Pasadena Mennonite Church: Recent Episodes
Pasadena Mennonite
PMC’s Justice and Service Commission invites us into ministry around affordable housing, indigenous rights, peacemaking amidst war and world conflicts such as in Gaza, and political advocacy in these and other areas. Justice is aspirational but also is possible, so the commission places Justice before Service in its name as a reminder to seek justice and not settle for direct service, valuable as that is. Our panel will share briefly about specific ministries.
PMCers Join Coalition at Oak Flat Prayer Rising.Below: Hear David Gist, Pastor Katerina Gea, and Bert Newton as they speak about Justice & Service Projects and PMC.
Cara Pfeiffer uses the story of the woman caught in adultery, John 8:1-11, to share the practical peacemaking steps Jesus took in that encounter to deescalate the situation and to protect a vulnerable woman.
Questions for thought:
- What everyday conflicts in your life could be deescalated with practices of pause and non-threatening body language?
- What are some practical steps you could take in your own life to have a more peaceful coexistence with difficult people in your life?
Listen to the sermon and discussion below. (Audio is a bit uneven given the set-up for group exercise.)
Stanley Green described his first pastorate in South Africa, where his parishioners were menial laborers on farms producing ostriches and grapes. Stanley knew that the very religious white owners of the farms beat their workers. They were paid little, forcing them to buy on credit from the farm store half-way through the month. And at 13, children were taken out of school to work the farms.
This history created an interest for Stanley regarding the topic of spirituality. The history of the western church created a duality between mind and body, and other-worldliness over earthliness, as well as linear thinking. This has been manifested through sexism, climate change, and wide-spread disease that plagues our society.
It is time to bring back what has been forgotten: the body, the physical world, and those labeled as “other” back into our consciousness so that our world can heal and find restoration.
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On September 11th, we were honored to hear from Sarah Augustine, a Pueblo (Tewa) descendant and author of "The Land Is Not Empty: Following Jesus in Dismantling the Doctrine of Discovery" (Herald Press, 2021). This is the first week in a series called Anabaptist Academy, and centers around Jesus and Justice.
The Doctrine of Discovery is a legal doctrine, a paradime for creating law. It is the current legal doctrine in the United States, defining reality for indigenous peoples, dating back to colonization, mission, and economic development — and last cited in 2005 in a majority opinion written by Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
The Doctrine is also based upon Christian doctrine deployed by the church.
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Jason T. Smith, gifted in weaving together cultural ideas and theological metaphors, spoke to us on September 4th.
Kujenga means “to build” in Swahili. In Kenya, both Swahili and English are official languages. And Leslie Scott, an Englishwoman born in Kenya brought a derivative of the word kujenga to the western world: Jenga. After her family moved to Ghana, she packaged and sold the family game.
Jason goes on to talk about a Mythbuster’s Jr episode tasked with whether the whole foundaion of a Jenga tower could be removed while leaving the building standing? He then turns the question back to us as the church, referring to the building up of the body of Christ in 1 Corinthians 3:9-17. He asks, “What is so foundational to what we are as Christians that removing it would cause what we’ve built to collapse?
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We enter Luke 10:38-42 with Mary and Martha, and the topic of empathy. Mike Rewers empathizes with a rather unpeaceful Martha and her blindness in the moment.
But when we can become aware of our inability to see clearly, we become more able to see the other with loving and accepting eyes, which is how God sees us — and them.
We have to bump into others to become aware of ourselves. God lives in the space between us and the other, and calls us into healing.
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As the apostles wonder whether Jesus has returned from the dead to restore the kingdom of Israel, Jesus instead speaks of power that will come upon them in the form of the Holy Spirit. This was not a dominion over others, but the power of the Spirit of God.
What if this is a power that allows us to bypass the offenses of others, that makes it possible for us to live in peace, to be able to be patient and kind to others, to trust in God despite adversity — the power to able to control our desires — power that can only be given by the Spirit of God. This is a power so simple, so sweet and profound that it can really only come from God.
