Elizabeth Dirks
One of the sermon writing practices that I have been doing each year for all saints day is to tell the story of a Mennonite from the Martyr’s Mirror as part of my sermon. We remember today an anabaptist forebearer, as we remember our loved ones who have died this last year, as we remember the loved ones that are on our hearts today, who have been gone for sometime – each a saint who has led the way and made us who we are today.
In the mid 16th century, after reading the New Testament, Elizabeth Dirks decided to escape her convent near Leer and run to the Anabaptist community in Leeuwarden. There, Dirks became an Anabaptist teacher, a deacon, and an influential part of the congregation. In 1549, Dirks was arrested with her friend Hade-wyck for her leadership among the Anabaptists. She was imprisoned and was interrogated about her Anabaptist beliefs.
In the Martyrs Mirror, there is an account of the interrogation between Dirks and the authorities, who drilled her with questions about what she believed and why she believed it. As a reader of this interrogation, you noticed quickly that Dirks is a talented apologist, having sharp and clear responses to every question that the Interrogator asked.
The interrogator asked the question –
“Do you not seek your salvation in baptism?”
Dirks responds: “No, my lords, all the water in the sea could not save me; But salvation is in Christ, and He has commanded me to love God my Lord above all things, and my neighbor as myself.”
Dirks pointed to the sacrament of baptism, which was seen as a mechanism for salvation in the Catholic church, and took it to the literal extreme. She says no amount of water could save her.
She argued that it was not the sacrament itself that saved her, but the work of Christ, who she claimed called her above all to love God and love one’s neighbor.
She quoted Jesus from the passage we had read today.
For those reading the martyrs Mirror, the reader is both hearing the story of an Anabaptist teacher of the past, and are learning ways to think about their faith. What does Jesus call us to? Dirks quoted Jesus in Mark 12 – love God and love your neighbor as the most important parts of faith.
Dirks interrogation reminds me of our story today in another way: Dirks and Jesus were both being questioned. In our gospel story today, Jesus had a conversation with Jewish teachers who asked him tough questions. This type of interrogation happens often throughout all of the gospels. Sometimes the authorities tried to trick Jesus into saying something incriminating. Sometimes they were just interested in challenging him. In our passage today, he is asked, “Of all of Moses’ commandments, which is the most important?”
Jesus responds, “The most important one is this: ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.”
There is no commandment greater than these.
The greatest commandment isn’t to go and be baptized. It’s not believe in a literal virgin birth or a 7 day creation, or that the bible is 100% historically accurate. It isn’t to go to church and sing songs and read readings.
All of these bells and whistles of religion can be great, but do not matter one ounce without this commandment. Love God and Love your neighbor.
This was the point that Dirks was trying to make as she made her comment about baptism. The anabaptists at the time were interested in stripping back all of the sacraments of the church, all of the traditions and practices, and objects that held so much power over people. Dirks, in the way of Jesus, points back to what is actually important, love of God and love of neighbor.
It is a good reminder for us today as well to reflect on our own tradition. How are our traditions, beliefs, rituals routines, even nostalgia, getting in the way of loving God and neighbor.
Where I disagree with some of our Anabaptist forbearers, is that I think they took their disgust with traditions and rituals to an extreme. I have heard it said that the soul does not know the different between ritual and reality – and I agree with this. Our symbolic engagement with the world through rituals can be healing and transformative. There is something powerful about being dunked underwater and brought back up, as you consider transformation. There is something powerful about lighting a candle for your loved one, as you hold them in your grief and your hearts.
But then there are traditions and rituals that get in the way of loving neighbors and God. And at the time of the Anabaptist reformation, it had been a while since the church had asked this question – are our traditions, sacraments, and rituals getting in the way of loving God and neighbor?
I had a friend who grew up in a Conservative Mennonite context recently tell me that he no longer considers himself a Christian because he felt like his Christian religion was getting in the way of loving people. As he was casting away his faith, I found it ironic, because he is actually acting more Jesus like, and more Anabaptist than ever – casting away the religious practices that were getting in the way. What is most important – loving God and loving neighbor – not all the religious extras.
It reminds me of the 12th century Christian mystic Miester Eckhart who writes, “God rid me of God.” Eckhart was asking for God to rid him of all the images of God that were getting in the way of him more deeply engaging the divine.
This work of getting rid of what has become God, to more deeply find God was important to the reformers of the 16th century, and it is important work for us to be doing today. I think “loving God and neighbor” is a great saying for grounding us back into who God is and what it means to practice our faith: Just like it was for Jesus in his revolution, and Elizabeth Dirks in her revolution.
