CMC Service 5-1-22 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 | A common center, ever-expanding

Text: John 21:1-17
Speaker: Joel Miller

Every fall I teach an Inquirers Sunday school class.  It’s open to anyone, with a special invitation to new-ish folks.  We do an overview of Christian faith in a Mennonite perspective and look at the story of this congregation. 

One of the things we talk about is a couple different ways of forming community.  One focuses on strong boundaries, the other focuses on a strong center.  If you’ve been part of that class, this will sound familiar. 

In a community with strong boundaries, there’s a pretty clear line between who’s in and who’s out.  Or at least what you need to do to be in, and stay in.  In congregations this often comes down to a set of beliefs and a few moral issues.  The key is whether a personal can intellectually assent to this set of beliefs – about God and Jesus and the Bible and salvation and such – and if they live a moral or righteous life – sometimes narrowed down to certain understandings of sexuality, sometimes a bit broader.  Sometimes focused on dress codes – like head coverings for women and jackets with the right kinds of buttons or no buttons for men.  Rarely focused on other Bible-based issues like whether or not you pay your workers a fair wage or whether you welcome the refugee or share your resources with the poor. But, alas.

In a faith community with clear boundary lines if you can believe and do or not do these things,…

CMC Service 4/24/2022 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.

Sacred Work

Scripture: John 20:19-29

(Sermon by Mark Rupp)

Last Sunday while I was worship leading, I mentioned that Easter is not just a day, but a season.  It is a season on the liturgical calendar that extends through Pentecost and invites us to ask the “so what?” questions about the resurrection that we celebrate on Easter day. 

So what?  These questions about what Easter–what the resurrection–means for us today are questions that we ask all year long.  In fact, if you’ve ever done the math about how Lent is supposed to represent the 40 days Jesus spent in the wilderness, you may have noticed that on the calendar, Lent lasts longer than 40 days.  This is because Sundays don’t count toward those 40 days of repentance and contemplating our mortality.  Every Sunday is meant to be a kind of “mini-Easter” celebration. 

I’ll let you decide what that might mean for any Lenten fasting you do…

We ask these “so what” questions of Easter and mini-Easters all year as we continue to both celebrate and ponder what the resurrection means for us, yet especially in these days and weeks immediately after the big day of celebration, we ponder them afresh alongside the stories of the disciples and others in the first century Biblical narratives who were trying to make sense of everything that had happened.  Encounters with the risen Christ in locked rooms, on seaside, or along the road show us how those early disciples grappled with the questions of the resurrection. 

And in many ways, how we order our life…

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 | Return from the depths, turning toward life

Texts: John 19:38-20:1,11-18; 1 Peter 3:18-22

Speaker: Joel Miller  

When I say “Christ is Risen” you say “Christ is Risen Indeed.”

Christ is Risen…

Christ is Risen…

Every story, we are told, has a beginning, middle, and end.  Our lives track this simple outline with our birth, our life, and our death.

It’s one of the great wonders and delights of Easter to break the mold of this story. 

On Easter morning, “early on the first day of the week,” as John and the other gospels tell us, Mary Magdalene, and other women, visit the tomb.   This is a story that starts with a tomb.  Good Friday, the day of Jesus’ death on a cross, is what begins the Easter story. 

The cross has come to be a primary symbol for Jesus followers.  You can put it up on a banner in church, you can wear it on a t-shirt, you can buy it in gold and hang it around your neck, but let’s be clear: the cross was absolutely a symbol of death.  And not just a symbol.  People died on crosses.  And Rome made sure these were very public events.  The power to inflict death was what kept the world spinning, kept life in submission, kept the order ordered.

The Easter story starts with death, which is to say an ending so final and disorienting one barely knows what to do next.    

To enter most fully into this story, is to bring our own experiences of endings.  Perhaps this is the actual death of a loved one without whom the world…

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.

Prelude

     Guitar improvisation

     Quartet – VT 325 | O Sacred Head Now Wounded, Vs. 1 and 2

Welcome

Call to Worship

On this night, as the shadows deepen,

           We come to be present with Jesus.

With the glory of Palm Sunday behind us and the victory of Easter not yet come,

           We will sit together in this space with our listening and breaking hearts.

In this world that is at once beautiful and tragic,

           We seek to be present with all who suffer. 

We will be present with ourselves

In the dark valleys of life, when sorrow threatens to overwhelm,

           We long for a safe and sacred space to sit with our grief and our questions.

Jesus Christ, holy friend,

           We know that you are here with us.

Let us be here with you. Amen.

VT 317 | Go to Dark Gethsemane

Prayer of Confession | VT 1012

 O Tree of Calvary,

           send your roots deep down into my heart

Gather together the soil of my heart,

           the sands of my fickleness,

           the mud of my desires.

Bind them all together, O Tree of Calvary,

           interlace them with your strong roots,

           entwine them with the network of your love.

VT 318 | ‘Tis midnight and on Olive’s brow

Prayer

Holy, loving, suffering God,

           Give us eyes to see

the injustice and suffering that abound.

           Give us hearts to feel

the depth of this world’s brokenness.

           Give us ears now to hear

the words of your passion.

Amen.

TENEBRAE

THE DEAL

Luke 22:1-6

VT 319 | Stay with Me, the Night Has Come, v. 1 “Stay with me…”

THE ROOM AND TABLE

Luke 22:7-23

VT 465 | Prepare…

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 | Parades and parables of peace | Palm Sunday 
Text: Luke 19:28-42
Speaker: Joel Miller

We all have places we return to each year.  These are the places that remind us who we are.  Or at least give us a chance to reflect on who we’ve been and who we are becoming.  I’m likely in the minority of people my age whose parents still live in the house where I was born and raised.  Going back to Mom and Dad’s, or to the farm, or 1471 – the county road address I memorized at a young age – Going back there, even if for a brief stop, is always full of memory and meaning.  A family cabin, or a camp, or a beloved destination spot can become a spiritual home that we return to, a place we can come back to ourselves.  A place of return could also be the soil in one’s own backyard, or front flower bed.  Putting hands in the dirt right about this time of year can be a return to the earth’s regenerative powers, a reminder that those powers also flow through us.

Even if not a literal place, we find other forms of return to call us back to ourselves.  A favorite book.  A friendship we keep alive across distance.  Perhaps this very service, Palm Sunday, or Easter next week, serves this purpose for you.  A similar point of reference each year, but a little different, because you are different, and so is this world that shows very little interest in staying the same.

This is what’s going on within the Palm…