MCC Washington Memo

Melissa Engle/MCC

Earl Zimmerman reflects on John the Baptist and recommends a “wonderful Advent exercise”:

I recently accompanied Rachelle Lyndaker Schlabach, from the MCC U.S. Washington Office, to the office of a Kansas senator. We were delivering a big stack of postcards from Mennonite congregations in Kansas asking the senator to support a just federal budget…

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Melissa Engle/MCC

Rachelle Lyndaker Schlabach reflects on the lectionary texts for this Sunday, the second Sunday of Advent:

Even though I’ve lived in Washington, DC many years, it still makes an impression on me when I see the presidential motorcade go by, with Secret Service and police escorts and all remaining traffic brought to a halt. The sheer scale of it all declares that someone important is passing by….

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Melissa Engle/MCC

Fred Redekop is pastor of Floradale Mennonite Church in Ontario and recently spent several weeks in the MCC Washington Office during his sabbatical.

He has a fresh take on a familiar text, Matthew 25:31-46:

In the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 25, is the story of parable of the sheep and goats…This text has been important in the Mennonite/Anabaptist tradition in defining our theology of service to those who are poor, sick, hungry and in prison.

But let us look another possible interpretation of this passage…Maybe the parable of the sheep and goats is a call to be ministered to, and not a call to minister to the least of these. Maybe it is to remember we are the least of these…

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Melissa Engle/MCC

Paul Heidebrecht of MCC’s Ottawa Office reflects on the parable of the talents:

As a resident of a wealthy country in the global North, I am most inclined to relate to the slave who was entrusted with five—rather than one or two—talents in this week’s text from Matthew. After all, I am part of a nation that possesses a disproportionate share of the planet’s resources. And I also like to think of myself as possessing virtues such as creativity, industriousness, and responsibility that would enable me to multiply whatever is entrusted to me...

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Melissa Engle/MCC

Matthew Dean of the MCC United Nations Office writes:

If we neglect to refill our metaphorical oil from time to time we will burn out and be of little use to the Kingdom. We must in our own ways refill our oil to be able to continue the work of justice in the world…

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Melissa Engle/MCC

Earl Zimmerman reflects on the connection between a rickshaw puller, a Wall Street titan and himself:

A picture of an emaciated, barefooted rickshaw puller taking a break from his labors on the hardscrabble streets of Kolkata hangs on the wall by my desk. It feels oddly out of place in my comfortable home. I took the photo when I served with Mennonite Central Committee in India and it is a daily reminder of the huge gulf between my life and one-third of the people in our world who subsist on one dollar a day or less…

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