Sermons

Worship | Voices Together and the worlds worship creates | October 24

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 Manuscript

Worship and Names for God

Texts: Genesis 1:1-5; Genesis 3:8-10; Isaiah 42:13-16; John 3:1-5

Speaker: Joel Miller

The American theologian Marcus Borg liked to say: “Tell me your image of God, and I will tell you your politics.”

Mary Daly, an early feminist theologian, wrote: “If God is male, then the male is God.” (Beyond God the Father, 1973).

The writer Anne Lamott proposed: “You can safely assume you have created God in your own image when it turns out God hates all the same people you do.” (Bird by Bird, 1994).

What these writers are naming is something we already know on a gut level: The images and language we use for God matter. They shape us from a young age and follow us into adulthood.

Very few if any of us have a blank slate when it comes to God-language. We’re either repeating, rejecting, or...

Worship | Voices Together and the worlds worship creates | October 17

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 | Worship Forms Community

Text | Mark 10:35-45

Speaker | Mark Rupp

I have a very vivid memory from when I was in High School and got the opportunity to attend some kind of youth leadership seminar. Now, I don’t remember anything about what the speaker had to say, but what has always stuck with me was one of the illustrations he used. He had the entire assembly stand up, then he gave pitches to have us sing a major chord, starting with low voices and building on up.

I don’t think this seminar was specifically for choir kids, but I do think it’s scientifically proven that all the best leaders have at least some musical ability.

The group was fairly large, and so the chord we built was really nice and full, and we all sort of basked in this unexpected moment of harmony. But that wasn’t the end of the illustration. Once the...

Worship | Voices Together and the worlds worship creates | October 10

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 | Worship and Justice

Texts: Micah 6:6-8; Mark 15:16-24

Speaker: Joel Miller

If you came to church this morning needing some good news, here you go: The Ohio legislature is close to abolishing the death penalty in our state.

If you checked in to worship feeling isolated and disconnected from community, then consider this: We are one of many participants in the Death Penalty Abolition Week for Ohio Faith Communities. As the Cleveland Jewish News reports: “The faith communities involved represent a broad spectrum of beliefs, including Judaism, Sikhism, Paganism, Zoroastrianism, Catholicism, interfaith communities, and several Christian denominations like Methodists, Episcopalians, the United Church of Christ, Evangelical congregations and the Mennonites.”
Something interesting has to be going on when Mennonites end up on the same list as Pagans, Evangelicals, and Zoroastrians.

Throw in Pope Francis’s 2018 edit to the Catholic Catechism and we’re really in business:

“The Church teaches, in the light...

Worship | Voices Together and the worlds worship creates | October 3

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 - Voices Together and the Worlds Worship Creates

Speakers: Joel Miller and Katie Graber

Texts: Isaiah 42:10-11 (VT 106); Revelation 7:9-12 (VT 110)

Joel – For a while now we’ve wanted to have a worship series featuring our new hymnal. For a while now, conditions have been less than ideal for a full communal experience of these new, familiar, and thoughtfully reworded, songs and liturgies.

After several postponed attempts, we’re going for it.

Our last hymnal, the blue one, Hymnal a Worship Book, served the church well for the last 28 years. If you want to get dramatic and deep time about it, we could say the last hymnal, since its publication in 1992, brought us through the end of the 20th century, into the new millennium. And now Voices Together has been conceived in that new millennium, born in the pandemic,...

Worship | Soul Work and the Great Work: Transitions and Ritual | September 26

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.

Order of Worship | September 26

Prelude

Welcome

Names and Naming

Land Acknowledgement

Call to Worship

Come, let us gather for worship.

From every corner and all the myriad paths we find ourselves on,

Let us gather now to praise the God who walks among us.

God of every season, guide our steps.

Come those from the West,

where sunsets mark the close of day, the transition into rest,

and a letting go of all the good that could not be done.

God of every season, guide our steps.

Come those from the North,

where stars point the way through uncertain paths,

darkness offers space for contemplation,

God of every season, guide our steps.

Come those from...

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