Text: Esther

When do you stop being a child and start being something else?

It’s a question cultures around the world have found important to answer.  Throughout time, human groups have created practices and rituals to mark that otherwise fuzzy boundary between childhood and adulthood.  And it’s done for the benefit of the young person and the community.  We need to know together that the child has become something else.  Childhood was a time of dependence, of protection and growth under the careful and loving watch of family.  Adulthood is a time of independence, increased responsibility and leadership, a time when one will ultimately grow into being a protector, a caring presence for the following generations.

Our culture has developed a third category of development between childhood and adulthood.  Adolescence.  It’s a period of tremendous growth and formation when you are no longer a child, yet not quite an adult.  So the question for us remains: when do you stop being a child, and start being something else?

Our congregation has created its own Coming of Age ritual to mark this transition out of childhood.   We’re in the middle of it right now.  This year we honor the Coming of Age of Elise, Gideon, Stella, and Dakota.  We’ve been preparing for this.  You helped create parts of the service.  A number of us have written blessings and naming of gifts for you.  Those have been compiled in notebooks that you’ll soon receive.  You’ve been matched with a mentor who will walk with you in the upcoming years.

Our hope is that you can experience today as a marker in your life.  A boundary marker.  On one side of the boundary is childhood.  Today we celebrate your cross over into adolescence.

As people of faith who value the role of community, we recommit ourselves to…

Text: James 1:19-27

You must understand this, my beloved: let everyone be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger; for your anger does not produce God’s righteousness. Therefore rid yourselves of all sordidness and rank growth of wickedness, and welcome with meekness the implanted word that has the power to save your souls.

But be doers of the word, and not merely hearers who deceive themselves.  For if any are hearers of the word and not doers, they are like those who look at themselves in a mirror; for they look at themselves and, on going away, immediately forget what they were like.  But those who look into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and persevere, being not hearers who forget but doers who act—they will be blessed in their doing.

If any think they are religious, and do not bridle their tongues but deceive their hearts, their religion is worthless.  Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world.

(Text of sermon unavailable.)

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https://joelssermons.files.wordpress.com/2017/01/20170115sermon.mp3           

Text: John 15:1-12

At a young age we’re taught about the five senses: sight, smell, taste, touch, and hearing.  We’ve come to speak of a sixth sense as intuitive perceptions, intuition.  There was also a pretty good movie called “The Sixth Sense” way back in 1999.  It had a surprise twist at the ending that my dull sixth sense wasn’t expecting the first time I saw it.  Although I was expecting it the second time.

Joshua Cooper Ramo is now proposing a seventh sense, essential for survival in our time.  Last year he wrote a book called The Seventh Sense.  The catchy subtitle is “Power, Fortune, and Survival in the Age of Networks.”  In an increasingly networked and interconnected world, Ramo suggests that a seventh sense is “the ability to look at any object and see the way it is changed by connection.” (Quoted HERE)  That’s the seventh sense.  Sensing, perceiving the web of relationships embedded in everything and everyone we come into contact with.  Ramo is especially interested in how this applies on the global scale to politics, terrorist cells, networks of trade and finance, and, of course, how technology and social networking change the dynamics of power and the ability to spread ideas and organize.

I’ve only read a couple reviews and summaries of the book and not the book itself, so can’t say a whole lot more about it.  But I imagine that if each of us were to exercise our seventh sense when it comes to something as simple as the clothes we’re wearing this morning, we would be mindful of where the cotton in our shirts might have been grown, the engineers and firms that designed the machines that separated the useable parts of the plant, where in the world and…

Texts: Matthew 3:13-17, Isaiah 42:1-9

This is seven brief meditations on the lectionary scriptures, baptism, the start of a new year, and our family’s Christmas vacation travels to and from Kansas.  Not necessarily in that order.

1. When presented with the fact of the matter, Columbus Mennonite young people grow curious as to why we’re told so little about Jesus’ growing up years. He’s born, he’s visited by shepherds and magi, and then boom, he’s a 30 year old getting baptized. Christmas is barely over, the curbs of Oakland Park Ave were lined with dried out Christmas trees for pick up just a few days ago,  and now, boom, it’s Baptism of our Lord Sunday.  The story of Jesus in the temple at age 12 talking with the elders hardly feels like enough to fill the gap.  What was he doing all those years, anyway?  It’s hard to imagine that learning the carpentry trade with his step-father Joseph, and studying Torah occupied every waking hour of his time.  So how do you get from the baby in the manger to the man who came to John by the Jordan River and requested baptism?  What all went into that young person, that prepared him for the life he was about to lead?  What experiences? what struggles? what relationships? what disappointments?  what revelations? Inquiring minds would like to know.

2. When you pack your swimsuits for a family trip to Kansas in the dead of winter you might as well use them. Having not used them, you figure it would be fun to stay at a hotel with an indoor pool on your way home.  When your two main criteria for finding a hotel online are a) has an indoor pool, and b) as cheap as possible, you know you’re rolling the dice.  After…

Speaker: Sarah Werner

Texts: Isaiah 60:1-6; Matthew 2:1-12

A few weeks ago I attended a seminar in New Haven, Connecticut called “The Gospel of Peace in Dynamic Engagement with the Peace of Islam.” It was led by David Shenk, a Mennonite scholar and missionary with a lifetime of experience dialoguing with Muslims throughout the world. I thought about sharing some of the academic sorts of things I learned about Islamic theology and practice, but I would encourage you instead to read about this on your own. Understanding the beliefs and practices of our Muslim neighbors is important and something we all need to do, but I want to offer a more personal reflection this morning. What stayed with me the most from my week wasn’t the history or theology of Islam. It was the spirit of hospitality, new ideas of what the witness of Christ means, and what is at stake for Muslims and Christians here and throughout the world.

This is also a very appropriate topic to delve into on this Sunday when we celebrate the Epiphany of Christ. Epiphany comes from the Greek word epiphaneia, which means “revelation” or “manifestation.” The light of Christ is manifested in the star of Bethlehem seen by the magi. Matthew tells us that these wise men have journeyed “from the East,” drawn by a star that they interpret as signaling the birth of the Messiah. Though they weren’t Jews, or even Israelites, they understood the star to be a signal of change in the world and they wanted to be a part of it.

The story of the magi is often interpreted as an indication that the gospel is for the Gentiles as well as the Jews, for all the nations. The Matthew text hints back to this passage of Isaiah. Isaiah promises that people will come…