Sermons
Sermon Archive
To keep up-to-date on our sermons, subscribe to our SMC sermon podcast through iTunes, or by searching your Podcasts app for “Seattle Mennonite Church Sermons,” or through our podcast page. If you would like to access sermons from before 2020, you can find them on our podcast page.
Seeking the Living & Practicing Resurrection
“Why do you seek the living among the dead?” sounds like a chastisement. Until we remember that the only reason that ANYone knows that Jesus’ tomb is empty is because a whole crew of faithful women showed up at the place of death, with the intention of attending to...
Prepare, Process, Weep
Not a single palm frond or “Hosanna” in this year’s Palm Sunday reading. Luke’s version of Jesus’ procession toward and into Jerusalem instead records people throwing their coats on the ground. Rather than simply reaching for a fallen branch, instead those...
Ask, and climb trees.
Join Rita Kowats as she explores the stories of Jesus healing the blind man and seeing Zaccheus. What lessons can we learn from (literally) blind faith and a spiritual curiosity that leads to climbing trees?Rita...
The Crevasse is Real
This Lukan fable has a pretty clear message: Wealth creates an impassable crevasse between humans. Wealth is only one of the many things that can create impassable crevasses between people; so too can race and religion and immigration status, to name a few more. But I...
Memory and Prophecy
In today’s parable, Death came to the youngest son, in that far-off land, and asked its question. “I see you’ve become destitute,” said Death. “Here you are very far from home, with no money and no friends. Now that even the pigs eat better than you, do you still...
Mother Hen Jesus
Jesus desires our ingathering, and we so often are not willing. Jesus goes belly up, like a fierce yet vulnerable mother hen in the presence of a fox, ready to take us under the shelter of her wings. Are we willing? And what might we learn from Jesus about...
Guts, Listening, and Urgency
One familiar story which contains a familiar parable flows into another familiar story. Is there anything at all new to say about the Samaritan that’s called “good” or the Mary and Martha sisterly tiff? Unclear. But given our deep dive into Luke, and looking for...
Queer Theology and the Woman who Anoints Jesus’ Feet
Visiting guest preacher Rachael Weasley shares about what her queer church plant is up to these days, and explores today's passage in a queer way.Rachael WeasleyNarrative Lectionary - Year 3Luke 7:36-50 BibleWorm...
Orthopraxy and a Faith That Sues the President
Fetus John the Baptist knew exactly who Jesus was, according to Luke. Adult John the Baptist sends emissaries to ask Jesus who he is. Jesus does not answer John’s question, but rather instructs the question-askers to simply report what they see and what they hear. It...
A Gut Impulse for Compassion
Jesus sees a woman and is moved with compassion to respond. But what about all the other women, humans, creatures, who also needed his compassionate response??? And what about the root causes of her suffering - Shouldn’t he have fixed the systems instead??? Jesus sees...
Sabbath Sanctuary
Sabbath was to be the fountain around which the garden of all public life and policy grew in ancient Israel. On six days the people were to work, tending that garden, ensuring its health and growth and accessibility to all people, and on the seventh day they were to...
Saying Yes & No With Ancestors
Three major commemorations converged last week: the birth of the Anabaptist movement, the life of Martin Luther King, Jr. (and the broader movement of which he was part, including our Anabaptist ancestors, Rosemarie and Vincent Harding), and the anniversary of the...
A Treasonous, Heretical, Communal Baptism
There’s lots going on in this story from Luke, and also in this sermon from Pastor Megan, and also in the story of our Anabaptist roots, and also in the congregational life of Seattle Mennonite Church. It’s all a bit of a mess, to be quite frank. But at the heart of...
Birthday Candles
Since at least the 4th century, Simeon’s prayer has been among the last words spoken by Christians each night before the candles of evening prayer are extinguished. His words are the incense the church has sought to breathe while falling asleep and while lying in...
And Yet More Love
As we wait for God’s “Big L” Liberating Love to be fully realized, we are called to BE God’s love of ourselves, for one another, and for all creation. We enter the story of Mary, and then Mary with Elizabeth, to see how this love begets more love and eventually...
From Lament to a Nevertheless Hope
Advent is a home for our longing that is at once ancient and new every day. We join our longing for the full inbreaking of God’s justice, peace, and liberating love to the longing of our forebears in the faith. Like them, we continue to wait while also being called...
Released to give and to receive
Jesus equips the disciples with power and authority, and then sends them to their ministries with no bread, no staff, no money, not even an extra shirt - nothing. Why? As we prepare to release Tyler to his ministry as our Pastor of Faith Formation, and as we too are...
Singing our Holy Holy Holies
What does it mean to sing “Holy holy holy is God” NOT to God, but to one another? Might Isaiah’s magnificent and poetic imagery of the seraphim singing their praise of God’s holiness TO one another be received as an invitation to do the same?[buzzsprout...
Universal Saving One
Jonah sought to protect his own people when God’s compassion and mercy were to extend to the repentant beyond Israel’s borders. Fairness, justice and truth are to be balanced with compassion and mercy by God’s definition and ways rather than our limited vision of who...
Unlikely Dependencies = God’s Provision
What happens when a raven and a prophet form a little community of care? How about a Hebrew man and Phoenician widow - across religious and political divides? According to our storyteller, the needs of all are met, and the storyteller calls this God’s provision. Might...
Sacred Places & Spiritual Batteries
Solomon sets out to build a house for God, as people across time and place have done over and over again. But even in the dedication prayer, Solomon acknowledges that God cannot be contained by a building, regardless of size or grandness or even how delicious it...
Cosmic Living Cathedral
Whether in tents or temples, God is present and abiding with the Israelites and their descendants. God's living promise is a loving extensive, generational commitment/covenant among, between and with us just as we are: the only tabernacle God needs. [buzzsprout...
Hannah’s Dreamsong
Hannah’s Song, often referred to as The Magnificat of the First Testament, is a collection of Hannah’s utopian dreams. She sings of a world where the bows of the warriors are broken and where God lifts the poor from the ash heap and sits them with princes. This sermon...
Symbols & Reputations
The Hebrew people grow weary of their supposed leader leaving them behind, and - in Moses’ absence - they ask for a symbol to represent God? Replace God? Hold them together as a community in a very destabilized time? Unclear, but even as we seek to empathize with a...
Love, Hatred, Suffering, and a Princess Dress
A sermon about a 25 chapter novella, in three parts: 1) Joseph actually had an amazing technicolor princess dress, and isn’t that both telling and fabulous?! 2) Love unevenly distributed produces division, resentment, and - in this story - the hate-filled action of a...
A Cosmos of Niblings
Abram longs for a child that he believes God has denied him. God meets Abram in that specific need, but then leads him to a more expansive - even cosmic - view. This is a story that might be easier for aunties like me to understand: I absolutely don’t have one or two...
Original Belovedness
We start a new Narrative Lectionary year at a very good place to start: In the beginning… We begin with the genesis of all things, and it doesn’t take long for everything to devolve into deception, messing up, shame, hiding from God, and scapegoating. If our ancient...
