Raleigh Mennonite Church: Recent Episodes
Raleigh Mennonite Church
Audio from Raleigh Mennonite Church: primarily the sermons from Sunday morning worship, but some other surprises show up occasionally as well.
Jonah 1:1-17
This Sunday Pastor Trey launches into a new series on the story of Jonah. God's desire for global salvation is a nearly unbelievable truth. We are invited to reflect on the first chapter of Jonah through this lens of expansive salvation.
When we look at Jonah, we see that God can work salvation through wayward people and stormy conditions. This salvation is not a get out of hell free card. Rather, it's deliverance from the consequences of a life lived with no compass nor compassion. It's about liberation from a matrix of systemic oppression and destruction; of remission from a sin-sick society and the cancellation of the harm we inflict on ourselves and others.
Jonah doesn't provide an easy moral lesson about how we ought to respond to the spirit of God prompting us to do things that we don't want to do. Jonah merely holds up a mirror to many of us. As we look at our reflections in Jonah, by the power of the Spirit of God, may we be transformed to look more like Jesus.
1 John 4: 7-16
It is very hard to live in the love Christ called us to when we dislike people or they treat us poorly. Trey Ferguson reminds us in this week's sermon that as Paul said, amongst the enduring virtues of faith, hope, and love - love is the greatest. Love is patient, kind, not rude or arrogant, not seeking its own advantage, never holding grudges, and enduring all things. God's love never fails. Love is the only way to discover who and how God is. Of course, many examples of love we see around us are distorted or warped. The sermon this week is on what love is, this thing that the scriptures tell us that God is like. Trey's abridged definition of love is the commitment to wholeness. We invite you to listen in as Pastor Trey unpacks this definition and shares his vision of the greatest virtue, love.
Isaiah 40: 28-31
Our world is full of great cause for alarm. AI potentially running amok, climate change, politics, war - take your pick. Hope in the face of these concerns is a precious commodity. However, the context of this week's scripture reminds us that the prophets also lived during troubling times as well. When faced with oppressive powers or oppressive times, we are faced with a choice. Do we assimilate, accommodate, or do we take the most dangerous option - resistance? Without resistance, many may suffer through our lack of action. One of the most powerful tools of resistance is hope. Trey Ferguson's sermon explores how hope is the exercise of the positive expectation in God's goodness, best practiced in community. The prophets teach us that hope comes from having a God mighty enough to save us and that you can count on that salvation. However, we must carry the burden of this expectation together. That as we wait upon the Lord with an audacious hope, God will effect changes that create an almost unrecognizable improvement in circumstances. Come and listen as Trey offers his interpretation of how we will live to see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.
Scripture: Genesis 221:1-14
The story from Genesis is about Abraham taking his son Isaac up to the mountain to be sacrificed. But Abraham being willing to sacrifice his son is craziness!
Who has been rendered expendable in our zeal for God? When we're driven by a desire to be faithful to God and go too far, real people pay the price. Typically, the most vulnerable among us: widows, orphans, immigrants, women, and children in general, captives, disabled people, queer people, all sorts of people who are pushed to the edges of our society. And when God sees these people bound to altars that we've constructed, God moves on their behalf. When faith takes us too far God provides the means for us to be faithfully generative.
We have to face the fact that zeal to be faithful to God will not override God's care and compassion for even the least among us.
We were excited to have so many guests join us for Pastor Trey's installation service!
This morning Trey preached from Romans 6:3-11.
Death is the great equalizer. Making sense of death is the impetus behind a great deal of faith systems and cultural narratives around the world and throughout history. Even in the incarnation of Jesus, Jesus receives a death sentence. In entering the story of humanity, Jesus embarks on a journey toward the grave. It's not the sort of journey we get to watch from the sideline. It's a journey we're invited to take with and in Jesus. When we are baptized into Jesus, we're not baptized into a substitutionary equation, but a life of radical following and discipleship. And it's a life that marches straight to death.
But when we follow Jesus, we're baptized into a different type of death. We're baptized into Jesus' death. The sort of death that we face when we know how the world will respond to what is right. We're baptized into Jesus' death so that we can experience the miracle of resurrection. When we come alive again we move as those who are not timid about what comes next. We move with a sense of eagerness and even urgency about what we find on the other side of our next steps.
Matthew 9:35-10:1
On Trey's first official Sunday as RMC's new pastor, he spoke about the radically inclusive, ever-expanding Kingdom of God. Jesus proclaims the good news not to draw people into religion, but to construct new ways of belonging.
Today's passage says that when Jesus saw the crowds he had compassion for them. Compassion is not only the awareness of distress or suffering of another but the sharing of that distress. We are compassionate when we feel the distress of others in our own being and move to alleviate it on their behalf.
In a world that has become increasingly reliant on artificial intelligence, it is easier than ever to dehumanize our neighbors. And it is impossible to dehumanize anyone without gradually losing touch with your own humanity. The salvation that Jesus offers is a rehumanization project in which the many ways of the world that chip away at our ability to love one another well are overcome by the herald of a new humanity.
Acts 2:1-13
RMC's soon to be pastor, Trey Ferguson, preached on Pentecost Sunday, reflecting on the arrival of the power of the Holy Spirit that empowered his followers to preach the Gospel to multitudes of people in their own heart languages, no Duolingo required. In the upper room their must have been a deep sense of anticipation, waiting on the arrival of God's invitation to a partnership with God in their work. This mirrors our own anticipation as we await to see the wonders God will show us in partnering RMC with Trey and his wonderful family. How will the Holy Spirit empower this community of believers and its new pastor? Raleigh today is as cosmopolitan as Jerusalem in the time of Christ, full of new people arriving from all over the world with heart cultures of their own. Trey reminds us of the truth that as a descendant of Africans, it bears witness to an act of colonization that he is fluent in English rather than Igbo. Pushing people away from their heart language separates them from their common story and culture, and cements outsider control. Pentecost is the Holy Spirit's act of affirmation of all of people yearning to commune with God, that reaches out to people in a way that makes the most sense to them, bringing them into communion with God and other believers without colonization or coercion. As RMC strives to become a multilingual and intercultural church, we sit in anticipation of what the Holy Spirit might do with our efforts to imagine a community that embodies this spirit of communion.
Scripture: Luke 10:25-42
Guest speaker Chris Rice brought the message this Sunday.
Every age has its signature affliction, according to Byung-Chul Han. Ours is the age of the burnout society. We're in captivity to our activity.
The story of the good Samaritan is about allowing our lives to be interrupted by the stranger by the side of the road. The story of Bethany is about our lives being interrupted by extravagant devotion. Extravagant action cannot be separated from extravagant stillness in this time of anxiety and burnout.
We need to get God's love into our bones! The Psalmist did not write, "Be busy and know that I am God."
Scripture: Acts 16:14-40
Susan shared the story of Paul and Silas being jailed in Philippi. They were charged, beaten and imprisoned after the owners of a fortune telling demon-possessed slave girl lost their revenue from her when Paul cast out her demon in name of Jesus Christ. When you mess with people's source of money, you're asking for trouble!
Even when in prison, however, Paul and his companions continued to pray and sing praises. They knew that God was still at work, even in difficult circumstances. It's a spiritual practice that we can learn from. But it takes practice and regular exercise to build that muscle.
Acts 2: 42-47
Susan Scott preached on the Acts 2: 42-47 as a natural extension of the Gospel of Luke. Jesus performed many miracles in Luke, and now his followers through the power of Holy Spirit are doing the same, if a little less perfectly. The testimony of their ministry begs questions of our own walk as Christians. How much forgiveness and love should I offer to difficult people? How much money should I give away? How much risk should I take to help the disenfranchised? Am I doing all of this well enough? Instead of framing this situation as an imposition that we should try to navigate in terms of minimum acceptable performance, we should be looking at service in God's Kingdom as an invitation. Susan Scott explores these questions by looking at them not in terms of the fear that we often pose them, but rather in the context of love. How is the love of God inviting you to be a vessel for his presence in the world?
Luke 24: 13-35
RMC's Hans Linnartz preached this week from the Gospel of Luke. Luke tells of the mysterious appearance of Jesus walking with his followers Cleopas and Mary, his wife, just outside of Jerusalem, fleeing the city following Jesus' crucifixion. Editor's note - below are the slides mentioned in the sermon in the order they are referenced. Much like the other post crucifixion appearances of Jesus, Cleopas and Mary, fully in grief over his death, do not initially recognize Jesus among them for some unspecified reason. However, at the end of their journey, Jesus corrected and guided the pair out of their grief through scripture, revealed his true self, and left them in a state of joy and understanding, equipped to rejoin the other Apostles and carry on with spreading the Gospel. Remember this mysterious Jesus when we are in our deepest despair and pain. Jesus is still walking alongside to guide us, bring us joy, and help us spread the Good News, even if we don't recognize his presence yet.
John 20: 1-18
Trey Ferguson preached on Holy Humor Sunday at RMC via Zoom. Editor's note- at the beginning of the sermon Trey played a CLIP - please click on the link to the left to watch- from a David Blaine street magic performance where he gets a person to pick a card and reinsert it into the deck. David throws all of the cards against a window and the person's card appears stuck to the BACK of the glass while the other cards fall to the ground. The audio of this illusion was deleted from the recording for copyright concerns and due to the visual nature of the trick not translating well to an audio format. Trey ponders in his sermon on the connection between the joy David Blaine took in instilling a sense of wonder in strangers and the real wonders that Jesus performed during his time on earth and how those around him struggled to interpreted their meaning and veracity. We know that some of the disciples were full of doubt, and others didn't believe Mary when she reported an empty tomb and a living Jesus. The biggest question for the disciples and followers wasn't can Jesus be raised from the dead, for they had seen Jesus do this, but who had the power to raise Jesus while he was dead. Of course Jesus knew this was going to be the Holy Spirit. But Jesus cared enough about Thomas's doubt to appear inside the locked room a second time, and took pleasure in turning doubters into believers, inviting them to experience shock, wonder, and awe. In turn we musk ask ourselves how we plan to share the whimsy of our faith with others who doubt. Jesus has sent us out into the world like God sent him to share this wonder.
John 20: 1-18
Happy Easter to all! Susan Scott preaches on the resurrection, of course, this Easter. God works a lot like springtime, making things that appear dead become suddenly renewed. With that in mind, what is Jesus when he comes back from the dead? He is embodied with scars, yet Mary mistakes him for a gardener until he speaks. Later he walks through a locked door later. Jesus's followers first had a hard time accepting that he was supposed to die at all since they expected him to usher in an end to Roman occupation, and thus had a hard time comprehending what his resurrection portended So what does the resurrection tell us? Jesus's resurrection foreshadows what will eventually happen to us, gives us hope in the face of our own mortality, and reframes our understanding of earthly suffering. Death cannot silence the power of God's love to manifest within us. In life, we receive hope in the fact that the good works we are called to do are all part of God's greater plan of redemption, and not done in vain. Join Susan Scott as she explores what we can learn from the resurrection of Christ.
Scripture: John 12:12-27, 19:16b-22
Ben Rudeen Kreider, pastor at Chapel Hill Mennonite Fellowship, provided the message on this Palm Sunday.
From the ubiquitous Buc-ee's billboards to the variety of incredibly creative signs seen at yesterday's No Kings rallies, signs are everywhere. A good sign grabs your attention in a short phrase with what a movement is about.
Palm branches waved while Jesus rides in on a donkey colt--both are symbols, or signs with meaning. Pilate had a sign for the world to see hung above Jesus when he was nailed to the cross: "King of the Jews." These words were meant to mock, deride and belittle. To send a message that anyone who dared cross or insinuate kingship was a threat to the Roman Empire. Yet we as followers of Jesus cling with faith to the truth of that sign posted above him.
The paradox of faith is that we believe that this man deserves all titles of honor and respect and admiration and gratitude, that he is indeed King of Kings, Lord of Lords, the very Son of God.
Scripture: John 19:1-16b
On this fifth Sunday of Lent, we continue the story of Jesus before Pontius Pilate. Through lots of questioning Jesus is mum. When Pilate gets quite frustrated and asks if Jesus is not aware that he has the power to release Jesus or to have him crucified, Jesus answers, "You have no power over me unless it has been given to you from above." Pilate can find no wrong in him, but the Jewish leaders and the people insist he must be crucified.
What made Jesus dangerous was his lack of fear. But Pilate is afraid for his role. When the Jewish leaders say they have no king but the emperor Caesar, Pilate is concerned for his own life.
There is such a contrast, such dissonance, between the apparently fearless Jesus and these deeply religious men speaking blasphemy. It can be difficult for us not to fall into the trap of relying on our government as our ruler, when instead we are called to rely on a higher power.
Scripture: John 18:28-40
There are so many points of reference for our lives today in this story of Jesus before Pilate that Susan spoke about on this fourth Sunday of Lent. Pilate was a politician, not a statesman, not a leader, but a politician. To Pilate, truth was something to manipulate.
The dissonance between Pilate and Jesus is stark. As relatable as Pilate is--we read about the likes of him in the newspaper everyday--so we understand his world, his priorities. But it's this other king, Jesus, who claims our allegiance, whose kingdom is not of this world. Jesus has gone before us and stood up to evil and power.
Scripture: John 18:12-27
Seth brought the message on this third Sunday of Lent. We find Peter, the beloved disciple of Jesus, at probably one of the worst times of his life, denying he knew Jesus when he swore he wouldn't.
But this story isn't so much about Peter as it is about us. We all, like Peter, have moments when we lose sight of our bravery, our integrity, our boldness, our loyalty. We all have deeds we look back on with shame; things that we hope we'll never have to answer for or even admit out loud.
We're admonished not to be consumed by the shame of our imperfection. Instead, to lean in to the beauty and the horror of the cross. To lean into the dissonance of our limitations and failures and the grace and truth of the one we follow, of the one who loves us.
(Apologies for the dropout of the audio at a couple places in Seth's sermon.)
Scripture: John 13:1-17
At the start of her sermon on this day after the US and Israel rained bombs on Iran, Susan admonished us to keep up the coordinated, persistent, non-violent pressure on the administration, and to keep up the prayer.
The way of Jesus is the way of love, and today's text is all about love. In it we read about Jesus washing his disciples' feet. This was completely unheard of for someone in authority--for their teacher--to be stooping to the point of washing the feet of someone "below" him in the caste system. The master takes on the role of a subordinate and pours out his love and devotion.
