Taking Part in God’s Drama

Through Fire And Water: An Overview of Mennonite History Invites People to Take Part In God’s Drama

By Stephen M. Nolt and Harry Loewen

When Luis Correa, a pastor in Colombia, is asked to explain why he is an Anabaptist, he tells stories. Some are experiences of church members working for peace in Latin America. Others involve friendships with Mennonites from other parts of the world.

Not all of his stories are pleasant. In one case, Correa left a Mennonite congregation in deep disappointment. He recalls all these stories of faith and failure as he seeks to follow Jesus.

“For me history is very important,” Correa says. “A people without [a] history is a people without a future.”

In the Bible, God’s people often used stories to explain who they were, connecting their faith and God’s faithfulness. Moses began his own story with the wandering of Abraham and Sarah (Deuteronomy 26:5-10). Later Joshua picked up the story and added to it (Joshua 24:2-13). The writer of Psalm 136 and the priest Ezra did the same thing (Nehemiah 9:6-37). Early Christians such as Stephen (Acts 7) and Paul (Acts 13:16-41) joined their stories to the story of God’s people who had come before them.

But how do we make sense of our stories?

An overview of Mennonite history shows that many have played a part in that story—preachers and peasants, martyrs and missionaries, reformers and rascals. Often their witness was inspiring. Their stories of courage and loving service call us to deeper commitment. Everyday tales of God’s work in ordinary lives give us hope. These stories are a source of strength and wisdom and power.

But some aspects of the Mennonite story make us uneasy. Sometimes Mennonites were unfaithful, even hypocritical. At times they lost sight of God’s activity and inflicted pain on one another or hindered others from hearing God’s story.

When we encounter unfaithfulness or hypocrisy, it is tempting to become frustrated and reject our history. We may want to hide our past, embarrassed because it includes mistakes and failures. Or we may simply ignore our story.

We know that the Bible includes stories about the past, but Jesus is calling us to be faithful disciples now. Can’t we just start from scratch? How does history relate to mission or peace? What does the past really have to do with the present or the future?

Discipleship as divine drama

Being a disciple of Jesus in today’s world is a lot like taking part in a play. But not an ordinary play with a completed script. Instead, it’s as if the world’s most renowned playwright handed you a script that is missing a crucial scene, and then asks you to complete the play by writing—and acting—the missing section.

On the one hand, participating in this divine drama calls for all the originality and imagination you have. This is your chance to follow your heart and be creative, confident that you are participating in the greatest performance of all time.

On the other hand, you don’t have complete freedom to create your scene. The scenes that come before and after your scene put some limits on what you can do. There are already themes and characters that you must work with. And there is a story line that you have to move along toward the drama’s conclusion.

We know some of the scenes that have already been played: creation; the call of Abraham and Sarah; Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection; the birth of the church; and much more. And we believe that the ultimate ending of this divine drama is the coming kingdom of God, the reign of God’s shalom.

So we take our parts while looking forward and backward. As we review the script, we realize that there were some unexpected twists in the plot that we still aren’t entirely sure how to interpret. We’re stuck with some flawed characters, and the stage may not be set the way we’d like.

But we are also confident that Christ is directing us in faithful creativity. Like any theater production, this one is a group effort. We recruit more players and make space on the stage for new people to take leading roles. We develop some themes from preceding scenes. And we play other things quite differently as we anticipate where this story is headed

Our lives—the scenes God has called us to live—have to bridge the scenes that have come before us with the finale that we believe will unfold when the final curtain goes up. We can’t ignore either the past or the future as we live faithfully in the present.

Siaka Traore, a first-generation Christian and Mennonite pastor in Burkina Faso, put it this way: “God includes us in the management of time and events so we must not simply be subjected to history. We must make history. We must influence history in the direction God wants.”

Siaka Traore and Luis Correa remind us to connect our past and God’s future through the scene we are living today. As we worship the One who is and Who was and Who is to come, we find our place in this divine drama, living our scenes in anticipation of the reign of God.

What’s your scene? Are you ready to take your part in God’s drama?

From Through Fire And Water: An Overview of Mennonite History (Herald Press), originally written by Harry Loewen and Steven M. Nolt; revised by Steven M. Nolt. $16.99 USD/$19.99 CAD. Click here for more information or to order.