Discernment Stories IV
Join Keyan, Eden and Rita as they share stories of discernment in the last of our series. This summer we asked congregation members if they would be willing to share stories about discernment from their own lives. Keyan...
Discernment Stories II
Join us to hear personal stories of discernment from Ken and Beth Miller Kraybill. They share about times of transition and decision in their lives.Ken Kraybill & Beth Miller KraybillDiscernment StorytellersMatthew...
Discernment Stories I
Join us as Charlene Epp and Lauren Good share stories about times of discernment in their lives. This is the first part of a series. Each Sunday for a few weeks at least two people will share stories from their lives highlighting the ways they have discerned paths and...
God’s Way of Mutuality in All of Creation
When we think we need to be in control of everything, we become anxious about our capacity to control. Letting our sense of control go and trusting in God and the provision that God has offered seems so terribly hard. What happens when we lose track of the fact that...
God’s Playground
God delights in God’s playground - all of creation is meant to be enjoyed and to participate in the purpose of the rest of creation. This sermon is a celebration of all that God has created, called good, and invited us to participate in.[buzzsprout episode='15420175'...
Creation Roars, Sings, and Trusts
Brisa Peacock from Camp CAMREC shared a sermon as part of our series on Creation Care, offering a glimpse into how SMC's and WMF's relationship with CAMREC continues to contribute to the region's stewardship of land and waterways. She also reflected on how CAMREC's...
Decentering human experience in light of creation as a whole
Creation itself, the morning stars and divine beings and whatnot – they were celebrating the foundations of the world itself before humans were even a thing. God and nature itself celebrated and called things good before human beings were even here. There’s a bigger...
Making the World
Cultures and traditions - including religions - all have multiple creation stories. Today we hear one from our scriptures told in Genesis, and our sermon shares another one - in the form of the children’s book “Big Momma Makes the World” by Phyllis Root.[buzzsprout...
Faith-Filled Tension
Paul binds the physical body with resurrection, a holistic change from life as we have structured and understood it to that which is eternal as Jesus life, death and resurrection gifted us. Our faith is intricately tied to a belief in the unbelievable while living and...
One Parish One Prisoner
There is one church for every prisoner in Washington State. Chris Hoke from One Parish One Prisoner brings reflections on the challenges and blessings of working with churches and prisoners.Chris HokeEastertide John...
The Power of Relationship
Relationships are a primary nourishment and fuel for a transformed community. Paul wrote letters only AFTER he engaged in relationship making. His work was able to flourish because he seeded intentional relationships with people that developed trust. How might we...
The Gift of Disruption
Just as the Jewish community at Thessalonica was disrupted by the arrival and teachings of Paul and Silas, so, too, are we disrupted by things we often don’t feel prepared for. What does it mean to look disruption in the eye and experience it as an opening for Jesus...
Gifts of Interruption
The crippled man and the disciples both experience surprise and interruption in the norms of what they think might happen for them this day. The man expected the same - people offering him coins or ignoring him. It has been the same day in and day out for years. ...
At Spirit Pace
In the aftermath of Jesus’ death and resurrection, Jesus offers comfort and presence to his disciples. He continues to remind them he has not come to establish a nation state, rather that the disciples would be the ones to carry forward Jesus’ mission. Requirements...
Costly Extravagant Love
Jesus lives an increasingly life of truth-telling to civic and religious authorities. All the while he enfolds the marginalized and oppressed into a just and merciful embrace of care and love, calling disciples to do the same. Up to his impending death disciples ...
God with Us
News of wars, natural disaster, and human suffering greets us every evening, without fail. Where is God in this? Does God not see? Jesus warns his disciples of the temple’s destruction, and worse, yet to come. Indeed, God in Christ does see what human beings are...
Jesus Observes the HOW of Money
Struck by Mark’s mention that Jesus sits across from the treasury box in the Temple, observing HOW each person gives their money, Pastor Megan ponders what Jesus might observe in how SHE lives with her own money (and for this Way walked together, how WE live with...
The Political Power of Palms
Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem is a deliberate act of political confrontation with the Roman Empire’s powers-that-be. After casing the mostly deserted late evening Temple, he makes plans to return the next day to make a royal mess of things; to disrupt business as usual....
Screaming for Mercy
The cries of the suffering are not always polite. When we are suffering, can we let loose and trust our community to hold us? When our neighbors are suffering, can we build our resilience in the face of their screams for justice, for relief, for healing, for...
Shifting Our Expectations
Jesus’ guide for discipleship invites us to rethink our expectations of what discipleship means and who disciples are. Embedded in the invitation is a deep look meeting the soul of our being with enduring love and perpetual hospitality to embrace the next steps of...
A Woman Gets ALL the Healings
I can talk about a woman who experiences a minimum of three healings in one healing story. The first is busting through all sorts of internal and external barriers to step out her door and into a crowd. The second is reaching for the hem of Jesus’ cloak to seize a...
Liberator(s) of LEGION
Tempted to avert our gaze from the mention of “evil spirit” or “demon”, instead Pastor Megan chooses to hold this story’s gaze and look for what may be true… then and now. What is true? What binds humans is indeed legion. What liberates humans is indeed Jesus. Who...
Kinship Seed Sowers
Jesus' parables meet us in story form about ordinary livelihood understandings. Throwing these stories alongside life experiences of these livelihoods can provide spirit openings to fuller understanding of what it means to be kindom people. With these parables Jesus...
Hospitality & Chalking Doors
Christine Sine teaches us about where Jesus was most likely born, how the Inn we traditionally invoke probably wasn't what we consider an Inn at all. She reminds us of the Mennonite tradition of radical hospitality and encourages us into Chalking our doors as a...
A Potent Confluence
When the writer of Luke’s gospel litters his stories with the names of politicians and references to their political maneuverings, we are meant to pay attention. When the tale of a 12-year-old Jesus choosing to remain in the temple occurs DURING THE PASSOVER… and IN...
Christmas and Angels
Rita and Janet lead us through reflections for the Christmas season on angels and being angels. Rita KowatsNarrative Lectionary Year 3Mark 1.1-20Resources Image: Photo by Julia Kadel on UnsplashHymn: 266 Where is this...
Infant Lowly
Pastor Megan contemplates modern day child prophets and the purposefulness of God coming embodied as a lowly infant. She shares the story of young girls from our community acting on their convictions and their callings. [buzzsprout episode='14401561'...
Commingling
All of the people shouted with praise to God because the foundation of God’s house had been laid. But many of the older priests and Levites and heads of families, who had seen the first house, wept aloud when they saw the foundation of this house, although many others...
Hope Has a Context
Jeremiah pens some of the most beautiful words of hope to his community. But those hope-filled words are smack in the middle of horrors. Pan back even just a few verses, and one can see that Jeremiah is writing from prison, where his people are under siege by the...
Renewable Fidelity
When the Very Good King Josiah is informed that a long lost scroll has been found in the dusty corner of a closet, he rends his garments in mourning for himself and for his people. Despite his commitment to just labor practices, and the narrator’s assurance that he...
