How can our ever-changing community of faith worship cross-culturally in a way that is faithful to our holy God of love? When our backgrounds-levels of formal education, life experiences, and political realities-are very diverse, can we find unity of purpose and spirit through our common worship?
We gather as those whose lives have been crushed
Toronto Mennonite New Life Church is a small Spanish-speaking Anabaptist congregation that is part of Mennonite Church Eastern Canada. On most Sundays, eight or 10 different nationalities are represented when we gather for worship. Most of us are Latin American refugees and immigrants. Civil wars and strife have raged across Central and South America, and the superpowers of the past and the empire of the present have ruled us with an iron grip. Some who have gotten caught up in, and been victims of, these struggles have come to Toronto seeking a new home in a land where they can start again.
Ours is a transient community of individuals and families torn by the tensions and paradoxes that are the aftermath of refugee experience as it confronts present realities of limitation and deprivation. Havoc exists at the heart of family life, and instability leaves people fragile and broken. Grief is part of daily life. Those in the older generation cannot let go of what they have lost, and youths want to forget where they came from and embrace the new culture, to fit in and belong somewhere-if only to a gang. Fragmentation and loss of identity make for fearful hearts and crushed spirits.
In the midst of this fear, in the face of a struggle with unknown powers that are sucking people down into depression, or enticing them with supposed freedoms, we at New Life offer a variety of services. Through the church, people are invited into a space for exploring faith in God and God's call to become part of a new community. As the presence of God grows in our hearts, we become a fellowship, a new body of believers who are learning to listen to the Lord. This communion with God and our fellow pilgrims is what we read about in I Peter 2:10: "Once you were not a people, but now you are God's people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy." We believe and proclaim the gospel of peace and try to sow the seeds of life of the Prince of Peace in the hearts of those who are drawn near.
Every Sunday the congregation is different. We never know who will be able to attend. Newcomers have very little security. Permanent work is hard to find. Opportunities to earn money are sometimes available only on weekends. Some who have participated in our circle for several months or even years are deported to their countries of origin.
We are finding out that the experience of building community is like placing ourselves in a winepress; it contains our crushed lives and brings us close to one another as we go through the process of being transformed together into new wine. As we let go of our pain and brokenness, we are distilled so the essence of God's life in us can emerge.
Scripture reveals to us a God of nomads and refugees
To address the needs of refugees and immigrants, we have developed two worship services, one on Sunday morning and the other on Wednesday evening. They are spaces in time, offering worship and pastoral care for a journey of constant invitation to dwell in the security of the one our Scriptures reveal to be the God of pilgrims, desert nomads, refugees and outcasts.
The main difference between Sunday and Wednesday worship is in the use of Scripture. Sunday mornings we follow the Revised Common Lectionary. These ecumenically chosen readings provide a framework for worship and praise around a theme that is the basis for an exposition of the Word and for our communal prayer time. For people who have never participated in a church service, and for those who come from different traditions, discovering the basis of our faith is a unifying experience. Through the Scriptures, the Spirit continues to reveal to our hearts who God is and how God is at work in the world.
Our Wednesday worship is organized around systematic study of a book selected from the Bible.
The Old Testament uses the image of the vine as a metaphor for the people of God. In the New Testament, Jesus calls himself the vine, and his people are the branches that produce fruit if we abide in him. The metaphor is expanded into the trampling of the grapes in the winepress. Jesus endured being crushed for us. This image becomes a balm for us in our broken lives, as we identify with the experience of being crushed. Scripture draws us close when we discover that-from beginning to end-it illuminates and describes our experience of suffering. Here is the foundation for community building: the Spirit revealing God's nature and we seeing ourselves mirrored in this revelation.
We pour our grief into the cup of Christ's suffering
In both services we offer the Eucharist (thanksgiving service) once a month and on special occasions. At present, we serve communion on the first Sunday of each month and the third Wednesday. The Eucharist is a proclamation of the basis of our faith, the pathway to God left to us by Christ himself. Evangelism at its best happens through this remembrance proclamation.
We partake of this meal of the living Christ himself as the supreme food from heaven for our earthly journey. Like God's people who were fed manna in the wilderness, we are invited into a nourishing relationship through eating the bread that is different from all foods, because it comes from above. The more we are fed by this experience of the mystery of God's presence as we partake, the more the presence of the eternal is revealed to us, so that our faith grows and unfolds in deeper communion and strength for the journey through the wilderness of unknowing.
As we are called to participate in this meal, our worship reaches into the timelessness of eternity. We are then set free to see God breaking through into the present. As we are drawn into God's eternal present, we become increasingly aware of God's intervention in the world of now, on our behalf. Before the foundations of the world were laid, God preordained that the Lamb of God would be slain for us, so we could be clothed in the garments of Christ. God provides the robes of righteousness through the living Word of redemption, to replace our own garments of inadequate covering.
It is in participating in the Eucharist that we are united in a new bond, and become blood brothers and blood sisters. Through the body and blood of Christ, we become a worshipping community. We are no longer strangers, but family, with God as our father and Jesus as our brother.