But then he goes a step further.
If I, your Lord and teacher, have washed your feet, you ought also to wash one another's feet, for I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you."
To pass on the selfless, self-forgetful love of God, sometimes means letting others see you in a less than flattering light. What a radical countercultural way to behave because it means we have to take our eyes off ourselves, and focus on the other person.
What does it mean to serve others when self-forgetful, selfless service opportunities come your way? Especially when we're not particularly comfortable following through on those opportunities? What is God nudging each of us to do?
John 11: 1-44
The first Sunday of Lent Susan Scott delivered a shorter sermon than normal to allow time for a major church life meeting after the service. Lent is a season when we tend to lean more intentionally into engaging with the life and character of Jesus. The scripture was story of Lazarus' resurrection. We all know the outcome, so it is easy to forget all the pain, suffering, and disappointment that occurred during his death when they expected Jesus to be there and do something to save his friend. He isn't even there to offer comfort. People sent word to Jesus and he stayed put for two days. Forcing this tragedy so that he can perform a great miracle seems callous of Jesus. What his followers do not understand is that Jesus is preparing them for the anguish, doubt, and fear that will happen to them after he is crucified. Join Susan Scott as she uses her sermonette to explore this seldom considered part of the Lazarus story and what lesson we can take from it for our own faith journeys.
Exodus 24: 12-17 Matthew 17: 1-8
This is Trey Ferguson's (our pastoral candidate) first sermon here at RMC. How we imagine God shapes how we interact with others, our pursuits, ethics, and mores. Which means that when our understanding of God shifts there is the potential for us to transform along with it. The children of Israel saw God's glory as a consuming fire (from God's appearance on top of Mt. Sinai) and they applied that understanding in the bloody conquest of Canaan. Jesus, however, provided an entirely different view of God's glory to the disciples. Jesus was not consumed by the fire of God's presence--he was transformed. This begs the question, did God's glory change or did the perspective of the witnesses to God's glory change? RMC invites you to join Trey Ferguson as he uses the Transfiguration of Jesus to explore how our perception of God fundamentally affects our faith journey and our community of faith.
2 Timothy 1:3-7, Philippians 1:3-4,7
Ann Robertson brought the message this Sunday prior to Thanksgiving. She reminded us of the importance of being grateful for the people in our lives who have made a difference and reflected on the ways that gratitude benefits us. Ann also provided some solutions to address times when we might not be so grateful, three of which were portrayed humorously by Hans.
As Paul told the church in Philippi, "I thank God every time I think of you."
1 Thessalonians 5:16-19
As we approach Thanksgiving, Susan provided suggestions for how to live into a life of gratitude.
The book of Thessalonians is said to be the oldest writing in the new testament. The letter is written to a church facing persecution, with the people fearing for their lives. Yet the writer tells them to, "Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, and to give thanks in all circumstances."
Gratitude isn't just a practice for the good times.
Because the important thing is not just to think about gratitude, but to do it, we were provided an opportunity to reflect on things we're grateful for and share at least one of those things with our neighbor. Susan also provided some ways to practice gratitude and incorporate these habits into our daily lives.
Proverbs 3:9-17
Our guest speaker this Sunday was Franco Salvatori, an Everence stewardship consultant. Due to flight cancellations he couldn't be with us in person, so he shared his message via Zoom.
Consumerism is a unifying religion in America. It's the thing that makes you wish you just had more. But as Christ's followers we're called to worship only one God, and it's not consumption. It's easy to fill our lives with stuff, but still be empty.
The path toward an overflowing life is through wisdom and generosity. Honoring God with our first fruits is the practice of recognizing God's hand in providing the resources that we have.
God calls us to give of our first fruits not because God needs it, but because it actually changes us. It changes our hearts and helps us focus on the giver. As we practice that discipline it creates an attitude in us that Franco called wealth. If we've developed an action of giving and of generosity, because we are seeking wisdom and we're seeking God, then it's the exact opposite of consumerism. And Proverbs tells us that is the pathway to an overflowing life.
Ephesians 1: 15-23 Ephesians 3: 14-21
When you pray to God, what underlying assumptions about God do you bring to the interaction? Do you believe God to be: loving? trustworthy? concerned with your life? These assumptions, and honestly our biases, fundamentally shape how we pray, the nature of our prayer life, and a good portion of our spiritual journey as a whole. Susan Scott preached on the prayer that started in Ephesians 1, was interrupted, and finished in Ephesians 3. What can we learn from this prayer? God is knowable, worth knowing, and stands ready to impart the wisdom and most importantly, the hope that we need. This hope is not for riches or aggrandizement, but rather that God will do what they have promised to do and to aid us in our calling. This hope allows us to wait patiently for the things that God has promised that we do not yet have. Ultimately, this hope is that God will reconcile all things in heaven and earth through Jesus. Hope give us the ability to endure the feelings of helplessness and despair when the world around us seems dark and unredeemable: when all of our efforts to bring light and salt appear futile. Remember that God wastes none of the work that they call you to do and that is all a part of a plan of redemption that started even before Christ appeared.
Matthew 4: 8-10
Mauricio Chenlo preached on Satan’s temptation of Christ, offering him all of the kingdoms of the world. Similarly, often we depend on the kingdoms of the world to deliver the kingdom of God. Mauricio related his experiences growing up in Argentina where he experienced Christian faith expressed in the nation’s politics swing wildly from right to left as the government went from a dictatorship to a Marxist government. He even heard the preaching on liberation theology about the kingdom of God from the dictator Ortega of Nicaragua in the 90s. Politics is the process by which people make collective decisions about how to live together by distributing power, responsibilities and resources. So, who gets to define these priorities? In this country it seems that we are told to change our politics every four years. Likewise, the Church historically has been tempted to align with political ideologies. Jesus, however, brings a different kind of politics. Jesus rejected alignment with any of the political ideologies of his time. The role of the Church is to be a witness and an extension of the kingdom of God in this world, because we still must be in the world even if we are not of the world. We cannot just focus on feeding people’s bodies (not on bread alone); we must also nourish people spiritually. We must not manipulate God’s word, love, or message to gain power or popularity.
Luke 18: 1-8
Susan Scott preached on the unusual prayer practices of Jesus in the Gospel of Luke. Jesus was steeped in the prayers of the Jewish people, but Luke recounts that he Jesus instructed his followers to pray in a different way, including for those that persecute you. The prayers of Jesus in Luke can be divided into two types. We pray for the glory of God's name, work, and kingdom, and we pray for our business, including our daily bread, the forgiveness of sins, and protection from temptation. Susan reminds us that Jesus also told the Parable of the Unjust Judge to remind us to always pray and not give up, just like the woman pursuing justice, and that God is always a just judge. Of course, wouldn't it be easier to have faith if God instantly answered our prayers instead of us having to wait? It would be nice but that places God in the role of being our servant instead of our lord. Oddly, when the disciples asked for more faith, Jesus told them it already takes very little faith to speak miracles into existence. Jesus wants us to not focus on amounts but rather on the love and greatness of God that can enable us to do the impossible. With this in mind, we must relentlessly pray with a steadfast faith and hope in God's goodness, justice, and mercy.
Habakkuk 1: 1-4
Susan Scott preached on World Communion Sunday and reminded us that regardless of our various religious journeys, national origins, denominations, and worship practices (including the incarcerated who cannot choose their mode of worship), that we are all a part of larger Christian Church family that is striving to follow the teachings of Christ. Susan also reflected on the lamentations of Habakkuk from the lectionary scripture. During these very tense, frustrating and worrisome times we are experiencing, it is easy to reflect negativity and despair back into the world. Lamentations, a form of brutally honest prayer, is one way that we can offload these feelings and transition our frustrations into a posture of waiting to hear from God and also a trust in God's love, goodness, and mercy for us.
Mark 14:16-26, Isaiah 25:6-8
Susan spoke this Sunday about something Christians universally practice and everyone maintains is important in some way: the Lord's Supper. Also called Communion, the Eucharist or the Mass.
She painted three word pictures for us that could provide a greater appreciation for what we're doing at the table: a Passover meal, a covenant ratification meal, and a wedding celebration. The thing these three meals and communion all have in common is that they are celebratory. They knit people together and they all have a host. In communion, the Lord's table, Jesus serves as the host.
Lamentations 3:17-26
This Sunday Melissa Rogati shared from her personal story of lament and dealing with a dark period in her life. It's very uncomfortable to be in that place. As humans, we don't like being there. But as she came to eventually realize, God is in the dark too! It's us who feel discomfort when we're in the dark. But if we can't sit in the dark and know that we are safe, where is our faith?
We can force ourselves to be upbeat, even when we don't see the good coming, but that is not authentic. We don't need to force an upbeat spirit to prove anything to anyone, including ourselves. Even when we can't engage with that upbeat, we don't have to force it when we don't want to. But we continue to seek the goodness of those around us while we wait in the dark. Because we still believe, even in the dark, that there's goodness to be had. Because the Lord is good to those who wait for Him. It is good that one should wait quietly for the Lord.
I Corinthians 12:4-13
Following the summer time of gifts discernment, each September Raleigh Mennonite recognizes the many volunteers who help make the church function. This Sunday Susan provided a brief overview of church history and how Mennonites incorporated the concept of the "priesthood of all believers" as a fundamental tenet of our faith and community life together. The idea is that not only can we communicate with and have direct access to God, but that there are indeed no roles that are the exclusive domain of the clergy.
And as we read in I Corinthians 12, all roles are important, and we all have to use our God-given gifts together for the church to thrive. When we use our gifts, or graces, it energizes us. At the same time, we need to check our perceptions of our gifts with others and listen for the affirmation of others in helping us see the gifts that we might have and be called to use. That's where discernment comes in.
Luke 10: 25-28
This week volunteers from the RMC congregation shared dramatic readings, acting out some of the experiences of the founding figures in Anabaptist/Mennonite history that suffered persecution and even martyrdom. This continues our series celebrating 500 years of Anabaptism. The sincere faith and devotion of these individuals to Anabaptist principles are a source of inspiration and encouragement, despite woes and troubles, to follow the path of love set before us by the example of Christ.
Ephesians 2: 14-22
RMC's Leah Weaver preached this week on her own faith story and her history with the Mennonite Church (and RMC specifically). Throughout her time as a youth at RMC, she experienced the love of a "second" family and received inspiration from many members whose lives and ministries demonstrated the love of Christ to strangers. Leah invited us to look at what RMC means to us and where we have found second families in our lives.
1 Peter 2: 11-17
RMC's Hans Linnartz shared from the pulpit last week about the inspiring story of the formation of the Mennonite Church in Indonesia. The ideal of nonviolence is difficult to achieve in the best of circumstances, but the slowly growing Mennonite Church in Indonesia had to overcome challenges from the Dutch colonial government, Japanese military occupation, a war for independence, and tensions with their majority Muslim neighbors. From this story we can learn that what initially seems like setbacks and persecution can be the source of growth, peace, and reconciliation.
Luke 1: 26-38
Susan Scott preached today for the first time as RMC's interim pastor. Susan shared stories from her life's journey and the bible stories that meant the most to her at these most critical and formative parts of her life. With this act of sharing Susan also invites us as well to examine and share with our fellow believers bible stories that has perplexed, inspired, taught, comforted, and sustained us throughout our lives. This introspection on biblical storytelling can connect us to each other and to a deeper understanding of God's steadfast love for us throughout our lives.
John 15:9-17
On this last Sunday of Melissa's pastoral ministry with us at RMC, she spoke from this scripture passage that Jesus shares with his disciples toward the end of his ministry.
Unlike clubs and societies, the foundation of our friendship as the church isn't a shared interest, but a shared good. Friends pursue the good together. And with Christ at our center, the church creates space for those who are vastly different to find out what the good is, and to go after it.
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry said it this way: "Love doesn't consist in gazing at each other, but in looking outward in the same direction." In the friendship of the church we don't look at each other, but we… stand side by side, so that we're all looking where we're going next. Church is the kind of friendship that says, "I actually think we all need to look at this thing happening here, in this direction and figure out where the path is to get there."
We can discern together when God is calling us towards needs that have been overlooked. When there is something that we need to work out in order to find out where we're going together. We learn to pay attention to people who have been ignored or overlooked.
We gather on streets to protest wars and to speak against genocide, to raise our voices for our church members, because our first loyalty is to Jesus, in whom there is no violence and no vengeance, and no hatred. We care for one another because when we do we see the face of God.
Luke 10:38-42
This Sunday Elizabeth Korver-Glenn shares of the dearth of information she was able to find about early Black and Brown Mennonite leaders, with an even greater lack of any details about Black and Brown Mennonite women. She found brief information about Phoebe Sheela Bisahu Solomon and Rowena Lark in the archives of Mennonite history.
The Gospel reading for today is part of a very long tradition of creative disordering and creative retelling. Jesus upends the established historical archive and the making of an archive by centering the stories of poor and otherwise marginalized people. People who would have been otherwise omitted. The story of Jesus' presence in Martha's home is an example of that reordering. Martha is portrayed and positioned as the head of the house. Mary has adopted the position typically reserved for men: the place at Jesus' feet where she can listen unencumbered by other distractions.
Luke 10:25-37
This summer at RMC we're focusing on telling stories of hope from the Bible. Katie Mangum was our guest speaker this Sunday and shared reflections on one of the most common and beloved of Jesus' parables, that of the Good Samaritan.
Jesus' parables can be frustrating, since many don't have clear meanings. Even this story of the Good Samaritan, which may have obvious meanings on the surface, can be looked at from many different perspectives.
When we weary, exhausted humans, with all our unsolved problems and unanswered questions show up on Sunday mornings, and Jesus tells us what seems to be a riddle about a Samaritan or a vineyard owner or a seed, it can feel a little frustrating. But we know, as Jesus knows, that pat answers won't bind up our wounds. The only thing that has ever been able to do that is a story.