Poetry
The prophet Isaiah writes poetry: to express deep love between God and God’s beloveds, to convey heartache, to cleverly and poignantly pierce through word play, to evoke hope and catalyze action, to faithfully proclaim the truest nature of God. If poetry is good...
The Good News Generation
Tom Sine encourages us to create neighborhood empowerment projects that young generations could join in, without requiring church attendance or membership. He talks about the value of examining Pew Research profiles of generations in order to predict action areas of...
Remember
Much could be said of the exaggerated and hyperbolic showmanship of this contest Elijah sets up between himself and the prophets of Baal. But step back from the spectacle, and I want to know why the people remembered this story, told it over and over, and eventually...
How NOT to be a Saint?
Amidst political maneuvers, power grabs, conditional allegiances, threats, oppression, and terrible advice, a king is crowned and a kingdom divided. And precisely NOone comes out looking like a saint. We too live in violent and divided times, and while Mennonites...
Praising God in a Time of Genocide?
Is God a megalomaniac who needs our praise? Or do we praise God because WE need it? And what about those of us who struggle with “praise” given our religious histories? Or those of us who quite simply value being thoughtful, critical, reasonable, and intelligent...
Gratitude and Blessing
Christine Sine explores a variety of practices to increase our experience of gratitude. In this overstimulating, stressful world gratitude is an active way to push back on the negative and highlight the positive. This service ended in a St Francis Day blessing for our...
Ripples
A whole bevy of women choose to creatively subvert the powers of death, risking their own lives, for the sake of choosing life. Shiprah and Puah - the midwives who bravely deliver life in defiance of the king, Jochabed - the mother and master basket-weaver who becomes...
Wrestling Within and Without
Rita and Vija explore what it meant for Jacob, and for the disciples in the storm, to wrestle. How have other people struggled with their consciences, and their internal and external obstacles? How do you wrestle?Rita &...
I didn’t laugh. Yes, you did.
We have all laughed at and with Sarah for as long as we've heard the story. An 80 year old woman giving birth!?! Pastor Megan challenges us to consider laughter. What impossible things do we laugh at? An end to hunger? Reconciliation between settlers and indigenous...
Favored & Beloved
Pastor Amy shares moments and memories of God's love and favor over the 18 years of her ministry at Seattle Mennonite.Amy EppLuke 1.46-55, 4.14-22Resources Pokemon and Christian discipleship Youth play super giant dutch...
Our WARRIOR PROTECTRIX is Angry Too!
A Psalm of praise becomes a Psalm of lament as the City of Seattle cites and fines our congregation for the humans who have found refuge on our property after relentlessly being swept from public parks and lands. As our friend Rachael Weasley so poignantly sings, “How...
JOYous Justice
Joy & Justice are the twin children of Jubilee. They go together like (love and marriage?) a horse and carriage… “You can’t have one without the other!” As we seek to be God’s Jubilee people for one another and the world, may we continuously form one another in...
Given to One Another to Remember a Forgotten War
“I implore you to exercise your power to help a friend (me!) to end this war. It matters to me.” When Sue spoke these words to a room full of Mennonites gathered to learn more about the (forgotten) Korean War near the 70 year anniversary of armistice, which paused the...
Blessings of a Living Jesus
Join us as Bob Pauw uses stories from Luke and Acts to illuminate stories of the people he has known in his work. He shares his heartfelt conviction that he has been blessed to walk with a living Jesus. Bob is an immigration lawyer who works with the least of these...
A Canaanite Call-Out
The Canaanite woman calls out Jesus for his exclusion and abusive language. He responds by changing his mind, offering her the healing that she seeks for her daughter. Throughout history, it has been the brave souls who make themselves vulnerable by calling out people...
Saved FROM what and TO what?
The early Jesus Way community held resources in common and - in that sharing - were able to meet the needs of all. The book of Acts reports that the Holy One daily added to the numbers of this early Jesus Way community “those who were being saved”. Which causes us to...
Getting in Trouble
The Holy Spirit disrupts our plans, and she beautifully disrupted the sermon plan this morning! When honored guests from the Palouse tribe spoke so powerfully to us during our time of welcome and gathering, Pastor Megan knew the sermon had to shift. We heard how the...
Learn to Know to Love to Honor/Protect
Place-based watershed discipleship and the spiritual practice of reverence deepen our experience of kinship with all creation. Pastor Megan shares stories of learning to know mountains, learning to know neighbors and neighborhood, and learning to know our foremothers...
The Blessings and Curses of God our Mother
Many of us are becoming comfortable with Mothering imagery for God - so long as that imagery is tender and comforting and caring. But what about a Mother who curses, judges and chastises. The feminine of God is as diverse and expansive as the other gendered...
Love Is All Around
The message of Resurrection, remembered in this Easter season, is a message of apocalyptic proportions. The Good News of the community of Love springs to life and begins to spread as Dustin begins to say goodbye.Dustin...
Earth and Breath
Sarah Augustine, our Just Peace Climate Justice speaker, discusses the uses and failures of Capitalism and calls us to engage in an Indigenous cosmology that prioritizes Community Wellbeing over individuals and profit. She deftly contrasts a worldview that demands...
Mary the Tower in the Garden
Pastor Megan inhabits the story found in John's gospel, of Mary Magdalene (Mary, THE Magdala; Mary the Tower) coming to the garden to find an empty tomb. Enter the story with her, listen for two bits of good news, and wonder where YOU are in this story...[buzzsprout...
It’s You I Like
John 3:16 is much loved by many & much detested by many others. This Laetare Sunday, Dustin looks beyond verse 16 to find a way to rejoice in it.Dustin WilsorLent, Year WSong of Solomon 4.7-16; Psalm 135.1-16; 1 John...
Seeing Eden Through the Lens of Jesus
We are still in the Garden, beginning to see movement towards the Table. What does this origin story say about gender, and culture, and danger? If we start with Jesus, what do we see about that first curse and the real danger? Join Megan as she discusses the story and...
Setting the Table
Join Pastor Megan in a reflection on the story that begins with dirt in a garden. We've heard it so many times, through so many tellings and retellings. What table was set in that garden by a trickster and a very human Eve?[buzzsprout episode='12396241'...
Garden to Table
Join us as Pastor Megan reflects on our Story's beginnings. Humans and gardens and all good, life giving stories begin in the dirt.Megan M RamerLent 2023, Year W Genesis 2:7-9, 15-25; Mark 16:9-15Image: Photo by Gabriel...
There’s A Place For Us
In this scripture, we come to the “ending credits” of the story of Mary that we have been following for the past several months. Using the musical West Side Story, Dustin urges us to ensure that we give credit to everyone who contributed to the story.[buzzsprout...
Gathered Around A Campfire
Jesus’ ability to choose his baptism matters. Our ability to choose baptism, to choose discipleship, to choose joining the the Jesus movement, to choose walking in the Way, to choose covenant with one another ALSO matters. Despite how it may sound, this is not a...