And it invites us to accompany others.
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“What a time in the U.S. to be asked to talk about conflict resolution,” says Kathleen Klompien-Wedberg as she begins her sermon relating to our Peaceful Practices Curriculum. She notes that the past few weeks have seen the world in a time of war and aggression on multiple fronts.
Yet our passage in Matthew 18:10-22 about trying to reconcile, again and again, the the songs we sing about God’s love and seeing from one another’s point of view, the interactions with the children this morning — call us to be looking at our situation with humility, with creativity, and with discovery. We’re not doing this by ourselves.
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Lisa Thornton began our summer sermon series on “Peaceful Practices — A guide to healthy communication in conflict.” Lisa finds curiosity to be an intentionally chosen posture. Curiosity isn’t merely about inviting all opinions to the table and giving them equal value, but about looking at others around the table regardless of their opinion, and holding each person with value. It’s about working to start interactions rooted in empathy rather than judgement. Hearts and minds are changed only because stories of others are revealed, and the Holy Spirit is allowed to work throughout.
We practiced this with the story of Jesus healing a woman on the Sabbath who had been bent double for 18 years.
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Pentecost Sunday celebrates the coming of the Holy Spirit in a new way following the resurrection and ascension of Jesus.
Rob Muthiah reviews how the Spirit of God is present in creation, throughout the Old Testament and in the life and ministry of Jesus. And so, Rob asks, what about today?
He goes on to use a metaphor developed by theologian and vicar Sam Wells, of performing a play that is missing an act — which we are assigned to improvise. Improv involves following the preceding acts and knowing the act to come. This is how the church discerns God’s movement today: following scripture, knowing what’s to come, filled with and gifted by the Spirit, and guided by the Holy Spirit's presence.
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Lisa Danner talks about the challenges of family conflicts for those attempting to live a pacifist lifestyle. Some of our toughest conflicts involve issues where we feel forced to choose between articulating a deeply held value or “maintaining peace” by way of keeping silent. Lisa summarizes a key finding of Dr. Tania Israel’s research on dialogue across political lines and asks the congregation what feels applicable to their own family conflicts.
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Tim Reardon talks about Buffalo, NY as home, lamenting that it’s now used as shorthand for horrific, racist white violence following the shooting on May 14 at a Tops Friendly Markets store. And he goes on to describe the peace of Christ, in contrast to what the world has to offer.
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Rhoda Blough, our representative from Everence, a faith-based financial services group, references Exodus 16, about manna, and the Matthew 14 passage that describes Jesus feeding a crowd of 5,000. Along with these passages, she shares from a money autobiography and the realization that her parents had left a legacy of abundance to her family. From a blue-collar Mennonite family with nine children and a stay-at-home mom, she was unaware that they were poor.
She asks, "What is a mindset of abundance or a mindset of scarcity?" and elaborates on a God of abundance who has given us a universe composed of all we need to thrive.
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Jason Timothy Smith describes himself as an accountant by day, and artist by night. He talks about a book called "Suma de Arithmetica," about Fra Luca Pacioli, an Italian Mathematician known as the “father of accounting,” who was also math teacher to Leonardo da Vinci. Pacioli also wrote "The Divine Proportion" about the Golden Ratio, or the Golden Mean, used by Renaissance artists in their painting composition.
Pacioli was a Franciscan friar who saw theological implications in these mathematical relationships. In accounting, the act of balancing credits and debits is called reconciliation. And in Luke 6:27-38, Jesus calls for us to give a record of our spiritual life in terms of our relationships with our debtors, the sum of which can be measured by whether we love our enemies.
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Bert introduces the Jesus of Matthew 4:23-25 as a sort of traveling pentecostal preacher: he’s preaching the gospel, healing people, casting out demons, and he gathers a large international following.
Jesus was doing this in synagogues, which to us were religious spaces, but in first century Galilee these were the town governments, centers of self-governance and communal political and religious life. Synagogues were governmental bodies that attended to municipal matters — rather like a town hall. Jesus was going through the towns and villages spreading the good news of the kingdom of heaven — God’s new society. And he told his disciples that they would do the same.
