scottdale, Pa.: Mennonite Publishing House, 1992).
[6] The Complete Writings of Menno Simons, 553.
[7] The Complete Writings of Menno Simons, 551.
[8] The Complete Writings of Menno Simons, 920.
[9] For a fully developed account of Menno’s revision of the New Jerusalem, see Helmut Isaak, Menno Simons and the New Jerusalem (Kitchener, Ont.: Pandora Press, 2006).
[10] Ben Witherington III, Revelation. New Cambridge Bible Commentary (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 269.
[11] The Complete Writings of Menno Simons, 1025.
Anabaptist Persuasion 