Heart Treasures & 12-Year-Olds
This sermon is a wondering, a story, a reflection, and - at the last - a blessing. A wondering about the treasures stored in Mary’s heart. A story about an aunt and her nephew ice skating. A reflection about Jesus at 12-years-old, about ALL 12-year-olds, and about...
A Sign Provoking Contention
Join us as Weldon reflects on prophecy and the prophets he has known and worked with in Iraqi Kurdistan. His work with CPT has brought him in contact with prophets, particularly women prophets, who are challenging and provoking the systems of oppression around...
They Spoke Not a Word, but, Got Right to Work
Magi from the East, travel (for two years) guided by a significant astrological event. Along the way (in the opera, Amahl and the Night Visitors) they stop at the home of a poor widow and her son; before finding their way to the chaotic home of Mary, the harried...
Formation and Family
Jesus’ formation began when he was still in utero, when his mama sang the revolutionary songs of her own foremamas, and when Joseph drew a circle of family around a child not his own. Years later when Jesus’ own ministry proclaimed a liberation of systems where...
Blessed Are You Among Women!
Elizabeth exclaimed with a loud cry, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb.” Who was the blessed woman, and what does it mean to be blessed in the first place? Dustin is an emerging Mariologist, and he walks us through the unfamiliar...
Annunciation and Story
When Mary said yes to Gabriel's invitation to be the bearer of Jesus, she did so as one in the long story of women partnering with God in creation. Each of us, like Mary, may be storytellers of God, helping to birth new things in our own lives and in the world: new...
Mary the Tower
An opening question for our sermonic adventure: Of all the Marys in our gospels, WHICH MARY is the Mary in John 11 and John 12? If you think you know the answer, your answer may be complicated by what you hear here. The biblical world has been shaken by the research...
Representation Matters
Drama heightens in the exaggerated, fantastical tragi-comedy that is Esther. After a moment of reluctance, Esther rises to the occasion to successfully execute a plan to protect her people (and literally execute - on a 75-foot-high stake - the enemy of her people…)....
An Ode to Those Who Say NO
Before there was Rosa Parks, there was Ida B. Wells. Before there was Esther, there was Vashti. And after all of them was Brenda Salter McNeil. Those who say “No!” stand on the shoulders of many others who also had the courage to resist before them, making the powers...
I Will Never Leave You
All Saints Sunday was a wonderful chance to eat together and share stories of our saints. We even got to make icons and hear part of the story of Ruth read out loud by four voices. Listen as Dustin reflects on the stories of his saints, his icons, and one of his...
Bible’s Best Boy
As much as we learned otherwise in Sunday school, Boaz is not the romantic lead of a storybook romance. He is, however, one of the best examples we have in the Bible of how to use privilege, power and wealth in a way that offers a place to those who don't have those...
Horns of Every Shape and Size!
The Bible has taught us well to allegorize stories by substituting God for the male figure in a story, and Jerusalem or Humanity for the female figure. However, Hebrew poetry lends itself to double entendres and multiple meanings. With the help of the 1957 Broadway...
Desire, Bodies, and Sex, OH MY!
No bones about it: Song of Songs is steamy. Before this sermon is through, we will acknowledge that people do, in fact, have sex. We will hear about desire and the clandestine rendezvous of lovers. We will learn that Pastor Megan has become an avid reader of romance...
A Singular Voice Contains Multitudes
When at last the communal voice enters the lamentation, closing out the book of Lamentations, the community finds a way to speak in a singular voice with enough spaciousness to embrace its diversities. It’s almost magical how they pull it off. Have we, could we, might...
Don’t Look Away: The Pain and Protest of Lamentations
It feels bad to feel bad! So often feelings and embodiments of anger and despair are punished or policed - especially in women and people of color. Maybe that's why we so often turn past the book of Lamentations: it leans fully into those shamed expressions of...
A Time to Hear from One Another
We encounter the timeless poetry of Ecclesiastes about the seasons of our lives. Pete Seeger iconically set this poetry to music so poignant and beautiful that it is known to nearly all of us. Like all good poetry, there is spaciousness to enter it from our many and...
Ode to a Vaporous Life
If all of life is “vanity” or breath or vapor, as the Teacher of Ecclesiastes repeats, is it then “perfectly pointless”? If life is unfair, inscrutable, beyond our control, and destined for the grave, as the Teacher describes, is it then meaningless? Perhaps. Or...
Some Six-figure Nard…
In 2020 Seattle dollars, Mary pours out $100,000 worth of perfume on Jesus’ feet. Why? And when Judas questions her choice, citing how much further those dollars could have gone if given to the poor, doesn’t he have a point? Yep. But come along for this sermonic ride,...
The Prayer that Jesus Taught and Economic Justice
Jesus’s example of how to pray helps us see economic justice in a new way, helps us remember who we are to God and to each other, and helps us see that admitting dependence on God can lead to justice for everyone.Debbie...
Camel or cable? Needle or gate?
Just how easy is it for a camel to get through the eye of a needle? Pastor Debbie takes us through many translations and interpretations around the familiar quip. Did Jesus really mean what he is reported to have said - either literally or metaphorically? Who was this...
Mundane Wickedness Interrupted!
Some of the most beloved words of Scripture - “Do justice, love kindness, walk humbly with your God” - are surrounded by some decidedly less beautiful words, to put it mildly. We know the gift of the beautiful and familiar nugget contained in Micah 6.8, but is there...
What do we do about Leviticus?
Leviticus is confusing. It wasn’t written to us or for us and we don’t even know who wrote it! Can we find some guidance for today in this text? Is it even relevant?Debbie BledsoeSummer series, 2022Leviticus 19.9-18,...
Cancel all debt. Period
The law in Deuteronomy is clear: every seven year all debt is to be canceled. But because people are people, it's pretty hard to live it out practically. What the law depends on and encourages is building a community of trust in which we know each other well enough to...
Baptism: Political, Practical, Personal
On this Sunday when we celebrate the baptism of two young adults in our congregation, Pastor Amy explores the way baptism blesses and call us. In Jesus baptism, he was pronounced his allegiance not to the emperors and kings who ruled over his people but to God alone....
This sermon – about a semicolon – is a comma.
We wrap up another Narrative Lectionary year with the lovely close of Paul’s letter to the community at Philippi. These words of encouragement, consolation, and assurance are bedside words: one can just as easily imagine reading them to a beloved child at bedtime, or...
In Full Accord
Philippians Chapter 2 contains what is thought to be the earliest Christian hymn. Paul’s words to his beloveds in Philippi can be likened to a music director’s instructions to a singing group. Seattle Mennonite Church is like a choir with many voices, singing a...
A Postcard from Prison
Paul writes from prison in a tradition repeated since his time by many activists, scholars and prophets of the Gospel. But this letter is less prophetic and more a love letter to a beloved congregation. In the style of Paul's letter to the Christians in Philippi,...
You Are Beloved. Period.