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Joshua Grace and friends Dimitri and Rufo painted and presented a mural to PMC, representing the land that we at PMC meet on: the unceded territory of the Hahamong'na tribe of the Tongva people who have lived in and stewarded the land of the Los Angeles basin for thousands of years.
Joshua has been working on a parallel project — a lenten daily reader — in collaboration with Randy Woodley of Eloheh, a Cherokee descendent. The reader is an introduction to settler colonialist Christians new to issues of the environmental, political and relational impact of colonialism that indigenous people are still experiencing.
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Sue Park-Hur reflects on God's call in 1 Corinthians 12:12-31, and the call to love as a whole in chapter 13. This is a reflection rooted in warmth as it was also an affirmation and celebration of God's call to ordination for Mariann Reardon as the service wrapped around this event for the congregation.
This is God's familiar passage to us as an interconnected body. We are united in the person of Jesus, and we have been baptized by one Spirit into one body. And even more, this is a letter of love, concretely defined by acts of will on behalf of others.
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Rob Muthiah talks about icons: images intended to draw those who dwell upon them into deeper meanings, windows to the divine. They’re intended to disorient us — to invite us to encounter the reality of God differently.
Conversely, given the racist realities of our culture, we have to reckon with a different image: the image of whiteness. This is not whiteness as a low melanin count, but whiteness as a way of seeing the world, and assigning value to people in relation to a color spectrum. It’s a window through which to view the world in a certain way. How might this impact our images of Jesus?
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On January 9th, Tim Reardon spoke on Luke 3:15-22. Here we meet people out in the desert, who are filled with expectations, hopes… So what were these people expecting? It was a particular vision of the world — the vision of Isaiah 40:3-5 — of mountains being brought down, valleys raised up, and people seeing the salvation of God. This vision was a redefinition of the way the world is; a vision of a world of justice and peace.
As we come into this year, what are the things that we are expecting?
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Kathleen Klompien-Wedberg talks about the toxic positivity and consumerism of the typical American Christmas, and how it leads us to feel tired and jaded. In this week’s scripture, Luke 3: 7-14, even the unlikely hero, John the Baptist calls us back to what we ought to talk about who is left out of the typical Christmas—the othered, the neurodivergent, the unhoused, those whose path has not been in a typically straight line—and how God is rejoicing and singing over all humankind.
Image by Kelly Latimore, kellylatimoreicons.com.
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Stories are important because they color the way we view God. In Philippians 1:3-11, Paul is writing from prison to the church in Philippi — a loving letter, full of affection and joy. Hope is important for Paul — both in the way the world is structured and in where it’s going.
The creation story in Genesis 1 is believed to be written while the Jewish people were exiled in Babylon. It is written for an exiled and subjugated people — yet contains none of the violence of other creation stories.
Our God’s creation is an invitation — a call that includes the participation of creation itself. God takes joy in creation. We are created in God’s image, counterparts with the capacity to love, to be compassionate, to have relationship with God — to help birth God's peace. We too are called to live into God's creation story.
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Lisa Danner talks about the season of Advent as a time to create space for waiting. She highlights that people seem to have a propensity to get distracted from things that matter and invites us to analyze what pressures, mindsets, or stressors might be let go in order for us to have experiences of wonder.
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Adam enters into the week’s scripture passage of John 18:33-37 in light of Jesus' words to Pilate, "My kingdom is not from this world. If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews."
Adam's own understanding has come from his transition from prison guard to anabaptist seminarian and hospital chaplain — a transition that has led him from ideas of perpetuating to breaking cycles of violence.
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Mark 13:1-8, is known as the little apocalypse. This is a foreign genre to us, though common at the time of Jesus’ life. Surprisingly, these were originally texts of hope, written to provide another vision of the world for people suffering and oppressed. In apocalypse, worldly power is turned on its head, and God’s justice reigns, assuring the vindication of the oppressed.
