CMC Service 9/24/23 from Gwen Reiser on Vimeo.

Wrestling with God: Blessings and Bruises
Text: Genesis 32:3-32
Speaker: Joel Miller
 

“Jacob was left alone.”  That’s what it says in Genesis 32:24. 

Jacob is alone because he has sent his entire family – two wives, two maids, and eleven children – and all his possessions – hundreds of sheep, goats, cattle and camels; servants, tents, changes of clothing, – everything he owns and everyone in his family and entourage – he has sent them all to the other side of Jabbok River.  It is night, time for sleep, and Jacob lies down, under the dome of the heavens, alone. 

It was a rare thing, for Jacob to be alone.  From the very beginning, even in his mother’s womb, he had company. 

Isaac, son of Abraham and Sarah, who we met last week, married Rebekah.  And Rebekah, like her mother-in-law Sarah for most of her life, had no children.  But she becomes pregnant, with twins, who, as Genesis 25 says “struggled within her.” Oof. Jacob must have lost that wrestling match. In a culture in which the bulk of the inheritance went to the first born son, Jacob is born second.  But just barely, grasping the heel of his very slightly older brother Esau as they entered the world.   

The struggle didn’t end there.  Once, after they had grown, Jacob was cooking a stew and Esau came back from an unsuccessful hunt, famished.  Jacob offered him some of the hot stew, but for a price, Esau’s birthright.  Later, when the now-elderly Isaac is ready to confer his blessing on his firstborn son, Jacob, with the help of his mother Rebekah, tricked his blind father by putting on his brother’s clothes and offering him the ritual meal while…

Scripture and Sermon

Holy Laughter: Giving Birth to Joy

Genesis 18:1-15; 21:1-7 and Luke 1:46-55

Sarah Werner

I’ve done a lot of different things in my life. I’ve searched for orchids in dense forests, sampled mud in a remote Canadian lake, taught kids about marine life in sandals on the beach. I’ve written poems and stories and tens of thousands of journal entries. If someone had told me when I was 20 that at the age of 40 I would be leading a wild church, working as a professional writer, and celebrating my ordination in the Mennonite church, I would have laughed out loud, just like our ancestor Sarah did. I’m sure you too have similar stories. None of us ever really know where we’re headed. All we can do is point our feet towards God, or sacredness, or truth, and start moving. And Sarah provides a roadmap for us through her laughter and trust in the Holy One.

This is quite a foundational story for all three of the Abrahamic faith traditions. All the major players are there—God in the form of three people (something the Trinitarians surely love), Abraham, Sarah, even the holy oaks of Mamre. But, I’m bothered by the clear patriarchal nature of this exchange. Only Abraham talks to the otherworldly visitors/God. Sarah is left in the tent to listen in to their conversation. God in the guise of the visitors, speaks to Sarah, but only to confront her about laughing. So, I’ve decided to share with you a different version. Here goes:

Sarah and Abraham are sitting under an ancient sacred oak tree, the defining feature of their homestead, the place where many holy encounters took place. Abraham goes into the tent to take a nap in the heat of the day, but Sarah remains, gazing out on the open rocky…

Creation Stories
Text: Genesis 2:4b-25
Speaker: Joel Miller

The book of Genesis is appropriately named.  It’s about beginnings.  It reaches all the way back to the origins of, as it says, the heavens and the earth.  It goes on to tell the origin story of a small near eastern tribe through its patriarchs and matriarchs.  They are a people who will be, for much of their existence, on the losing side of history – slaves, exiles, living under foreign rule in their own land.  And that’s really something, because, as has been repeated many times, “history is written by the victors.”  Usually.  Remarkably, a sizeable portion of humanity has now adopted Genesis, this minority report, as their own origin story.  The fact that we’re even talking about it today and that most of us have a printed copy – or ten – in our home is remarkable indeed.

It’s hard to overstate the power of origin stories.  For example, consider the founding story of our nation many of us were taught in school.  The Pilgrims came to America in search of religious freedom, which they found as they established Plymouth Colony.  We fought a revolution against the tyranny of a king and founded what is now the world’s longest living democracy.  Our values are enshrined in the Declaration of Independence, penned by Thomas Jefferson in 1776: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.”

Now consider the turmoil, still churning, caused by the 1619 Project, a project of mostly Black academics, which suggested that a more truthful telling of our nation’s origins would begin in the year 1619, the year before the Mayflower landed at Plymouth Colony.  That was the year the ship the White Lion delivered between 20 to 30 Africans to Virginia Colony, setting off 240 years of…

CMC Service 9323 from Gwen Reiser on Vimeo.

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Baptismal Waters: Creation, Choices, Beloved 
Speaker: Joel Miller

Genesis 1:1-2

In the Genesis 1 creation story, there’s no need for God to create water.  It’s there from the beginning.  Along with the darkness. And the Ruach Elohim – the Wind from God or the Breath or Spirit of God, depending on the translation, hovering, like a mother bird, over those primordial waters. 

There’s something about water – something so essential, so given – that makes it hard to imagine existence without it.  Genesis 1, the opening words of scripture, doesn’t even try.  In the beginning there was darkness, there was the Divine Breath, and there was water.

A creation story told by Native peoples of this continent, the Haudenosaunee, shares this sense.  It’s the story of Skywoman, who descended on a beam of light, down to our world.  At that time, the story goes, there was only darkness and water, and those who lived in the water like the beavers and swans and fish. 

As she descended these beings held a council and determined she would need a patch of earth to land on.  It was muskrat who dove down deep and retrieved a fist full of earth, even though it cost him his life.   The other animals spread the earth on the back of turtle, and the swans flew up to guide Skywoman to a soft landing.  With her presence now on the earth, surrounded by those waters, the turtle grew and grew until it became a large island, our present home, Turtle Island.  (See Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass, pp. 3-5, and HERE for two versions of this story which I conflated)

There’s something about water and creation stories.  No water, nothing for the Wind of God to sweep over and stir into life.  No water, no council…