What if taking a break is okay? What if being Beloved is enough?Megan M RamerNarrative Lectionary, Year 4Acts 17:16-34 BibleWorm podcast: Episode 342 – Paul in Athens, Amy Robertson and Robert Williamson, Jr. “Nonprofit AF...
Singing Before the Miracle
We zoom in on the powerful image of Paul and Silas, political prisoners, behind bars, surrounded by other prisoners listening to them, as they SING HYMNS to God. They are singing before the miracle. They are singing as strategy, as prayer, and as soul-nourishment...
Understanding our Children and our Time
Rev. Dr. Randy Woodley looks at Luke's story of Jesus' parents losing him on a trip to the Temple in Jerusalem. He reflects on the ways that we can find hope in our younger generations. We may not understand them, but, they are evidencing all kinds of changes in our...
Sent to Share Life
Yes, it’s exceedingly unfair that Thomas gets such a bad rap. But that’s a sermon that’s been preached a thousand times, including several times by Pastor Megan. Instead, this week she dives deep into what she’d always previously glossed right over. Jesus says to the...
Mary Stayed
Death may not be the end of the story, but death is in the story. Like many of us, Mary is deeply feeling grief, loss and trauma after the loss of a beloved friend. She goes to the tomb, sad and disoriented and from the midst of those feelings, she encounters God. The...
Wielder of Life
Who is Jesus? Throughout John’s gospel, Jesus makes a series of key “I AM…” claims to various groups of people. I AM… the good shepherd, true vine, gate, living water, light of the world, way-truth-life, bread of life, the resurrection and the life. Additionally,...
The Carceral System Sucks
We are in our third week in a row of Jesus’ trial, and the story is getting increasingly painful to endure. If we stick with it enough to actually take it in, to allow ourselves to feel all we feel, we might notice that - while horrific - it’s not actually all that...
Belonging to a True Word
The scene in Jerusalem during this time of Passover is fraught, and occupying imperial power is tenuous. Crowds travel all across the Judean landscape to convene in Jerusalem for an annual pilgrimage in which they retell a story of their ancestors finding liberation...
Jesus’ trial and Peter’s denial; 1st and 21st Centuries
On our Lenten journey in John's Gospel, Jesus is falsely arrested and accused for embodying truth that exposes the lies of powerful authorities, while Peter struggles with the call and cost of discipleship. That 1st century struggle between truth and lies is reflected...
Holy Disruptions
Jesus was completely unruly at the margins of one of his community's most sacred celebrations. Disruptions to Solemn Ceremony are very unexpected and annoying. But, Pastor Megan invites us to look for the life amongst the disruptions, to find the path of love that...
“Munching Jesus’ Flesh”
To be frank: John is a bit extra. John’s gospel will take anything that Jesus says or does in Matthew, Mark, or Luke, and turn the dial all the way up to “whaaaat?!” Following the feeding of way-more-than-5000 with 5 barley loaves and 2 dried fish, Jesus begins his...
Strategic Signage
We're all on the lookout for a sign - the thing that tells us we're on the right track, headed in the right direction - even if we're not superstitious. In the Gospel of John, Jesus is performing miracles, but John calls them signs, and they serve that strategic...
A Jewish Man & Samaritan Woman Walk Into a Bar…
Okay, they don’t precisely “walk into a bar”, but they do meet at their local “watering hole”... the well… literally a hole with water in it. Ha! Do I have your attention yet?! Two people like them are NOT supposed to interact at all, but these two beloved humans...
The Parable of the Wind
Pastor Rachael Weasley of Community of Hope in Bellingham reflects on our church and hers, and gives us a teaching from John. She reflects on how this passage qualifies as a parable and on what it teaches us about where the wind, or Spirit, takes us. She brings us...
Reading John With Care
We are now a few weeks into the mystical, strange, poetic, beautiful, mysterious, harrowing, polemical, and prophetic Gospel of John. Since we’ll be slowly walking through John’s gospel for the next several months, it seems important to address John’s mixed legacy in...
Discipleship is like the Spiderverse?
This passage of John continues the story of the "Word Made Flesh" in John 1 with the story of Jesus' first disciples. There are three things Pastor Amy can talk about in this passage: How the gospel of John is next level (everything in John has multiple meanings),...
A Great Feast
Our final text in the Hebrew Bible, before arriving at the Gospel of John next week, is the beautiful poetry of Isaiah. We hear of God’s shalom vision: a great feast where thirst is sated and hunger no more; where none has need and we are shown that we’ve always had...
The Bonesiest of No Bones Days & The Practice of Hope
Ezekiel is having a “No Bones Day” (check out the links re: Noodle the 13-year-old pug to understand this reference!), and his people are having a whole “No Bones” season. Surrounded by the bleak and very dead pile of dried out bones, Ezekiel has no reason to feel...
The Messy Middle
Advent is all about the messy middle. Smack dab in the middle of exile, destruction, and the crumbling of a people’s sense of identity, Jeremiah pens a letter encouraging his kindred to live now, thrive now. Build homes, grow food, and create families, he writes....
Light is Complicated
The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light. But light is complicated. It can burn and glare. The familiar and beloved song from the prophet is about military conquest and might, a leader whose rule is absolute. Yet it still reflects God desire for a...
Justice First
The prophets bring us beautiful poetry and powerful challenge. Amos is clear that justice must be established at the city gate, at the entry point, at the first. Everything else flows from that. Without justice at the start, God **can’t even** with our worship…!...
God, You’re Muted
We continue our journey through the Hebrew Bible and hear a story from 1 Kings of God speaking to the prophet Elijah. Listen to our preacher’s reflections on the nature of God, God’s voice, God’s silence, our experience of the pandemic, and how to navigate when God...
Given to Weeping and Laughter
We remember our beloved saints who have passed on by reflecting on Jesus’ blessing, spoken to those who grieve: You shall laugh. And Jesus’ woe, delivered to those who laugh: You shall grieve. We are each one of us both, of course - those who laugh and those who...
Beloved & Gripped by the Spirit
You are beloved and God’s Spirit is with you. Y’all are beloved and God’s Spirit is with y’all. We are beloved and God’s Spirit is with us. Sometimes the sermon is a mantra. With a couple of plump, plucked cherries atop.[buzzsprout episode='9430511'...
Prophetic Youth, Priestly Elders
The story of Samuel and Eli is a study in how to listen and relate not just to God but between generations. It's easy for elders in the church to dismiss those who are young(er) as too inexperienced or idealistic to lead, and for the young to dismiss those who are...
Manna? Manna!
Though we think of manna as the bread that God rained down on the wandering Israelite community in the wilderness, “manna” was first a question. “What is it?!” The Israelites draw near enough to the strange flaky substance on the ground to ask “Manna?” and in so doing...
A Name In Motion
Names can shape identity or character in powerful ways. When Moses asks God’s name, God responds with a verb: “I am becoming who I am becoming.” What does it mean, then and now, to be in relationship with a God who claims a name that is an action, a movement, a verb,...
