Text: Acts 2:1-21 | Pentecost

There’s a story in the Torah, in the book of Numbers chapter 11, that takes place just after the Israelites depart from Mt Sinai where Moses received the teachings of the law on the people’s behalf.  They are again on the move and they are again complaining about the lack of dining options in the desert.  Nothing but this bland manna to eat.  The people are upset, and this makes Moses, their leader, upset.  Moses has it out with Yahweh saying that this is an impossible task, too heavy a burden to bear, and that if Yahweh is indeed merciful that Yahweh should end his life at once.

Yahweh’s response is to have Moses gather 70 of the elders of the people together.  Yahweh says, “I will take some of the spirit that is on you and put it on them; and they shall bear the burden of the people along with you so that you will not bear it all by yourself.”  Moses is skeptical, but goes along with the idea.  He calls these elders together, takes them outside the encampment and has them circle up around the tent of meeting, which was the place Moses would go to meet with Yahweh.  Kind of a mobile mini temple.  A temple for nomads.  They circle up around this tent of meeting, and sure enough, Yahweh comes down in a cloud and takes some of the spirit that was on Moses and distributes it to the 70 elders.   The spirit rests on them, and they begin prophesying, speaking profound and insightful words.

The only catch to the situation was that two of the elders either didn’t get the memo or were lagging behind and were still back in the camp with the people, not gathered at that special…

This was given at Columbus Mennonite’s annual outdoor service at Highbanks Metro Park.  No audio available.

I’m going to talk about two epiphanies I’ve had and how they have led to a conversion in my adult life.

I grew up on a farm, less than an hour’s drive northwest of here, in Bellefontaine, where my parents still live.  We had cows, a large herd of barn cats, and about 140 acres of crops.  There are two creeks that run through the property, and a couple different patches of woods.  It’s a lovely place.  So I grew up surrounded by “nature,” but I didn’t really get it.  I liked being outside, liked doing manual labor and getting dirty, but I didn’t find anything particularly beautiful or awe-inspiring or even interesting about the natural world.   I was interested in people, and I was interested in ideas.  I remember that my brother would sometimes go back to the woods to think or write and I would wonder why in the world that would help anyone think or write.

Two of the more transformative epiphanies in my life have been not flashes of profound insight but rather flashes of profound ignorance.  The first one happened after my two years at Hesston College while I was taking a year off of college with four friends, living in Atlanta for a year to see how the “real world,” really worked.  My goal for the year was to learn about the four C’s of independent, adult male living, about which I knew next to nothing.  Construction, Cars, Computers, and Cooking.  I got a job at a construction site and one time I was taking a lunch break, eating by myself in a house that had been framed, but had not been drywalled, so all of the electrical and plumbing in…

This Sunday I interviewed Linda Mercadante of Columbus Mennonite.  She is a professor at the Methodist Theological School of Ohio and has recently published Belief Without Borders: Inside the Minds of the Spiritual but not Religious.  Her project included five years of listening to the beliefs of those who value spirituality but do not identify with a single religious tradition.  She found a number of common themes and has an important message for the church and culture.  The audio of our interview/sermon is below.  

https://joelssermons.files.wordpress.com/2014/05/20140525sermon.mp3 

…

Text: Philippians 2:12-18

Talking about the importance of church conference during worship feels a little bit like Ira Glass talking about the importance of public radio during an NPR fund drive.   Rather than try and go directly for the hard ask, Ira Glass takes the more subtle approach of reminding listeners how much they benefit from NPR, whether they give or not.  NPR is a part of your life, he says.  You like it so much you even listen to it during fund drives.  It’s supported by listeners just like you, and even if you don’t give, it will continue giving you the programming you’ve come to depend on.

It could be an annoying tactic if Ira Glass wasn’t so disarmingly charming.  So, maybe that’s what finally nudges you over the edge to donate to public radio, or maybe you just smile at the clever, pure-hearted marketing attempt and keep driving.

Our main goal today isn’t to get people to give to conference, although Central District will always accept your money and would put it right to good use.  Our conference has encouraged its congregations to have a CDC Sunday to highlight how we do church together and the connections that sustain us as a conference.  Connections with each other keep us from being isolated in our own world and help us all better carry out the mission of God is our communities.  I’m fully aware that conference can mean very little to people.  I will not ask for a show of hands, but if the first thing that comes to mind when you hear CDC is Center for Disease Control and not Central District Conference, you are almost certainly not alone.  At least having predisposed positive connotations with CDC means we’re off to a good start.  Just think of this as…

Text: Acts 2:42-47

At the risk of sabotaging my own sermon by drawing your attention completely away from it, I want to draw your attention completely away from the sermon for a bit and invite you to take out the insert in your bulletins for the 12 and 6 scriptures project.  We figured one way to get high participation was to get it to you while you’re a captive audience and have you at least start to fill it out and maybe even complete it and hand it in before you leave the church today.  Hopefully you’ve caught some drift of this project and know that we are asking each person, young and old, to submit up to 12 of your personal most important and meaningful scriptures and six most personally troubling and difficult scriptures.  From these submissions an adult Sunday school class will discern our congregational 12 and 6 scriptures and we will use these to focus some of our worship themes for the next year as well as help further name our gifts and mission.  At least a couple of you have asked if you can flip the lists so you can name your 12 most troubling scriptures.  So if that’s what you must do, who am I to say to no.  Please proceed.  So, there are pencils in the pews in front of you and I invite each of you, right now, to write at least one scripture reference – a verse, a chapter, the name of a story, on your sheet.  That way you’re already on your way.

One of my favorite quotes about church services comes from the not so religious author Kurt Vonnegut who said that church is a place where we day dream about God.  So, you have full permission to day dream about…