https://joelssermons.files.wordpress.com/2019/12/20191201sermon.mp3

Texts: Isaiah 2:2-4; Luke 1:26-38

Note: Please see the postscript after the sermon from CMC member and OSU Department of Physics Lecturer Rick Leonard.  He goes into more depth about the workings of sailing, corrects some poor physics in the sermon, and suggests another possible route for semonizing. 

Back in August we had a family vacation by Lake Michigan.  One of those days we took a ride on the Friends Good Will – a replica 1810 top sail sloop.  Or, in words that I understand, a really cool, pretty old, good sized, sailboat.  The original boat played an important role in the War of 1812 on the Great Lakes.  The Michigan Maritime Museum in South Haven offers this ride as a way of experiencing what it’s like to be on such a boat, complete with an experienced crew running the ship and giving full commentary along the way.  The out and back trip on the lake took about 90 minutes.

On the way out, the wind was mostly at our backs and we were mostly occupied with looking around the boat and watching the crew work the ropes on the sails.  As we made the turn and started heading back the crew seemed unfazed by the fact that we were now sailing into the wind, the very force that had just been pushing us in the opposite direction.  I knew that sailing upwind was a thing, and had likely had it explained to me multiple times before, but I forgot how it worked.  When it was our turn to hang out on the captain’s deck, I asked him to help me understand what was going on.

I remember two things from this explanation.  The first is that the curve of the sail acts much like the curve of an airplane wing, creating…

Text: Luke 21:5-19

Speaker: Joel Miller

In Luke chapter 21 Jesus and his companions are walking the temple grounds in Jerusalem.  The whole complex is an engineering marvel, a feat of mind and muscle.  Some are awestruck by its beauty.  They comment on the massive stones, dressed and stacked; the attention to detail; the overwhelming sense of power and permanence such structures evoke.  Jesus, who was never very good at going with the flow of conversations, interjects: “As for these things that you see, the days will come when not one stone will be left upon another; all will be thrown down.”

These startling comments suddenly take center stage.  “Teacher,” they ask, “when will this be, and what will be the sign that this is about to take place.”

After looking back for the last two weeks – first with All Saints/All Souls remembrance of Anabaptist history, then with Rabbi Jessica Shimberg reflecting in a similar way on Jewish history – invoking memory and lineage and tradition, we seem to be doing a 180.  Having been told that the present order will soon collapse, we are suddenly turned toward the future.  With the disciples, we want to know the timeline.  “When will this be?”  We want more clues about what to watch for.  “What will be the sign that this is about to take place?”

This passage from Luke 21 is part of what is known as the “synoptic apocalypse.”  Each of the three Synoptic Gospels – Matthew, Mark, and Luke — contain their own version of Jesus’ sobering words uttered in his final days.  The Revised Common Lectionary, finalized in the mid 1980’s, decided to feature these passages at the end of every liturgical year, and the first Sunday of the new year when Advent begins – in two weeks.  In a role befitting…

Guest preacher: Rabbi Jessica Shimberg

This week, I had the blessing of reading Joel’s sermon from last Sunday and, in observance of All Souls Day, his reference to The Bloody Theater or Martyrs Mirror of the Defenseless Christians. As an American Jew in my 50s, my formative experience of Christians — as one of the only Jewish children in Upper Arlington in the 1970s and early ‘80s — didn’t allow me to see the nuanced variety of Christian experience. In my personal story, to be Christian was to be part of the dominant majority — safe, secure, culturally very dominant. Through my many experiences of exclusion (though none of them “bloody,” thank God!) and as the victim of antisemitic language and mythology, I was the stranger despite my citizenship and that of my parents and my grandparents as people born in the United States.