Tricksters and Power and Blessings, Oh My!
All of my first-born, rule-following instincts are troubled by this story of a younger son employing devious and conniving tactics to “steal” the blessing of his elder brother. But how was this story liberative to the people who remembered, told, recorded, and passed...
Testing… Testing…
The history of testing is troubling and it's been revealed how biased and even harmful tests can be. In the familiar passage of the binding of Isaac, God is giving the test. This story of God asking Abraham to sacrifice his child and Abraham proceeding to carry out...
An Ingathering of the Supremely Good
We start our new year with the Narrative Lectionary “In the [very] beginning…” (a very good place to start…). The first creation account, in Genesis chapter one, reveals a Creator God who creates and co-creates, makes and beckons forth life. And God sees all that...
I can talk about gratitude
This one stumped Pastor Megan. We again ask: “Why do we worship?” And this week’s response, taken from our Voices Together hymnal, is: “To praise and give thanks.” Listen as Megan meanders through reflections on gratitude, even as she doesn’t feel very much like...
Favored and Formed
Pastor Amy realizes that God plays favorites! We, God's people, are the ones who God returns to again and again, we're invited to return to God's presence to be formed in worship. In worship we are shaped by the language in song, prayer and preaching. Week after week...
Blessing and Sending: Saying farewell with Melanie and Jonathan Neufeld
Our pastors Melanie and Jonathan Neufeld have been with our congregation for the past 14 years, building a ministry with people experiencing homelessness, expanding the community of people who care about those living outside into a network, and offering companionship...
Welcome Home
As we return to our church building for the first time in more than 17 months, we ponder the question: Why do we worship? Our new hymnal and worship resource, Voices Together, guides us through some of the foundational responses to that question. Firstly, we worship...
Stories Embodying Love and Truth in Action
In solidarity with Water Defenders at Line 3 in Minnesota, Christian Peacemaker Teams called on churches across Turtle Island to a Sunday of prayer and action during Eastertide this past spring - to better understand and support Indigenous-led resistance. Our own...
Resilience Through Difficulty
Jesus told a parable “toward the necessity” that his hearers might be urged to pray persistently and not be discouraged. It was the story of a woman - a widow - who nevertheless persisted in crying for justice from an unjust judge who self-avowedly neither feared God...
Resurrection on Repeat
Jesus is on a resurrection tour! He appears to the disciples not once but time and again - and then again when different ones among them are gathered. His set-list stays the same: Peace! But he changes the way he communicates. Likewise, we will need to communicate...
Blessing Our Differences
On the Day of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit came to bless and honor difference, by allowing for bridging and understanding amongst differences. As we navigate the many differences in how we communicate, how we gather, and how we worship, especially in this season of...
Communicating and Consent
Bartimaeus is blind and cries out asking Jesus to have mercy on him. Rather than assuming he knows what Bartimaeus means by ‘having mercy’, Jesus asks him a direct and open-ended question: "What do you want me to do for you?” Jesus creates space for Bartimaeus to have...
Resurrection, not Resuscitation
Looking to the sacred text of John’s gospel, and the sacred text of creation, Pastor Megan ponders resurrection as not only a powerful Way of Life, but specifically as we emerge from the worst of the pandemic and begin our journey of return to incarnational community...
Gathered & Sent – A Communal Sermon
The Holy Spirit comes to a community in the Pentecost story. And so we hear Scriptural reflections from our community. Pastor Megan shares what our Spiritual Leadership Team noticed and wondered about together as we dwelt in this story during Saturday’s meeting (in...
Family Fruit
Paul insists to the Galatians that all who follow Jesus are adoptees into the family of God and thus we receive our inheritance...not gold or property but Spiritual riches. As all adoptees know, family is the people who take care of you and who you take care of. ...
A Community in Transition
All of Acts is a story about a community / communities in transition; a story about finding a way together through much sorting and discerning; a story about claiming and releasing and improv; a story of a community’s long journey of becoming. All in the service of...
The Faith of an Ethiopian Eunuch
At first blush, Philip seems to be the hero of this remarkable story in Acts, being willing to expand the circle of the Jesus-following community. Philip offered baptism to the Ethiopian eunuch, a gender-variant foreigner from a racial minority. But Pastor Joanna...
Holy Spirit, Come with Power!
We had a 15 minute service of worship and prayer today followed by continuation of our Congregational Meeting from last week. Holy Work! Land Acknowledgement: Real Rent Duwamish Prayers of the People Adapted from Peter...
A Dispute Arose
Acts tells us that as the community of disciples grew in number, “a dispute arose…” Not shocking for any of us who have ever been part of any human community: As numbers grow, disputes are surely to arise! This story of the early Jesus-following community trying to...
The DNA of Discipleship
The disciples on the road to Emmaus didn't recognize Jesus while he was walking with them. But like a flower that knows in its cells how to bloom, they knew in their bodies that to be disciples was to offer hospitality. They had been at hundreds of tables with Jesus...
Easter Celebration
We gather to celebrate the risen Christ with music, song and story. Children and their families bring their joy and creativity to the Easter story in a mini video-pageant and we conclude our worship with our tradition of belting out the Hallelujah Chorus (well, we...
Saved by Belonging
Jesus is always surprising the crowds around him with his attentions; sometimes offending with his attentions. To whom is Jesus drawn? How often Jesus walks his body to the edge of the crowd and speaks directly to the marginalized or stigmatized one; calling them by...
Gatekeepers and the Scramble for Crumbs
Jesus keeps on telling stories about wealth and money. Pastor Amy preaches on the rich man and Lazarus and the way, like the rich man in the parable, we are gatekeepers with wealth and resources. Unlike the rich man, we still have the opportunity to open the gate...
Bad at Math; Good at Parties
Jesus’ parables contain an “excess of meaning” which makes preaching three of them on a single morning quite the challenge. What is one to do with the excess upon excess upon excess?? Instead of choosing just one sermon of the hundred variations a preacher might...
Truth, Lament, and Healing
Jesus tells the truth about the violence his people were both experiencing and perpetrating. That truth-telling leads to lament: “Jerusalem, Jerusalem… How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were...
Plans & Unplans
I make plans. I create checklists. Checking boxes on those checklists is one of my greatest joys. And I’m TOAST without my calendar and its checklists. But Luke’s gospel gives us two very familiar stories in a row (Jesus at the home of Martha & Mary, and the...
Pursuing God’s Will Together
A group has been meeting weekly for the past couple of months, going chapter-by-chapter through "Pursuing God's Will Together" by Ruth Haley Barton, a foundational text for the spiritual discerning we have done as church the past 7+ years. Jennifer Delanty was...
A Jesus Who Troubles
We’ve got ourselves a BADnews - GOODnews situation with the pair of stories from Luke 7. Jesus is moved by a widow’s suffering to bring healing and a restoration of her wholeness in the community. Yet Jesus also brings healing to the “treasured” slave of a Roman...
