Sermons

Fourth Encounter: A Good Question 
Text: Mark 12:28-34
Speaker: Joel Miller

It’s hard to believe it’s been almost ten years since we did the Twelve Scriptures Project.  For the slightly more than half of you who weren’t around then - or for those who were, but forget the details - the Twelve Scriptures Project was something our denomination, Mennonite Church USA, encouraged congregations to do.  The idea was fairly simple.  Put in the form of question, it was something like: Which twelve scriptures are core to your congregation?  Out of all the teachings in the Bible, which are foundational? 

The way we arrived at our twelve was to invite everyone to answer this question for themselves, kids included, leaving it slightly undefined whether the list was your personal twelve scriptures, or what you perceived as the twelve scriptures defining the congregation.  Several Sunday school sessions were used to share these lists, discuss, and compile the results, with the most common mentions becoming our collective Twelve Scriptures.

We then had a...

Third Encounter: Debts and Enemy Lines
Text: Mark 12:1-17
Speaker: Mark Rupp

There is a strange stillness in the air. A moment full of anticipation, weariness, hope, and a good bit of fear. The stars shine down across the expanse known as No-Man’s Land, the frozen ground between two trenches that bears the marks of violence momentarily paused. The smells of blood and ash linger in the air, or perhaps only in the memory. Two men in uniform approach slowly, tentatively, from either side. Hearts racing, they gain a bit of confidence as their first steps are met not with violence but with curiosity.

One of the men reaches inside his pocket. In that brief instant, the other silently braces himself to react. But the hand emerges not with a weapon but with a cigar as the first man speaks the words, “Fröhliche Weihnachten.” Merry Christmas.

This is the scene that Melissa Florer-Bixler uses to open her book, How to Have An Enemy: Righteous Anger and the Work of Peace. It is one more fictionalized retelling of the Christmas Truce that happened in 1914 during WWI when...

 

 

 

 

Second Encounter: Servanthood and Sight
Text: Mark 10:32-52
Speaker: Joel Miller

Jesus is on the road to Jerusalem.  At this point, he’s walking ahead of the others.  Mark writes: “they were amazed, and those who followed were afraid.”  Amazed, perhaps, because Jesus had just told a wealthy man that in order to follow him he had to sell everything, and redistribute his wealth to the poor.  Afraid, perhaps, because Jesus keeps telling them – now for the third time – that once they arrive in Jerusalem, the Human One will be handed over to the authorities and killed…and after three days rise again. 

Jesus was walking ahead of them, but James and John break away from the group and come forward to Jesus with a request about being Jesus’ right and left hand men – places of honor, power, and succession, perhaps. 

With the other 10/12ths of the disciples now listening, quite upset at James and John, Jesus says this: “You know that the ones who...

 

 

First Encounter: Wealth and Letting Go | 18 February 2024 | Lent 1
Mark 10:17-31
Speaker: Joel Miller

On February 24, in the year 1208, a young man sat in a chapel listening to a sermon.  It was based on Jesus’ instructions to his disciples as he sent them out to spread his message:  “Take no gold, nor silver, nor money in your belts, no bag for your journey, nor two tunics, nor sandals, nor a staff…whatever town you enter, find someone in it who is worthy, and stay with them till you depart.” 

The young man was the son of a wealthy cloth dealer.  He had already begun to question the smooth, comfortable path he had inherited.  As his earliest biographer, Thomas of Celano tells it, that day, in that chapel, was the decisive moment.  Hearing Jesus’ words as a direct personal calling, he discarded his shoes and walking staff.  He began wandering the countryside and villages, preaching Jesus’ message to anyone who would listen.  We know...

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