In Mark, Jesus seems to be speaking in realistic terms about what lies ahead for his friends and disciples, trying to prepare them. He tells them that God will be with them through it all. His warnings here are not a condemnation, but a lament of what is to come. Jesus is reading the signs of the times.
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David Gist reflects on the meaning of the phrase “You will always have the poor among you,” or “with you.” It’s a rather famous phrase — or infamous, given how this passage has been used to perpetuate greed and capitalism. But what was the context for this phrase, initially from Deuteronomy?
David was called to work with Bread for the World just over 20 years ago. It's founder decided to focus on the root causes of hunger concluding from Bible study that God not only cared about “the least of these,” but about our laws and structures — and how society relates to the least of these. God calls us to advocacy: write a letter to Congress with us!
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In Mark 12:28-34, a religious scholar asks Jesus about Old Testament law — what the greatest commandment is. Jesus responds by quoting the Shema: a Deuteronomy passage instructing the Jewish people to love God with all their heart, soul, and might. Jesus adds “mind.” Secondly, he says, is to love one's neighbor as one's self.
Jesus is confirming his identity as a member of this Jewish community. The Shema is the unifying message among the Jewish people. The scholars want to show that he’s an outsider — but Jesus always comes back to center.
Lisa delves deeper into heart, soul, and mind love, and reminds us that God is interested in love that is communal, and protective of others.
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Jason takes the passage of Mark 10:35-45, in which Jesus calls his disciples to divest themselves of power in order to serve, and weaves it together with stories of Judy Chicago and Sojourner Truth.
Jesus continues to turn the tables on culture, and to call for the divestment of power and dominance in order that his followers might serve.
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Bert Newton talks about how the early church spread the idea of God’s New Society in which all would be housed, how churches are attempting that today, and how the campaign to help churches build affordable housing continues that vision. He also describes how Jesus and his disciples spoke up in their city councils (synagogues) and how we can do that today.
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The passage of Mark 10:2-16 has greatly impacted Susan Cameron’s growth and thinking about what God is trying to say to us through the Bible — particularly because of its abuse and misuse.
Studying family systems in seminary at the time she was practicing family law brought light to Susan’s view of what Jesus was saying in this passage. Rather than words of bondage, these were revealed as words of liberation. Jesus’ words about adultery were shocking in his day because they included rights for a woman impacted by adultery, rather than just men or husbands — implying mutuality and equality in marital relationships.
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As a chaplain in a hospital context, Adam offers solidarity with those who need confession. His touchpoint with James is the call to “confess to one another … and you will be healed.”
At a recent hospital event, a tea for the soul with hospital staff, one doctor remained behind to talk about the challenges his patients were carrying. Their need, and the need of this doctor, was for solidarity.
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Long influenced by Yale theology professor Willie James Jennings, Frank Scoffield Nellessen spoke about God creating home: a place of safety, of love, of belonging, where we could provide for and take care of one another, get to know one another: a place of life. For “to be a creature is fundamentally to be a homemaker."
The Word became flesh and made his home among us. —John 1:14.
The word made flesh continues to unfold home among us. And so God’s home opens up to us, fully draws us in and is given away like Jesus’ body.
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Sam Bills was drawn to Jesus’ healing of a deaf and mute man — restoring him to community. It offers a gospel of hope, healing, hearing, restoration and expanded understanding for himself and for our community — all expressed in the word ephphatha, open up.
But this is the second story of healing in our passage. The first is that of the Syrophoenician woman. Not only is she a woman, but one of enemy descent — an outsider of outsiders. Jesus has entered a house in an effort to be hidden, and this woman defies custom by approaching him. She is desperate, driven by concern for her child. Jesus refuses her abruptly. Is this a test of faith? Or could it be that the interaction is also shaping Jesus?
Ephphatha, open up. What things are keeping us from this openness?
