Text: Proverbs 8:1-4; 22-31Speaker: Joel Miller

Good morning.  Happy new year.  Happy Epiphany.  ‘Tis the season….for movie prequels. 

As the name suggests, a prequel is the story before the story, at least in the imagination of a group of writers who usually did not write the original story.  The prequel is the younger sibling of the sequel.  Prequels give a backstory on popular characters.  It’s how Annakin Skywalker became Darth Vader.  How Cruella de Vil met her accomplices and got her thing for Dalmatian-themed fashion.  It’s how the young Coriolanus Snow rose to power and remade the Hunger Games.  It’s how Mufasa became King of the Pride Lands.  It’s how the Wicked Witch of the West, in this telling, had wickedness thrust on her by a weak Wizard of Oz in need of an enemy. 

A good prequel is full of little aha moments in which the elements of the story you already know get placed on the stage, one by one, in ways you hadn’t previously imagined.  A good prequel adds depth and texture to that original story. 

The cynical side of me, and this is admittedly my main attitude these days toward much of pop culture –the cynical side of me is pretty sure Hollywood has no new ideas, so they bank on old stories, or franchises as they’re called, to milk past success for all its worth.  As Ecclesiastes prophesied about studio films: “There’s nothing new under the sun.”  I’m eagerly waiting for all live-action prequels to be re-released in their cartoon versions. 

Be that as it may, there’s something kind of intriguing about the most recent telling of a story being set before the older story.  There’s something enchanting about a story we know, a familiar story, gaining new meaning through a pre-story. 

I’m not sure if the editors of Proverbs…

Speaker: Kate AndréText: Luke 2:21-40

Good morning, Columbus Mennonite Church!

Thanks, for inviting me to speak on this first Sunday in the Christmas season!

My name is Kate André. I’m the pastor of the Mennonite Congregation of Boston. 

I’m also Susan André’s daughter. 

I understand your Advent theme was “Visitations” — temporary but meaningful encounters. 

It’s fitting, then, that I, a visitor to your church, am the last person to sermonize about visitations.

So far in your Narrative Lectionary journey this month, 

angels have visited, family members have (Mary and Elizabeth)…

But in today’s Gospel story, as Jesus first crosses the threshold into the Temple– 

an intentionally sacred space not entirely unlike this one– 

a visitation occurs between intergenerational strangers. 

Before we dive into the story, let’s take a few deep breaths, 

calling our hearts and minds to the Spirit of Life in our midst. 

As you breathe, notice what words from the following Jan Richardson meditation resonate with you today:

I am still fascinated by thresholds– 

those places that lie between the life we have known and the life ahead of us. 

I am continually intrigued – and eager, and fearful, and amazed, and mystified – 

to enter into those spaces where we have left the landscape of the familiar, the habitual, 

and stand poised at the edge of a terrain whose contours we can hardly see or imagine… 

A threshold invites and calls us to stop. To take a look around. To imagine. To dream. To question. To pray.  

“May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O God, 

our strength and our redeemer.”

Here’s a fun fact: In the late 2000s, I was unfamiliar with the Mennonite tradition.

But my mother was a new member of CMC, so I came with her to worship whenever I visited from out of town.

On Christmas Eve 2009, I sat right there at your…

Text: Luke 1:26-30; 39-45,56

Speaker: Joel Miller

Perhaps you’ve heard, our Advent theme is Visitations.  Doorbells, eagles, angels, a storyteller with a backpack, and an impromptu choir singing “And the Glory of the Lord” have all made an appearance this season.  Visitations come in many forms.

And of all the stories leading up to the birth of Jesus, it’s Mary’s visit to Elizabeth, that the church has remembered as The Visitation.  It has its own feast day, for Catholics and Eastern Orthodox.  The Visitation has inspired artists, famous and not, to capture the moment these two pregnant women meet in the home of Elizabeth in the Judean highlands.  Mary, young, is newly pregnant.  Elizabeth, less young, is six months along.  Even outside the realm of the miraculous, they could have been 30 years apart in age.

Mary has traveled “with haste,” Luke writes, all the way from Nazareth, a journey of perhaps 90 miles, maybe 100.  Why so urgent?  How hard did she push it – the animal, her own legs – to arrive as quickly as possible? 

When she did arrive, she entered the home and greeted Elizabeth, her relative.  No text messages in advance that she was coming.  No doorbell.  Mary greeted Elizabeth.  And Elizabeth greeted Mary.  Elizabeth felt the child within her leap, or kick, or a fist pump, or whatever it was.  Elizabeth calls Mary blessed, and blesses her with hospitality for three months. 

This is the Visitation.  There are no angels.  Just these two women and the children they will soon birth.

This piece you see is by Franciscan Brother Mickey McGrath.  He titled it “Windsock Visitation” in honor of the sisters of the Monastery of the Visitation in Minneapolis.  These sisters set out a windsock on days when their much-loved after-school program is open to neighborhood kids.   They are Elizabeth…

…

Text: Luke 1:26-38Speaker: Joel Miller

As far as I know, I’ve been within close range of a bald eagle in flight exactly twice in my life.  I remember each pretty well because they both happened within the last two months.  The first was in October.  Our family was at my brother Luke’s cabin.  It sits on top of a wooded sand dune, overlooking Lake Michigan.  It was morning, and we were out on the deck with some warm drinks, facing the lake, when we spotted a large bird over the water flying toward us.  Someone called out that it was an eagle.  As soon as I saw it I expected it to veer off any moment, keeping its distance.  But it kept flying toward us, and thus kept getting bigger…and it kept flying directly toward us.  Definitely a bald eagle.  It was getting close enough that my brain had just started to wonder if we might need to be the ones to veer off in one direction or the other.  And then right at that split second where fascination was about to give way to fear, maybe about 50 feet away, it swerved up and to our right – white head, dark outstretched wings, and white tail feathers in full view – perching in a nearby tree top.  Luke was aware of a nest near the cabin, but hadn’t had an encounter quite like that.  Neither had we.    

The second eagle came a week ago, last Sunday afternoon.  It was my birthday, which meant I had the rare upper hand in requesting a family activity that everyone pretty much had to agree to before we got our Christmas tree.  So the four of us went for an extended walk behind Antrim Lake on the dirt trails that go along the Olentangy…