CMC service 6-5-22 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.

Sermon by Ben Rudeen Kreider: Like the Howling of a Fierce Wind

The Membership Commitment of Columbus Mennonite Church begins simply and beautifully – The Spirit calls us from where we are…

Of course – it doesn’t stop there – but it does start there. Here. Where each of us are – in our different places…

As a newcomer to Columbus, a few weeks into my internship here with you all, I am beginning to figure out where I am. I discover via trial and error which roads connect to what, where is bikeable, walkable or drivable, where to get food, whose names go with which faces and stories in this church.

But this morning we are all here in this sanctuary, waiting, singing, praying, each in our own voice, placed in the pews and on Zoom, calling out to the name of the Lord.

The Spirit calls us from where we are.

The gathered Jesus-followers we meet at the beginning of our passage have been in Jerusalem. It was here that they met their resurrected Lord and friend. In chapter one of the Acts narrative – Jesus has left them with parting words that still ring in their ears:

         “…for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now…”

         “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”

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.

Our guest speaker this Sunday is Samuel Sarpiya.  He is the Executive Director at the Center for Nonviolence and Conflict Transformation in Rockford, Illinois.  He addressed the delegate body at the Mennonite Church USA assembly this weekend in Kansas City and pre-recorded his Sunday message for congregations. His sermon is entitled The Way of Peace in our Polarized World.

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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.

Sermon | “Outside the gate by the river” 

Text: Acts 16:9-15
Speaker: Joel Miller

After a gathering last month for those preparing to join the church, Leah let me know she’d like to be baptized.  My response was that this deserves its own Sunday.  Baptism is far too rich an event to be crammed into an already rich event of hearing new members’ faith journey stories as we did two weeks ago.  After checking calendars, we settled on today. 

It was a pleasant surprise when I proceeded to peak ahead to this week’s lectionary readings and discovered the featured story: The baptism of Lydia in Acts 16.  It is one of the small but not insignificant joys of preaching when life and lectionary converge.

The practice of baptism connects us today to spiritual ancestors, through the Anabaptists who were determined to reclaim baptism as a conscious adult decision to follow in the way of Christ, all the way back Lydia, and Jesus who was himself baptized.   

The records don’t show who he was speaking about, but Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote these words while in prison, 1944: “You are being baptized today as a Christian. All those great and ancient words of the Christian proclamation will be pronounced over you, and the command of Jesus Christ to baptize will be carried out, without your understanding any of it. But we too are being thrown back all the way to the beginnings of our understanding. What reconciliation and redemption mean, rebirth and Holy Spirit, love for one’s enemies, cross and resurrection, what it means to live in Christ and follow Christ; all that…

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.

Sermon: Sabbath-ing
Texts: Deuteronomy 5:1-7;12-15; Exodus 20:8-11; Mark 2:27-28
Speaker: Joel Miller

With Mark’s Sabbatical almost here, it’s a good time to revisit the role of Sabbath in all our lives.  If you’re not sure whether you have Sabbath in your life, or are pretty sure you don’t, let’s start with a broad view.

Before Sabbath was a holy day, a noun, it was a verb, with nothing especially holy about it.  To sabbath means to cease, to rest.  Verbs are action words, and sabbath is an action word meaning, basically, to refrain from action.  Sabbath is the un-verb.

The first four times the Hebrew word shabot, sabbath, appears in the Bible it is in verb form.  It’s mentioned twice in Genesis 2, where the Creator Elohim famously and somewhat mysteriously ceases, rests, sabbaths from all creative activity.  This happens on the seventh day, which is not yet called The Sabbath.  The seventh day is declared holy because on it Elohim sabbathed.         

The word appears nowhere else in the book of Genesis, and so we’re on to Exodus, chapter five, where Pharaoh is scolding Moses and Aaron for daring to ask for a three day holiday for the Hebrew slaves.  Holidays and paid or unpaid vacation leave were not part of the slave benefits package.  Rather than give them a break, Pharaoh makes their work more difficult, demanding the same quotas for brick production, while making them provide not just labor, but some of the materials.  From now on, the Hebrews will have to gather their own straw to mix with clay.  Pharaoh says to Moses and Aaron, “Why are…

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.

Reflections | Jacqui Hoke, Ryan Hoke, Kyle Kerley, Andy Minard, Heidi Minard, Oralea Pittman, Shannon Thiebeau, Daryl Turley, and Trisha Turley 

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