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Tim addresses Mark 7:1-23, where the Pharisees come to Jesus asking why his disciples don’t practice ritual hand washing before meals. Jesus doesn’t get upset that the Pharisees are obsessively following laws, but because they are not sticking closely enough to the law. Their traditions are getting in the way of God’s commandments. The intent of these traditions was not harmful, and Jesus knows that. But while the intent wasn’t harmful, they were creating a hierarchy. The Pharisees want Jesus and his men to be more separate from the population — more holy and set apart.
Jesus is pointing out that their practices are doing things that they did not anticipate. What practices might we have that do the same?
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Lisa Thornton begins her encounter with Ephesians 6:10-20 by suggesting we do a google image search on “armor of God,” and see the resulting images of battle armor. This makes sense in the world we live in today.
Paul, the author of Ephesians, uses this imagery because it was familiar to his readers; and though we don’t generally have soldiers marching our streets, we can easily envision someone in modern armor.
Yet this is human armor. Paul is giving a new way to understand and redefine armor. He is saying we need a different kind of armor: God’s armor. This is armor not for an individual, but for the community. It's a new identity we wear to help us carry the word of peace, not violence.
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Midway between gen X and millennials, Tim identifies more with a micro-generation: “the Oregon Trail generation.” This is the final generation with an analog childhood and an adolescence marked by a seismic shift to a digital world.
Tim compares the slowness of the Oregon Trail game with the pressures of covid. In Ephesians this week, chapter 5:15-20, Paul talks alot about walking. Translated either live or walk in verse 15, we are to be active in the world. Paul asks the believers in Ephasus to walk wisely and to be filled with the Holy Spirit. The status quo is more comfortable, especially for those of us with privilege. Yet we are called, in the language of Oregon Trail, to ford the river.
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Melissa Spolar spoke about venturing out after improvements in COVID care post-vaccine. She participated in two mud & obstacle races. The first, “Tough Mudder,” was presented with teamwork as the spirit of the event. Next, a Spartan Race, was based on self-challenge, success and competition.
Feeling covid isolation from church community, Melissa approached Ephesians 4:1-16 in need and with prayer. The passage calls for churches to live in unity, and an ultimate goal toward unity was knowledge of Jesus. Our acts as a body of Christ must be second to knowing Jesus. This is our foundation and our bond of unity.
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Lauren Murtidjaja tackles this passage that we're almost too familiar with. Yet scripture is living, moving, breathing — so Lauren jumps in to share observations from her encounter with the text. What hasn't been said about this story? Why is David not at battle with his troops as a King should be?
David catches sight of Bathsheba bathing, purifying herself to enter the temple — a ritual bath. She is in her proper place.
But David inquires about Bathsheba, sends for her, takes her, and lays with her. Does she have a choice? She must obey the King. But David is abusing his power — and this is rape.
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Tim Reardon contrasts a monument to the Egyptian pharoah Ramses II o the temple that God would build from the time of David through to the time of Christ. The poem, Ozymandias, is a comment on a monument to fallen power — a call to fear.
Paul's description of the temple of God's people built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, and the cornerstone of Christ Jesus. This temple is dedicated to Jesus, and inhabited by the Spirit. And the power of God in this temple manifests in mercy, in Spirit, and in life. And we live out God's call within a community of the Spirit.
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Jason Timothy Smith deftly weaves together the symbols of our nation's history, the art and life of Jasper Johns, the call of Ezekial as prophet to the nations of Israel in Ezekiel 2:1-5, and above all — the mercy of Jesus.
See and hear as Jason calls us toward that mercy.
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A sighting of bald grapevines led Tim Reardon to look into viticulture — both now and in Jesus' time. What he learned shed new light for him on Jesus' parable of the vine in John 15. He learned that there is a source vine — a trustworthy root. And next that there are two types of pruning — and not all branches are meant to bear fruit. How does this impact our life in Jesus the true vine? Our relationship to one another as branches?
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Lisa continues our reflection of the roles each of us uniquely play in the kin-dom work that our community has set out to do.
