Foreword Hubert Swartzentruber has snow-white hair now; he has tried to retire three times. But somehow those of us who know him still regard him as a vigorous force, one still deeply engaged in the path of exploration and discovery. Hubert’s life seemed to intersect with many dramatic changes of the last fifty years: he grew up on a farm, speaking both German and English. But a call to ministry took him and his young wife June to spend formative marriage years in a St. Louis, Missouri, ghetto housing project. There they learned to love a new Jesus—one they met on the streets, at the funerals of gunshot and police brutality victims. They met Martin Luther King and learned from African-American community leaders. Still later, Hubert worked in Mennonite denominational offices, helping the church bridge culture gaps, teach peace in the face of the Vietnam War, and explore new forms of outreach. After the death of his wife June, children Lorna and David now being adults, Hubert married Mary Rittenhouse, a former St. Louis volunteer, and moved to Pennsylvania. Here because of his gentle, courageous pastoral leadership, he was asked to chair a study group which might bring together various positions on homosexuality that had arisen in relation to Germantown Mennonite Church, for which Hubert was overseer. Once again, the man who should have been peacefully retired was embroiled in the middle of the culture’s messiest controversy. In these pages, Hubert tells us something about the internal path he walked as he moved from country to city, "religious" to secular, safety to danger. He gives a personal picture of the faith that sustained him and the Jesus who led him. This memoir is not professional. It does not even attempt to be complete. Many stories with huge dramatic potential are surprisingly only hinted at. Rather, Hubert’s recurring focus is his discovery of God’s presence in the most humble and broken life and in the darkest corners. He takes great care to share with us Scriptures he has claimed as his own "mission statement," and which have fed his courage to step out into the uncharted territory where he believes Jesus is already walking. Although he writes this small spiritual memoir on paper, Hubert wants to "carve in stone" one truth he has come to know: it is a sin to discriminate against any person created by God. The man who felt the heat from a KKK cross burning, heard bullets crash through his car window, and cried in public when his church voted not to include women as possible pastors, can still cry over injustice, prejudice, and religious apathy. I had a sense as I read Hubert’s words that he had prayed them as he wrote them. I felt privileged to read the testimony of the stories, Hubert’s fervent hope that all he had learned about God’s presence in the tough places would not be lost to us, who live in tough times. As he says, "We may never keep people guessing as to whose side we are on. Nor can we wait till we have all the answers before we can walk with . . . those who are oppressed. The answers come as we are walking." This gentle pastor who loves John Deere tractors, polishes pieces of colorful stone as gifts, listens long and hard, writes love poems to his wife Mary—this man offers few pat answers to his friends and colleagues. He simply invites us to join the walk, in the company of Jesus and of the wounded ones in this world. —Mary Lou Cummings, Perkasie,
Pennsylvania, Jesus in Back Alleys orders:
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