Equip Update

As I was flying home to Saskatoon from the CCMBC Equip Conference on “The Kingdom, The Gospel, and Peacemaking” in Winnipeg, I looked out my window to see Winnipeg as we took off. From high in the air, Winnipeg looked crisp, organized, and intuitive. Everything “made sense” and I could clearly see which roads were main arteries of the city as I watched the flow of traffic. However, when I was in Winnipeg at ground level, the city looked different. The streets were unfamiliar and I had trouble orienting myself. I had no sense of where the main roads were. Things didn’t seem as obvious as they had when I was in the air. 

My experiences of the city of Winnipeg is a metaphor for my reflections on the Anabaptist peace position after Equip. I arrived (and spoiler alert: I also left) as an Anabaptist committed to the peacemaking and nonviolence. The streets of my nonviolence were crisp, organized, and intuitive. I knew that a grassroots beginning to the Anabaptist movement led from the Schleitheim Confession, through the martyrdom of our forebears, with a quick (a very quick!) digression in Münster, and toward the peace ethic I’ve believed and practiced for over a decade now. The streets converged and made sense; I knew where I was going.

After Equip, I’m still in that same city. I am committed to an Anabaptist peace position and still find myself ultimately in the place of not joining the police service or the military, recognizing the many challenging scenarios these convictions lend themselves to, especially as a mother of two young sons. However, after being on the ground of Equip, that same peace ethic now carries an important challenge of what it really means to make shalom in the thick of the mess. As we explored Article 13 in the MB Confession of Faith in round-table groups, as I heard about the visceral challenges to peace here and at home, as I listened to my Christian brothers reflect on their experiences of serving as police officers (and as I felt a sense of thankfulness for a Christian witness and presence in the police service!), the roads that looked so crisp, organized, and intuitive from above, flying in my airplane, suddenly felt more complicated. I felt the need for a GPS!

In my metaphor, the GPS is the Bible— the Word of God recorded for our edification and instruction. I feel the need to look at the Sermon on the Mount and Romans 13 again to see what these texts say about peacemaking, as we seek to follow Jesus in a broken world. I want to ask what it means to love and honour Jesus as Lord and how obedience to him flows out of that. I want to entertain difficult questions about the role of the Christian, and the church, in contributing to the shalom of our society. Power up the GPS!

I’m thankful God our Father has the view from above, piloting the airplane, and that we have access to him through Jesus and through the Bible to ask for his wisdom as we seek to be people of peace in a fallen world. I have a limited, finite view, in contrast to his infinitely expansive view. So through the twists and turns, the one-ways and roundabouts, I follow and listen to Father, Son, and Spirit, as revealed to us in the precious pages of Scripture.