A Hope for Hannah (30 page)

“It’s not that,” Ben said. He hung his head but didn’t seem ready to continue.

“See,” Sylvia said, “maybe I wasn’t born again—before, I mean. Now I believe I am. We…went up to the front when the preacher made the altar call. We wanted to be right with God.”

Ben nodded. “He preached about repentance and getting rid of sin.”

“The preacher?” Mose asked.

Ben nodded again.

“You were practicing sin?” John asked, his brow wrinkled.

Sylvia spoke up. “We just felt it—inside us. This preacher spoke of the blood of Jesus washing us.”

“There’s nothing wrong with that,” John agreed. “But this sin you speak of. You were
sinning?”

Ben managed a grin. “Not really. I mean, I did break a few of the church rules at times. Maybe small ones. That’s all.”

“I wasn’t doing anything wrong, but their preaching made me feel like a sinner,” Sylvia added.

“We all are sinners,” John agreed. “So I still don’t understand.”

Hannah glanced at Jake, but he was staring at the floor. Obviously this was bishop work. She again wondered why in the world they were even here.

“I guess we felt something…for the first time…in here.” Ben laid his hand on his chest. “We wanted an experience with God.”

“I see,” John said. “An experience.”

“Yes,” Sylvia nodded vigorously. “We felt washed afterward. We confessed our sins with the preacher.”

“You confessed your sins?” Mose asked. “Which ones?”

“Things we had done—even as far back as our childhood. The usual sins, I suppose,” Sylvia said. “Ben didn’t have as many. I confessed the lie I told my mother—I’d never told anyone about it before.”

“That is why we have pre-communion church,” John said. “It’s time then for confessions.”

“We’ve done that,” Ben said, “but this felt different.”

“I can understand that. Some confessions are to be private,” John said. “Have you told your mother this lie?”

Sylvia shook her head. “I felt cleansed at the meeting.”

“You probably should tell your mother, though,” Mose spoke up. “That would be between the two of you.”

“I suppose so,” Sylvia said, seemingly deep in thought.

“The other things too,” John added. “Whatever you told this preacher, if they involve other people, they should be told.”

Ben nodded. Sylvia still seemed to be thinking.

Hannah felt nervous for them. Her palms sweaty, she wished she were somewhere else.

“See, we are not priests,” John said. “We don’t stand between God and man. We don’t hear others’ sins. We confess our sins to God. If we sin against the church, we confess to the church. If we sin against others, we confess to them. The confessing, then, restores fellowship. It does not forgive our sins. Only God can do that.”

“His blood,” Ben said. “They spoke of His blood.”

“That is how it is done,” John agreed. “The blood of Jesus. They are right about that. Sins are only forgiven through the blood.”

“So…maybe no harm has been done,” Mose said and seemed to relax in his seat.

“Maybe,” John allowed.

Ben cleared his throat, his eyes focused on the floor and his fingers tightly clasped.

Hannah held her breath.

“We would like to leave,” Ben said.

“Leave?” John asked, stunned.

“To join the group in Kalispell,” Ben said. “We feel a oneness with them. They’re starting a new group with those who went to the altar.”

No one said anything for a few seconds. Then John said, “Isn’t this a bit sudden?”

“Maybe,” Ben allowed, his eyes still looking at the floor.

“We hope this will cause no trouble with the church,” Sylvia said. “God is really drawing our hearts.”

“I see,” John said, his face a question. “This ‘drawing’? It is out into the world, then?”

“Not the world,” Sylvia said quickly, “to the church of God—to other believers.”

“You surely don’t think—think we aren’t the church of God?” Mose asked, the question lingering in his voice.

“No.” Ben shook his head vigorously. “We just don’t believe it’s necessary to live like this to be a part of the church.”

“Like this?” Mose asked.

“Buggies and such,” Ben said. “The preacher said we can have God without living like this. He said some of our Amish ways might even be holding us back.”

“From growing spiritually,” Sylvia added.

“Yes,” Ben said, “spiritually.”

“You realize what’s out there?” John asked. “In the world—the temptations, the evils, the trials that happen to one’s faith. It’s different from what you’re used to.”

“I suppose,” Ben said. “The preacher said the grace of God would be sufficient.”

“Yes,” John agreed. “God might have grace even for ignorance, but in this case, I don’t think you can claim ignorance.”

“John,” Elizabeth said, laying her hand on his arm again, “they’re young.”

“There is no reason to spare them the truth,” John said. Then turning to the Stolls, he said, “You realize this will need to be told to the church.”

“You…you won’t be excommunicating us?” Ben’s voice trembled.

“Will this be a Mennonite church you’re going to?” John asked.

“Yes,” Ben said, “I think so.”

“I will see what the church and the other ministers say. Don’t get a car until you join this new church—if it is a Mennonite church—and keep yourselves in the
Ordnung till
then. I know it may seem foolish to you since you are leaving anyway. You’ll need all the help you can get, though. A little keeping of the rules won’t hurt and might even help you. We are not the keepers of men’s souls. We just watch the best we know how. Our faith has always been a voluntary one, a gathering of like hearts. If you wish to leave, I don’t stand in your way.”

Ben looked relieved. Sylvia even smiled.

“But if it’s a wacky church, that’s another matter,” the bishop added. “There are some out there.”

“No, it’s not wacky,” Sylvia said. “The preacher is a very spiritual man.”

“I hope so,” John said.

Hannah noticed Elizabeth had laid her hand on John’s arm again.

The bishop then dismissed the meeting and said this would be discussed more among the ministry during the next preaching Sunday. He asked Ben and Sylvia if they would be willing to give this more thought. They both nodded with troubled expressions on their faces.