Sabbath Fences, Sabbath Gates
We worship with Jesus in the field and in the synagogue. Jesus debates with his fellow Jewish leaders about God's gift of the Sabbath. The Pharisees and legal experts were trying to fence up the law, protecting it and their community. Jesus argued that the gift of...
How brave it is to follow
Today's Scripture reflections feature Jesus, a heap of fish, and pondering the BRAVERY of following. That leads directly into Brenda Salter McNeil's powerful storytelling of clergy in Ferguson in 2014 being asked by the young generation of leaders who'd witnessed a...
A Hope-Filled Crowd
Crowds. They can be riotous, violent, insurrectionist mobs, afraid of losing power and hellbent on throwing a prophet off a cliff. Or they can be boisterous, hope-filled, sleeves-rolled-up masses resolved to build a movement for liberation. We meet both kinds in...
Raging & Weeping
My words are stuck GodDo I rage or do I weep?Wrap me in your grace“Haiku prayers” posted by John Stevens in Narrative Lectionary facebook group--This week's images of white supremacy storming and occupying our Capitol have caused many of us to rage and weep. In short,...
The Freedom of Youth
Sarah Augustine preached on the story of the boy Jesus in the temple. We connected deeply with Mary, dealing with a shamelessly unapologetic pre-teen son. And then - firmly identifying with his parents - Sarah invited us to see the freedom and unencumbered way of...
Wait, Look, Receive
The Holy Spirit is on the move! The prophets Anna and Simeon are channeled by our own resident prophet Rita Kowats, this first Sunday of Christmas. The elders of Jerusalem wait, looking for the Spirit, ready to receive the infant Jesus and to declare the salvation of...
Christmas Pageant
This week in worship we continue to explore the rich and fertile darkness of Advent, hearing with Mary the invitation to partner with God in offering a home for God-with-us in her own body. And we experience a pageant like we've never done it before! Our families...
Oaks of Righteousness
Seeds are germinated and nurtured in the deep dark black of soil. A newly liberated people draws on this rich metaphor in understanding how God's jubilee vision grows in them: from tender shoots of justice and praise, into oaks of righteousness. The prophet Isaiah...
Seeing (differently) in the Dark
Anyone who has gone hiking or walking in the nighttime knows that darkness doesn't lead to not seeing; darkness leads to seeing differently. The prophet Joel writes that God's mothering, raven Spirit will be poured out on all flesh; causing children to prophesy,...
In the Den with the Lions
In this worship we begin exploring in the dark. So much of the time language and culture teaches that all that is good and right an beautiful is full of light and all that is evil and terrible is dark. And thus that dark is something to fear and avoid. As we enter...
Scrolls of the heart
The prophet Jeremiah records in a scroll God's words for God's people. The King, cozied up to a warming fire in his winter apartment, takes a penknife to the scrolls, excising and then burning God's words for God's people. But God's words have already been read in the...
Musical Composition of a Fantastical Vision
As I've lived with Isaiah's bizarre, fantastical, and awe-some / terrifying vision, I began to experience it as a musical composition: Introduction - In the year that King Uzziah died... Movement 1 - The Skirts of God Movement 2 - Frankenstein Movement 3 - Hineni Coda...
Pouty Jonah & Spreading the Faith
Jonah is dramatically, laughably angry about God's mercy for the Ninevites, and carries on a stompy, pouty tantrum. Often I laugh at his expense; this week I relate. We also recall that God's mercy for Nineveh follows sincere repentance and reparation of harm on the...
Just Enough for Today
We may be able to identify with the widow of Zarephath who, in a time of a devastating, nation-wide crisis feels ready to die. In the midst of this certainty that she will not make it through, God provides a companion and the hope that each day she and her household...
A Housing-Resistant God
From the womb of wild nature, Pastor Jonathan reflects on King David, new to kingship and in love with his royal residence. God too should have a divine place to dwell, David thinks! But God reminds David that the Divine has always dwelt with the people, roamed in...
Hannah’s prayers
Both in her "wretched" distress and joyous confidence, Hannah prays. She brings her "hot, holy mess" to her God, and she also prophetically sings of God's joyous and just Jubilee vision before it is visible to her or realized in the world. Perhaps her witness can...
When Love IS Anger
God is angry at the Hebrew people over their casting of a golden calf for false worship, mere months after God has liberated them from slavery. God is angry. SO angry, in fact, that God seems ready to destroy them all... again. God ultimately relents from punishment...
Celebrating MCC’s Centennial
The Mennonite congregations across Washington State worked together to create a celebration video in honor of Mennonite Central Committee turning 100 years old. Normally we would have gathered this weekend for the annual Mennonite Country Auction, but this year we had...
What Becomes of Dreamers
As a powerful Egyptian ruler, Joseph welcomes his family back into relationship and care saying, "Even though you intended to do harm to me, God intended it for good." Though many people interpret this to mean that terror or trauma experienced by people or creation...
Peacemaking IS Accompaniment
We joined with Mennonite World Conference congregations around the globe in celebrating Peace Sunday. According to 1 Corinthians, when one of us suffers all of us suffer, and when one of us rejoices all of us rejoice. This, we as global Mennonites were urged to...
Creation: Relationship & Fracture
We are back to the Narrative Lectionary, and we kick off this year's journey through the biblical text with a Genesis creation account. In it, humans are created from the earth, for the plants, intrinsically connected to one another, and intimately sculpted and...
Common Life & Common Space
We spend one final summer week with commentator Willie James Jennings, the Book of Acts, Paul imprisoned (yet again...), and the Holy Spirit calling Jesus-followers into common life and common space with one another. [sermon begins at 20:38] [buzzsprout...
Listening & Learning: Jerrell Williams
In this last Sunday of hearing from in our summer series: Jerrell Williams, pastor of Salem Mennonite Church, a fellow Pacific Northwest Mennonite Conference congregation. Jerrell takes us on a journey with Hagar into the wilderness, a journey in which she encounters...
Citizen Discipleship
"Disciples of Jesus should be desperate citizens. The desperate citizen will press their citizenship as far as possible for the sake of thwarting death and its agents." Pastor Amy explores the work of theologian Willie James Jennings and discusses the way our...
Listening & Learning: Shannon Dycus
We continue our summer worship series in which we listen to and learn from Black preachers. Today: Shannon Dycus, former pastor of First Mennonite Church in Indianapolis IN, and current Dean of Students at Eastern Mennonite University. We listened to Shannon’s 2016...
Listening & Learning: Austin Channing Brown
We continue our summer worship series in which we listen to and learn from Black preachers. Today: Austin Channing Brown, author of best-selling book, I'm Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness, and a powerful preacher. We listened to Austin's sermon,...
Easy Yokes & Light Burdens??
Nothing about the yoke of intractable racism feels easy. Nothing about the burden of a runaway pandemic feels light. Is there any good news at all in these supposedly comforting words of Jesus? And what's the deal with all those words of judgment that *precede* the...
Listening & Learning: Glen Guyton
We continue our summer worship series in which we listen to and learn from Black preachers. Today: Glen Guyton, the Executive Director of our denomination, Mennonite Church USA. He loves pie and is funny (though his wife may disagree). And he preaches a good word:...
