Sermons

Essentials: Hope, Peace, Joy, Love, Immanuel, Epiphany

 

The video above includes the full service, except for the time for sharing.

Permission to podcast/stream the music in this service obtained through One License with license A-727859.

Sermon | God with us, Us with God

Text: Luke 1:39-56

Speaker: Joel Miller

In April 1977 a group of mothers gathered in the Plaza de Mayo outside the presidential palace in Buenos Aires, Argentina.  It was a demonstration of women whose adult children had gone missing under the current military dictatorship.  They demanded the release of their loved ones but were instead expelled from the public square. 

This was the first public action of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo.  Later that year they  decided to join the annual pilgrimage to Our Lady of Lujan, a Basilica with a statue of the Virgin Mary.  They wore white headscarves with the names and birth dates of their missing children along with the words “Aparicion con Vida,” “Alive reappearance.” ...

 

The video above includes the full service, except for the time for sharing.

Permission to podcast/stream the music in this service obtained through One License with license A-727859.

 

 

 

 

The video above includes the full service, except for the time for sharing.

Permission to podcast/stream the music in this service obtained through One License with license A-727859.

 

Sermon: An essential story 
Text: Luke 1:26-38

Speaker: Joel Miller

Song: STS 11 No wind at the window, v. 1
"No wind at the window, no knock at the door; no light from the lampstand, no foot on the floor; no dream born of tiredness, no ghost raised by fear: just an angel and a woman and a voice in her ear."

In this Advent season focused on the essentials, we have now reached the essential story.  Not that the others aren’t important – Jesus calling to be watchful for the coming of the Human One, John the Baptist’s claim that one more powerful than he is coming, the hopeful words of the prophets Isaiah and Micah, even the birth of Jesus – these are all part of the holy drama of the season.  But for any of those prophetic words to be fulfilled, for Jesus to be born in the first place,...

 

The video above includes the full service, except for the time for sharing.

Permission to podcast/stream the music in this service obtained through One License with license A-727859.

Essentials: Hope, Peace, Joy, Love, Immanuel, Epiphany

Prelude

Welcome 

Land Acknowledgement 

Call to Worship

VT 281 | Joyful Is the Dark

Advent Candle Lighting 

Children’s Time 

Offering/Dedication and Pastoral Prayer

VT 240 | Joy to the World 

Scripture | Isaiah 12:2-6

Special Music 

O Come, O Come, Immanuel | Jacqui and Ryan Hoke 

It Came Upon a Midnight Clear | Joel Call, Tom Blosser, Steve Rolfe, Karl Helmuth

Mary had a Baby | Phil Hart and friends 

Children’s Christmas Program | Acts of Angels

VT 412 | My Soul Cries Out 

Scripture | Philippians 4:4-7

Special Music

Still, Still, Still | Abbie Miller, Katie Graber, Ivan and Nina Graber-Nofziger, Karl Helmuth

Silent Night | Katrina and Matthew Brown 

O Holy Night | Debra and Galen Martin, Sarah Martin 

VT 229 | Unexpected and...

 

The video above includes the full service, except for the time for sharing.

Permission to podcast/stream the music in this service obtained through One License with license A-727859.

 

Sermon | Peace and release 

Texts: Malachi 3:1-4; Luke 3:1-14

Speaker: Joel Miller

 

It’s the second Sunday of Advent and the candle of peace has been added to the candle of hope.  For those of us who identify as Mennonite, or at least Menno-curious, this is a familiar theme. Mennonites have long believed that peace and peacemaking, rather than being an optional extra for Christian living, is essential to the gospel itself.  Jesus models for us the kind of peaceful humanity we both aspire toward and can never quite reach.  A peace-centered faith has all kinds of implications in how we relate with our militarized national government, the international community, and immigrants and refugees who enter our country; where we invest money; advocacy for ending the death penalty; our relationship with creation and our neighbors and ourselves.  Kind of everything.  We believe in...

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