CMC service 4-30-23 from Gwen Reiser on Vimeo.

Boundaries and Gates

Scripture texts: John 10:1-10; Acts 2:42-47

It was late summer of 2005, my first summer after graduating from Bluffton University with a music degree and no real direction. My parents had driven me nearly 16 hours from little old Lyons, Ohio all the way to the only-slightly-less-little Hutchinson, Kansas. This 16 hour pilgrimage would become the beginning of a three year pilgrimage for me as I began my first year with Mennonite Voluntary Service. I stepped out of that car with a lot of anxiety about meeting the other young people who would share at least the next year of my life with me. 

When I say I graduated from Bluffton with no real direction, that’s somewhat true, but the bit of direction I did have was the wisdom to know that I needed to force myself to be with other people in intentional ways. I had a few leads on jobs here and there, but a part of me feared that my introverted personality would keep me from building relationships in meaningful ways if I ended up in a new location where I didn’t know anyone. So when the option of joining MVS came along, I was instantly intrigued. Not only would it allow me to serve a community and explore my vocational gifts, but it would mean living in an intentional community with peers who were also having similar experiences. 

Even if it scared me, the idea of intentional community had always captured my imagination. It seemed like the kind of radical thing that Christians ought to be doing just like the early church. The vision of the Acts 2 community is a compelling one for anyone who wants…

“Wisdom is a tree of life,” and a nurse log
Texts: Proverbs 3:13-18; 1 Peter 2:2-5
Speaker: Joel Miller

“Happy are those who find wisdom, and those who get understanding, for her income is better than silver…all her paths are peace.  She is a tree of life to those who lay hold of her; those who hold her fast are called happy.” (Proverbs 3)

A little over a decade ago I found wisdom in the trees of southern Ohio.  If you’ve been around here a while this isn’t the first time you’ve heard this conversion story.  It might be 10th time.  It was the first and only Sabbatical I had while pastoring in Cincinnati.  It included a weeklong tree ID course at the Arc of Appalachia in Highland County, about a half hour southwest of Chillicothe.  I figured it was about time to learn the names of the most common trees I’d been surrounded with my whole life, only to find out that knowing the name of a tree tells you about as much about a tree as knowing the name of a person tells you about a person. 

Little did I know these trees have stories and personalities.  Origin stories, like the apple tree’s wild beginnings in the mountains of Kazakhstan; tales of migration, like the pawpaw’s generational journey from the tropics of the equator up to the Midwest of the US; retreat, survival, and, spread like pretty much all of our native trees that went south for the long winter of the most recent ice age, reclaiming land as the glaciers retreated north. 

There are trees so ancient all their near relatives have died off, like the gingko.  Trees still hybridizing and differentiating like a campus full of youthful college students, like the oaks.  Sycamores and bald cyprus like to hang out by rivers…

CMC Worship Service 04/16/23 from Gwen Reiser on Vimeo.

Impossible Power
Texts: John 20:19-31
Speaker: Jeremy Garber

“I don’t usually believe in things like this, but…” I was a twenty-something young adult with a theatre major and no direction in life. I’d moved to Minneapolis to find acting work, but found that the hustle and unreliability of theatre life wasn’t a good fit for me. In the meantime, I ended up working for minimum wage in a chain bookstore – and returning to church for the first time in a decade. I grew up in a Mennonite household where it didn’t even occur to me that people didn’t go to church every Sunday. But the lure of college hedonism and the late nights of theatre rehearsals took me away from church. It took a life crisis to bring me back.

I grew increasingly frustrated with barely eking out a living in retail, even though I loved books and I loved my coworkers. On Christmas Eve of 1999, I submitted my rejection letter and swore I would never work in retail again. I applied for a temp agency to cover my bills, but I didn’t own a car, and Minneapolis’ public transit system was unreliable in the suburbs (the only place I could afford to live). On the first day of my new job assignment, I missed my bus connection and traveled all the way to the end of the line, late for work. I collapsed to my knees, sobbing in the middle of a snowy field, overwhelmed and desperate. I felt like there was nowhere else to go.

When I got back to my apartment, I called my mom and said I wanted to come home to figure things out. She suggested I…

CMC Worship Service 4/9/2023 from Gwen Reiser on Vimeo.

Easter Pilgrimage: The Great Unsettling
Text: Matthew 27:45-54; 28:1-10126
Speaker: Joel Miller

When I say Christ is risen, you say Christ is risen indeed!
Christ is Risen…
Christ is Risen…

No need to respond out loud for this, but if you were to complete this sentence, what word might you choose? 

Of all the Sundays of the year, Easter is the most  ____________ .

How about: The most joyful.  The most celebratory.  The most hopeful.

For this congregation Easter Sunday is the most floral; the most likely Sunday to dress up; the most Episcopalian we get in our Communion liturgy; and definitely the most brunchy.   

And if we were to answer this question from a theological or spiritual pilgrimage perspective – What would we say?  Of all the Sundays of the year, Easter is the most ___________.   I imagine our responses would range all the way from the most comforting to the most confusing. 

Unless we’re so overly familiar with these stories that we’ve stopped paying attention, crucified saviors and empty tombs and resurrection appearances are bound to evoke some kind of visceral response.  There is great comfort in the proclamation that the grave never has the last word, that death is swallowed up in life.  There is great confusion in the picture of a dead man vacating his tomb, appearing to the women, saying, “Greetings!”  Saying “Do not be afraid; go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me.”       

Easter is all these things.  Joyful; colorful, dressed-up, and delicious; comforting and confusing.  And, I’ll add one more: Unsettling.  Of all the Sundays of the year, Easter is the most unsettling.

Matthew has a unique way of telling this. 

When Jesus cries aloud on the cross and breathes…

CMC Scripture and Sermon 04-02-2023.mp4 from Gwen Reiser on Vimeo.

Sermon: Pilgrimage: From Garden to Garden 
Text: Matthew 26:36-46
Speaker: Joel Miller

If you ever visit Jerusalem, one of the places you may see is the Church of All Nations.  It’s one of many structures built on a site of religious significance.  In this case, the Garden of Gethsemane.  It’s right there at the bottom of the Mount of Olives, right outside the walls of the old city, beside those 1000 year old olive trees, believed to be the location where Jesus prayed with his disciples the night he was arrested. 

And if you were to enter that church you may notice a sign – as I have the couple times I’ve been there.  It reads: “Please no explanations inside the church.” 

It’s a well-meaning sign that I think is more profound than intended.  What I’m almost certain it’s supposed to mean is that this is a sacred site, and when you’re inside this building, please be reverent, or at least be respectful of others and don’t talk loud.  Especially, ahem, you tour guides or seminary grads who know or think you know a lot about this place and wish to explain it to those in your group.  For all those who fit this description, please do your explaining, your commentary, your knowledge sharing, outside the church, on the lovely grounds of the garden perhaps, or elsewhere.

All this, concisely summarized in that one sign: “Please no explanations inside the church.” 

What I love about this sign is its potential secondary meaning, the plea it could be making to those who spend a lot of time in churches.  Especially to those who do a lot of talking inside churches.  In short – churches aren’t places that…