Worship in Place | Cultivating Beloved Community | November 15
Sermon: Carolyn May
Scripture | 1 Thessalonians 5:1-11, Matthew 25:14-30
Sermon | Moving Toward Endarkenment
Good morning! Upon graduating from seminary this May I moved back here to Columbus to do some chaplaincy work at Riverside Methodist Hospital. I don’t get to preach at the hospital so I’m really grateful to be able to share with you all this morning. However, when I initially read the texts for this week, I will admit, I was a little less excited to preach…I suspect this parable has been heard by many of us before. It is one that comes in a series of eschatological –end of the world– type parables. We heard one last week about the 10 bridesmaids. Through these parables Matthew is seeking to advise his readers to consider the end of the world which he, along with many others, expected to come during his lifetime. These parables are to teach not so much about what will happen in the end but how we ought to live in the meantime.
I have long struggled with this parable of the talents. I think I most commonly heard the text interpreted as being a call to use our talents (as in singing, painting, teaching, etc.) in a way that didn’t waste them. If we did waste our God-given abilities then we would be cast into the outer darkness where there would be weeping and gnashing of teeth. In other words, we would be cast into the fiery pits of hell. This parable terrified me when I was younger because I had a hard time even knowing what talents I had that I wasn’t supposed to waste! Eventually I started hearing (or maybe just registering) an interpretation of the text that focused on finances. At some point I was able to grasp the concept of a “talent”…
Worship in Place | Cultivating Beloved Community | November 8
Sermon: Joel Miller
Scripture | Amos 5:18-24; Matthew 25:1-13
What to expect when you’re (not) expecting the end of the world
May our eyes be open to seeing, may our ears be open to hearing, and may our hearts be open to loving.
Keep your lamps trimmed and burning.
Keep your lamps trimmed and burning.
Keep your lamps trimmed and burning.
For the time is drawing nigh.
Well, what do you preach the Sunday after a highly contested, highly consequential election in a global super-power?
It’s times like this when I’m especially grateful for the lectionary – this cycle of scriptures we share with other Christians around the world. That way if the scripture is entirely unrelated to current events, or is so on the nose as to appear hand-picked for this particular occasion, we preachers can say “the lectionary made me do it.”
And, as we slowly emerge from an insanely long election season, we’re reminded that the lectionary has its own season and rhythms. Case in point – the lectionary calendar is winding down, and Advent, just around the corner, begins not just a new season, but a new year. People keep saying that 2020 has been a crazy year, but in church-speak, this Year A of the lectionary cycle has really been a doozy. Thank God it’s about to be Year B.
And as the lectionary cycle nears its end, every year, it goes apocalyptic. The Day of the Lord in the Hebrew Scriptures, the so-called Second Coming in the New Testament. The new heavens and new earth, the end of time as we know it, and all that.
That’s why we get “The parable of the ten bridesmaids,” a passage unique to Matthew, the featured gospel of Year A. Matthew is written soon enough after Jesus’ life that there is still the expectation of his return to earth…
CMC Worship in Place | Cultivating Beloved Community | November 1
Sermon: Weaving the Beloved Community
Scripture | 1 Thess. 2:1-8; 1 John 3:1-3
Sermon: Joel Miller
It’s All Saints Day, today, and as we have done for a number of years now, we will soon light candles on behalf of those who have died. That’s the main reason why I’m here. To join you who will be lighting candles at home by lighting candles here.
And as I have gotten in the habit of doing, I will use the sermon time for some storytelling of an Anabaptist forbear. So we’re looking up at that great cloud of witnesses and picking out one figure to know better.
The person whose story we’ll dwell on today is Abraham op den Graeff.
The first thing you need to know about Abraham is that he was a weaver. A really good weaver, among the best of his time. In 1686 he was awarded the first ever Governor’s prize in Pennsylvania for the finest piece of linen woven in the Province, presented by William Penn. Like many people of his time, the trade he practiced ran in the family. Abraham was born sometime in the late 1640s in Krefeld, Germany. He learned weaving from his father.
The family was Mennonite and had left Catholic-controlled land in the early 1600s for the more tolerant Krefeld, under the authority of the Netherlands. Other Mennonites had done the same, fleeing the threat of fines and imprisonment for their nonconforming faith. Lots of Mennonite weavers in and around Krefeld.
When Abraham was in his 20s, a group of Quaker missionaries came through the area. Abraham’s family and a number of other Mennonites converted to Quakerism and soon found that Quakers weren’t quite as tolerated. And so, enterprising person that he was, we can imagine why news of William Penn’s experiment in Penn’s Woods – Mennonites and Quakers…
CMC Worship in Place | Cultivating Beloved Community | October 25
Sermon: Mark Rupp
Scripture | Matthew 22:34-46
Sermon | Winning a Debate in the Beloved Community
When you are assigned one of the scripture passages containing the “greatest commandment,” it can be a little daunting. Not only is this one of CMC’s top 12 scripture passages (or at least the version in Mark’s gospel), it is Jesus’s summation of the entire Law. What more can a person have to say about it without detracting from it’s beauty or unnecessarily overcomplicating its simplicity? I can sympathize with those described there at the end of the passage: “No one was able to give him an answer, nor from that day did anyone dare to ask him any more questions.”
Sometimes when I’m whining about being stuck writing a sermon, my husband will tell me to just say “Love everyone” and be done with it. Or if it’s near Christmas, he’ll tell me the whole sermon should just be “Jesus is the real gift.” Somehow without ever attending Sunday School, he seems to be able to really get at the heart of it. While both of his suggestions are tempting options, I’m guessing they would leave you all wanting something a little more to chew on.
And so, let us set out to approach this passage with fresh, 2020-eyes to see how the beautiful simplicity of the greatest commandment might speak to us in new ways some 2000 years later. When I read Matthew’s version of the greatest commandment thinking about how it speaks to this moment, I can’t help but first be drawn more to the wider context of the passage than the specifics of what Jesus says.
If you were with us last week or read Joel’s sermon afterward, you may remember that this is not the first time Jesus has found himself…
CMC Worship in Place | Cultivating Beloved Community | October 18
Sermon: Joel Miller
Scripture | Matthew 22:15-22
Sermon | Not trapped
There are a lot of intersecting lines within this brief exchange between Jesus and the Pharisees and Herodians and the question of whether or not it is lawful to pay taxes to Caesar.
There is the obvious question of paying taxes, with the additional layer of how an occupied people relates to the occupying government. Think Gandhi in British-occupied India. Closer to home, think Native Americans in settler-occupied America.
There is the lively rabbinical debate of what is lawful in the Hebrew Scriptures and what scripture one might use to back up one’s argument. Think of the episodes that directly follow this one when Jesus is asked about resurrection, and the greatest commandment, responding to each with a citation from Torah.
There is the modern question of the separation of church and state and the relationship between the secular and the sacred and by modern I mean a relatively recent way of thinking that would not have been on the minds of these first century folks. There’s the question of how we in a representative democracy relate differently to our government than those in the ancient Roman world.
There is the matter of conscientious objection and when one’s allegiance to a higher authority is in conflict with other authorities. Think sanctuary and war tax resistance.
There is the broader issue of our relationship with money and what we do with it.
There is the rhetorical issue of how to respond when you are given a Yes or No question and neither answer quite works and either answer could get you in trouble.
The text states up front that the goal was to entrap Jesus in what he says. It’s a trap set at the intersection of religion, politics, and money. We jokingly say these are topics to be avoided…