Luke 16: 1-9
RMC's Susan Scott preached this week on what Jesus was trying to do when he spoke in parables. The parables Jesus spoke in are often confusing, indirect, and seldom leave the listener with clear answers to their questions. Why won't Jesus get to the point? However, this storytelling tactic forces the listener to actually listen, ponder, and wrestle in their minds with content of the story. The settings and people in the stories have familiar jobs and roles in Jewish society to draw in the listener, but their unexpected actions require a level of engagement for the listener that precludes the audience from "zoning out". Jesus primarily used two types of parable. One to undercut and derail the accusations of his detractors, and the other to prepare his followers for the radically new kind of kingdom Jesus was ushering in that had nothing to do with their current political subjugation. Furthermore, the parables of Jesus, regardless of the audience, at the end had a punchline that subverted expectations and taught valuable lessons to those with ears to hear. In parables, Jesus told the religious leaders that their obsession with following the law was all a hollow show without any sincere connection to God's will for people to live. Christ's followers in turn were called to live a life of soft hearts and hard feet. A life full of sacrifice, suffering, and radical gift giving that will not make sense to the world, but shows God's love in its fullness . We too must emulate our spiritual forebears and wrestle with these parables so that we may learn to also live with soft hearts and hard feet.
Matthew 5: 43-48
With the recent American bombing of Iran, we now move into a time filled with tension, fear, calls for war, and calls for reprisal. As Christians we must remember that we are called to a different path than the world. Melissa Florer-Bixler preaches on our Covenant Sunday that we must pay close attention to Jesus' first teachings after his temptation in the desert; we must love our enemies and pray for those that persecute us. Yet the gift of peace that God has given us must be worked out through imperfect vessels, namely pacifists like Mennonites and other Christians who hold the ideal of peace close to heart. And how do we figure out this way of peace? Church is where we gather every Sunday to conduct our experiments of peace. There we try, sometimes fail, learn, and share with each other as we try to pass on God's gift of peace to others. As an intentional community of believers we take the risk of being hurt by each other for the opportunity to heal and to be healed.
Romans 5: 1-5
On Trinity Sunday Melissa Florer-Bixler preached on the words of Paul in Romans. Paul didn't focus on what the makeup of the Trinity is, but who the persons of God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit are. Essentially, God is not vengeful, cruel, or indifferent. God, through the trinity, is the giver of gifts. Jesus is the gift that redeems our sins, and the Holy Spirit is our guide and the wellspring of our hope. Who God is, not what, instructs us on how we should treat each other, our neighbors, and how we build together a faithful Church body. If God is the giver of precious gifts, then we must live a life of radical gift giving and receiving that does not count the cost.
1 Corinthians 3:11
This Sunday RMC's own Jordan Morehouse preached on the foundations of our faith. We often use scripture, tradition, and faith practices to justify all manner of evils against our neighbors. Jordan reminds us that we must be ready to change our actions and views when we see that time honored parts of our theology fail to show God's love in its fullness. As we face uncomfortable inconsistencies in our politics, traditions, and theologies, it can be especially difficult to find God's purpose amidst all of the fear and confusion of our current social, political, and economic environment. Today's scripture and sermon instruct us to look to the life and words of Jesus to help us to interpret what parts of our faith need tearing down and what parts are a solid foundation to build upon, instead of clinging to what we have constructed that is not working to build God's kingdom.
Scripture: Isaiah 12:1-6
Melissa opened her sermon sharing about a man who helped rescue a friend who was attacked by a shark. He swam directly toward the injured swimmer, putting himself in direct vicinity with the shark. The backstory behind most people who show real bravery in the midst of danger is that they have long been cultivating disciplines, convictions and patterns, sometimes over a lifetime.
The same can be said about the Israelites that Isaiah is speaking to in the passage above. While things are really bleak, they are from a long line of people who have trusted God, who left their homes, who gave up their gods to follow the Lord. In other words, they were trained for this. It's not just doing what God says, it's about knowing God.
The first Anabaptists were willing to "swim toward sharks" in their quest to follow Jesus. Who would be willing to die to follow Jesus as a member of this Anabaptist group?
The message also featured the testimony of one our community who will be baptized in a couple of weeks. Grant shared his confession of faith with us.
Scripture: John 15:1-10
"Abide" is central to John's gospel. Abide is the orientation of our lives to Jesus, but also of Jesus's life with us.
Jesus tells his disciples that he will abide with them, even as he goes away. In this goodbye it's interesting that Jesus actually never tells the disciples that they ought to bear fruit. It's actually the work of God to bear fruit. Our job, our only role, is to abide.
Sabbath is the way we abide. Why do we yield our time around the Lord's day? Because Sabbath is an invitation to rest. Because God rests. But God doesn't need rest. Rest is the time to delight in the pleasure of what God creates.
Scripture: Matthew 18:1-5
The disciples of Jesus have "power problems." Who's going to be greatest? Who's going to sit next to him? And as usual, Jesus has to gently put them in their place. He tells them,
Unless you turn around and become like a child you will never enter the kingdom of heaven."
Jesus brings attention to children because of their social rank--at the very bottom of the hierarchy.
Melissa held up the Presbyterian minister and children's TV icon, Mr. Rogers, as someone who took seriously the experiences of children. He treated them with dignity. Jesus tells his disciples to convert to children but Mr. Rogers shows us what that might look like.
Scripture: Proverbs 3:5-8
"Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not rely on your own insight.In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths."
It's easy to "weaponize" this teaching in Proverbs, to make us believe that the rational or scientific reasoning may be suspect. That can open us up to a lot of hucksters peddling whatever they have decided is God's truth.
Wisdom comes from patient, attentive discernment of the questions that are always before us. Because wisdom intersects with community, wisdom asks, is it good for the body of Jesus? Is it good for all of us? We turn our lives towards the way God is shaping and forming the reign of God, not through violence and coercion. But instead through the constant enduring love of God that's made known to us in Jesus.
Jeremiah 17: 5-8
This week RMC's Miguel Cruz preached the sermon in Spanish. The English voice you will hear is that of the live translator in the sanctuary. Due to the nature of the recording tech, there is some residual audio of Miguel's voice in the background. ** Preaching from Jeremiah, Miguel asks us to test and examine ourselves deeply when we ask the question: where does our help come from when encounter injustice, strife, and hostility in the world? If our answer is that we rely on our own power, skills, and intellect to confront these modern ills and idols, we almost certainly doom ourselves to perpetual dissatisfaction, even if our desires are righteous. We must realize that we owe every ability we have and every good thing we might do to God's goodness and mercy. The scriptures say that our hope comes from the Lord, and that means allowing God lead us instead of relying on our own strength. By giving up, we win.
Luke 24: 1-12
Happy Easter everyone! This week Melissa Florer-Bixler preached from the Gospel of Luke. The women Disciples (the men having scattered) around Jesus, despite their deep grief and despair, stayed with Jesus through his arrest, death, and burial, and then returned only to find the tomb empty save for shining beings that declared his resurrection. The women shared this with the other Disciples, only for them to disbelieve because they had not stayed to witness and to suffer the same trauma as the women during Christ's crucifixion. Melissa reminds us that the resurrection in meant for those nearest to despair. Like these steadfast women, we are drawn with grief and despair to a tomb in our own times - the suffering and evil deeds that we see all around us in this extremely unsettling year. Christ's resurrection however, in freeing us from sin and death, transforms that deep hopelessness into a freedom to participate in the radical and surprising redemptive work that God is doing in the world.
Luke 19: 28-40
What could we possibly have to learn about the Gospel message from a donkey? Luke spends as much time in his Gospel on the donkey Jesus rode into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday as he does on the Lord's Supper. Melissa Florer-Bixler reminds us this Palm Sunday that our Anabaptist ancestors were keenly aware of the spiritual lessons to learn from the suffering and death of their animals, which brought life to their owners. Likewise, our suffering in serving and giving to our neighbors, the poor, and the incarcerated gives life and reflects the lessons we can learn from Jesus' suffering. Melissa further explains that Jesus came for an even greater purpose than suffering as an example. Let us all remember this Palm Sunday that He came to free all creation, (including the creatures and little donkeys) from the bondage of sin and death.
John 12: 1-8
This week Melissa Florer-Bixler preaches on Mary anointing Jesus' feet with expensive funerial perfume meant for Lazarus, whom Jesus had recently raised from the dead. Mary knows that Jesus plans to go Jerusalem soon to die, and her offering is a reckless offering of love, not just grief, as she sacrifices in a moment a precious heirloom meant to anoint many generations to come. During Lent we often focus on confessing our weakness, but Mary's story reminds us of the power in confessing our love, without consideration for pride or cost. The perfume would have eventually run out, but her sacrificial recklessness was followed by Jesus' humble washing of the disciples' feet, and after many generations was passed on to us in John's Gospel as an example of the reckless love God intends for us to share with the world.
Scripture: Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32
How many times have we heard Jesus's parable of the Prodigal Son from Luke 15?
While the focus is usually on the son who leaves with his share of the inheritance and squanders it away, Melissa brings us a fresh perspective on the father and the eldest son. Not only was the younger son lost, but so was the older son, who stayed at home and continued to work with his father. When this son refuses to join the festive party welcoming his kid brother back home, his father wants to know where he is.
For a second time in the parable, a father goes out to find his son.
In this Lenten season of reflection and penance, what have we come to believe about justice and mercy? Will we see that God has come out of the house, away from the party, for each of us?
Scripture: Isaiah 55:1-9
God's version of confession and penance is entirely different from the world's understanding of confession and penance. During Lent we have to let go of the anxiety that comes from the long-held cultural myth that confessing can only make things worse.
Penance is to accept responsibility and to repair what is broken. Penance means we take out our needle and thread and we stitch up what was torn. Lent is a season of penance, not of punishment.
Our God will abundantly pardon, and confession is a beginning. Confession can break forth into penance and repair in a way that is actually better than it was before. It's about getting right with one another and getting right with God. Restoring relationships is at the heart of all of it. God's relationship with God's people.
What are acts of penance you can take during Lent to restore relationships with those around you?
Note: There was a technical issue with the recording at the beginning of Melissa's sermon, so the first minute or two was cut off.
Luke 13: 31-35
Many of us are uncomfortable, especially pacifists, with anger and how we treat each other when tempers flare. The Bible is clear, however, that Jesus often became frustrated or upset with those around him, and even God gets angry too. Jesus, though angry with his own disciples and the evils of Herod and the Roman state, turned his energy and agitation to doing more healing and teaching and did not abandon his followers to save own life. RMC's Jordan Morehouse, in their debut sermon, invites us to explore how our anger over injustices can motivate us to protest, to advocate for the downtrodden, and serve our neighbors. The love of Christ, which did not die with him on the cross, lives on in our hearts and converts our anger and frustrations into motivation for righteous action that builds the kingdom of God. As we struggle with the evils of our own time, let us all consider what makes us angry and follow Jesus's example, by leaning in to more healing, love, and righteous action.
Scripture: Luke 4:1-13
When Jesus is tempted in the desert, Satan offers Jesus power over all of the world, which Satan has been given, if Jesus will just worship Satan. (Luke 4:6)
God has handed over the powers of this world to a cosmic being called Satan. We may wonder why God allows this arrangement. The answer seems to be that people wanted it. We want human rulers: kings and presidents, caesars and judges to set up systems of government that assert that power over us. This is actually one of the many catastrophes we learn about in ancient Israel's history. God's people want a king like all the other nations around them. And immediately God tells them what terrible things will come of this, as we read about in 1 Samuel 8:4-22.
During Lent we are turning to repentance. Here before God and one another we remember that one way we stray from God is that we look for shortcuts to the kingdom of God. The reign of God can't be forced upon us. It is a covenant built on consent; it can't be mandated. It has to be chosen and nurtured. There are no shortcuts to the kingdom of God, but what we need is already here.
Scripture: Luke 9:28-36
As told in this passage from Luke, through Jesus's transfiguration we learned that prayer is getting caught up in God's glory. To pray is to know at any minute you could be surrounded by the glory of God.
Prayer invites us into a wholly different relationship with God than that of extraction or exchange. And for this reason, when the disciples asked Jesus how we should pray Jesus invites us to--remarkably--address God as our parents.
Prayer, like human speech, is a creative act. The prayers that we utter shape our inner lives. When we pray, we are describing the world as it actually is, formed out of this gratuitous love of God that is pouring out over everything. It turns out that prayer isn't an escape from reality. Prayer describes it.
Acts 2: 43-47
Much of the focus of Pentecost is on the gifts of the Holy Spirit, including the signs, wonders, and languages being heard and spoken. Melissa Florer-Bixler reminds us this Sunday that the Apostles selling their possessions and giving the money to those in need was also a significant part of the signs and wonders seen that day. The example set was the idea of mutual care within the community. The state and those in power will never provide sufficient aid to the poor because they do not share our value of all of God's children, especially the poor and downtrodden. They will always favor the privileged few. Contrary to the capitalistic value of personal wealth accumulation, this passage in Acts informs us that we are called to be stewards of wealth, not owners, and to distribute it to others to meet their needs. Melissa's sermon examines how Anabaptist and Native practices and beliefs were, although faithful to the Apostle's actions on Pentecost, considered threatening or treasonous by agents of the church and state in history and what that means for our present context.
Matthew 26: 47-56
As a pacifist, if you could end cancer or stop the next Hitler and save millions just by killing an innocent person, would you do it? These ridiculous scenarios are often posed to Anabaptists, seeking the knife's edge that would cut through our nonviolent convictions. Melissa Florer-Bixler points out this week that all four gospels share a story with a similar scenario. To save Jesus from Judas and the mob coming to arrest and crucify him, all that needed to happen was a disciple to cause the death or mutilation of a young slave of the high priest. Jesus, who apart from the sword-wielding disciple could have called down the hosts of heaven upon his enemies, chose instead to heal and protect this lowest of the low in Roman society, end the violence, and surrender himself to a painful death. Join Melissa as they discuss how pacifism is the embodiment of Christ's example of tipping the scales away from the important and powerful to the least among us, even if it costs us everything. We must live as sheep among wolves to build the kingdom of God.
Romans 6: 3-4
What does it mean to baptized into Jesus' death or walking in the newness of life? Melissa Florer-Bixler unpacks this passage in Romans by explaining some of the symbolism of baptism, the three fold nature of baptisms, and what this means for us as Christians and Anabaptists.
The water used in baptism is ubiquitous in our lives and essential for life, yet we can drown in only a few inches of it. Water is death and life within one substance. Our submersion represents a death of self that somehow still connects us to creation and to other believers that share our experience, and our reemergence connects us to our redemption and rebirth in following Jesus.
However, this process of baptism is actually contains three distinct types of baptism for the believer. One, God's invitation of grace - Spirit Baptism. Two, our pledge to God to take this love and live within it - Water Baptism. Three, our transformation in Christ that threatens the powers of this world - Baptism of Blood.