The opportunity Joel’s sermon provided to learn about Menno Simons and the persecution of the early Anabaptists/Mennonites at the hands of other Christians within central Europe was a window for me into, as Joel put it, “one of the central teachings of Menno and Anabaptists of his kind. That to be Christian is to embrace the nonviolent – or, as they would say, nonresistant – way of Jesus – the peacefulness spoken of in the Beatitudes. This eschewing of violence left these Christians ‘defenseless.’” Although this reaffirmed my deep affection for this church and you, it also saddened me a bit. Knowing that so many of us share an historical lens of persecution of “our people,” and a Scriptural lens that encourages and commands us to love and care for those who are most likely to be marginalized and persecuted in society, somehow feels like it should make it a “no brainer” that we would treat the stranger/sojourner…

https://joelssermons.files.wordpress.com/2019/11/20191103sermon.mp3

Texts: Exodus 22:21-23; Exodus 23:9; Leviticus 19:33-34;  Matthew 5:1-10   

Speaker: Joel Miller 

The picture on the front of the bulletin is one of about 100 images made from etchings, included within the Martyrs Mirror.  For the uninitiated, this book is a 17th century compilation by a Dutch author.  Its full title is The Bloody Theater or Martyrs Mirror of the Defenseless Christians. Subtitle: Who Baptized Only Upon Confession of Faith, and Who Suffered and Died for the Testimony of Jesus, their Savior, From the Time of Christ to the Year AD 1660.  They just don’t make book titles like they used to.  The author was a Mennonite, a group taking its name from Dutch Anabaptist leader Menno Simons.  The Martyrs Mirror of the Defenseless Christians is a reference to one of the central teachings of Menno and Anabaptists of his kind.  That to be Christian is to embrace the nonviolent – or, as they would say, nonresistant – way of Jesus – the peacefulness spoken of in the Beatitudes –  thus giving up any claims to defend oneself with violence.  The large majority of the Martyrs Mirror focuses on the 16th century, when the early Anabaptists/Mennonites, the defenseless Christians, were a persecuted minority at the hands of other Christians within central Europe, mainly Holland/North Germany and Switzerland.  This copy lives in our church library, available for your perusal.

For the further uninitiated, every year on this Sunday, the first of November, in observance of All Saints and All Souls Days, I like to highlight a story from the Martyrs Mirror, or from our wider Anabaptist heritage.  There is a bit of irony in highlighting a saint within a tradition born out the critique of a tradition that reverenced the saints, but we’re all about walking that fine line between heritage and heresy,…

This is Part 4 of a 4 week series on Healthy Sexuality

Week 1: Our bodies – God’s image

Week 2: (Pro)Creative intimacy

Week 3: Healthy sex: Drawing the line(s)

Texts: John 17, 1 John 4, Revelation 21,22

Speaker: Joel Miller

There’s a beautiful scene in the movie “The Motorcycle Diaries.”  It takes place in a small hut of a leper colony in Peru, along the banks of the Amazon River.  The film is about the young Che Guevara in his early twenties when he was a medical student, before he became a revolutionary.  The story is based on the journal he kept on this trek he and his friend took up through South America.  One of the dynamics of the film is that the more he encounters the people of the land, their struggles, the more impassioned he becomes on their behalf.  This scene is a tender moment after he has been informed that a young woman, Silvia, is refusing to get a surgery that would save her life.  He finds Sylvia in the small hut, sits beside her bed, and begins talking with her.  She tells him that life is too much pain and she wants to be done with it.  During their conversation it’s clear that he’s having trouble breathing well.  She asks him what’s wrong.  He says, “I was born with bad lungs.”  Sylvia pauses, then says: “Is that why you’re a doctor?  Because you’re sick?”  He smiles and says maybe so.  The patient diagnoses the doctor’s inner motivations, and they continue their conversation, a human connection having been made.  Later we see Silvia getting her needed surgery.

Spiritual writer Henri Nouwen called this dynamic the wounded healer.  The healer is herself/himself wounded, and out of their own brokenness and vulnerability, becomes an agent of healing for others.

So, personally, if someone were to…