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…

This is Part 3 of a 4 week series on Healthy Sexuality

Week 1: Our bodies – God’s image

Week 2: (Pro)Creative intimacy

Week 4: Sexuality and spirituality: When all is one

https://joelssermons.files.wordpress.com/2019/10/20191020sermon.mp3

Texts: Songs of Songs, 1 Corinthians 13:4-7

Speaker: Joel Miller

GK Chesterton once wrote: “Art, like morality, consists in drawing the line somewhere.” (1)

In the fine print of a pastor’s job description, so fine it cannot be seen by the naked eye but is surely there, is the expectation that, should the pastor ever be asked privately or need to comment publicly about sex, that the pastor steer the conversation toward lines.  Lines that differentiate the good from the bad.  Lines that should not be crossed.

I don’t know if that’s part of the CMC pastor’s job description.  Maybe some of you will let me know after this sermon!  Either way, I’m going to take the bait.  As long as I can talk about lines the way GK Chesterton does: “Art, like morality, consists in drawing the line somewhere.”

In other words, what makes healthy sexuality healthy as opposed to unhealthy?

If you’re already starting to get a bit nervous, now might be a good time to take a large bite of chocolate.

I think it’s fair to say that the church’s main contribution to the sex conversation has been one big heavy line.

That line, in case you need reminded, can be summarized as: Celibacy, no sex, for singles.  Sex only within marriage.  That’s one way of wielding the line.  The line is a rule.  It values covenant and the commitment of marriage vows.  Check.  It’s clear, kind of, because how far is too far?  It’s easy to remember.  Check, check.  It elevates marriage as the only relationship in which sex is appropriate/good/not sinful.  In itself it has nothing to say about what might make for a…

This is Part 2 of a 4 week series on Healthy Sexuality

Week 1: Our bodies – God’s image

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

Week 4: Sexuality and spirituality: When all is one

Texts: Readers theater excerpts from Genesis 2, Ruth, John 11

Speaker: Mark Rupp

Welcome friends.  Welcome family.  Welcome neighbors and guests.  Welcome sisters, brothers, cousins, aunties, tios, and omas.  Welcome lovers.  Welcome husbands, wives, partners, significant others.  Welcome people who are straight.  Welcome people who are L-G-B-T-Queer.  Welcome people for whom “it’s complicated” best describes their relationships.

Welcome all, to this, our second week of a four-part worship series on healthy sexuality.

I want to thank Joel for naming in his sermon last week the reality that too often these sorts of conversations in the Church have been dominated by straight people talking about the sexualities of queer people, dissecting every detail and treating the lives of real people as if they were nothing more than an “issue” to be resolved.

But we are all sexual people.  None of us can distance ourselves from the “issue” any more than we can separate our mind from our heart from our body.  We are all in need of good, theological discourse about our bodies, relationships, sex, and desire, because sexuality is about a lot more than just what we do with our genitals.  It’s about how we relate to the world around us, how we understand our identities, how we express our desires.

And we are in desperate need of good theological conversations about sexuality because for too long the Church has been one of the chief purveyors of unhealthy, damaging, and even death-dealing notions of sexuality.

So what does a healthy, life-giving conversation about sexuality in the Church sound like?

The High School Sunday School class is doing a series concurrent with this worship…