Melissa explains that this Baptism of Blood is a consequence of being remade by Christ into a new creation. By dying to sin and following Jesus, the water of life, we place ourselves into situations that oppose those powers that oppress, abuse, and rob the poor and powerless. Melissa reminds us of examples from our Anabaptist history where the mere act of baptism could lead to your death as an enemy of the church and state and modern instances where following Christ also lead to death and danger. However, we can place our hope in the fact that even if (as in the Roman's passage) we follow Christ unto death (even just death to self) it does not end there because Jesus defeated death. It leads to resurrection and the building of God's kingdom.
Death and scarcity may surround us, but in Christ we are dead to sin and alive and new to God. The question we must ask ourselves as we start this week is - where will we follow the water of life?
Scripture: Luke 2:22-40
Simeon and Anna were waiting for something big their whole lives. They were waiting for God to keep their promises.
When Mary and Joseph brought Jesus to the temple to be consecrated, Simeon knew what he had been waiting for had come to pass. Looking at that little baby's face Simeon was looking at the face of God's long promised, long hoped for, seemingly too long deferred salvation. However, unimaginably or improbably or confoundingly, he knew this baby was Israel's consolation.
God kept God's promises to Simeon and Anna, to Israel, and to us. God was saying again and anew, "Let there be light." Salvation is here. Definitively, uniquely, finally.
But Simeon said more... And what he said certainly adds complexity to the grand message of salvation.
Our daily work is not to save the world. It's too late for that. We are free to put that burden down. Our work from day to day is to be faithful witnesses to the good news of Jesus and to try to stay in step with the Spirit who is still moving.
Scripture: 1 John4:7-21
On this Anabaptist World Fellowship Sunday, Melissa began her sermon with a 2017 video illustrating what young kids thought God looks like. You can watch the video on YouTube.
How God looks is a mystery to us. But there is something that might get us pretty close. Maybe it's even better. If we love each other, God's love gets into us and it becomes whole, complete. We get to know what God is like because of love.
There is a cost of love. Our spiritual ancestors knew this. Each time God's love shows up in people, that love brings danger and instability for the powerful, especially for the power of the state. Those powers have attempted to crush God's love in people. And yet, we live out our days without fear, because the perfect love of God casts out fear.
Scripture: John 2:1-11
We held a joint service with Church of the Good Shepherd Episcopal this Sunday, the congregation we rent space from. The service was held in their sanctuary and Pastor Melissa brought the message.
In recognition of its 500th anniversary this week, Melissa shared some of the history of Anabaptism, and even included the story of Dirk Willemsz from the Martyrs' Mirror.
Early Anabaptists had an expectation that God would act in the world just as Mary, the mother of Jesus, had an expectation at the wedding at Cana that he would act when she told the servants to "do whatever he tells you."
As the good wine was poured out of the large vessels that had just earlier been filled with water, so too is the fullness of God poured out to all people.
As we reflected on the story of Jesus' first miracle, Melissa asked, "What do you expect of Jesus? "
Scripture: Luke 3:15-17, 21-22
Jesus's baptism is what shows that he was not just the Son of God, but also human. His baptism is what shows his solidarity with humans.
On this Sunday, Melissa encouraged us to take time to remember our own baptisms, or to consider becoming baptized if we weren't already. Baptism in the church is a large part of what binds us together as a community of believers. It reminds us of our own humanity and that we are a part of something bigger than ourselves.
Luke 6: 17-36
Our intern Emily Alexander preaches from the Gospel of Luke on the final week of Advent, as we ready ourselves to celebrate the good news of Christ's kingdom arriving. In this passage, Jesus is trying to get his followers accustomed to a radically new kind of kingdom philosophy. He inverts the natural order by exalting the poor, hungry, and grieving people over the privileged few, and goes even further by exhorting his followers to love their biggest enemies. With peace as a fundamental principal of Anabaptist theology, it is easy to become complacent in the rightness of our beliefs. In this holiday season earmarked by material consumption and in a world full of fighting and heated politics, we too can easily slip into comfort seeking, judgmental words, and repaying others with the righteous anger we feel they deserve. Emily invites us to take a moment from our busyness to examine how are feet are being guided. We must remember that Jesus's kingdom is guided by principles that bewilder, confound, and upend the world's order and may make us feel uncomfortable. Let Jesus guide your feet to a kingdom filled with the infinite goodness and mercy of God.
Luke 1:46b-55
Melissa preaches in the third week of Advent on Mary's leap of faith to obey God, immaculately conceive and eventually give birth to our savior. As an unmarried, pregnant, Jewish woman, Mary had to put her reputation, future, and life at risk given the societal and medical conditions of Israel in antiquity. Likewise, we too will eventually reach a point in our lives where we must choose to trust God beyond reason or logic and take a leap of faith, or not. However, we do not jump alone. We are tethered to a long line of believers that went before us. Moreover, with each person and each choice, God is also taking a leap of faith towards us with open arms. This act of blind faith in God is a fundamental part of his plan to build a community of true believers instead of automatons without free will. This Christmas season, as we make time to remember Mary's great leap of faith, let us remember her example and ready our hearts for when God calls us and prepare to support our brothers and sisters in their calling.
Luke 3: 7-18
The second week of advent Melissa preaches on John the Baptist from the Gospel of Luke, who is paving the way for the coming of Christ. His message is fiery, convicting, and demands dramatic change of those who would desire to answer God's call. However, Melissa reminds us that John's call is an invitation to a new life. An opportunity to start over with a clean slate that is purged of the chaff that weighs down our spirits and a chance for repentance that aligns with the spirit of the Christmas season - Christ the Redeemer has come.
Luke 21: 25-36
What do you do when the stress, cares, and bad headlines of this world weigh you down and threaten to choke out the life-giving good news of the Gospel? As Advent begins, Melissa Florer-Bixler looks to this week's passage in the Gospel of Luke for inspiration. Jesus had just finished informing his followers that imprisonment and persecution would come to them. He instructed, however, that the way out of this looming fear was not through mental and physical distractions, but (rather paradoxically) from paying more attention...to the right things. Look beyond all the catastrophes and drama and focus on the fact that the Kingdom of God is at hand. Relentless, renewing, and fruit-bearing, you will know that this verdant Kingdom is God is coming the same as the leaves appearing on the fig tree foretell to us that summer is coming. Join Melissa as she shares her thoughts on this topic.
Scripture: John 18:33-37 and Ruth 3
Ruth forged a future where there wasn't one. Her mother-in-law Naomi only sees a life of constriction, defined and closed. She sees no options, no future.
Ruth, on the other hand, is a future-oriented person. She consistently speaks in the future tense. While she might have told Naomi, "I accept everything that you say," she still sees a possibility.
To use the future tense is to create possibility, to counter the facts. And that is where God is at work.
The reign of God is a woman directing her future when no future seems possible.
Scripture: Ruth 2
In the book of Ruth two of the thousands of nameless poor people of those times take center stage. The story is not about powerful men carrying out great works. Ruth and Naomi live in the time of political chaos. Sound a little familiar? This short story--just four chapters--traces God's intricate work in small movements towards hope through ordinary people.
It's not just through the powerful or through "mountain top" experiences that God works. Rather, God works with ordinary faithfulness. In the process of doing the work put before us, we realize that much of what we need is here, in front of us. In showing up, together in community, moving with tenacious love towards discomfort and danger, God works through us to bring about healing and hope.
Scripture: Ruth 1:15-18
What do we do when we are shocked, overwhelmed and devastated? When our hands feel empty and the troubles to come feel so massive? What do we do now?
The petty dictators of this world, however severe their terrors, they do not change who God is and how God's word in Jesus comes to us. What do we do now is the question we will ask for many years to come. But what we do will be grounded in another question, a deeper question. Who are we? We are the church of Jesus Christ.
In other words, we're followers of Jesus in the same way we were last week and the week before, who we were on Tuesday, who we will be next week in January in the years to come.
Isaiah 43:1-7, Hebrews 11:32-12:3
In just two days we have a national election. It's something that has many of us anxious and concerned. The two texts for today are both addressed to people in anxious circumstances.
Even with all of the anxiety of the situation in the first passage, the summation of the Isaiah's prophecy to these people is, "Do not be afraid, for I, God, am with you." Some variation on that simple sentence appears more than 300 times in the Bible. So it seems like God realizes this is a problem for us. Do not be afraid, for God is with you.
Knowing that doesn't make passing through the floodwaters or walking through the fire or going through chemotherapy or surviving a divorce or being forced from your country or living under a crazy person's rule actually easy. It's really hard to hang on to in difficult circumstances.
God will still be God on Wednesday. God will ultimately get the final word. Lord, help us to become people who work toward justice and proclaim your beauty until the day every sorrowful story ends in joy. Until the day when you get the final word.
Isaiah 40: 1-8
This Sunday Melissa Florer-Bixler continued to move further into the words of the prophet Isaiah, when the Persian king Cyrus allowed God's people to return to Israel, ushering in a time of comfort and hope. The prophet spoke of a highway being built from through hostile land between Babylon and Jerusalem, and Melissa reminded us of the tradition of the aesthetics, the desert mothers and fathers, who also lived in hostile places and prayed for all people and ministered to those who came to grief on remote highways. Much like the aesthetics, there have been faithful people in our own lives who have gone before us, sacrificing much, and helping us to see a living model of the path to redemption that Jesus paved for all with his suffering. In this time of political tension and extreme anxiety approaching the election, we may wonder who is speaking the truth, and who might be leading falsely in the name of Christ. Ultimately, we must look at the shape of the way they are trying to pave, and decide if that way has a hope big enough everyone to find the path home to safety and redemption.
Isaiah 46: 1-13
Melissa Florer-Bixler invites us to consider the question, "why do we come to church every Sunday?" as she preaches on Isaiah's message about idols. Isaiah mocks the idols of Israel's former conquerors, now laid low and unable to even help themselves from falling over. In last week's sermon, Melissa stated that we become what we choose to love, and now she adds that when we put our hope into idols that cannot help, we in turn become helpless. Tech giants, political figures, possessions, and all the other trappings of the world offer no more hope than the worthless idols that Isaiah decried. We come to church to kindle the hope we so greatly need by remembering together the stories of how God has loved and nurtured us from the beginning of creation.
Isaiah 11: 1-9
Melissa Florer-Bixler preaches on Isaiah's vision of the lion laying down with the lamb and reminds us, rather appropriately on World Communion Sunday, to consider more deeply in that context how we address the multitude of intractable conflicts occurring throughout the world. Naturally, we cannot rely on willpower alone to overcome the worst "carnivorous" parts of our nature that inflame these conflicts. Rather, it is through the transformative gift of Jesus that we are remade in the image of God and can then work to build real peace. We invite you to listen and join our congregation as we discover how a children's book, Wild Robot, can demonstrate the heart of this transformative process and point us towards practical ideas to implement peace-building.
Isaiah 9: 1-7
Merry Christmas everyone! We know it's only September, but Raleigh Mennonite Church took a moment this Sunday to sing Christmas carols and reflect on the birth of Christ during a season far less busy and distracting than the end of December. Melissa Florer-Bixler's sermon reminds us to take time and examine the coming of Jesus, made flesh, without the holiday sentimentality that can undermine the innately powerful political message embodied in the humble beginnings of Jesus. Not political as we see it today, with everyone looking to a figurehead in one party or another to correct the world's ills. Rather, we must look down into the manger to see Jesus' message of hope to the world that binds all of God's creation together in lovingkindness. It is truly dangerous to the powers and principalities that seek to divide us for a hope to exist that transcends fear and hatred. This politics of hope inexorably calls us to acts, confounding to others, that bring about God's Kingdom. We invite you to remember the Christmas message of hope embodied in Christ anytime the world seeks to make you feel afraid and alone.
Scriptures: Isaiah 2:1-11, Matthew 5:1-12
Melissa continues her sermon series, Hope in a Time of Fear, focusing on the book of Isaiah. As we're drawing closer to the election, what does hope look like for followers of Jesus?
The people who heard Jesus' sermon on the mount may have been thinking about Isaiah's words when they heard Jesus speak. They had been crushed beneath the heels of a Roman occupation. And here, at this moment, when all hope is lost, the word of God is born into the world.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.
This is not the way it is in our world. The merciful are crushed by political pressures that announce being soft on crime. The pure in heart are taken advantage of and accused of being naïve. The poor face a crisis of debt and eviction. The meek are cast aside for faith and weapons. And yet, we hear in Isaiah:
They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation shall not lift up nation, sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore.
A seemingly impossible scenario to ever occur. But the impossible is where we as followers of Jesus make our home. Take heart. Have no fear. Jesus is Lord!
Scripture: Isaiah 1:1-3, 11-20
Our world is not well. Our politics are not well. Our land and our oceans and our air is not well. We may be anxious. About the future, about elections, about what comes next for you and your family. So this series based on Isaiah will spend time with people who are in the middle of political and social and personal crisis. These are the people of Judah in Jerusalem.
The Bible is for people who are down on their luck. The Bible is for people facing odds and terrible outcomes. That's when hope shows up. That's when hope matters.
The shape hope takes in our lives has everything to do with how we believe the universe is structured. Hope, writes Walter Brueggemann, is what this community must do. Because it's God's community.
In this last of Melissa's three-part series on Jesus' teaching on bread, the scripture was from John 6:56-59.
As we eat this bread, this Jesus, we see God's life growing and healing us. We become a people; a people that believe that we love our neighbors as ourselves. We become a people who refuse to look away from suffering. We become a people who know that no one is the worst thing that they have done. We become a people who will move toward disaster and danger, because we know that is where God is waiting in the wreckage and where there is suffering.
We also heard from Wick and Jude who shared about why they have chosen to become baptized.
Melissa continues her three-part series on Jesus' discourse about bread.
The bread of life, as Jesus talks about it in John 6:51-58, isn't a pill you swallow or compass giving directions. It's a feast that you get into. It's messy and visceral and fleshy. Jesus wants to get into our lives and become a part of us. Jesus wants to give us life and give it abundantly.
Jesus doesn't intend for us to take a crumb of his life. He doesn't intend for us to use him as a ruler for measurements or a whip for self-destruction through guilt and shame. He is a meal, the life that fills us up, a life of abundance, a life that sustains us forever.
