May 28thHistory Making Change
To my dear TFMC family,
I’ve been hearing about ‘historic moments’ lately. It strikes me that 2025 has had several history-making events, and we’re barely ½ way through. And it’s curious how many of these history-making events revolve around change.
The year started with the inauguration of Donald Trump into his second presidency. What followed was a whirlwind wind policy changes, upending decades of carefully negotiated agreements. Later that month, we saw our Prime Minister resign; a new Liberal leader elected; a provincial election, and a Federal Election. While the governing party didn’t change, the Prime Minister did.
A little over a month ago, Pope Francis died and set into motion a new Papal conclave, something I’ve only experienced twice in my life, which saw the election of Pope Leo XIV, the first North American-born Pope. And just yesterday, something occurred that hasn’t occurred in my lifetime: the reigning sovereign, King Charles, presented the Throne Speech. The last time this happened was with Queen Elizabeth in the late 1970s.
There has been a significant amount of change in global leadership in the last few months, it’s enough to make ones head spin And this got me thinking about our faith story, and how much of it, from our perspective, is earth-shattering: God embodied in a child, dwelling with humankind in the most vulnerable way possible. But from the world’s perspective, it was simply mundane; it wasn’t worth a note in the annals of history.
Consider Jesus’ birth, which was a common birth; he was born as any child would have been, in a home birth. His name, Jesus, was as common as you could get; it’s the Middle Eastern equivalent of John Smith. His life? He was trained as a carpenter by his father, a common career before he became a nomadic, itinerant preacher. His death, while a spectacle, insofar as it was a public execution, was otherwise common for any condemned criminal. And his resurrection was a secret. And yet, Jesus shaped the world.
Jesus transformed people. Jesus changed, and continues to change the church. And he did so, largely without spectacle; without purposefully drawing attention to himself, preferring instead to point people to God and God’s desire for humankind. And, here we are millennia later, discerning what and who God’s calling the church to be, as we are doing our best to follow this very common person, the embodiment of God with us, Jesus.
Our faith in Jesus is shaped by the people, places, and circumstances in which we live. And so a question that the church wrestles with is, what is God calling us to? However we answer that question, we need to remember that we might not make history in following Jesus, but we will change the world.
Yours,
Craig Janzen Neufeld