Hopefully, our small efforts at righting the world add up and bring us closer to the kin-dom of God described and displayed to us by Jesus. The story of Tabitha in Acts 9 is one such story. We know that she devoted her life to caring for others. And like the widows in the first century, our communities are filled with people who are not protected by the system in which they live.
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Sarah Fuller takes on a tricky passage following the Israelites' demand for a king to lead them. Saul, a man of status, is annointed as king, but fails to obey God. God instructs Samuel to anoint a son of Jesse instead. The selection process reflects God's perspective: "...the Lord does not look at the things human beings look at; people look at the outward appearance ... the Lord looks at the heart." How do expectations of prestige and status affect our view of ourselves and others?
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This Memorial Day sermon makes clear that what we remember and how we remember matters — for our understanding of the world, and for how we define ourselves. Memories are foundational for how we connect with our past and with others. They help build collective memory, social memory, memories that we all hold in common. To these memories we build monuments. They are our stories. Monuments not only tell stories, but they invite us to be part of those stories, whether for good or for bad. This week we celebrated two intersecting events — communion and Memorial Day. Each mark a liturgical calendar centered on sacrifice.
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Lila Hunt went looking for something missing in her relationship with God, and found positive influence in the pentecostal tradition. And so as an anabaptist, she considers herself a hybrid. Pentecost in Acts occurred during Shavuot — or Pentecost in Greek. It commemorated the giving of the Torah by God at Mt. Sinai. The risen Jesus had instructed the disciples to remain in Jerusalem until they were given heavenly power — so they wait. In Acts 2, they pray, fast, and interpret all they had experienced. On Shavuot, God’s Spirit comes with signs and wonders resembling the signs and wonders that came with the giving of the Torah. But rather than giving the law, the Holy Spirit was giving Herself.
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What is Ascension Sunday? Resurrection part 2? “Why are you staring toward heaven?” two white-robed men ask. And for us as well, our focus is here. This king, this proclaimer of good news to the poor, this enemy of the state, this executed criminal, has been enthroned — and stands at the center of all that is. The Jesus community remains in hiding — but it is also marked by their eating together, a symbol of covenant. In this time Jesus teaches and commissions them as ambassadors, and pilgrims, and witnesses. This is life and living in our bodies the truth of justice and peace in Jesus — in the face of powers and principalities. We mark with our bodies in life the politics of heaven on earth.
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Bert Newton unpacks John 10:1-16, and asks, "How do we become shepherds in a society where often our official shepherds are much like the hired hands that Jesus describes?"
What do shepherds do? They organize sheep. And in organizing, we are all both shepherds and sheep.
Together, organized and using our diversity of gifts and talents, we can move mountains. We are not alone in our struggle to establish God’s justice, we not only have each other, we have other faith communities and community groups and organizations that we can organize with to move mountains.
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This week Frank led us in reflecting on how we can be a community of action, by considering how we might find ways to move together as a body. Key to this common, community action is not the need to be individuals who do everything, but in recognizing our unique gifts and how we can contribute to a common movement. Along the way, Frank tells us a few stories of walking together in little things with big consequences.
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In this week’s sermon, Melissa Hofstetter reminds us of the power of connection, for those of us especially that may feel out of touch in this moment. As she considers Jesus’s offer to Thomas to touch his side, we are invited to consider the importance of touch, in Scripture and in our lives. As we focus on the wound, we consider the intimacy of woundedness and the importance of our ability to connect to one another in our woundedness and mutual reliance.
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Our Easter reflection focuses on a Jesus who comes and dismantles the stories of oppression, colonization, and death that we have been formed into and invites us into eternal life in the present. Where the powers of the earth are not Lord; where death is not the last word; but Jesus is Lord, who comes in life and forgiveness.
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Rob leads us through Jesus’s journey down the “Stairwell of Love.” Beginning with Philippians 2:1-11, Rob shows us how Jesus begins a descent out of love and obedience. This loving journey down this stairwell is mirrored in the days of Jesus’s crucifixion. Jesus moves from the top of the staircase, likeness with God, divinity, and moves through humanity, betrayal, arrest, denial, dissertation, and eventually crucifixion and into the grave.