Exodus 16:4-8, 13-21 John 6:35, 41-51
What do squirrel communions, earthworms, confessions to potted plants, forest churches in Ethiopia, manna, and Jesus calling himself the bread of life have in common? Join Melissa Florer-Bixler as she gathers these seemingly disparate threads together to show us that the process of our deification as we attempt to become more Christ-like does not lead to the abandonment of the world and our bodies. Rather it leads to embracing the fullness of our created being, trusting in the goodness of our creator, and rejecting the urge to dominate and instead live in interdependence with the rest of the people, plants, and animals that surround us. The more we lean into this principle, the more God can nourish us with spiritual manna and Jesus can become our bread of life.
Scripture: Exodus 16:4-8, 13-21 and John 6:35, 41-51
We, along with all the creatures of the world, are invited to be the fullness of our created being.
The passages from Exodus and John tell a story of trust, a dependence on God. Jesus also reminds people about all of the non-human creatures who depend on the Creator for life. The story of manna and of Jesus's body is the story of God's persistent care for all creatures.
2 Samuel 11: 1-5
Melissa Florer-Bixler's invites us to consider King David's abuse of power over Bathsheba, which mirrors abuses of positions of authority we now see in churches, businesses, and other institutions, especially since the beginning of the #MeToo era. The triumphant king in last week's sermon that danced with joy before God and her chosen people has now violated Bathsheba and arranged the death of her husband, Uriah. Melissa cannot help but say the questions out loud that sit silent in our thoughts - where is God in this story? where is God in our stories? Listen to this week's sermon to see how Melissa uses the end of Bathsheba's story (which sees her son Solomon replace David on the throne of Israel) and God's intentional construction of the lineage and life of Jesus to demonstrate how God works to bring down the powerful who choose to exploit the weak and how God's abiding love inhabits all of our stories.
Psalm 23, Jeremiah 23: 1-6
What does it mean to wrestle with our faith when the word calls us not be afraid or reassures us of God's imminent just resolution to injustice? In their first sermon at RMC, intern Katie Magnum explores the connections between Psalm 23 and Jeremiah 23, which are vastly different in tone, but convey a message of God's intimacy and hope to both the individual believer and our corporate church body. Katie invites us to consider how we must turn to God and each other for comfort, guidance, and help in carrying out God's good will for all even when our global, local, and personal circumstances lead us into the valley of shadows.
2 Samuel 6:1-5, 12b-19
What does David dancing with abandon, Jesus' life and suffering, a famous New York City gay nightclub, the subversion of toxic masculinity in modern Christianity, and the role that joy plays in the spiritual life of the church and the knowledge of God's character all have in common? Melissa Florer-Bixler ties all these disparate events and concepts together and shows how unabashed joy and playfulness in life and for God reveal truths about God's character and how surrendering to our sillier side can bring spiritual growth and build a healthier church community. The joy of the Lord is indeed our strength!
Susan and Hans provided a sermon dialogue based on the passage from Mark 5:21-43 of the woman with the hemorrhage and Jairus, a chief rabbi in the synagogue, whose daughter was deathly ill.
They portrayed these two characters who met Jesus, allowing us to picture ourselves in the story. Through this imaginative retelling, we can be touched by the story and hear what the Holy Spirit is speaking to us through the passage.
Susan Scott brought the message this morning from the book of Job.
The story of Job is a literary construct. It's about faithfulness in adversity and raises a lot of questions, with no easy answers. Suffering often prompts a crisis of faith. It's okay to be angry at God; God can take it.
Ultimately, God's love is bigger than our questions.
Scripture: Mark 4:26-34
In this Sunday's message, Melissa wove together the parables of the sower scattering seed and of the mustard seed growing with the tremendously destructive dispensationalist theology made popular by Hal Lindsey. Dispensationalism is a reading of scripture that is the basis of Christian Zionism, a violent anti-Semitic, literalist misuse of scripture. It is also the underpinning, for many US policies and attitudes towards the modern state of Israel.
Unlike the coercive theology that runs through Christian Zionism, we see in today's passage that the kingdom of God is a mystery, one of the Gospel of Mark's favorite words. It's not a mystery in the sense that we don't understand it or can't comprehend it. It's a mystery in our lack of ability to bring it to pass. The lies of Christian Zionism are manifold, but the most central is this, that we can control history. That we can manipulate God's action that we can spur on a desired future through geopolitical maneuvering. And once you're there. Once you start down this path, you have lost the Jesus plot altogether.
This is an occasion for us to look at the ways we may also think God needs our help to make history turn out right. What are the ways that we insist that particular political ends, no matter how destructive or violent, may be necessary? What are the ways that we say compromise and capitulation is simply part of the calculus of the greater good? Because there's just no room for that here. And in the seed parables we discover that we live out of control. That is part of the mystery.
Matthew 19:1-12 and John 1:14-16
Melissa wraps up the series about questions the congregation has asked this Sunday, focusing on the question of sex, and intertwines it with the need for grace.
Just before his conversion to Christianity the saint and theologian of the church, Augustine of Hippo, is in a garden and he prays a prayer. "God, give me chastity and countenance. But not yet." What does God have to say to us who are living, breathing bodies? One place we can begin is to acknowledge that our sexual lives are accommodations of grace; even those of us who are married.
For most of our religious history in the church, the church has placed a huge emphasis on getting sex right. Rowan Williams rightly says that this is always a doomed task. But the fact that it's a doomed task is also the key to understanding why sex matters to Christians at all, and it surely does.
We exist within a wide range of relationships that affirm to us that the bodies that we are, are desired and delighted in. Ethics is never a matter of just abstract rules. For Christians, it is a matter of living the mind of Christ. Sex is one area in which we order our lives in a way that tells the world the story that animates our being. We are created to be incorporated into God's love because we are loved.
Jeremiah 29: 1-9
Isaac Villegas guest preaches in our ongoing sermon series "I'm not so sure about that" on the topic of pacifism. Isaac explores the concept of peace through the lens of prisons. Using the above passage in Jeremiah, Isaac compares the exile of jews in Babylon to the exile that takes place within modern prisons as well as the awkward position that pacifists are confronted with regarding the part of current society that we do not have the power to change: We depend on prisons to protect society from violence even as prisons themselves commit violence on their occupants and even preserves the institution of slavery. Isaac Villegas tells us stories of his and others' experiences working in prisons to help us understand the intractable complexity of living out pacifism in such an environment, searching for the acceptance of things we cannot control while seeking out opportunities to change whatever we can to bring the kingdom of God here on earth.
Acts 2: 1-21This Pentecost Sunday Melissa Florer-Bixler preached on the connection between the enormous changes that have recently taken place in our church life and membership, and the changes that took place with the fledgling Church on the day of Pentecost. The crowd didn't just hear a translation of God's message, they heard it in the language of their home (and heart), and thus the Holy Spirit knitted together of new community of believers that shared a new common identity while still retaining their own unique selves. In much the same spirit, Melissa reflected on how we have added new people, languages, generations, activities that advocate justice and build community, and much more besides as well as the conflicts, losses, illnesses, and deaths that we have had to processes and work through together in the "stickiness" that inevitably occurs in a family of faith struggling to walk through this difficult life together. We invite you to listen to our reflection on how the Holy Spirit has transformed and knitted together Raleigh Mennonite Church and share in our joy and awe at God's marvelous works.
2 Timothy 3: 14-17
In the RMC sermon series "I'm Not So Sure About That," which addresses questions offered from the congregation, Melissa Florer-Bixler helps us to understand why there are so many disturbing stories, deeply flawed servants of God, and appalling deeds that appear in the Bible. Melissa shares with us that as Christians, we are a people of the Book and as Anabaptists, we share with each other on a regular basis where we hear from the Holy Spirit. The Bible is critical to our faith but does not achieve its function in isolation from shared context and interpretation. The stories from the Bible are our stories and spiritual history, yet we cannot learn from our mistakes or about God's deep love and commitment to us (despite our failures to reciprocate) if we exclude or downplay these difficult passages. If we listen and speak the Word together, embracing this complexity as the breath of God standing ready to enter our lives, with the guidance of the Holy Spirit, we can find the person of Jesus waiting there to love, guide, and redeem us.
Genesis 1: 26-31
Our recent societal and political experiences with the concept of gender are highly charged, to say the least, and often the insistence of a black and white interpretation of God's word is used as a club to injure others who do not share our viewpoint. Sarah Neff, a student at Duke's Divinity School, guest preaches today at Raleigh Mennonite on the topic of God's gender in our ongoing sermon series, "I'm not so sure about that." Sarah asks us to give the book of Genesis room to breathe and some well needed pauses to separate verses we have unwittingly entangled when we speak of God's image and the creation of genders in humans. We may be created in God's image as male and female but the triune God in their wholeness has no gender as we know it and is not made in our image. Moreover, even the seemingly binary creations of male and female, day and night, and water and land in Genesis, which seem clear and proscriptive for use in developing theology, upon further examination appear less an exhaustive instruction manual for world-building and more a poetic reflection on the good gifts of God's creation, with humans as the capstone. Twilight, dawn, estuaries, and marshes, not included in Genesis, are all less than binary expressions of day and night or water and land, yet we know God made and loves these creations as well. Ultimately, Sarah reminds us that our ultimate example of understanding gender and yet breaking gender binaries resides in the life of Jesus. Although born a male, Jesus used his privileged position to dignify and uplift women and the "other" as equal in society. Amongst other males, he eschewed violence, patriarchal displays of dominance and self-aggrandizement, and taught mercy, love, and sacrifice. If we can find it within ourselves to give room for the scripture to breathe, perhaps we can then follow Jesus's example and give room for a theology beyond a rigid binary.
Matthew 6:24-34
The third topic Melissa takes on in the series exploring questions, wonderings, and themes that come from our congregation, focuses on our relationship as Christians to other faith communities and religious groups.
Serious sports fans may be the most ardent religious fanatics, forming around a common belief in something bigger than themselves, sharing a devotion that changes how people spend their money, time and energy.
The Christian life will demand a particular allegiance, a form of life that requires setting aside other allegiances, including our allegiance to money.
Melissa offers a caution about the kind of belief that all religious paths lead to one god. This glosses over some very serious disagreements in our communities and defaces the self-identity of those distinct religious commitments. But an even more important reason is that it gets us out of the hard work of the Christian life.
Luke 24:36-48
In this second in a series exploring questions, wonderings, and themes that come from our congregation, Juliet joins Melissa to bring today's message.
After Jesus' resurrection, he keeps showing up. Jesus meets their doubt with what they need and gives it to them.
Jesus helps us know that we all are special. What do you need for God to be in your life?
Colossians 1:15-23
Melissa started a new sermon series this week, "I'm not sure about that," exploring questions, wonderings, and themes that come from our congregation. The most frequent submission was around the subject of hell.
We live our whole lives bearing consequences, around retribution and punishment. If you make a bad choice with money, no one is coming to bail you out. If you break the law, you go to jail. We want bad people to get what's coming to them. But that should also give us pause.
Just a few months ago, Pope Francis was asked what he thought about the afterlife. "I like to think hell is empty," he told an Italian reporter. "At least I hope it is." Melissa also hopes that it is, and that hope is a core of her Christian faith. Core to a belief that no one is too far gone. No one is the worst thing they have done.
John 20: 1-18
Happy Easter to everyone! In this sermon Melissa Florer-Bixler preaches on the resurrection and the appearance of Jesus to Mary Magdalene at his tomb. Jesus asks Mary, "whom are you looking for?" This is a loaded question, however, as Melissa shows us. The question asks us to look into our own selves, our own motivations, and our hopes when we seek out Jesus, who asked this probing question of Mary, his disciples, and also (tellingly) Judas. Whatever you come seeking for from Jesus you will find it, for even Judas got a quick payout. Ultimately, Melissa asks us to consider how we will live and conduct ourselves if all of this is true, just as the early Church sought to help the sick, the poor, and the downtrodden. This Easter when you consider the life, sacrifice, and resurrection of Jesus ask yourself, whom are you looking for?
Mark 11: 1-11
Note: The English voice you hear in this podcast is that of the translator. You can hear Miguel in the background, preaching in Spanish
In this sermon, RMC's Miguel Cruz preaches on the triumphal entry of Christ into Jerusalem as related in the Gospel of Mark. While we often focus on the exhilaration of the scene with Christ surrounded by followers and having performed miraculous healings and casting out of demons in the previous verses, Miguel asks us to focus on the transition that is taking place at this moment in Jesus' life, ministry, and future which should act as a guide to order our own lives. Jesus arrives on a humble donkey, argues with the priests and vendors, curses a fig tree, and talks intimately with his followers about prayer, taxes, wealth, power, and betrayal. Miguel helps us to see in these passages that Jesus is leading us to a new understanding of triumph and success that rejects the accumulation of wealth, material possessions, and positions of power that the world teaches us to expect and respect.
John 12: 20-33
Note: At 2:19, ten seconds of audio was lost due to a technical problem during the live recording.
Melissa Florer-Bixler preaches on a time in Jesus' life where there is no time left for ministry, but only to speak to those present of his imminent demise and fulfillment of God's plan. The Jesus who has constantly upset our comfortable balance with life and often called us to the do opposite of what we instinctively think correct, again reminds us that if we choose to follow Jesus faithfully, our path will lead to the cross. But the wheat that dies bears a field of fruit, albeit of a type we may not expect to be helpful in creating what we think the Kingdom of God should look like. Herein lies a freedom that comes from our vulnerability, in giving up our attempts to control and rectify the problems of the world, history, politics, and society. We can instead leave it to a God that is always faithful in his love and work of redemption. Our sacrifices, living the life of wheat, brings more wheat, which brings more wheat - beautiful, vulnerable, and a fundamental part of our calling to follow Christ.
Numbers 21: 4-9 John 3: 14-21
Our perspective on the trials and tribulations of life can have a profound effect and how we formulate our understanding of God's character and our own place and purpose in God's creation. Melissa Florer-Bixler preaches on the long and arduous Exodus of the Jewish people from Egypt and how their focus on the harsh environment, dangers, and discomforts of the wilderness caused them to doubt the truth of God's love and divine plan for their rescue. God's response to their criticism wasn't to send snakes as a punishment but to let them go: to remove some of the many divine protections that had quietly always been in place. God's constant effort shielded God's people from sand storms, snakes, bandits, and had mapped out places to rest and drink. When the desert started biting with a vengeance and yet God also gave Moses a new means for salvation, the people suddenly realized a new perspective about how much of God's love and planning for them existed that they had never perceived. Melissa asks us to consider this shift of perspective within our own lives as we think about Easter, the crucifixion, and why God sent his son in the flesh to die for us. Did Christ come just to fix the giant wilderness we have made of this Eden, and that God is set in wroth against his rebellious creation unless they bend the knee? Or...has God, from before the beginning, cared for, loved, shielded, and planned for our existence in a harsh wilderness and the death of God's son came as a demonstration that God would rather, more than anything, be with us than without us?
