Sermon Manuscript

Love you enemy as yourself? 

Scripture | Isaiah 25:6-10, Matthew 5:43-48

Speaker: Joel Miller

Toward the beginning of seminary Abbie and I were asked to lead a congregational retreat for a church near where I grew up.  One of the exercises we had people do was to rewrite the words of Psalm 23 with a different image besides shepherd.  The Lord is my ____, and then go from there, re-writing the Psalm to fit the new image.  That’s the Psalm that goes on to say, “You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies.”  We went around the room and shared what we had written.  The Lord is friend, the Lord is my mother, the Lord is my computer.  I don’t remember any of the following lines of anyone’s Psalms except from a quiet dear elderly woman.  Her Psalm included these words: “You prepare a table before me.  I have no enemies.”

Fast forward to just a few weeks ago.  I’m meeting with the Wednesday small group that discusses the Daily Meditation emails from Richard Rohr.  As we’re getting underway, discussing the blatant racism and political polarization around us, one of the participants says “You know, for the first time in my life I feel like I actually have some real enemies.

Of all the things Jesus said, passed down through the gospel writers, “love your enemies” has to be one of the most confounding.  It’s hard enough to love your neighbor as yourself.  I mean, it’s hard enough to love yourself. 

Is it even commendable to seek to love someone who has directly caused you harm, even trauma, who is still out there getting away with it?  What about people who willingly play a part in systems that oppress?  Nice people who perpetuate terrible things just by doing their job.  And…

Sermon | Julie Hart

Scripture | Romans 12:3-8, 1 Corinthians 12:12-26

Sermon | World Communion Sunday: Expanding the Table

World Communion Sunday is a gift of the Presbyterian Church to the larger body of Christian Churches.  Observed on the first Sunday in October, this day calls the Church to be the universal, inclusive Church.  The first celebration occurred in Pittsburgh, PA, in 1933. It was their denominations attempt to bring churches together in a service of Christian unity in which everyone might receive both inspiration and information, and above all, to know how important the broader Church is, and how each congregation is interconnected with each other. Apparently, the concept spread slowly initially. It took the suffering of the Second World War as our nation struggled to create unity and sacrifice that the idea finally caught hold. World Wide Communion Sunday reminded us of our spiritual oneness. It emphasized our common call to share the good news of Jesus Christ with the world as well as to share our resources with our brothers and sisters in need.

Today, World Communion Sunday is celebrated around the world, demonstrating that the church, founded on Jesus Christ, peacefully shares God-given goods in a world increasingly torn apart by profit-focused economies and governments based on greed.

World Communion Sunday offers congregations an opportunity to experience the practice of Communion as a global community of faith. This Sunday has become a time when Christians in every culture break bread and share juice to affirm Jesus’ message of inclusion. On this day, we remember that we are just one small part of the whole body of believers. Imagine some sharing communion in a grand cathedral or a mud hut, outside on a hilltop, in a meetinghouse, in a storefront, or in our homes. Christians celebrate communion in as many…

Sermon | The backside of God

Scripture | Exodus 33:12-23

Sermon: Joel Miller

If there’s one thing that’s consistent about our experience of God, it is God’s absence.  We talk about God, read stories in the Bible about God, we sing about God.  We pray, we meditate.  Sometimes we sing or talk or journal directly to God.  But God is not a person in the way we are people.  God is not an object in the field of our experience.  Or even an idea.  We can’t quite point and say – There is God.

There is, in fact a word for treating something as if it were God: idolatry.  Money is a preferred idol because of its power to get us what we want.  The nation state is one of the most dangerous idols.  We look to it to keep us secure and give us identity.  But its tools of lordship are violence and walls, metaphorical and real.  Every nation and empire seeks eternal life but ends up being mortal.  Even Pharaoh’s Egypt.  Even these United States in which we live will not last forever.  It would be blasphemy against God to say that they will. 

Commercials can be a seductive invitation into a sort of mini-idolatry.  The theology of an advertisement is that this product offers a slice of salvation, for a small price.  Salvation from not having enough.  Or, more powerfully, form not being enough.  Salvation from aging or boredom or from a need you didn’t realize you even had.  We need some of these products for life’s practicalities, and some for fun, but they too are mortal and can create a larger appetite than they satisfy.

God is not money or the nation state or salvation in a box that will show up on your doorstep in two days.

It seems that it’s easier…

Getting Egypt out of the people | 20 September 2020

Exodus 16:2-15

Joel Miller

Anytime we’re part of a wider movement I think it’s good to pause a bit and recognize that.  So I’m grateful that the Ohio Council of Churches has declared today, September 20, Antiracism Sunday.  We are one of many congregations across our state worshiping today in the spirit of repentance and resurrection hope.  To borrow some language from Rev Jack Sullivan of the Council, our Christian calling, is to detect, disrupt, and dismantle racism. And as church folks ought to know, anytime you can boil it down to an alliteration, you’re on your way. And of course that work of detecting, disrupting, and dismantling racism starts with ourselves.

I’m a subscriber to The Atlantic magazine and a few years back, 1897, there was an essay in The Atlantic by WEB Dubois.  It was titled “Strivings of the Negro People.”  In that essay, Dubois talked about double-consciousness.  This was an idea he kept developing in later writings.  Double-consciousness for the African-American, as Dubois describes it, has to do with seeing the world through one’s own perspective and experience as a self-conscious human being, AND, coming to see oneself through the eyes of a society that views you as a problem. 

Dubois starts the essay like this, and I’ll quote the whole first paragraph:

Between me and the other world there is ever an unasked question: unasked by some through feelings of delicacy; by others through the difficulty of rightly framing it. All, nevertheless, flutter round it. They approach me in a half-hesitant sort of way, eye me curiously or compassionately, and then, instead of saying directly, How does it feel to be a problem? they say, I know an excellent colored man in my town; or I fought at…

Sermon | “Why do you cry out to Me?”

Sermon Text: Exodus 14:10-31

Preacher: Phil Yoder

A story about water
In 2014, the local government of Flint Michigan decided they wanted to save money by switching to a different water source. After switching the water source, the local government did not hold the water plant responsible for making sure that the water was clean, through placing the necessary chemicals in the water, to keep the lead pipes from poisoning the water. This led to high concentrations of lead in the drinking water of thousands of people.

Instead of having access to clean drinking water, Flint residence’s hair was falling out and children were getting sick. Lead poisoning at high amounts can lead to all sorts of health and human development issues. Bottled water, to this day, is still shipped to Flint for people to have clean water access. The government of Flint and of the United States had the ability to dictate who has access to clean water, and thus dictate who lives, and who dies.

Our bible story starts with the Israelites in a sticky situation, stuck between the  approaching Egptian armies and the foreboding red sea. They might be asking “Do I die by drowning, or do I die by the sword?” The decision over their own life has been ripped out of their control. Not too different from those in flint, who were stuck asking,“Do I drink poisonous water, or drink no water at all?”

In this peculiar situation, Moses is apparently very calm and collected. He tells the Israelites to “be Still.” That God will fight your battles. Often this is where traditional Mennonites like to end this story. Just be still – See, this God in the old testament isn’t violent. God is telling us not to act,…