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The people of Israel waited hundreds of years for the promise of a new reality, where, as Jeremiah prophesied, God would restore the people and write his Law on their hearts. Jesus, himself, tells us that the times have changed, that God’s salvation is at hand, that we are in a new time and a new reality. Though this can be difficult to imagine, we are called into a promise and living hope; God is with us and working through us. As we join in Jesus’ posture of humility and sacrifice, we also join in the hope and confidence that the world is being made new.
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This Week, we consider the strange comparison made in John 3 between Jesus and the story about Moses lifting up a Bronze serpent in the wilderness. Using a reflection from Japanese theologian Kosuke Koyama, we reflect on how the central image of Christianity, the cross, is not a "bridge" but an encounter and a conflict.
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This week sermon, Jason leads us in considering signs, the signs that we reflect and display as we live in the way of the crucified. After considering the signs and significations of artist Retna, Jason contemplates Jesus’s clearing of the temple in John 2. Making the comparison to the false worship found in Jesus’s time with the false worship of Christian nationalism, power, and violence seen on display at the “temple of democracy,” Jason contends that rather than “abandoning the sign of the cross,” we must learn “to cleave closer its true content.”
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This week, Erica Scoffield Nellessen led us in a reflection on faith. She calls us to consider our faith as a faith beyond our own vision, but that is a hope in the faithful God. To this end, she invites us to consider both Jesus's call to Peter to step out in faith, and God's call Abraham to step out similarly. This faith is a trust and belief in God's own vision and love, a living out a beautiful imagination, a commitment deeper than our ability to see how it all works out, a faith grounded in a God who is good, faithful, and beautiful.
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This week we reflected on the beginning of our Lenten journey in the wilderness and how our imagination of wilderness shapes this journey. Doing so, we spent time thinking about white-settler colonialism, its "wilderness," and the recent Supreme Court win for the Creek nation. In resetting our imaginations we think of wilderness as a place where we hold joy and lament in the hope of life, flipping the script on common perceptions of wilderness.
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On February 14th, as part of PMC's first healing service amid the pandemic, Mariann offered this reflection on healing and wholeness, and Romans 12:10-15 While certainly physical healing is part of this, this sermon focuses on the ways that we can be agents of healing, promoting healthy systems and healthy relationship, as agents of God's love and seeking our own wholeness amid this current moment. As a community we are invited into creating and resting in frameworks of love. As the reflection concludes, Mariann invites us all to find ways to encounter God's love, to reflect on and receive it, to imagine ourselves enveloped in God's love.
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Every year at Pasadena Mennonite, we engage in something called Consecration Sunday. On this day, we take stock of our common community, recommit to our Covenant of Faith, determine how we will be able to contribute to our community throughout the year in our time and finances, and sometimes we even welcome some new members into our community. This Consecration Sunday, Tim preached on abiding in love, in the foundational, mysterious, and overwhelming love of God, that, strangely enough is manifest in the little acts and love of our little community and its common life.
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Reflecting on the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, we remember the King rejected by polite society, pushed to the fringes of social discourse, and still relentless in his concern for justice in his fight against racism, economic exploitation, and militarism. This sermon focuses on King’s last days and last speech, while considering “the mark of Cain,” a trope traditionally used to justify the enslavement of Black and Brown people. The real mark of Cain, Cain's foundational violence, is visible today in whiteness and has reared its head marking the American project. In the spirit of King, what we need is a real, deep, costly love; truth; and an embracing of the gift of repentance.
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The reflection that was provided by the heavens during Christmas week was perfect: in the midst of our seeming darkness, we saw a Christmas star — though it was actually the alignment of Jupiter and Saturn.
Christmas falls amid the darkest days of the year.
In scripture, the star illumines the way for the Magi, but they still need to recalibrate their expectations. Assuming they know where the newborn king should be, they go to the power-center of the region, Jerusalem, to find Herod, who rules by Roman allowance and maintains power through violence. But the newborn Messiah is not there.
