Twelve Scriptures Project

Text #10: Matthew 5:1-17

Blessed are the wealthy, for they will have all they need.

Blessed are the mentally stable, for they will keep it all under control.

Blessed are the warmakers for they will pre-empt and destroy any threat that may come their way.

Blessed are the white.  For they will have the privilege of not thinking much about being white.

Blessed are those who drink Coke, for they will Open Happiness.

Blessed are those who eat at MacDonalds, who wear Nikes, who shop with Mastercard.  For they are lovin’ it.  They will Just Do It.  Their experience is “Priceless.”

Blessed are the self-sufficient.

Blessed are the well-adjusted.

Blessed are the athletic, the youthful, the beautiful.

Blessed are you when people say all kinds of wonderful things about you.  Rejoice and be glad, for your name is golden, and your reputation is your ticket up the ladder of success.

Blessed are the…

Who gets to decide who are the blessed ones?

In Matthew 5, Jesus rolls off a series of statements that have come to be called the Beatitudes – or, as the autocorrect on Robin W’s email to me this week preferred, Be at i-Tunes.  The Beatitudes are the opening lines of a long block of teaching from Jesus, the longest recorded block of teaching from Jesus, extending through the end of chapter seven of Matthew, collectively called The Sermon on the Mount.  For the first centuries of the church this passage served as something of a catechism for new believers.  It is Christianity 101, Jesus’ manifesto for the reality he referred to as The Kingdom of God. It was a passage that the Anabaptists of the 16th century, our spiritual ancestors, emphasized as containing the outlines of the basic Christian life.  Ironically, the person in the 20th century most responsible for reviving the Sermon on the Mount’s…

Twelve Scriptures project

Texts #8 and 9: Romans 12:1-17; Philippians 2:5-11

Meditation 1: The renewing of your mind

Here is a chicken and egg type question: Which comes first? Is it that we have our minds changed and this leads to a change in our actions?  Or is it in the doing of the actions that our minds are changed?  In the case of the chicken and the egg, I heard someone say recently that this really isn’t much of a puzzle, as eggs were in existence long before there were chickens.  I guess, technically, that question should be clarified as “Which came first, the chicken, or the chicken egg?” 

But what about this other question: Does our mind form our actions, or do our actions form our mind?  Or to put it visually, does this lead to this?  Or does this lead to this?

The answer, of course, is Yes. 

Another response is that different ones of us will more naturally experience one direction of this flow more than the other.  Some of us tend to think our way into doing things.  Others of us do our way into thinking things.  In spirituality, this would be the difference between contemplatives and activists.  It always works both ways, and the two are by no means mutually exclusive, but depending on how we’re geared, we’ll emphasize one over the other.

I think it’s fair to say that Anabaptists of our variety emphasize the action.  We are doers, servers, peacemakers, and this is a wonderful thing.  One member here, who shall remain anonymous, told me once that this congregation is a den of doers – spoken in a most affectionate way.  This person, however, comes at the life of faith from a more contemplative perspective.  Which is to say that the inward journey, the cultivation of the mind…

Twelve Scriptures Project

Text #6: Micah 6:8

There’s an expression you might hear from time to time: “If these walls could talk.”  This tends to get said inside a building, a space, where we recognize something significant has happened, but there aren’t any people around anymore who would have witnessed it.  No one – except for these walls, which have been here all along – could tell us the story.    If you’ve never said “if these walls could talk,” or even knew the expression existed and was available to be said, perhaps you have thought the thought behind the expression, walking into a place – and wondering what all has happened within those walls.

When we bought our house just up the street we learned that the elderly couple we were buying it from had lived in it for 50 years, raising their children and hosting their grandchildren throughout that time.  Although we didn’t have any interest in the walls of the house divulging anything about the family, we did have a sense that the walls now surrounding us had contained the long history of another family.  As it turned out, one of our first acts of home ownership was to permanently silence one of the walls by eliminating it from existence and opening up the kitchen to the dining room.  Fortunately none of the other walls fell down in the process.

If the walls of this sanctuary could talk, what would they say?  They have witnessed baptisms, baby dedications, services for healing, Vacation Bible Schools, many joys and concerns shared openly and prayed for.  If these walls could talk I wonder if, instead of talking, they would sing, having absorbed all the sound waves from voices gathered together week after week.  I wonder if these walls prefer Baptist red carpet or Mennonite…

This sermon was given by Mark Rupp, candidate for Pastor of Christian Formation at Columbus Mennonite Church.

https://joelssermons.files.wordpress.com/2014/07/20140720sermon.mp3

Twelve Scriptures project

Text #5: 1 Corinithians 13

What is love?

For the last few weeks we have been exploring this question.  As a congregation we have named three scriptures into our top twelve that attempt to dive into the heart of this question.  Yet, in many ways, it could also be argued that we have named 12 scriptures that get at this question.  Perhaps instead of “The Primacy of Love” we should have named this section “The Indefinability of Love.”  Is it any wonder that we have and need so many resources to help us answer the question, “What is love?” when one of our primary ways of understanding love is simply, “God is love.”  That settles it, right?

But thankfully we also have any number of other resources for helping us to answer this question.  Maybe it’s helpful for us to have Jesus boil everything down to “love God and love neighbor,” but we see in at least one of the scriptural versions of this account that even this answer invites further questions.  “But who is my neighbor?”

Before we get to Paul, maybe we want to consider some other resources for helping us understand what love is, because society gives us no shortage of answers.  Perhaps we should first consult one of the greatest philosophers of our time.  According to Snoopy and the rest of the Peanuts gang, “Love is walking hand-in-hand.  Love is a letter on pink stationary.  Love is letting him win even when you know you could slaughter him.”

But it seems like everyone has a different answer to this question.  If we turn on the radio, we get a diverse array of answers.  There we hear things like, “love is all you…

Twelve Scriptures project

Text #4: Mark 12:28-34           

Unless you are just back from a very long summer vacation, which I know a few of you are, you know that we have been focusing on the 12 Scriptures that we have selected as a congregation as being most significant for us.  This is a project being encouraged across our denomination, Mennonite Church USA.  The idea is that we are able to get a window into what we, together, hold as most valuable, of central importance, or, to use a little more lofty theological language, what is our congregational hermeneutical center out of which we interpret not only scripture, but also lived experience.  The question we will be speaking to throughout the summer is “Which scriptures are the first of all?”

One of the unique aspects of today’s scripture is that it isn’t just one scripture.  It appears three different times, in the gospels with Matthew, Mark, and Luke each having their own version of this exchange between Jesus and the religious leaders.  Luke’s version includes the telling of the story of the Good Samaritan, the only place the parable appears in the Bible.  Even more, this exchange itself, each time it is told in the gospels, involves Jesus quoting two passages from the Hebrew Scriptures, one from Deuteronomy, and one from Leviticus.  So, technically, this “scripture” includes five different scriptures, and if anyone chose just one of those scriptures in their twelve, we took the liberty of combining then together into this one, using Mark’s version as a reading.  I’m thinking this five for the price of one bargain basement deal is a healthy sign that Mennonite frugality is alive and well.  It’s just too good to pass up.

Another way that this passage stands out, which I tried…