John2: 13-22
Melissa Florer-Bixler preached on the cleansing of the Temple by Jesus. From this gospel we learn that the existence of an economy for selling sacrificial animals and exchanging currency was not what angered Jesus, being necessary for travelers to participate in rituals, but rather the proximity of these activities, within the holy space that God comes to inhabit and meet us. Melissa uses the destruction of the Temple and the Crucifixion of Jesus, Earthly places God has inhabited, to wrestle with the question of what kind of home does God make among us now? Without these touchstones, how do we possess a thing we cannot touch? All we have to make a home for God in the wilderness is each other when we meet in His name and the remembrance of his body and blood in the sacraments. We are now the feet and hands of Christ.
On this second Sunday in Lent, Melissa preached from Genesis 17:1-7, 15-16 and Romans 4:13-25, focusing on the story of Abram.
Way before Moses gives those laws on the tablets, Abram is righteous before there's a temple to sacrifice things in. Even before circumcision. And that's really important, especially for us, because most of us are not obligated to the 613 laws of the Torah like our Jewish siblings. The only reason that we're here? The only reason at all is that we have faith in the same God. And the same story. Somehow this promise, this miracle, has overflowed to us.
In Abram's wilderness story we meet a God for whom everything has been stripped away. A God who places herself in the hands of people. A God who puts himself on the line. And one day when the time is right, that God will make a life fully on earth. One day when the time is right Jesus will come and will take upon the cross all the promises that we could not keep. Jesus will live, die and rise again to keep God's promise to us.
RMC member Phil Jackson preached on the temptation of Christ in the wilderness as told in Mark 1: 9-15. Although this relation of the beginning of Jesus' ministry is very brief, we should not be fooled into reading too quickly past Mark's description of this pivotal event. In it we can see how Jesus is being set up as the new embodiment of Adam and Eve, who will not falter under temptation and hardship unlike those first people, or God's people wandering in the desert for 40 years, or us. At the core of our faltering resides the persistent doubts that tear us down, sown by the accuser into our thoughts since the beginning...is God good, trustworthy, or even good for us? Are we worth saving? As the reflective and repentant season of Lent begins, Phil reminds us that the Gospel doesn't solely provide advice on how to live righteously. It also brings the good news of God's steadfast love for us as well as his son, shown through the example of God's sustaining presence during Christ's suffering and testing. As we submit ourselves to the testing and instruction of the Spirit during Lent, let us remember and reflect upon the humility, the obedience, and the good news of Christ as he walked into the wilderness.
Mark 9: 2-9
What will we do when we meet God? Will we run away? Cower? Ask questions? Or can we make a tent for God to inhabit and live among us? Melissa Florer-Bixler explores and unpacks the experience of Peter meeting God in the story of the transfiguration of Christ in the Gospel of Mark. Here we see that God not only wants to dwell with us, but also more importantly, within us - into the very blood and breath of our being. Our prayers and willingness of heart can build a special place for God to inhabit our bodies and allow us to experience God's love in its fullness.
In the third sermon on the theme of "What is church for?", Melissa talked about God's countercultural vision of hierarchy demonstrated by Paul's body metaphor in 1 Corinthians 12: 14-31.
Since antiquity, the institutions of government and the economy have a distinct continuity: they have created social, political, and economic hierarchies that we have often failed to question, and accepted that a permanent underclass must exist to serve the needs of their "betters" in society. If you are a minority and/or in the impoverished lower-classes and suffering from low wages, police persecution, and few academic opportunities, the world teaches us to that this situation is a natural state, inextricable from the fabric of our lives, resulting from our lack of our own hard work, intelligence, or moral character.
Paul reminds us that "the members of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable" to the function of the whole body and deserve elevated honor and dignity. Melissa invites us to through this metaphor to envision church and worship as ways to use the special gifts that God has given each of us to speak the truth about God's great love and value of all people regardless of how the world treats them. Just as Jesus spoke the truth to the powerful even unto death, so must we speak the truth as a way to remind others and ourselves of God's countercultural idea of hierarchy, where all are loved and honored equally within one interconnected body.
In the second sermon on the theme of "What is church for?", Melissa talked about stewardship, speaking from Acts 2:38-47.
She shared the story of the Diggers. Every once in a while Christians begin to live so near to the life of Jesus, so deeply in tune with the Spirit of God at such a horrific moment in history, that their lives cannot help but take on a new shape. People who love Jesus find radical, creative ways to live out what they believe.
We carve out space on a Sunday morning to get lost in the nonsense of the gifts of God's abundance and Jesus' examples and teachings about how to live our lives and share out of that abundance. We might think of this space, here in worship, as a kind of setting the stage or setting the conditions for the Spirit to spark among us in all of the other parts of our lives.
John 2:1-12
This Sunday Melissa begins a three-part series on the question: What is the Church For?
The miracle at the wedding of Cana seems like a superfluous act on the part of Jesus. There's nothing practical or useful about the sign. Jesus doesn't cure disease, raise a person from the dead or feed hungry people. Yet it's a sign that points to what Jesus is about...and can tell us something about who we are as a people who follow after the way of Jesus.
Dr. Candace Laughinghouse brought the sermon during this last Sunday in the summer series focused on Genesis 1 and creation care.
God applies purpose and abundance to the earth even before humanity's existence. From earth's exception to today's reality. How did we get to this place of chaos, catastrophe, and destruction?
Today's text reminds us that being made in the image of God involves an accountability to God's Word, to care for the earth and maintain it. Creation wasn't created for human pleasure and convenience. Pleasure never satisfies the deep spiritual thirst we have within to live the life we were created to live as the Imgo Dei--in the image of God.
Salvation directly involves an ethic of care for our souls and our creation. When we receive Christ, we are acknowledging that the onus is upon us to not only save ourselves, but to save and care for all of creation.
RMC's summer series on the Genesis account of creation continues with this Sunday's sermon by Elizabeth Korver-Glenn. Dr. Korver-Glenn is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Washington University in St. Louis, and a member of Raleigh Mennonite.
Elizabeth began by sharing from a booklet she and Randall received at their wedding.
God creates out of what to us may seem like nothing, but is indeed something. As we create, we tend to assume it's better to use what we do notice, what we're used to, rather than returning to the original materials God uses to craft this world.
Continuing the summer's theme on creation, this Sunday Dr. Derek Hicks brought the sermon. Dr. Hicks is associate professor of Religion and Culture at Wake Forest University.
What is creation for ALL if some are pushed to the margins? Or left out altogether? How does that square with the radical nature of Jesus's declarations about what it means to walk in faith and being bound to the margins?
Derek told the story of his grandmother's front porch in Los Angeles which provides a little world of belonging. She serves, ministers to and encourages folks on her baby blue porch. She displays an unflinching faith in God's creation to activate hope in those still suffering indignities associated with being left out and left behind of that creation. With every bowl of gumbo she extends nourishment to God's creation. Each bite of her hot water corn bread is a testament of belonging. This is the nature of God's creation.
Our summer series focusing on the creation story from the beginning of Genesis continued. Dr. Christopher Hays, president of Scholar Leaders, joined us this Sunday. He shared the Babylonian creation story, the "Enuma Elish," comparing and contrasting it with the biblical creation story. The Enuma Elish provides insight into how the contemporaries of the ancient Israelites would have understood and told the story of the universe. The biblical creation account serves as a better model for interreligious engagement than our current model of rhetorical and sometimes military warfare.
In the continuing summer series on Genesis 1, this Sunday's guest speaker was Ren Martin. Ren is the Eco-Justice Connection Program Coordinator for the North Carolina Council of Churches.
Genesis teaches us that all of creation is a gift from God. Our response to this gift should be one of deepest respect and gratitude. We must cultivate a profound appreciation for the wonders of nature, acknowledging that every tree, every creature, every ecosystem carries God's divine blessing. With this reverence we should naturally be inclined to protect and preserve the earth for future generations.
As our summer series focused on creation from Genesis 1 continues, Chas Edens brought the message this morning. Melissa introduces him at the outset.
Do we name and care for creation, for the environment, as an asset or part of our livelihood, an extension of ourselves? How we look at it may depend upon our experience and relationship with it.
On this third Sunday of our summer series focusing on creation care, Dr,. Aminah Al-Attas Bradford provided the message, speaking from Genesis 1, 2:9, 15-17, 3:1-6, 22-23.
We've been misreading what it means to be a reflection of God. The world in its entirety is meant to mirror and reflect a symbiotic God. Symbiosis is not just a biological fact, it's a sacred one.
On this second Sunday of the summer series focusing on creation care, Doug Kaufman brought the message. Doug will be taking on the role of executive director of the Anabaptist Climate Collaborative and has been an environmental activist, along with being a pastor.
Doug preached from Genesis 1:2-3 and Jeremiah 4:23-28. He spoke of the incredible biodiversity loss we have experienced throughout the world. It's in noting these distressing realities of our current climate situation that we can find the compost out of which will grow our action and our hope.
Melissa kicked off a summer series focusing on creation care. Over the course of the summer we will hear the story of creation from Genesis from nine different preachers. She started us off, combining it with the passage from Colossians 1:15-20.
Another aspect of the series this summer is captured in this web page, suggesting that each person pick up one or more new practices to try as a way to be a little more kind to our planet as we face the crisis of climate change.
Scripture: John 20:19-23; Acts 2:1-21
On this Pentecost Sunday we also celebrated the birthday of Raleigh Mennonite and the annual renewal of our covenant together. We take time to remember that we've said "yes" to showing up for one another. There's no rule book for how to do this. The only tools we're given to figure out how to love God and our neighbors in this world are the Bible, the Holy Spirit and each other. That's it!
Scripture: John 17:1-11
We were privileged to have Casey Stanton provide the message this Sunday. Casey is co-director of Discerning Deacons, a project serving the Catholic Church through active discernment around women and the diaconate.
Called to be active in promoting change within the Catholic Church, Casey called all of us to do the work to which we have been called, whatever that witness might be. That we would in our communities of fellowship and organizing, ministry and accompaniment, continue to proclaim that the Word was with God and the Word was God. That the Word became flesh and now lives inseparably connected and bound in us.
This was a unique Sunday when Raleigh Mennonite joined St. Ambrose Episcopal for a joint worship service in St. Ambrose's sanctuary. Father Jemonde Taylor and Pastor Melissa Florer-Bixler brought a dialogical sermon from the gospel reading in John 14:15-21.
During Lent the choirs from both churches joined together to learn about and sing songs from our respective traditions. This was part of the Balm in Gilead - a year of anti-racism learning RMC has been involved with.
Susan provided the message this Sunday from John 14:1-14
Jesus tells his disciples to, "Ask for anything in my name and I will give it." That offer needs to be looked at in context!
Our guest speaker this Sunday was Ian McPherson, from Pullen Memorial Baptist Church. Chrys introduced him before he spoke from the lectionary passage of John 10:1-10.
We often hear of Jesus referred to as the good shepherd. But in this passage, Jesus first refers to himself twice as "the gate."
"Christ's in-breaking into our world has always been about our collective liberation. For while the shepherd calls each of us by name, all of us are led through the gate together. As this story, and the whole Biblical witness will testify, our fates are inextricably bound to one another. We will never get to having life together, much less having it abundantly, without a shared commitment to the well-being of all of us. Indeed, the only way through is together."
Melissa preached from Luke 24:13-35 on this third Sunday of Easter.
Bread weaves a thread through the pages of scripture. Bread is a character in our salvation story.
Even though they had talked at length with this stranger, it wasn't until the two traveling on the road to Emmaus sat and broke bread with Jesus that their eyes were opened and they recognized him.
On this Easter morning Melissa preached from John 20:1-18.
Early on the first morning, while it was still dark, there was sweat and adrenaline and weeping. It has been three days since the crucifixion. Three days since they took his body down from the cross, and sealed it inside a cave with a massive boulder. We don’t know what happens inside the tomb in the dark during those days.
Today we continue to find ourselves in darkness. It is difficult to see the shape of our future, the threat of climate change is so immense. I can’t find the path before me when there is so much destruction and hatred aimed at trans people, so much hatred for teachers who have the conviction that we need to tell the truth to our children about racism. Tyre Nichols is dead at the hands of police. Tortuguita is dead also at the hands of police, for protecting the forest he loved.
Easter doesn’t make that go away. Easter points us to the most raw and vicious pain we carry in us. And then we hear our name.
Melissa spoke from Matthew 21:1-11 on this Palm Sunday.
She shared the story of one of her favorite parties she has been a part of, when women were released from jail after their bond was paid by members of SONG. "When I see the women with radiant faces celebrating their freedom, I am there with Jesus, down the narrow switchbacks of the Mount of Olives to the foot of Jerusalem."
It turns out that parties like the one where Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a colt are dangerous for empires.
Hosanna is not a request; it's a claim. Hosanna marks the truth about our lives. God is here. God has already been here. God has made a way. A way when there was no way. We've been shown exactly how to plant flowers in the cracks of the Empire, because we learned this from Jesus.
On this fifth Sunday of Lent Melissa preached from Romans 8:6-11.
Our bodies are not neutral. We are formed by environments, constrained or freed, or subjected to housing laws and legal decisions, physical borders, corporations. Our bodies, our racialized bodies, our aging bodies, our gendered bodies, these are formed by forces much larger than our individual action. We are formed to participate in much larger and more nefarious structures of power.
We're tangled up with this "fleshy" stuff as opposed to our bodies being like-minded with God. Paul tells us we can't get out of this stuff on our own.
On this fourth Sunday of Lent Melissa preached from John 9:1-41 and Romans 5:1-11. The story of Jesus healing the man who was born blind, and the subsequent questioning by the Pharisees illustrates the difference between being cured and being healed.
After he gains his sight, he is repeatedly questioned by the people in power in his community. When the man subsequently pushes back and refuses to back down, he is reviled by them, they drive him out of his community.
It turns out that what makes a righteous life a good life is flipped on its head. A good life is not a sighted life and a bad life, a blind life, a bad life is the kind where we depend on our own abilities and justify our rightness. A good life is one where we fall into the arms of grace.