Jesus is not born in a palace not among riches and worldly power, but among the people — regular people at a modest house in Bethlehem. It is here that a light shines forth.
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Do not fear! These are the angel’s words to Mary.
But there is so much to fear!
So much to anticipate! Something is coming. Something has already come. Change is on the horizon. Change is already overwhelming us.
When the angel’s words come to her, what does Mary hear? Mary’s world was also unsettled, living as she did under Roman occupation.
Her song, praising God who turns the world upside down, shows us that she is well aware of the injustices of the world around her. Yet she comes to us with a message of disruptive joy.
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Isaiah 61 involves some of the same geographies that are in the news today: Iraq, Israel, and Iran. Iraq roughly correlates with the ancient nation of Babylon. In 597 BC, Babylon invades Judah — the remaining southern kingdom of Israel that hadn’t yet fallen. Judah becomes an occupied territory. Ten years later Jerusalem is leveled.
In 539 BC, Persia defeats Babylon, and the exiles of Judah are allowed to return home — to a homeland that has been destroyed. Yet there is joy in returning. And into this homecoming, Isaiah speaks good news — of promise to these poor returning home, and many yet to come.
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Advent is a season of preparation — doing the work of getting ready for the Lord to come. Yet this year preparing for advent has felt really tough, and the stakes for what’s coming have never felt so high.
This year has been hard. Yet Isaiah 40:26-31 points us toward God and his strength and presence in our weariness. Our hope is in midst of the messiness of human weakness.
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In many ways, Advent is a prayer. We come to this time amid our own trials, amid a world of uncertainty and hurt — real pressures and hardships — but we also come with an expectation and a hope. We come bearing one another’s burdens and we come in anticipation of a coming Savior. It is a season long prayer — a meditation that is both lament and hope — existing in tension. But it is a moving into hope.
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On November 22nd, Sarah Fuller engaged the lectionary passages of Ezekiel 34:11-16, 20-24 and Matthew 25: 31-46. In these passages, it seems that there are some responsibilities that belong to sheep|people and some that belong to God|the shepherd. So how do we work for good, in obedience — while leaving judgement to God?
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Tim talks about Elijah waiting in a cave for the presence of God, and Jesus on the mount of transfiguration. "I wonder if now, after this election, amid this pandemic, we find ourselves pausing to decompress, to take stock, though we are all surely processing it differently. Pauses can be helpful and necessary, chances to heal and reflect, as long as we remain mindful that we cannot simply hold onto these moments as if we do not have a journey ahead of us."
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What happens in this world matters very much. The Anabaptist way invests in helping to bring about God’s justice in this broken world. That can become an overwhelming burden — especially at times when it seems fruitless.
Yet God is on a mission of transforming and redeeming this world, which started long before us and will continue after. We are invited and called into that work, but ultimately, it’s God’s work.
God’s way is bigger than our political solutions, and vastly more creative — and the love of Jesus will continue to invade our world.
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Nov 1st — many of us are are distracted, exhausted, anxious, hopeful, emotional. We’re invested — not only in the election, but even more so in it’s aftermath. How do we hear God today?
Micah was a mouthpiece for God during a time of turbulence and political unrest. On a national scale, the people of God were divided: Israel in the north, and Judah in the south, two kingdoms and two rulers. But they were still the one people who had made a promise of devotion to God — promised in the time of Moses and David.
Yet this was an Israel with extreme social and economic injustices. And God says, “No more.”
This is still our hope.
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In this time of change and upheaval, summer uprisings that brought cracks in law enforcement and culture to the forefront, and another difficult presidential race — the idea of delighting in law brings tension. What do the seemingly idealistic words of Psalm 1 say to us in such a moment?
Frank Scoffield Nellessen sees Psalm 1 as casting a beautiful vision of the world. The psalmist sees that God's law is delightful — and is actually a window into another world: a vision of God's world.
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