After the Apology

I can say already that I will be proud for the rest of my life that I was able to take part in the action of the LWF today in repent­ing of the sins of the past against the Anabap­tists. It was an extra­or­di­nary event. I am proud that the Lutheran fam­ily was capa­ble of con­fess­ing its wrong and ask­ing for for­give­ness. But I was not expect­ing the response from the Men­non­ites, which was every bit as extraordinary.

After the action was taken by the assem­bly, a response was given by Rev. Danisa Ndlovu, a pas­tor from Zim­babwe and pres­i­dent of the Men­non­ite World Con­fer­ence. I typed his response as he was speak­ing so it is not absolutely ver­ba­tim and I have missed a few clauses, but this is the heart of it:

“You seek for­give­ness for what your fore­bears in the six­teenth cen­tury did to the Anabap­tists, for for­get­ting about it in the inter­ven­ing cen­turies, for mis­lead­ing things said by Anabap­tist authors…

“Are we wor­thy of this? We are painfully aware of our own inad­e­qua­cies. We can­not come to this table with our heads held high. (chok­ing up) We can only bow down in great humil­ity and in fear of the Lord. We can­not come to this point and fail to see our own sin­ful­ness. We can­not come to this point with­out rec­og­niz­ing our own need for God’s grace and forgiveness.

“At this time we are pro­foundly moved by your spirit of repen­tance and your act of seek­ing for­give­ness, and we remem­ber the prayer of George Blau­rock, first bap­tized Anap­batist, later burned at the stake, who said, “I sin­cerely pray for all my ene­mies”… We believe that God has already heard and granted this Anabap­tist prayer. We believe that God has heard and granted this appeal for for­give­ness. We humbly and joy­fully join with God in grant­ing this gift of for­give­ness. …God also is doing it in heaven. To God be the glory.

“In response we com­mit to pro­mote the inter­pre­ta­tion of the Lutheran-Anabaptist story, which we take seri­ously, the jointly told his­tory in the report. We will take care that your ini­tia­tive for rec­on­cil­i­a­tion is known among us… We will con­tinue delib­er­a­tion on resolv­ing the issues between our two com­mu­ni­ties, open to the move­ment of the Spirit. We will encour­age our local churches and insti­tu­tions to seek greater cop­per­a­tion and rela­tion with Lutheran chruches for ser­vice to the world. Again we say to God be the glory.

“In the last sup­per Jesus gave a new com­mand­ment (quot­ing John 15). He gave them a phys­i­cally embod­ied sym­bol of this new com­mand­ment (retells story of foot­wash­ing). Some Anabap­tist and Men­non­ite churches have main­tained this prac­tice of foot­wash­ing. This tub and towl come from this tra­di­tion (offer­ing them).

“We will learn to seek one another’s good from a pos­ture of vol­un­tary and mutual sub­mis­sion. This is how God’s trans­form­ing pres­ence is made vis­i­ble in the world. Amen.”

The whole assem­bly joined the amen and the applause went on for quite some time.

This is the first time this has ever hap­pened, as far me and my ecu­meni­cal col­leagues know: a unan­i­mous deci­sion of a world­wide assem­bly repent­ing for its own church’s past errors, met in kind with for­give­ness from a world­wide community’s del­e­ga­tion. Let no one say again that we are in an ecu­meni­cal winter!