Twelve Scriptures project

Text #2: John 1:1-5;14

When’s the last time you saw a word become flesh?  I’m not sure how I’d answer my own question, but I’m pretty sure I once saw a word become a house, although it was kind of by accident.

During my first year of seminary I took a course on preaching.  Part of the coursework involved a preaching lab in which we delivered sermons to classmates and the professor, receiving and giving constructive criticism.  This was all fairly new stuff for us, and so we proceeded to give what were hopefully the worst sermons of our lives.  I hereby nominate for official sainthood June Alliman Yoder, longtime preaching professor at the Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary, for having to sit through several decades’ worth of Mennonite pastors in training, all the while keeping her groans to a minimum and her criticism constructive.

After one of my sermons, whose point I and everyone have long forgotten, I received the evaluation form back from June.  Along with some other technical comments, she noted that I had told a story about my experience with Habitat for Humanity while in Mennonite Voluntary Service in St. Louis.  Her brief side remark was something to the effect: “Maybe the seminary could build a Habitat house someday.”  Intrigued, I followed up with her about the idea, and, to make a long story short, after getting some likeminded people together, connecting with the local Habitat chapter, talking up the idea on campus, doing some fundraising, and lining up volunteers, the seminary community built a Habitat for Humanity house with a mother and her teenage son, about a year after that fateful and forgettable sermon was preached.  Whether it was the word from the sermon or the word from the evaluation form or any of the words…

Twelve Scriptures project

Text #1: Genesis 1

The Hebrew Scriptures, and our Christian Bible, begin this way:

In the beginning, Elohim created the heavens and the earth.

And the earth, it was welter and waste,

And darkness was on the face of the deep,

And a wind from Elohim hovered on the face of the waters.

And Elohim said: “Let there be light.”  And there was light.

—  Genesis 1:1-2

The selection round for our Twelve Scriptures project has come to a close, and we have our finalists.  Unlike reality TV, we will not be forced to eliminate one of these scriptures each week until we arrive at a singular favorite.  Playing CMC Idol with passages from a book that isn’t too keen on idolatry doesn’t seem like all that good of an idea.  So unlike that and the World Cup, these scriptures get to enjoy group play all summer without having to worry about who is in and who is out of the final tournament.

This summer we’ll be walking through these twelve scriptures – beautifully displayed here – thanks Adam Ruggles and Seth Trance – and pondering what they have to say to us as a congregation and as individuals.  After each sermon time, we’ll hear a short reflection from one person on the significance of that scripture for them.  You’ll notice that the passages are grouped by theme rather than the order that they appear in the Bible.  But with Genesis 1 as one of the scriptures, it only feels right that we start there, at the beginning.  “In the beginning,” as Genesis, and the entire Bible, begins.

Perhaps moreso than most parts of the Bible, what we bring to this Genesis 1 text by way of personal background and experience affects how we read it.  Some may feel that their primary relationship with this passage is…

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 

…