As we are nurtured and filled, we desire to become channels of this new life for others. The experience of having been crushed makes us vulnerable and able to identify with other vulnerable ones. It is only when we pass on the blessing we have received that we continue to be filled. The Eucharist becomes the sustaining food and drink that brings true meaning to our past and present experience of being crushed grapes that are now becoming holy wine.
Singing articulates our gratitude and longing to belong
Our songs of praise and adoration are a visible, communal, musical expression of the gratitude in our hearts. The experience of singing together binds us in an offering of mutuality as we join in voicing the same words. The poetic forms carry a message about our intimate relationship to our Lord.
The whole of the worship team strives to prepare a meaningful sequence of hymns and songs that include children and adults in expressions of joy, reflection, adoration, praise and reverence. Sometimes we invite corporate dance with children and adults. The purpose is to guide us into a time of reflection and openness to the message of the Word. As we are caught up, our individual voices become one, and we find ourselves receptive and open.
One of the hymns from the Honduran Anabaptist community of faith that has become very meaningful to us is:
You called me, Lord my God,
my hands are ready now
to build with you, O God,
a fellowship of faith.
No angels can perform
the task given to transform
a world in pain and grief
to wholeness, joy and peace.
But God chose human hands
his mandate to fulfill.
Lord, help me in this work,
to do your holy will.
Blessed are the faithful ones,
those who strive for love and peace,
proclaiming to all justice
while living liberty.
This song recognizes our human condition, a personal call from God to be involved in building a new community with others, and a continued challenge to live in a new freedom. This liberty restores us to practise justice without ignoring the injustices, as we build a community of people of peace.
The refrain of another favourite hymn from the Paraguayan Anabaptist community affirms that "God is calling forth a people his true Israel to be. I belong to God's own people by his power and grace to be." God is the initiator and the enabler who desires to grant us what we covet: to be brought into a new community, to be the new wine of meaning and healing that embraces the past and transforms it.
In prayer we seek God
The fourth and final element of our worship-communal prayer-incorporates abundant thanksgiving, petitions, intercession and praise. The methods of prayer are varied. Sometimes the leader responds to the requests or expressions of thanksgiving with the phrase, Tor this we pray to the Lord," which is followed by the congregational refrain, "Lord, hear our prayer." Other times, people rise and pray spontaneously.
Sometimes someone may be asked to pray for another, perhaps because the intercessor has lived through a similar experience and can pray with great empathy for the one in need of prayer. On Wednesdays we often give opportunity for everyone who is present to pray aloud for the requests that are brought to the community.
Every two months we incorporate a healing service into our Wednesday gathering. Prayers for healing of body, mind and spirit are followed by anointing with oil and communion. On these occasions each person who requests prayer is prayed for in private-one-on-one, with full confidential!ty-by someone asked in advance to be available to offer such prayers. We have often held these services with Toronto United Mennonite Church and had people pray in different languages. A physician joins us for these services to pray for her patients in great need.
These services are deeply moving and are requested by the congregants. Occasionally we have also had prayer vigils for specific needs to seek God more intensely. This practice, combined with fasting, is especially needed when someone brings a request for a prayer of liberation.
Sometimes we receive people who do not speak Spanish, and several members of the congregation who are good at simultaneous translation into English can step in to translate during the service. We welcome these visits and the opportunity to interact with visitors and friends of the participants, who are themselves exploring faith. In God's power and strength, we try to be faithful in what we do and say.
The greeting of peace is our final embrace with our brothers and sisters, as we face the mission that each of us returns to.
Sharing a meal strengthens us for the journey
Every Sunday morning we eat a simple meal together. In a sense, our sharing bread is a continuation of our worship. Each Sunday a different family is responsible for preparing and serving the meal. On Wednesdays the communal meal is eaten as people come in from work before the service.
These times of sharing our food and having fellowship are community-building experiences through which we get to know one another better. Both physical and spiritual bread of life strengthen us for the daily journey.
We are slowly becoming "poured-out wine" for our God, as Oswald Chambers wrote. When I first read this phrase I had not experienced what Chambers meant. I could understand the concept in my head, but it was not in my experience. Now, in a closer walk with God, I am just beginning to understand how we arrive at the willingness to become poured-out wine. Daily we are crushed and yet not defeated. Daily we offer to God the blood of our lives that is being transformed into new wine: the best wine from the winepress of trodden grapes!
Sometimes someone may be asked to pray for another, perhaps because the intercessor has lived through a similar experience and can pray with great empathy for the one in need of prayer.
[Author Affiliation]
-Betty Kennedy de Puricelli
The author was born and raised in Buenos Aires, Argentina. She and husband Adolfo Puricelli direct a multi-service community centre for newcomers to Canada and serve as pastors of Toronto Mennonite New Life Church. Reprinted, by permission of the publisher, from Vision: A Journal for Church and Theology 6 (Fall 2005); www.MennoVision.org.
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