Speaker: Mark Rupp

I have to begin this morning’s sermon with a confession: I’ve had a strained relationship with the martyrs. 

When I was hired as pastor here at CMC, I was given a gift as part of my installation. It was a beautiful reproduction of the artwork of Dirk Willems reaching down to save his captor who had fallen through the ice, artwork found in the Martyrs Mirror but colorized and altered into the style of the more traditional religious icons. This gorgeous piece of art hangs on the wall in my office, and even though I am extremely grateful for the thoughtful gift, I sometimes struggle with Dirk’s story, and the other stories of the martyrs. 

If you grew up in the Anabaptist tradition, chances are you encountered Martyrs Mirror at some point. If you are unfamiliar, we have a copy here on our altar table during this series, so you can see what an impending tome it truly is. More than a thousand pages long, it was first published in 1660 in the Netherlands, and its full title is The Bloody Theater, or Martyrs Mirror of the Defenseless Christians. It begins with the stories of early Christians persecuted by Rome, but it is especially remembered for the detailed accounts of 16th-century Anabaptists who were drowned, burned, beheaded, and starved for their convictions. 

What made this tome truly iconic were the artistic renderings of the various stories done by artist Jan Luyken. These black and white renderings of the various martyrs, including Dirk Willems and others, helped etch their stories into Mennonite-Anabaptist consciousness and identity. I’m not sure if it was intentional, but I can’t help but see parallels to the black and white linocut style artwork included in the recently published Anabaptist Community Bible, art that now surrounds us, and perhaps…

Texts: Micah 6:1-8, “We Are Sunflowers” Poem, Psalm 24:1

Speaker: Joel Miller

Today’s reading from Micah 6 is familiar.  At least that last part.  At least if you’ve ever looked up on your way in from the church parking lot.  That big green banner summarizes Micah 6:8 in three short phrases. “Do Justice.  Love Mercy.  Walk Humbly.”  The early Anabaptist Hans Denck pointed to these three “fruits” and wrote, simply, “When held together, these make a Christian; when transgressed, they make a non-Christian” (Cited in Anabaptist Community Bible, p. 1123).

What’s less familiar in that passage is the set up.  In the previous verses the prophet Micah imagines the Lord, the Creator of the cosmos, taking his people to trial for all the harm they’ve done.  Since God is kind of tied up as the plaintiff, and the people are the defendants, God calls on the mountains and the hills, the earth itself, to serve as a witness. 

Micah 6:1-2: “Arise, lay out the lawsuit before the mountains; let the hills hear your voice!  Hear, mountains, the lawsuit of the Lord!  Hear, eternal foundations of the earth!  The Lord has a lawsuit against his people.” 

After some back and forth, the prophet announces the verdict of what the people must do: Do justice, love mercy, walk humbly.   

Holding creation as a reference point for our relationship with God, a witness to truths we often forget, was a key part of early Anabaptist theology.  It still is. 

We’ll get to that in a bit, but first let’s do another set up.  Let’s get the lay of the land that we, the people, have created.     

Here’s the situation:

We’ve got a world still recovering from a global pandemic, and while it feels like the storm is over, its long term effects on society are yet to be determined.

We’ve…

Texts: Matthew 25:31-40; Revelation 21:1-6

Speaker: Derek Yoder

Good morning! It is a joy to be with you this morning. Barbara Brown Taylor shares about being invited to bring a Sunday morning message to a congregation that was new to her. She asked the local priest what she should preach on, and his response was a model of hospitality: “Come tell us what is saving your life now.” “Come tell us what is saving your life now.” That is such a beautiful invitation. And that is how I feel, sharing with you this morning. Joel contacted me a few months ago and asked if I could perhaps speak about disability awareness. What your invitation means to me is that I get to tell you about the community that I pastor, the community that I love, the community that has been the vessel of God’s saving grace to me.

Today, what I’d like to do is… to mash together the two scriptures that you have heard this morning. I would like to share how it is that my community has been saving my life. And I would like to offer “Beholding” as a spiritual practice. It is a practice that I have been learning. I think it’s helpful for disability awareness—but also for a broad awareness of where God is and what God is doing in the world. So let me introduce you to my community: Pleasant View.

Pleasant View was founded in 1971 by the churches of Virginia Mennonite Conference. At the time, families in the state of Virginia were often encouraged to place their children with intellectual disabilities into state institutions. And among Mennonites in the area in which I now live (Harrisonburg City and Rockingham County), this didn’t sit well. Parents wished to keep their children within the faith community. Pleasant…

Text: Romans 13:7-10

Speaker: Joel Miller

“Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another.” Romans 13:8

On his 21st birthday, Ernest Thompson received a surprising birthday card – from his father.  It was a list of every expense his father ever had in raising him, starting with the doctor’s delivery fee.  Each item had a precise amount next to it, with a grand total at the bottom. 

This could have been a nerdy joke.  Or an oddly detailed way for a parent to ask for thanks.  Or, I suppose, an misguided attempt at birth control.  See, it’s expensive.  You should wait.  In this case, it was none of these.  It was a bill.  No joke.  This really happened.  As he tells in his autobiography, Ernest didn’t have “a cent of money” at the time, but he was good for it.  He went about earning and saving until he’d paid his father back for every penny. 

This story is how Margaret Atwood begins her book Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth. 

We might ask – If this is a story about debt, what kind of debt is this?  If you’re a parent, or a child – or if you ever were a child – have you thought about these relationships in terms of indebtedness?

We speak of debt almost entirely in terms of financial transactions.  And maybe you’ve been told there are two kinds of debt: Bad debt, and good debt.  Unfortunately, a lot of common debt falls into the category of bad debt.  Health care debt, payday loans, credit card/consumer debt, and Yes, car loans are generally considered bad debt.  Anyone who’s ever been buried in any of these might agree. 

What makes for good debt, so the reasoning goes, are loans on things that either go up in value…

Texts: Galatians 6:11-18; “My Work Is Loving the World,” by Mary Oliver

Speaker: Joel Miller

Mary Oliver wrote that her work is loving the world.  I think she meant it.  What this looked like for her was listening and watching and putting her observations, and wonderings, and longings into poetry – , writing and rewriting, teaching others to do the same.  Her summary of what she saw herself doing when she did all this appears to be this: “My work is loving the world.” 

In another poem she wrote “There is only one question: How to love this world.”  She slips that right in the middle of considering a black bear, fresh from sleep, coming down a mountain – breathing, and tasting, and sharpening its claws on a silent tree. She imagines this being as some kind of embodiment of perfect love.  Which prompts this proposal: “There is only one question: How to love this world.”

I came across these poems about half way into the Sabbatical that wrapped up Monday. 

Now I assure you, I did not spend all 13 weeks sitting around reading Mary Oliver poetry.  There were, in fact, several weeks where I read hardly anything, including headlines.  Those were pretty good weeks.  But I’m glad the poetry was there when I reached for it.   And I’m glad Mary Oliver included these lines among the hundreds and thousands she wrote.      

Because as long as I’ve had to figure it out, and as clear as I’d like to think I am on those big questions of life purpose and all that, I can still get disoriented about what it is we’re doing.  What are we doing?  I have a lot of questions.  Maybe you do too.  Wouldn’t it be nice if there was one question big enough to contain all…