Listening & Learning: Rev. Dr. Otis Moss III
We begin our summer worship series in which we listen and learn from Black preachers. We start with Rev. Dr. Otis Moss III, pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago. With him we cry in lament for Ahmaud Arbery and so many other Black lives lost to the...
Jailer, Jailed, Judge, Jury: None are free until all are free
In our annual Interdependence Day worship - on the Sunday nearest the 4th - we again expose the lie of supposed independence, and instead claim the joy of justly-ordered mutual dependence and collective liberation! Willie James Jennings's fiery, faithful commentary is...
Circling Back to Gratitude
With our sibling congregations from around Pacific Northwest Mennonite Conference, we lament not being gathered together for our annual assembly and we celebrate with the prompt, "Thanks be to God". Though, like the Psalmist in Psalms 9-10 we are experiencing the...
“The Common” – zoom church
In the drama of Acts, the Holy Spirit is the main character and the plot is The Common. What IS "The Common"? In short, it's the spectacular joining of God's people which enables collective boldness, criminal discipleship, and shared life. Pastor Megan reflects on...
Do Not Lose Heart: Blessings for Graduates
Blessings for graduates abound! Today's homily by Pastor Megan (starts at 19:00) is a pastoral blessing for high school graduates and ALL. About not losing heart... until we inevitably do... and then what?? Also: pudgie pies & inherited tradition, but you're going...
I’m sorry. I’m listening. I’m learning.
Today, we tented with some Black Anabaptist kindred: Osheta Moore, Jerrell Williams, and Glen Guyton. Sister Osheta called her "Dear White Peacemakers" following to show up for anti-racism in better ways than we are. Pastor Megan follows her lead: I'm sorry. I'm...
Burn and Breathe – Zoom Church
In the days of protest, riot and rage over police violence against black people and the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Tony McDade and many others, we gather for Pentecost. We call on the Holy Spirit to come with power. We call on the Holy Spirit to burn...
Bodies Matter to God
Death swallowed up in life? That might be a little hard to swallow, considering the mounting statistics or loss of beloved ones in our lives. But when it comes down to it, what Paul is trying to communicate to the Corinthian church is how important our bodies are to...
The Loooooove Chapter
What can be said of 1 Corinthians 13, the "love chapter," that you haven't already heard at one hundred weddings? How might we refuse to dismiss it as just another smarmy love song, and instead live every more fully, beautifully, heartachingly into its sacred siren...
It’s not about you AND it’s all about you – Zoom Church
The early community of Jesus-followers in Corinth struggled with factionalism - over-identifying with particular leaders. Just as Paul urged his friends to re-center Jesus, we too seek to center our collective call to discern how to walk the Jesus Way together in the...
Turning the World Upside Down – Zoom Church
Paul arrives in Thessalonica and turns the world of the Jewish community there upside down – just as Jesus intended as he calls us to see justice and love.
A Gaze That Heals and Sparks Joy – Zoom Church
Joy infuses our worship and singing together; longing ignites our prayers. Pastor Megan's homily explores how biblical stories that seem to equate healing with miraculous physical cures, at best confound the deeper and more beautiful complexity of what we know about...
Anything but normal – Zoom Church
This week, we jump from the gospel of Mark into Luke's distinctly different world and voice, as experienced in the book of Acts. Jesus is kidnapped by a cloud (!!!), and the disciples are left, jaws dropped, gawking at the sky. They are looking in the wrong direction,...
The Final Word – Easter Zoom Church
Easter comes whether we're ready or not. Thanks be to God! We gather to hear Mark's (short! sweet! scandalous!) resurrection account, to sing a couple of our favorite Easter chestnuts, to create a joyous cacophony of Hallelujahs, and to pray for and with one another....
Good Friday – Passion According to Mark
We gathered for a Good Friday service via zoom, to hear Mark's Passion Narrative, to sing, and to pray together. Narrative Lectionary - Year 2 Mark 15.16-39 — None Permission to podcast the music in this service obtained...
More Than One Kind of Good News – Zoom Church (4/3/20)
We celebrate the entrance of Jesus into Jerusalem with Jesus and shouts of Hosanna ("Save us!") and waving our branches. Then Pastor Amy reflects on the good news of love poured out. Jesus silences the haters who would shame a woman for her loving gift and affirms...
It’s only the apocalypse – Zoom Church (3/29/20)
Sermon-in-a-sentence this week: "Keep alert and don't worry; its only the apocalypse." Tune in to hear Pastor Megan's brief reflection on reading the apocalyptic text of Mark 13 during a global pandemic, and to join our prayers and singing and sharing Christ's peace...
The rest is commentary – Zoom Church (3/22/20)
Our new rhythm of gathering for zoom church from our respective homes each Sunday morning prompts Pastor Megan to claim with more regular intention her occasional practice of sharing a "sermon-in-a-sentence." This week's scriptural reflection can be distilled to this:...
Zoom Church (3/15/20)
There were 69 households participating in worship this past Sunday! Listen along to the prayers and sharing, music and reflection on scripture. Use the links below to find some of the resources named in the recording. Episode artwork: photo by Vija Merrill[buzzsprout...
Zoom Church (3/8/20)
Our first experience of gathering as church via Zoom. While absolutely nothing can replace being in the same space with our whole body-spirit selves, given the circumstances, this was a delight. 39 households, many of whom included multiple people, logged in for...
Jesus made me do it
Not going to lie: this is a TOUGH message about the laughable impossibility of wealth in God's kindom and the dispiriting reality of growing homelessness on the West Coast and specifically on our front doorstep. But it's also about Jesus' love for we who have much,...
A Markan Fulcrum & Evocative Transfiguring
Smack dab in the middle of Mark's gospel and SOMEone finally knows how to answer the persistent question: Who is Jesus? Peter responds, "You are the Christ." At this fulcrum, we've now tipped over to the second half of the gospel in which Jesus sets out to teach...
Heads Will Roll
The story of an insane, self-important, opportunistic, incestuous, tyrannical (but pretty small-time) political family is dropped into the Gospel of Mark just as Jesus' ministry is taking off. Herod and company are quite the soap opera. He thinks he can stop the...
An Audacious Reach
A woman audaciously reaches for her own belonging and healing. There's not much left for Jesus to do... except to stop, seek her out, and quietly create the conditions for her to speak her whole truth in the presence of the community that has amplified rather than...
Movement & Trouble
We are just starting our journey with Jesus through Mark's gospel, and already there's a pattern to his movement: margins --> centers of power --> get into / cause trouble --> retreat to margins for prayer and rest (then around & around again...). This...
The Call to Discipleship
Using poetry from Lifting Hearts off the Ground: Declaring Indigenous Rights in Poetry, by Lyla June Johnston & Joy De Vito, Pastor Melanie reflects on the beginning of Jesus' ministry and on what Jesus' followers are called to - both in scripture and today. ...