Love your Neighbor
Why do these simple words, “Love God and Love Neighbor” feel so radical?
Partly, because it is really hard. We have idols in contemporary life that make loving God and loving neighbors very difficult. The idol of power. The idol of control. The idol of fear. The idol of wealth. The idol of nostalgia.
It is easy to find excuses to not prioritize this commandment from Jesus – which originates in the 10 commandments. It is easy to search through the bible for some sort of excuse to not love your neighbor.
You can go looking in the bible for examples of “sins” or “evil” and believed it should be banished away. You can go looking for examples of stories in the old testament, you can look at the conquest of canaan, and the violence and the ridding of the lands of evil, as God supposedly commanded them. You can distort old testament prophecies.
But Jesus’ words can ground us.
In the gospel of Luke, when this same story is told, Jesus is pushed further on the question, and was ask “ well then, who is my neighbor,” Jesus does not tell them that it is your neighbor who lives beside you that has the same religious tradition as you, and goes to the same synagogue as you. It’s not the person that goes to the same church as you, that votes the same as you, that lives in the same country, has the same skin color, speaks the same language, eats the same food, has the same traditions, customs or religion.
No Jesus tells the story of the Good Samaritan. A story where the hero who saves the day and cares for them is a person of another ethnicity and religious tradition. A people group that was looked down upon at the time by Jews. Jesus makes it clear that our neighbor can be the very person you most despise.
Christian Nationalism
Love God and Love Neighbor – this is not the call of those participating in Christian Nationalism today.
This week, I find myself grieving how many Chrisitans in the United States are being pulled into Chrisitan Nationalism. Christians dreaming of our country being taken back by God to be a “Christian Nation” ruled by their values and beliefs. A type of Christianity that hates the Haitian or Central American immigrants, refuses to empathize with the experiences of Palestinians, prioritizes the well-being of the United States over all other nations, and fears and condemns other religious traditions. With Christian Nationalism, salvation is found in the power of being a White Christian American, the privileges that our country gives this group, their pride in a strong military, and God’s special blessing over the United States and Israel.
The message of Christian Nationalism could use some grounding from Jesus’ message to love God and one’s neighbor. I find myself praying with Miester Eckhart, would God rid the Christian Nationalist of God, in hopes that they would find God in the aftermath of their loss of faith. Perhaps not unlike what my friend needed to experience when he shared he was “no longer a Christian.”
But this work of loving our neighbor isn’t just in the dust of the Christian Nationalist eye.
We Mennonites have our own work to do. Regardless of who wins the election this week, there will be work to be done in loving our neighbors across the street and across oceans.
Regardless of who wins the election this week, people will continue to be marginalized, imprisoned, impoverished, and killed to maintain this empire we live in.
Regardless of who wins the election this week, Christian nationalism is here, has been around for a while, and will persist.
Regardless of who wins, the world needs compassionate people.
Regardless of who wins the election this week, we as Christians will have to continue to work at letting go of the belief that it is through the powers and principalities that the kingdom of God arrives. And instead follow in the way of Jesus, through our own woundedness, our compassion for those on the edges, and our love for our neighbor.
Regardless of who wins this election this week, as followers of Christ, we have work to do in this world. And its most simplified version is to love God and love neighbor.
I found it really poingaint that this passage about loving God and neighbor is here in the lectionary on the Sunday before the election. Something for church going Christians to consider before going to the polls.
How this Story Ends
So how does Exliabeth Dirks story end – not too differently than Jesus. In Mark 14, Jesus is brought before the high priests and is interrogated, only this time, at the end of the interrogation, they condemned him worthy of death.
After Dirks interrogation in the Martyrs Mirror, Van Braght writes, “Sentence was passed upon Elizabeth, on the 27th of March 1549; she was condemned to death – to be drowned in a bag, and thus offered up her body to God.”
Jesus and Dirks were revolutionaries. They questioned the powers that be, those who carried the sword, and those who thought that the kingdom of God came from those in power.
They were both killed for questioning those in power, and for offering something simple in return – “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength” and ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.”
To love God and your neighbor is vulnerable. When you love, you do not control the other. In fact, you are exposing yourself to the terror which is the other. The other whose desires are impossible to figure out. The other whose emotions and pain are overwhelming to understand. The other who may have a completely different dream for this world we live in. The other who might just take your life.
As followers of Jesus, we are called to take this risk when we reach out to love the other, to love our neighbor.
May the courage of Elizabeth Dirks and Jesus, go with us all, as we love our neighbor. And may the love of God and love neighbor ground our faith more than any other practices and beliefs we might hold.