On this third Sunday of Lent, Melissa spoke from Romans 5:1-11.
Most of our sins aren't interesting or dangerous. They're mostly petty and boring and cruel. We short change both the chasm of our failings and the grace of God when we limit the scope of our sins to doing bad things.
Our sins are rooted in distortion about one central truth, the truth that we are loved. Loved not because of what we have done or accomplished, but because there is an inexhaustible flame that burns forever for all of us. God continues to love us.
On this second Sunday of Lent Melissa preached from Romans 4:1-5, 13-17, weaving in basketball with the ongoing theme of confession, along with talking about community and identity.
What if our identity isn't a story about heroics or world-changing? What if the only way to tell each other apart is that we forgive each other?
On this first Sunday of Lent, Melissa preached from Genesis 2:15-17 & 3:1-7 and Romans 5:12-19.
During this season we are focusing our time and attention toward "confession." We have varied experiences with confessions. Confession is when we come clean, when we tell the truth about who we are. We are not God!
Susan Scott spoke from Matthew 17:1-9, which shares the experience of Jesus and three of his disciples going up into a mountain where they meet Moses and Elijah. In that interchange Jesus's divine nature is revealed, with God appearing in a cloud, claiming Jesus as God's beloved Son, telling the disciples to listen to him. It's known as the transfiguration of Jesus.
The text calls all of us as disciples to shut up and listen to Jesus, to embrace the counter-cultural other- focused life.
Scripture: Matthew 5:21-37
Today we're listening to Jesus challenge our misconceptions about what this Jesus-centered life is that we have chosen to live.
If you're here because you're trying to find a behavior modification program to make you more moral, this is not the right place. Jesus is actually interested in the heart of the matter.
Jesus calls His men disciples to enact right relationships that refuse the forms of subjugation and discrimination in our world. And He calls us to that today.
How does power, especially patriarchal power, thwart the vision of God's redemption that we want to live out now, here, bearing witness to what is possible for everyone?
Scripture: Matthew 5:11-20
Melissa asked the congregation to help shape the sermon and interpret scripture together in this message about the oft-heard passage of the church being the salt of the earth and the light of the world.
Scripture: Luke 18:35-43, I Peter 1:3-6
On this Anabaptist World Fellowship Sunday Karina Gonzalez, John Frye and Christina Hershey each shared a bit of their journeys and what it means to them to be Mennonite and part of this community. John's sharing included several slides.
Scripture: John 1:29-42
Melissa shares about Jesus' baptism and anointing by the Holy Spirit through three different encounters: two icon images and a video. The Holy Spirit is frequently an under-considered member of the trinity, an afterthought.
Feel free to participate in this visio divina by studying the icons as you listen to the sermon and hear responses to the images shared by some of those present, then watch the video.
The Baptism of Christ (Theophany), by Andrea del Verrocchio and Leonardo da Vinci:https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1FIvrbbZgFLXATmiGmWVBJhvF68VUCp3DpqAE6phAK1w/edit?pli=1#slide=id.p
Epiphany - Baptism of Jesus, by Ivana Demchuk:https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1FIvrbbZgFLXATmiGmWVBJhvF68VUCp3DpqAE6phAK1w/edit?pli=1#slide=id.g1cf7e49c015_0_46
AMA - a film by Julie Gautier:https://vimeo.com/259539583
The service on Epiphany Sunday was filled with poetry and singing. Featured in this recording:
- The Starlight Night, by Gerard Manley Hopkins, read by Brenda H.
- A sermonette and reading of Alfred Lord Tennyson's In Memoriam, by Melissa
- Star of the Nativity by Joseph Brodsky, read by Jackie
- Roman Brevity at Lauds liturgy lead by Hans
- One King's Epiphany by Madeline L'Engle, read by Andrew B.
- Matthew 2:12 read in English by Nina and in Chinese by Shuting
- Solemn Stillness sung by the RMC Vocal Ensemble
Matthew 2:13-23
Scripture doesn't tell us a lot about Jesus' early life, when God became a human baby. The story at the beginning of his life will form the whole rest of the story.
It turns out that what it means to be God is actually what it means to be perfectly human, to love without a limit of reason; for Jesus' whole being to be in solidarity with others.
And so we see the Incarnation as this invitation: we are invited to get into God's stuff. We are invited into a perfectly human life, just as Jesus was perfectly human--to love beyond what makes sense. And to be fully human means that we also put our lives among the most wretched around us, refusing all the good reasons we come up with for cutting ourselves off and putting ourselves out of the way.
Scripture: Isaiah 7: 10-16, Matthew 1: 18-25
Melissa preached from home since she had a child with COVID.
We continue to hear from the prophecies in Isaiah on this fourth Sunday of Advent. God rolls God's eyes at Ahaz because of Ahaz's reluctance to listen to God. And God sends a token that Ahaz doesn't really want and at the time seems a bit underwhelming. But as Matthew's gospel takes up this prophecy we see that it is the oracle of the birth of Jesus, God becoming flesh in the womb of Mary.
Scripture: Isaiah 2:1-5
Melissa began her sermon on this first Sunday of Advent by sharing a rendition of Down by the Riverside by Rosetta Tharpe.
In the Isaiah passage, God paints a picture for Isaiah of a world where tools of war become obsolete. That is a pretty bold vision for people locked into a city waiting for starvation to overtake them. And it is a bold vision for people starving for freedom in cotton and tobacco fields under whip and chain. Ain't gonna study war no more.
Spirituals, like the ones we heard today, refused to let suffering be the last word. They offered vision, an imagination for a world that no longer required war, because God's expansive flood changed every nation it swept along.
For all of us who prop up our lives with the safety afforded by nuclear threats and the stock market and police brutality and oil reserves, for us the roaring of the flood may sound like the end of the world. It turns out that's just not true. This is just the beginning.
Scripture: Luke 23: 33-43
On this Sunday celebrating the reign of Jesus, Melissa shared the image of some graffiti archaeologists uncovered depicting a man with his arm raised toward a man with a donkey's head nailed to a cross. Under it bears the inscription "Alexamenos adores his god."
There are frequently two depictions of Jesus. One as a passive, suffering Jesus on the cross. The other as a warrior Christ. So much of culture, both centuries ago and in the US today, would have us worship a warrior Christ that reigns over people. Christian nationalism is one of the most current examples.
Worshipping a crucified Christ is counter-cultural, yet that is what we are called to do.
Melissa reflects on and gives voice to the hypothetical woman who was married to seven brothers from the story in Luke 20:27-38.
The Sadducees pose this question about the resurrection, but all along what Jesus wanted to tell the Sadducees, wanted to tell us, is that all women, all people, need good news. We need good news that announces to us that we can carve out an existence that is not centered on fear, but around love.
Scripture: Ephesians 1:11-23
On this All Saints Day Melissa provided the message, explaining that saints are people who have lived in a way that help us believe that God is real. They are not necessarily the ones who are the best at believing stuff. Saints carry faith for one another and make make God credible to others.
Melissa shared The Parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector (Luke 18:9-14) in it's original form and as it might play out right here at Raleigh Mennonite. This version as acted out had a Bishop, a philanthropist, an activist and a payday lender. The first 3 were smug in there righteousness and celebrated that they were "not like the payday lender" who wept and exclaimed "God have mercy on me a sinner".
Jesus said, I tell you, this man went down to his home to justify rather than others, who, for all who exalt themselves. You can't do anything to earn God's love, and nothing you could ever do could turn it away from you. It's a gift with no strings attached
Melissa began the four-part message sharing the story of the widow who demanded justice from the judge in Luke 18:1-8. This was followed by three stories of RMCers who shared out of their calling to work for social justice in their varied roles: Rachel "RED" Davis, Elizabeth Korver-Glen and David Rohrer.
Susan brought the message from Luke 16:19-31, telling the story of the rich man and Lazarus.
How often are we so caught up in our own world that we miss those at the margins? And it's not just about being blind to those at the margins but about being so sure you know what God is doing that you're blind to what God is doing in front of you.
Scripture: Jeremiah 32: 1-3a, 6-15
In the final sermon of the four Melissa preached reflecting on her sabbatical, she focuses on hope, even in the midst of incredibly trying times.
Often times it's difficult to see hope in current circumstances, but frequently it's churning and breathing below the surface, even if we can't see it. Coming together as community helps foster that hope.
In the midst of our busyness it's easy to miss the beauty of God's extravagant creation all around us.
Through the poetry of Psalm 65 and several more modern authors, Melissa recounts more of her sabbatical journey and encourages us to stop and notice that we too are a part of the joyful abundance of noticing.
Scripture: Ezekiel 18:1-4, 19-32
Melissa continued sharing about some of the experiences from her sabbatical, this time about Belfast and the historical divisions between Catholics and Protestants.
Each of us is more than our past, more than our histories. More than the actions and illnesses of our parents in our nations and our communities. Your life, your actions, your decisions about how you live, whether by life or death, those matter to God.
Scripture: Jeremiah 18:1-11, Luke 14:25-33
Melissa is back from her sabbatical and will use this month's sermons to report on several aspects of her family's travels and some of the learnings along the way. This Sunday she contrasted the work of Akram, a Palestinian craftsperson who recycles tear gas canisters into works of art, with Jeremiah's telling of the potter reworking clay from a spoiled pot into a new pot.
When we look at the world described by Jeremiah, the same world we live in, it’s hard to imagine carving out another way of life in the crushing destruction of separation walls, police violence, and militarized hate groups. What is the cost of trusting our lives to a potter who longs, who pleads for our collective life to be reworked and reshaped into thriving and wholeness?
Rachel provided the message this Sunday based on Hebrews 13:1-2.
There are many examples of folks at Raleigh Mennonite carrying out acts of hospitality. When we practice radical Christian hospitality, we are opening ourselves up to the gift of an unexpected messenger or bearer of God's good news.
May we as a community continue to live our everyday lives as a people that practice radical hospitality as a discipline of delight. It's a way of fighting the plagues that surround us.
Susan Scott brought this Sunday's message based on Luke 13:10-17, the story of Jesus healing the crippled woman at the synagogue on the Sabbath.
Susan asked us to contemplate, "How does God feel about you at this moment?"
Jesus was chastised for breaking strict Sabbath rules by the leader of the synagogue. This leader was trying to follow the rules as he understood them. His actions were born out of his head knowledge, not out of knowing in his heart the love that God had for him.
Does our answer to the question of how God feels about us at this moment line up with our theology that God loves us? The extent to which we have actually internalized God's love for us colors everything else that we do.
Scripture: Isaiah 5:1-7, Psalm 80:14-19
Pastor Chalice Overy, from Pullen Memorial Baptist Church, provided the message this morning. Prior to her preaching we heard a rendition of Lift Every Voice and Sing and Chalice begins by sharing with us some of the significance of that song for her.
Prayer is a place where our will comes into submission; where our greed comes into submission.
It is important to pray in proximity to those who have far less allegiance to our institutions. It is important to pray in proximity with those who can hear God's "No!"
Praying with the prophets means that we will have to lend an attentive ear to those people that we have become accustomed to ignoring and to dismissing and disregarding. It means that we will have to sit with some messages that are difficult for us to hear.
Scripture: Luke 12:13-21
Liddy Grantland brought our message this morning. She serves as the service team leader for two L'Arche homes outside Washington D.C. Liddy shared with us stories of L'Arche community life, particularly during COVID, including some of the joys and the frustrations.
God wants us to live in the world as our home, with each other as our family, finding treasure not in stuff, or wealth, or certainty, or rightness, or perfection, or even righteous anger. But in the embrace of one another.
The work that God has called us to do is indeed to find treasures here on earth, in the people we encounter, and are called to make community with. For it is in doing the hard lifetime work of loving and forgiving and belonging with each other, that we come to see the face of God in the faces of one another.
Scripture: Colossians 2:6-19 and Luke 11:1-13
Elizabeth Korver-Glenn provided the message this Sunday, drawing on four themes from the Gospel of Luke passage.
May our bodies, the bread and the breaths we ask for and receive, and the baptism in which we participate through breaking, recreating, crush the empires of this world, and usher in the kingdom of God, which we urgently, pray will come.
We were privileged to have Greg Jarrell as our guest speaker this Sunday. Chrys introduces Greg, then Eric reads from Mark 9:14-29 before Greg gives the message.
The silenced understand the silent spirit spoken about in the Mark passage. What it's like to be told to go along just to get along. What it's like to be tone policed. To be told to be grateful, not to come across as angry. To deny those things, those images that are essential to yourself in order to assure the comfort of others. To accept your station in life. You may have been told not to be troublesome or meddlesome, but to just keep moving, to stay quiet.
The silentious--the habitually silent--also know this. Told not to make waves, to be nice, rather than to be kind. Not to raise issues that would disturb the greater good. Don't speak up about this; you'll mess up the long-term strategy.
We've probably all been in both of those places at some point. Though, from our social locations maybe some more than others in different roles. The attempt to break silence results in a punishment, a backlash.
A different kind of prayer is needed to break the silence.
Rev. Teresa Kim Pecinovsky was our guest preacher this Sunday. In this recording, Susan introduces her and Hans reads the scripture passage from Proverbs 8: 1-4, 22-31 before Teresa brings the message.
"Today's text comes from a rich passage in Proverbs, where the writer chronicles the personification of wisdom.
"She is indeed more splendid than the sun, and she out shines all the constellations. Wisdom is a prophet, a teacher, a guide. She is a craftsperson with God at creation contributing to designing with and delighting in the world's creation.
"At this crossroads in American political history, what can we learn from wisdom about laws that prohibit reproductive justice, bodily autonomy and human flourishing? On the heights and besides the way, how will we listen to wisdom when lawmakers and fellow Christians cry out about being pro-life, while grocery shelves are still achingly empty for things like baby formula to feed our very young?"
Rachel provided the message this Sunday drawn from the story of Elijah in 2 Kings 2:1-2, 6-14.
It is a strange irony that Elijah, who lived in the shadow of the forces of death for the entirety of his ministry, narrowly avoiding dying of starvation, thirst, violence, depression, should meet the end of his own earthly life, in the way that he did.
We can't learn from him how to suffer patiently, or how to stubbornly stare down death in the face and tell it that it does not have the last word. Yet we can learn from him how to let go, how to trust that our gifts will multiply after we are gone. How to trust that others will keep watering the seeds that we have planted. We can learn from him how to receive the gift of the presence of others even when our own feelings are too much to bear. We can learn from him how to let go of our idol of control.
