Sermons

Worship | Voices Together and the worlds worship creates | November 7

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
Hans Denck: Polarization, Pestilence, and Divine Love
Texts: Matthew 5:1-10; 1 John 4:7-8

Speaker: Joel Miller

January 21, 1525 – That’s the date most frequently cited as the beginning of the Anabaptist movement. That’s the day a group of mostly young dissidents met in a home in Zurich, Switzerland. It was a tumultuous time – religiously, politically, economically. After discussion and prayer, this small group decided this was the day each of them was going to be baptized – re-baptized. Their infant baptism had joined them to a church they could no longer claim as their own. It was their conviction that this second baptism, as free-willing adults, was a public statement of their commitment to follow the way of the gospel and to live out its economic, political, and religious implications.

That very same day, January 21, 1525, over 250 miles away in Nuremberg, Germany, a young headmaster at a...

Worship | Voices Together and the worlds worship creates | October 31

CMC Sunday Worship 10.31.21 from Gwen Reiser on Vimeo.

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 | Worship and Visual Art

Prelude

Welcome

Land Acknowledgement | VT 878

Call to Worship | VT 13 | Isaiah 2:3-4

Peace Candle

VT 44 | We Long to Know Her

Children’s Time

Offering/Dedication Prayer

Scripture | Psalm 19:1-10

Reflections on Worship and Visual Art

VT 12 | Tree of Life by SaeJin Lee

VT 11 | Mountain of God

VT 104 | Sing the Goodness by Meg Harder

VT 103 | Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee

VT 230 | We Owe Them a Complicated Debt by Rachel Epp Buller

VT 229 | Unexpected...

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...

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