Third Sunday of Easter (Year 4, NL)

In the Mennonite tradition, we are all priests. But I still have a particular role to play.

For Jesus, the inverse of scarcity isn’t abundance—it’s accumulation.

Throughout scripture, human bodies are not an obstacle to righteousness; they are its location.

If so, what did he mean?

Jesus still needs Peter—and us.

The apostle Paul’s overlooked supporting cast

We are invited to bring the rich resources of our senses and imaginations into the realm of faith.

Struck down but not destroyed, perplexed but not forsaken

"I dream of walking the streets of Damascus," sighed a Syrian refugee whose radio interview I heard on my evening commute. His voice trailed off into a wistful silence. I had been engrossed in his story, but at the interview's end, my mind connected the refugee's lament and longing for a Damascus road story of long ago.

On Sunday, we hear the story from John 21 of Jesus and Peter on the beach. Jesus asks Peter three times, "Do you love me?" and three times Peter answers, "Yes, Lord, you know that I love you." Then Jesus tells him, "Feed my sheep." We also hear about how Saul became the apostle Paul, on the road to Damascus. Here he was, on the way to persecute the followers of the Way, and out of the blue, Jesus speaks to him, too: "Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?" There he is struck blind, and when he sees again, he has a new calling as a follower of Jesus and a missionary to the gentiles.

On one Sunday, we hear stories of two of the main characters from the New Testament. But I can't help being drawn to Ananias.

I can still smell the wet canvas and sawdust of my father's revivals. He believed that any self-respecting revival was held in a tent.

Gangs excel at finding the lost, adopting them and sending them out. Therefore, gang youth can be recruited for apostolic ministry.

My mother’s generation of women was raised to expect that families would depend financially on the husband’s income. My mother is lively and creative, and as a child she wanted to be a doctor—but women just didn’t do that. When her husband left her, her creativity and energy were channeled into supporting three children on the small income from a job initially intended to supplement the family’s welfare and provide a personal challenge.

Christians tend to compare their personal conversion experiences to Saul’s encounter on the road to Damascus. Not all of us, of course, talk freely about what happened in us and to us on the way to becoming Christian. Our levels of comfort with such talk vary widely depending on our congregational culture, our notions of evangelism and our ability to be self-revelatory. But when we do think about that journey, and when we’re willing to talk about it, we say that our conversion was—or was not—a Damascus Road. We tell our young people that their experience does not need to be a Damascus Road experience, although it can be. There are many paths of Christian transformation—and the light from heaven is only one of them.