Texts: Matthew 13:31-35, 44-48; Luke 17:20-21Speaker: Mark Rupp

The Kin-dom of God is like…a wise Gardener who had many children. While these children were very young, the Gardener went away, leaving three stewards in charge. 

One of these stewards was very smart and had spent a lot of time learning from the wise Gardener, so this steward taught the children all the things the Gardener had said about how to care for the Garden. Some of the children became like this steward, and over time they even began studying the things the first steward had written about the Gardener. And they declared this to be the most important work of tending the Garden. 

The second steward was very passionate and creative, spending lots of time marveling at the wisdom of the Gardener and the wonder of the Garden. This steward wrote marvelous songs to sing in the Garden and created rituals to help the children remember the Gardener. Some of the children became like this steward, and over time they wrote even more songs and created new beautiful ways to remember and honor the Gardener. And they declared this to be the most important work of tending the Garden. 

The third steward was very strong of body and skillful with the work of the hands, and used this strength to build structures to support the growth of the Garden in the ways the Gardener had done. Some of the children became like this steward, adding their strength to the work of building up the Garden, and over time they added new structures to support its growth and walls to protect its fruit. And they declared this to be the most important work of tending the Garden. 

As time went by, the Gardener remained gone and the three original stewards passed on their wisdom to the…

Sermon: Katelyn Amstutz

Ruth 1:16-18; Acts 4:32-35

Once upon a time, there was a girl. This girl lived with her father and stepmother, but her stepmother was jealous of her great beauty. As the girl grew up she became even more beautiful, and her stepmother mistreated her. Something happened between them; perhaps the girl was banned from going to the ball, perhaps she was killed by an apple, but the girl needed to be rescued, and there was a handsome prince who showed up just as she needed him, who married her, took her away from her family, and they had children and lived happily ever after.

My freshman year of college at Bluffton University I took an advanced writing class on Fairytale literature. Professor Susan Carpenter kindly let me and my best friend into the class despite neither of us fulfilling any of the requirements. At the time, I was obsessed with fairytales; I loved reading original fairytales, retellings of fairytales, and rewriting them. The fact that I’ve begun this sermon with a fairytale should maybe tell you that I haven’t moved on from that. What I learned from Susan Carpenter was that fairytales are always about the fears and anxieties of the people telling them: warnings about being careful or kind, about the grossness of going through puberty, but also reassuring children who lost their mother to childbirth that their stepmothers might feel evil, but their lives too could have a happy ending. Fairytales are also about the possible: what could be, and what we can imagine the world to be like.

I’m sure we delved into it at the time, but I didn’t think until later about what kind of anxieties caused the happy ending my beloved fairytales proposed to be a nice heterosexual marriage and children.

Earlier this year I read…

Dan Halterman

Joel in 2017 opened a sermon describing himself as “a pastor in the Mennonite creek of the Christian stream of the human river of spiritual wisdom traditions.” 

Even though Google is unaware of any “Mennonite River,” “Mennonite Creek,” or “Mennonite Ditch,” I’ll get back to this.

Matthew 5:45 says God causes his rain to fall on the just and on the unjust.  That’s you and me.  I’m taking liberties to commingle that about rain and the fates of seeds in the Parable of the Sower:

The Lord causes his rain to fall on the just and the unjust…that’s us.  Some falls on leaves or other surfaces and promptly evaporates back into the atmosphere.  Some falls on hard surfaces, roofs, parking lots, roads, and quickly runs off, cleansing the surfaces of accumulated oil and gas from vehicles, dirt, dust, animal feces and animal carcasses, litter – icky stuff – and transfers it directly to streams as the so-called “first flush.”  Some falls on vegetated land, dissolving nutrients in the soil waiting to be shared with plant roots and rises to the light again through the wonder of photosynthesis that lifts soil water through capillary action – an inch above the soil into a radish leaf or hundreds of feet to the top of a giant redwood.  Other water mingles with its kin in the moist soil and percolates further by gravity, being cleansed, and becomes ground water that may be pumped through a well supplying a home or multiple huge wells feeding a public water system serving Dayton and Montgomery County.  Other water may encounter an impermeable layer and emerge to light again later as a spring or seep pulled by gravity to join a stream – with the other water that the Lord has equally shared with the just and the unjust. …

Let’s Review: Community, Cross, (New) Creation**Texts: Mark 1:14-20;  Matthew 16:24-26; 2 Corinthians 5:16-18Speaker: Joel Miller

There’s a story in John’s gospel where religious leaders bring a woman caught in adultery to Jesus and ask what he thinks should be done.  It was a test.  According to a strict reading of the laws of Moses, she should be stoned to death.  But Jesus had been preaching a message of mercy.  So if he says the law should be followed, death penalty, he contradicts himself.  And if he says she should be shown mercy, he contradicts the law.  Faced with this dilemma, Jesus does what any of us would do.  He stalls.  This is how John tells it: “Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground.  When they kept questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, ‘Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.’”  And they all just leave, “one by one,” it says, until it’s just Jesus and the woman. 

There are all kinds of reasons to love this story, but for a sermon that is supposed to be a review of the New Testament, it has two especially key features.  One is that this story was a floater in the early church.  Many of the oldest manuscripts of John don’t include it.  Others put it in a different location in John.  A few even have it in Luke.  So, within that oral culture, this was likely the last story about Jesus to find its place in the writings of the New Testament.  It’s the final statement of the whole.

And speaking of writing, this story has the only mention in the gospels of Jesus doing just that – writing.  We have these 27 different written documents that make up…

Let’s Review: Creation, Exodus, Exile Texts: Psalm 19:1-6; Deuteronomy 24:17-22; Jeremiah 29:4-7Speaker: Joel Miller

It’s been a while since I’ve been in school, but I do remember that the end of the year is a time of review.  To learn what you learned, as some teachers say.  Or, as a much-loved seminary professor would ask at the end of each semester: “What do you want to remember well?” 

As Chris mentioned in the opening, this transition from school year to summer corresponds with a transition in the church calendar – from Easter season to Ordinary Time.  And, in our case, from the Narrative Lectionary over which we traced the full arc of scripture, to a less structured summer. 

So, let’s review.  This week is focused on the Old Testament or First Testament.  Next week we’ll review the New Testament, or Second Testament. 

Rather than sprint back through the story, I want to make a few bridges into our present by highlighting some themes.  For today, how about three?  Three big storylines that weave through the Hebrew Scriptures which continue to weave through our story:  Creation, Exodus, and Exile. How might remembering these well relate with living well?     

Read/Sing: Psalm 19:1-6

Creation is, in many ways, about beginnings.  “In the beginning Elohim created the heavens and the earth.  A wind from Elohim hovered over the face of the waters.” That’s the opening of Genesis, the beginning of the Bible.  It goes on to speak of seven days of creation, including a day of Sabbath rest without which creation is incomplete.  Elohim speaks the world into being, and then speaks blessing over Sabbath.  It is a poetic rather than scientific telling of our origins, but there is a delightful overlap with our current understanding of evolution and the way Genesis 1 portrays an increasingly complex and diverse world, each…