After everyone left, Jake stood and watched the buggy lights grow distant.

“I’m sorry to see them go,” he said.

“I am too,” Hannah said, surprised at how much she meant it. The young couple would be missed in the small church.

Thirty-three

Hannah sat in her usual place on the hard bench with the other women, but this Sunday, Sylvia Stoll was not beside her. Instead the line of young unmarried girls started immediately. Either Sylvia and Ben had made their final decision and already left the Amish church, or they were absent because of sickness. After the meeting the other night, Hannah couldn’t help but suppose it was the former reason.

On the way to church, a cold blast swept down the mountain slopes. Last night too had been frigid. When Hannah greeted Betty in the kitchen, her aunt said that the pond they had passed on their way to church had frozen over. And now, outside the living room window of Amos Raber’s place, where church was being held, the branches on the trees whipped angrily back and forth.

Hannah shivered on the bench, though the house was well heated. Amos kept his old furnace chugging along just fine. Every so often he would head for the basement to add wood to the fire. The cause of Hannah's discomfort was not the temperature but the emptiness inside of her.

Hannah hadn’t expected to experience such strong feelings after losing the baby. But then she hadn’t ever given a thought to the sad possibility. How could she know how to feel? And yet, for the past several days, a void seemed to have engulfed her. She had mourned more—not less—over the life that still should have been in her. She felt like weeping over a grave, but there was none.

Around her the singing rose and fell while the ministers met upstairs. It wouldn’t be long before they returned and began the preaching. Jake would be preaching this morning, she supposed. It might even be his first time doing the main sermon. Strange, she thought, how the preaching suddenly held such an interest for her.

The song ended with one last exertion, the notes rising in a joyous outburst of sound. Around the room, silence descended instantly, as if no one wanted to be the first to move. Then came a cautious shuffle of feet, and someone fumbled for his handkerchief and loudly blew his nose.

With the announcement of the next song number, the room filled with expectation, as if everyone simultaneously drew in breath for the start of the song. The sound of shoes on the hardwood steps came first, though, followed by a collapse of the room’s collective readiness to sing. Hannah heard the songbooks softly close all around her. She shut her own book and laid it under the bench. Preaching hour had arrived.

Bishop Nisley delivered the first sermon, followed by the Scripture reading. Christmas was in two weeks, and Bishop mentioned the fact briefly. Jake, though, got up to deliver the main sermon as Hannah expected. He told the full story of Jesus’ birth.

He stood close to the double living room windows. With his hands clasped and his young features sober, he told of the birthday of Jesus, a time to reflect on God becoming a man. Jake started with what Hannah assumed were Old Testament prophecies and spoke of the promise of a child who would be the hope of mankind. “In a world of sickness, sin, suffering, and war, God would give His answer in His own time, His solution to the world’s troubles.

“The baby was born of a virgin and grew up to tread on the head of the serpent. He was bitten in the heel for His troubles and was killed. He would be called
Emmanuel,
the
Everlasting Father,
the
Prince of Peace,
and of His reign and kingdom would have no end. He would be known as the
Man of Sorrows,”
Jake said. “He would weep over His people, even though they would reject Him. He would be taken as a lamb to the slaughter, to be killed like a sheep who would remain silent before its shearers. The world would never understand how God could save without an army, without a war of slaughter against His enemies, without reigning as a king from Jerusalem.

“The religious leaders of the day,” Jake said, “expected something God didn’t do, something He never said He would do. Their years of Scripture study had led them away from God and into their own understanding. The church leaders thought God was like them—hard, unforgiving, enforcing a harsh code of justice.

“Many of them had forgotten the beginning, when God walked in the garden with Adam and Eve and talked to them in the cool of the day. People of Jesus’ day were no longer being told that God loved His people, that He created them for love, and that He could do no differently than love, as His nature demanded it.

“In the Old Testament,” Jake said, “God spoke of comforting His people. He commanded the prophets to cry out to Jerusalem, to proclaim the end of her warfare, to announce her iniquities pardoned; one could receive double from the Lord for any wrongs committed.”

Jake then said, “God was no longer in the garden. Sin had defiled it. Man could work all he wanted, but this earth would never be heaven. This was no longer our home. God’s people were now to be pilgrims and strangers down here, never quite at home, preparing for their move to a better world where they would live forever.

“The wonder of the child’s birth was not that the earth had become heaven, but that heaven had come down to earth. God became man, not to live in one place or to be at home in one country but to be at home in every man’s and woman’s heart, preparing them for the move to God’s new world. There could never be another garden of Eden, but there could be a garden in the heart of all who believe in Jesus.

“God wants to live fully through those who believe in Him. He wants them to go into all the world, wherever sin is, and live the life of God fully—the humble, unarmed, holy life that the child brought into the manger. Such a life inevitably attracts persecution and hatred from those who don’t understand.

“Our forefathers,” Jake said, “never believed the earth could be made into heaven. They never sought to bring about another protected place where no scorpions crawled or wolves tore up lambs, where people could eat from the tree of life whenever they wanted to. Instead they went about their lives like sheep among wolves because that was how God had come into this world.

“It was a great mystery,” Jake continued, “what God was doing. He revealed His plans slowly, throughout the pages of Scripture. He started working with one man, Abraham, and one nation, Israel. This led many religious leaders to think that where God started He was going to stop. They thought this meant God loved only Jews and worked only through war and battle.

“But God is going somewhere,” Jake said as he started to walk around a little, clasping and unclasping his hands in front of him. Hannah glanced over to Bishop Nisley, afraid of what she would see. Was Jake preaching too well again—especially today with his first main sermon?