Text: Genesis 4:1-17; Luke 24:36b-48

Practice resurrection.  This is the theme we have chosen for our Easter season as a way to remind ourselves that Easter is not about celebrating just once a year the new life that resurrection shows us is possible.  Rather, we remember that Easter is a season, a way of life that holds every moment in the light of the new life that is possible in God. 

It is easy to see why Easter falls in the early spring.  It’s not hard to imagine the possibility of new life when we are surrounded by both daffodils and people bursting from the dark places that have sheltered them through the cold, hard winter. 

But if Easter is a call for us to practice resurrection in every moment, what do we do with the moments that don’t feel like spring?  What does it mean to practice resurrection in places of deep suffering?  What new life is possible when our bodies and our souls are marked by the wounds of violence and abuse? 

Specifically this morning I want to spend some time thinking through these questions by looking at a topic that has been in the forefront of Mennonite news in the last few months.  For those of you for whom the name John Howard Yoder means very little or nothing at all, suffice to say that Yoder is one of the most important pacifist theologians and ethicists in the world.  For me, personally, his most famous work, The Politics of Jesus, has been immensely influential in allowing me to see not only that there is a political dimension to Jesus’ life and teachings but also that this politics of Jesus was one of nonviolence.  In a world that was and still is in desperate need of strong critiques of the…

Text: Mark 16:1-11

Christ is Risen.  Christ is Risen indeed.

I’m going to let you in on a little secret, which may not be much of a secret.  Today, Easter Sunday, preachers and congregations around the world will proclaim the resurrection, that Christ is risen, that Christ is risen indeed, but we barely know what we’re talking about.

I say barely because we kind of know what we’re talking about.  We’re familiar with the witness of the early apostles, those who knew Jesus when he was alive and encountered him after his death.  We’ve heard Peter’s sermon from Acts 10, when he told a group of Gentiles how Jesus of Nazareth went around preaching peace and doing good and healing all who were oppressed by harmful spirits and that we was put to death on a cross but that God raised him on the third day and allowed him to appear to Peter and others who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead.  We’ve read Paul’s writings, someone who never knew Jesus when he was alive, never met the guy, and who in his letters to these little communities he was founding hardly ever refers to anything Jesus said or did, but who had a personal encounter with the risen Christ that turned his world upside down and transformed the way he saw all of reality.  We may have some familiarity with the creeds that the church formulated in its early centuries, putting its central convictions into poetry.  The Nicene Creed, which many churches still recite weekly, says:

For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate; he suffered death and was buried.
On the third day he rose again in accordance with the Scriptures;
he ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father.

We know that…

Text: Mark 11:1-11

There’s something wonderfully anticlimactic about Mark’s telling of Jesus’ dramatic entry into Jerusalem.  It all begins about two miles outside the city, in the town of Bethany, where Jesus and his companions will be staying throughout the week of Passover.  It was a time when the city was flooded with pilgrims, all the homes and hotels in the city at full capacity.  Jesus and his crew had neglected to meet the online early register deadline, so they’re stuck at one of those outlier hotels that some youth end up in at Mennonite conventions, when they have to take the shuttle back and forth to the convention center.  But it’s all good.  They’ve got friends in Bethany – hanging out in the home of a guy named Simon the Leper.  Maybe catching up with Mary and Martha and Lazarus who also lived in town.  And given all that’s going to go down in the city in the coming week, it will be nice to have a quieter -and safer – place to escape to at the end of each day.

Pilate had perhaps already made his dramatic entry into the city, coming down from his headquarters on the Mediterranean in Caesarea as he did every Passover.  Not because he was interested in celebrating the festival of the Jews liberation from slavery out of the Egyptian empire.  He was there as a not-so-subtle reminder that they were firmly back under the watchful eye of a larger, more powerful empire, the Romans.  Not quite slaves, but not quite free.  Like other leading figures of the time, governors and generals, he would have received quite a ceremonial greeting, which could have included the waving of branches and the spreading of cloaks along the path for him and his entourage.  Pilate was doing…

Text: John 12:20-33

One of the things in the back of my mind this Lent has been wondering whether we are having too much fun.  It can be one of the more somber times of year, but this Praying with Creation theme has been lively.  Personally, it’s not every week I get to use some of the sermon prep time to brush up on the history of the domestication of cattle, or look at images of ancient cave paintings or a huge cute kitten painted on the remaining wall of a bombed out building.  The fact that various children want to come up and play with our worship visuals only confirms that there is an underlying stream of joyfulness going on.  It’s good inviting all these creatures and elements of creation into our hermeneutical community.  Last week Mark even managed to find a way to make serpents welcome guests, teaching us their wisdom, with their need to shed their outer skin, which doesn’t grow, to make room for the rest of their continuously growing  selves.  Throw in insightful daily devotionals from different members, a wildly successful comforter knotting party, and a much deserved party celebrating Paul Swartzentruber’s long service to the congregation, and the season has been an all-around good time.

And now, on cue with the official arrival of spring, warming weather, and the annual time of inflated aspirations that this year we will plant our best garden ever and it will be awesome, we turn our attention toward seeds.

It doesn’t take long reading into John’s gospel to recognize that John is…different than the other three gospels.  Among John’s many differences is that one of Jesus’ main teaching styles, the telling of parables, is all but absent.  Those earthy teachings that draw wisdom from the natural world.  John – What…

Texts: Numbers 21:4-9; John 3:14-21

In the last seven months of serving here at Columbus Mennonite, I have been asked the same question a number of different times, “Do you ever get tired of being the gay pastor?”  Even though I don’t think I’ve given the same answer to any of the many people who have asked this question, I think I’ve finally decided on an answer that feels right to me.  So here and now, once and for all, hear my reply: Do I ever get tired of being the gay pastor?  It sure beats the alternative. 

You see, I used to answer this question in a lot of different ways because I constantly found myself trying to live in the tension between, on the one hand, recognizing that being the “gay pastor” is something that is immensely meaningful and life-giving in important ways, not just for me but for lots of other people.  I don’t ever want to downplay the fact that I believe what Columbus Mennonite has done in calling me to serve as your pastor is part of a movement towards more just relationships with the LGBTQ community.  It is truly something to celebrate.

But on the other hand, there are lots of instances where I wish I could cast off that identity.  For one thing, it’s not like I come to work everyday and sit at my gay desk and answer my gay phone and use my gay computer to plan my gay Sunday School lessons.  Being the gay pastor is something to celebrate, but it’s also something very ordinary. 

And there are plenty of other instances where I wish I didn’t have to be the “gay pastor”: Every time I feel the need to justify my existence in yet another religious setting.  Every time another person asks me,…