CMC Worship Service 08:28:2022.mp4 from Gwen Reiser on Vimeo.

The video above includes the full service, except for the time for sharing.

Permission to podcast/stream the music in this service obtained through One License with license A-727859. Copyrights for songs given after the sermon text.

Sermon | The place of honor
Texts: Proverbs 25:6-7; Luke 14:1,7-14
Speaker: Joel Miller

When Jesus goes to eat at the house of a community leader, he’s being watched.  That’s how Luke chapter 14 begins: “On one occasion when Jesus was going to the house of a leader of the Pharisees to eat a meal on the Sabbath, they were watching him closely.”  It’s a bit ambiguous who “they” are who are doing the close watching, but we can assume it was other members of that group known as the Pharisees, and anybody else within watching distance.  

“Watching closely” doesn’t necessarily imply suspicion or mal intent.  Jesus had been making quite a name for himself.  He’s been stirring things up by restoring body and status to the sick, honoring women, casting out harmful spirits, telling parables that both confound and illuminate.  Even Herod, ruling the area on behalf of Rome, had taken notice.  Four verses prior to this dinner event it was the Pharisees who had come to Jesus and given him a warning that Herod wanted to kill him.  Predictably unpredictable, Jesus had responded by calling Herod a fox and himself a hen, gathering her brood of chicks under her wing.  Which is what he plans to continue to do, or at least try.   

Maybe they’re watching Jesus closely because they’d never met anyone quite like him.  He doesn’t fit any pre-determined categories.  He’s not interested in playing the respectability game.  He’s not even all that strategic about preserving…

Texts: Isaiah 58:9b-14, Luke 13:10-17

On days I ride my bike into church the commute home includes a left turn off High St by Global Gallery followed by a nice long coast down Dunedin Road towards the river.  Not every day, but what has felt like most days this summer, a group of kids is out playing on Dunedin near the bottom of the hill.  And when I say playing on Dunedin I mean on Dunedin.  On the street.  The play frequently involves bikes and scooters turning circles and tricks, weaving back and forth from curb to curb.  Cars slow as they approach and wait for the street to clear before passing.  Even a grown up on a bike cruising at gravity-assisted speed has to ride the brakes and yield to the action.  These kids rule the road.  It’s pretty awesome.  

It’s perhaps because of this recurring experience that a particular line from the Isaiah reading stood out to me:

Your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt; you shall raise up the foundations of many generations; you shall be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of streets to live in. 

“You shall be called…the restorer of streets to live in.”  Hmmm.

If there’s one thing streets aren’t, it’s places to live in, especially not for children.  Even parents who want to encourage the most free-range of childhoods still tend to hold to the general rule of No playing in the street.  Streets are dangerous places.  They contrast sharply with the safe, inviting spaces we seek to create in our homes and yards.  So close to one another, yet worlds apart.  Usually.

The people to whom Isaiah preaches and writes know nothing of cars and trucks speeding through their neighborhoods.  But they do know of war and occupation.  They do know of exile and returning to…

CMC 8-21-22 from Gwen Reiser on Vimeo.

The video above includes the full service, except for the time for sharing.

Permission to podcast/stream the music in this service obtained through One License with license A-727859. Copyrights for songs given after the sermon text.

Sermon | What’s a street/Sabbath/body/_______ for?  
Texts: Isaiah 58:9b-14, Luke 13:10-17
Speaker: Joel Miller

On days I ride my bike into church the commute home includes a left turn off High St by Global Gallery followed by a nice long coast down Dunedin Road towards the river.  Not every day, but what has felt like most days this summer, a group of kids is out playing on Dunedin near the bottom of the hill.  And when I say playing on Dunedin I mean on Dunedin.  On the street.  The play frequently involves bikes and scooters turning circles and tricks, weaving back and forth from curb to curb.  Cars slow as they approach and wait for the street to clear before passing.  Even a grown up on a bike cruising at gravity-assisted speed has to ride the brakes and yield to the action.  These kids rule the road.  It’s pretty awesome.  

It’s perhaps because of this recurring experience that a particular line from the Isaiah reading stood out to me:

Your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt; you shall raise up the foundations of many generations; you shall be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of streets to live in. 
“You shall be called…the restorer of streets to live in.”  Hmmm.

If there’s one thing streets aren’t, it’s places to live in, especially not for children.  Even parents who want to encourage the most free-range of childhoods still tend to hold to the general rule of No playing in the street.  Streets are dangerous places. …

CMC Worship Service 8.14.22 from Gwen Reiser on Vimeo.

Credits

The video above includes the full service, except for the time for sharing.

Permission to podcast/stream the music in this service obtained through One License with license A-727859. Copyrights for songs given after the sermon text.

Isaiah 5:1-7

“What more could have been done for My vineyard?”

Columbus Mennonite Church – August 14, 2022

Benjamin Rudeen Kreider

Country music’s twang has been in my ears and on my mind this week. I love the kind of country music full of love found and lost, full of sadness and unfulfilled hopes; songs that tell stories with gritty details and end in twists heartbreaking or heartwarming alike.

I’m not speaking of “bro-country” as it’s sometimes called, which boasts of big trucks and red Solo cups. Rather I’m thinking about the prison songs of Johnny Cash, the timelessness of Dolly Parton, the nasally ballads of Willie Nelson, the fierce spirit of the Highwomen, and the storytelling chops of John Prine. I love the songs that draw you in and then end and you aren’t quite sure what to make of them, but their melodies and questions and unresolved chords still linger your ears.

If our text from Isaiah is a country song, it is first a country song in an earthy, grounded sense. It is a love-song about a vineyard. It uses agriculture imagery to get its point across – drawing out a metaphor about a farm and a farmer, a vineyard and a vineyard tender, and the hoped-for harvest of grapes and wine to follow.

This song begins so beautifully, with the tenderness of lovers. We aren’t quite sure who is speaking. We can imagine that it is the prophet Isaiah, as our text opens “Let me sing for my…

Credits:

The video above includes the full service, except for the time for sharing.

Permission to podcast/stream the music in this service obtained through One License with license A-727859. Copyrights for songs given after the sermon text

Sermon | Having faith 
Text: Hebrews 11:1-16
Speaker: Joel Miller                  

Wendell Berry, poet and author, Kentucky farmer, turned 88 on Friday.  He once wrote: “Put your faith in the two inches of humus that will build under the trees every thousand years.”  These words come at the end of his Mad Farmer Liberation Front Manifesto in which he chastises the many other things in which humanity has placed its faith: the quick profit, mindless consumption, the generals and politicos.  At 88 and counting, Wendell Berry is living a full life.  But according to his own math — 1000 years to form two inches of humus – the length of his life, so far, is only time for .176 inches of that richest of soils to accumulate in the healthiest of forests.  Barely noticeable to the human eye.  Which of course is his point about the nature of faith.

In chapter 11 of the letter to the Hebrews faith is at the forefront of the author’s mind.  Having just finished writing about the importance of provoking each other to love and good deeds and staying in the habit of meeting together, the author ends chapter 10 by stating, “But we are not among those who shrink back and so are lost, but among those who have faith and so are saved.” 

That sounds like a pretty definitive statement.  We don’t shrink back.  We have faith.  But the author seems to know that simply naming the importance of having faith is not enough.  So the…