Rachel closed out the message with the congregation listening to the Mountain Goats singing their song, Elijah.
Scripture: Matthew 5:38-42
While Melissa is on sabbatical we are privileged to have a number of guest speakers. Yuri Yamamoto recently graduated from Shaw University with her Master of Divinity and is commissioned and endorsed by the Federation of Christian Ministries as a Christian minister and chaplain. Yuri is very active in the community and works as a chaplain resident at a local hospital.
In this part of the Sermon on the Mount from today's scripture, Jesus teaches us how we must do more than is required by law in order to advance the kingdom of heaven. He is talking about building the kingdom of heaven through building relationships. In particular, building the kingdom of heaven for the poor and the marginalized.
Jesus tells us to give more than we're being asked. Going just the extra mile is a very modest ask. Whenever we practice justice, mercy and love, we are advancing the kingdom of heaven. The more we do this, the easier it becomes.
I Corinthians 12:12-26, Luke 24:44-53
On this last Sunday before Melissa and her family leave for a three-month sabbatical, it was also Ascension Sunday. It was also the Sunday following another deadly mass killing in a Texas school, and just a week after a mass shooting in a Taiwanese church in LA, and a day before that, a racially motivated mass killing at a Buffalo supermarket.
In the body of Jesus, the ones who are most honored are the ones who are the most despised, the lowly and weak. Our lives are bound to the weakest and most despised. We can't survive without them. We are the body of Christ,
Colossians 2:6-18
It was our annual covenant renewal Sunday, plus the opportunity to welcome new members, plus baby dedication for two of our newest beloveds, along with communion. A full Sunday!
In covenanting with others at Raleigh Mennonite, we're deciding together to trust that a certain story is true, that we can trust that story to shape our lives, and that we are going to figure out how to do that as a community. In doing so, we're going to get into all sorts of good trouble together.
Scripture: Matthew 25:31-45
We were honored to have Sarah Jobe and Cindy Locklear share in today's service. Melissa introduced chaplain Sarah Jobe from the Interfaith Prison Ministry for Women who shared about the prison awareness quilt crocheted by women incarcerated at North Carolina Correctional Institution for Women as they survived COVID in prison. Cindy shared her testimony about her reliance on her faith during her time in prison and particularly what it was like during the pandemic.
Following their message, the congregation had the opportunity to pray for women in prison while meditating on the quilt and listening to two Conviction Songs.
Scripture: John 21:1-19
Jesus visits the disciples a third time after his resurrection, this time as some of them have been fishing.
"Where is Melissa going with this sermon?" That's what many were thinking as she started her sermon, telling us that our bodies are "an island of creatures."
The real body of Jesus joins the disciples and eats fish and bread with them. We're invited to a fleshy resurrection. The human and divine. Same but different. By being human, Jesus links his body to what's going on in the world. He becomes part of our biome.
Melissa starts out with a story of Brer Rabbit for the children on this Holy Humor Sunday. She then recounts how those who had been enslaved in our country knew how to quietly and secretly assert their resistance, trickery, and humor. They would use ordinary means to confront power they could not fight openly.
When we say that Jesus plays a trick on the devil, we mean that Jesus puts on a life like ours, and gets into the heart of brokenness and destruction, and then turns himself over to it. And then something breaks open.
On this Easter Sunday we celebrate that creation is reborn, and we with it. The tomb opens and life is born from it.
You can't thwart it or destroy it. You can't even unbelieve it, or overpower it. Because all that's left to do here is to bear witness.
We're brought up in a system that divides people from commodities. All that other stuff--oceans, animals, trees--all of it is neutral material used to benefit people to make us happier or richer, or to give us more space or more stuff.
But we can't separate ourselves from other creatures because over and over in the story of our faith we discover that creatures have a vocation, a particular role to play in the drama of salvation. Colts that are untied for Jesus to ride into Jerusalem, trees that bear witness and rocks that cry out...
In this continuing series during Lent, today's story is about Mary pouring out expensive perfume, washing Jesus' feet with it and drying his feet with her hair. Rather than agreeing with Judas' chastisement for wasting money on such extravagance, Jesus says, "She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial. You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me."
Jesus is asking us to believe this absurd thing that we can trust God and we can trust one another; that we can respond in ways that are foolish to the economics our day. That we can be faithful in our response of love, because God can be trusted.
The parable is The Prodigal Son but Melissa's sermon focused on the older brother. The brother that stayed behind, served his father, tended the fields and flock and waited for his inheritance. He's working in the field when his brother returns having squandered the inheritance he demanded while his father was still alive. Facing starvation returns begging forgiveness. Even if we aren't the oldest sibling we've been there. Gritting our teeth, as we are ignored and praise is lavished on our unworthy peer. We can hold on to this anger and be dragged down, or like the father, rejoice that our brother has returned from the dead (his sins). It's in this light that Restorative Justice brings the victim and perpetrator together healing both.
Continuing the series during Lent, Melissa preached from Luke 13:1-9. Despair is that intractable boulder that won't move. Despair is the feeling of weariness after prying and pushing and pulling with all your might.
From the passage, Jesus doesn't provide pat answers when folks come to him in despair. "No, I tell you, but unless you repent, you will perish."
With spring here, Melissa shared that she is spending time working with her compost pile. Carefully feeding it and aerating it, the bacteria turns all this waste into compost, and then the compost goes into the garden that creates flowers for pollinators. And that's how we all eat food.
My compost pile smells amazing. It smells like life. It smells like resurrection. Like things that were waste and leftover, breaking down and becoming new, and offering life to other things.
Jesus invites us take our despair, our shared pain, and lay it down for the good gardener who is working in and among us to return it as compost for life, and wholeness and health.
On this second Sunday of Lent, Brian Recker provided our sermon based on the passage from Luke 9:28-36.
The last two years have been tough. During that time we've had lots of expectations that have been thwarted. Whether they were expectations in our personal lives or in the world around us, the last few years have left many of us in a state of constant disappointment.
While those moments of frustration and failed expectations can be disappointing when they shatter our dreams, they can actually be liberating if they help us align ourselves with what is more true.
The disciples were confused about who Jesus was. Their version of the Messiah was a warrior, a liberator who would rise up and combat the oppression the Jewish people were facing. But Jesus described a vision for glory that doesn't quite fit with their expectations. And then God shows them Jesus' glory, putting hope in the middle of their disappointment.
Our world has let us down so often. But Christianity is a religion of hope. We have a hope that God's peace will break into our world and God's justice will be established.
On this first Sunday of Lent, Melissa preached from Luke 4:1-13, the story of Jesus' temptation.
The last two years of the pandemic have held untold losses. We are entering Lent brimming with trauma and fear of these past two years. We each have been holding in so much. It's hard to know what the future holds, what is still before us. We are reminded of those long lonely days that Jesus spends in the wilderness day after day, mustering the will to go on just a little bit longer.
During this season of Lent we will have the opportunity to pour out before God and one another the pain we've been holding in. This Sunday we reflect on what we have lost control of in the past year.
Melissa preached from Zechariah 8:1-8. The passage begins with Zechariah prophesying of God's jealousy. We tend to use the words jealousy, envy and coveting all interchangeably, but in the Bible there are important subtleties. Envy comes from emptiness. Jealousy comes from being full.
God doesn't want other things. God wants you. God's jealous love is for all of us.
Following the message this Sunday, Chrys and Pam performed a moving instrumental rendition of The Wayfaring Stranger.
Hearing a sermon from the sensuous passages found in the Song of Songs is pretty uncommon. Susan Scott provided an eloquent, humorous and insightful message on just that. What do the words in the Song of Songs teach us about God? For one, that God is not a prude. God is not squeamish or embarrassed by our desire and our longing; our longing to be valued and cherished. The Song of Songs shouts out that human love is something worth celebrating.
But God also understands the depths of pain and longing that we can experience. One of the wonders of the incarnation is that we have a Savior who is fully human and fully divine, who experiences the full range of human emotions. We have a Savior who delights in our love and who understands our loneliness.
Today's reading from Isaiah 16:1-5 opens us to a moment of a refugee crisis; we are reading about this massive disruption that happens across the Near East. Isaiah says "Like fluttering birds, like scattered nestlings, so are the daughters of Moab at the fords of the Arnon."
Due in large part to climate change, so too are the daughters of Eritrea in South Sudan. So too are the daughters of the Philippines and the daughters of New Orleans. And the daughters of Tuvalu.
While our country produces the vast majority of emissions, at least in the short run, we will face the least significant consequences. We have a responsibility to people, like the people in Tuvalu.
As people who follow Jesus, we put our lives among those who believe in this absurd hope that our world can change. That there is enough among us that we can respond to the people of Tuvalu. And then we live like we actually believe it.
1 Timothy 4:4-5 For everything God created is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, 5 because it is consecrated by the word of God and prayer.
We love family heirlooms not because they are wood or steel or gold but because they are given in love and carry love within them. Your body is a gift from God given in love, it is good. There are no exceptions. Bodies may be disabled, queer or disgraced, it does not matter, the creator exclaims "you are good and I am well pleased". The gift of your own body. That is a good creation from a good God, do not neglect the gift that is in you.
Rachel preached from a passage not often preached about, Leviticus 12:1-8.
Leviticus is sometimes a book of the Bible that we need to read multiple times and keep wrestling with. The book spells out in a very nuts and bolts sort of way what it meant for the ancient Israelites to love your neighbor as yourself.
The book also reminds us that no part of our daily life is too mundane to not matter to God.
Wrestling with this book and this passage can help remind us we have not yet achieved gender equity, that we need to continue to order our shared economic lives so that parents have some protected space when welcoming a new child into the world, that big events that happen in our bodies impact our relationship with God and are worth holding within our worship and community.
Melissa recounts stories of Mennonites in Java--doing harm and learning to do better--as we reflect on what it means to be part of the larger global Christian church on World Anabaptist Sunday.
Healing and restoration is always ongoing. We engage in repentance, over and over again, recognizing that this is how the reign of God is known among us.
How do we put together the way that God's love and care works among us? Is it in spite of us, or through us in the cracks of the things that we break.
We are facing disagreements that are deep, so deep because they're conflicts about the most important questions facing us, the most significant questions of our faith. And some of us have come to learn that the people we love, who raised us in care and gentleness, are not only absent from the fight against dehumanization but may actually be participants.
For Jesus, family is anyone who stays in the struggle, anyone who does the will of God, who continues to fight the dehumanizing forces of evil. The people who share your baptism, that's your family. Like Jesus, you will find them with their holy parent who is in God's house. What a gift!
Micah decries prophets who cry peace when they have something to eat and declare war against those who put nothing in their mouth. Micah looks out at the justice system and announces his disgust: its rulers give judgments for a bribe, its priests teach for a price, its prophets give oracles for money.
The mystery of Christmas is not that God will set the world right but how God goes about this work, God brings justice and more see life and wholeness. At Christmas we are asked to to believe in the possibility of peace without violence.
This is Christ revealed to the world in the eyes of a child and in the eyes of the poor.
Melissa spoke of St Ephrem who lived at the start of the fourth century. He was the son of poor farmers, falsely accused and imprisoned. When exonerated he makes his way to a monastery seeking solitude and a life devoted to writing poetry. But during a devastating famine he feels God calling him back to to care for the poor. He spends the rest of his life distributing food to the poor. In his writing and in his actions Ephrem ties together the humanity and divinity of Jesus. He shows how the common is made holy. A birth is both common and a miracle. Will we be inspired by the most holy of births as Ephrem was?
On this fourth Sunday of Advent, Melissa spoke from 1 Samuel 1:19-28 and Matthew 1:18-25.
Both Hannah and Mary faced incredible oppression and ridicule given their situations. But Elkanah and Joseph bear that shame along their wives. Elkanah and Joseph must both transgress the boundaries of their culture. These men recognize the power vested in them, not power that is earned or deserved, it simply comes from being born a man in the world at the top of this gender hierarchy. And they divest themselves from it.
Feminism isn't against men, it's against sexism.
Brian Recker provided the sermon on this third Sunday of Advent based on the scripture passages in Judges 13:2-7 and Luke 1:46-56.
The writer of Luke doesn't keep Mary in the margins. Not only do we hear her voice in this passage, this is actually the longest set of words spoken by a woman in the New Testament.
Mary's song, referred to as the Magnificat, shows what God is really up to in bringing Jesus into the world. She speaks prophetically and theologically, and in this song she actually challenges the very core of the worldly system that we live in. Mary calls us to a new way to live in the world.
While the Good News is good news for the rich and the poor alike, there is a different message of hope for those who are marginalized, for those who are rarely given a voice. Whenever God tells us what God cares about, we're meant to care about that too.
On this second Sunday of Advent, Melissa preached from Genesis 17:15-22 and Luke 1:39-45.
Women congregating in groups is often dangerous to the powers that be. That reality is a part of this long history of keeping women from trying to find their way to one another.
We don't know much about Mary from the Gospels. One thing we learned about Mary here is that she takes off for a visit to her cousin Elizabeth after the shameful discovery of a pregnancy before marriage, a pregnancy that is threatening to make her a social outcast. Elizabeth, herself pregnant, welcomes Mary and offers Mary a blessing.
Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb!"
Luke 1:42
Elizabeth is the first person in the Gospel of Luke to be filled with the Holy Spirit.
This is a work that crosses time, which is why the gospeler gathers together Hannah and Miriam and Judith and Sarah, and Hagar and Deborah all around this greeting. We too are participants in this joyful band of resistance that takes place in their bodies. We too are drawn into community when we come together to worship. This day and each time we gather.
In this final sermon in the fall series on gifts, Melissa preached from Matthew 3:13-17 and Acts 2:1-13.
The holy spirit is somehow both a gift and a giver of gifts. One of the awkward parts about Jesus' baptism is that Jesus does not need to be baptized. Jesus does not need to receive the Holy Spirit. Jesus receives the gift he doesn't need and John gives a gift that he doesn't have.
Receiving what you already have is not the same as receiving what you have. Receiving what you have can inspire gratitude, but receiving something you already have inspires graciousness.
~Eugene Rogers
Just because you received a song, doesn't mean you can't receive more of them. Once you've swam in one river, there are more rivers to swim. There is an abundance of gifts and receiving them moves us outward.