Seattle Mennonite Church Sermons

Both in her "wretched" distress and joyous confidence, Hannah prays. She brings her "hot, holy mess" to her God, and she also prophetically sings of God's joyous and just Jubilee vision before it is visible to her or realized in the world. Perhaps her witness can serve as an invitation to those us of us also feeling a hot mess, whether or not we ever get our happily ever a...

God is angry at the Hebrew people over their casting of a golden calf for false worship, mere months after God has liberated them from slavery. God is angry. SO angry, in fact, that God seems ready to destroy them all... again. God ultimately relents from punishment and destruction, thanks to Moses and remembered belovedness. But the whole story prompts Pastor Megan to ponder her/our desire for a...

The Mennonite congregations across Washington State worked together to create a celebration video in honor of Mennonite Central Committee turning 100 years old. Normally we would have gathered this weekend for the annual Mennonite Country Auction, but this year we had to get creative about how to connect and experience community with one another. Listen to our full worship service here, but when y...

As a powerful Egyptian ruler, Joseph welcomes his family back into relationship and care saying, "Even though you intended to do harm to me, God intended it for good."  Though many people interpret this to mean that terror or trauma experienced by people or creation is a part of a Divine plan.  But God's dream for humanity is not terror but love and connection.  It is dreamers like...

We joined with Mennonite World Conference congregations around the globe in celebrating Peace Sunday. According to 1 Corinthians, when one of us suffers all of us suffer, and when one of us rejoices all of us rejoice. This, we as global Mennonites were urged to recognize, is peacemaking as accompaniment and solidarity . We got to hear a powerful story from our own Sarah Augustine of solidarity wit...

We are back to the Narrative Lectionary, and we kick off this year's journey through the biblical text with a Genesis creation account. In it, humans are created from the earth, for the plants, intrinsically connected to one another, and intimately sculpted and in-spired by God our Maker. Almost as soon as these relationships with earth, humans, and God are crafted, there is fracturing of our...

We spend one final summer week with commentator Willie James Jennings, the Book of Acts, Paul imprisoned (yet again...), and the Holy Spirit calling Jesus-followers into common life and common space with one another. [sermon begins at 20:38]  -- Scripture:  Acts 28:16-31 Photo by Karim MANJRA on Unsplash -- Permission to podcast the music in this service obtained from One License with license #A-7...

In this last Sunday of hearing from in our summer series: Jerrell Williams, pastor of Salem Mennonite Church, a fellow Pacific Northwest Mennonite Conference congregation.  Jerrell takes us on a journey with Hagar into the wilderness, a journey in which she encounters and names God El Roi, the God-Who-Sees-Me.  This God who sees is also the God who walks with, who accompanies, who facilitates Haga...

"Disciples of Jesus should be desperate citizens. The desperate citizen will press their citizenship as far as possible for the sake of thwarting death and its agents." Pastor Amy explores the work of theologian Willie James Jennings and discusses the way our citizenship in nation should be engaged in relationship to our citizenship in the Reign of God.  Now is not the time to opt out, w...

We continue our summer worship series in which we listen to and learn from Black preachers. Today: Shannon Dycus, former pastor of First Mennonite Church in Indianapolis IN, and current Dean of Students at Eastern Mennonite University. We listened to Shannon’s 2016 sermon , delivered at Christian Theological Seminary, in which she in which she invites us to consider lament - Jesus’ and our own - i...

We continue our summer worship series in which we listen to and learn from Black preachers. Today: Austin Channing Brown, author of best-selling book, I'm Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness , and a powerful preacher. We listened to Austin's sermon , from the Evolving Faith Conference 2018, in which she revisits the story of Rizpah, whose sons were killed by King Davi...

Nothing about the yoke of intractable racism feels easy. Nothing about the burden of a runaway pandemic feels light. Is there any good news at all in these supposedly comforting words of Jesus? And what's the deal with all those words of judgment that *precede* the supposed comfort? Pastor Megan explores the good news of a well-placed "y'all" and steals her most memorable line...

We continue our summer worship series in which we listen to and learn from Black preachers. Today: Glen Guyton, the Executive Director of our denomination, Mennonite Church USA. He loves pie and is funny (though his wife may disagree). And he preaches a good word: When we flee from our path, or lock ourselves away in fear, God invites us back again and again ("I got you..."), and Jesus b...

 We begin our summer worship series in which we listen and learn from Black preachers.  We start with Rev. Dr. Otis Moss III, pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago.  With him we cry in lament for Ahmaud Arbery and so many other Black lives lost to the violence of white supremacy.  With him we reach back into the history, celebrating the ingenuity, genius and resilience of Black peop...

In our annual Interdependence Day worship - on the Sunday nearest the 4th - we again expose the lie of supposed independence, and instead claim the joy of justly-ordered mutual dependence and collective liberation! Willie James Jennings 's fiery, faithful commentary is our conversation partner as we engage the imprisoned Jesus-followers in the Book of Acts. We know that God's deepest des...

With our sibling congregations from around Pacific Northwest Mennonite Conference, we lament not being gathered together for our annual assembly and we celebrate with the prompt, "Thanks be to God".  Though, like the Psalmist in Psalms 9-10 we are experiencing the distress and anger of confronting injustice and oppression, we give thanks to God. Our Creator is a God of love and justice....

In the drama of Acts, the Holy Spirit is the main character and the plot is The Common. What IS "The Common"? In short, it's the spectacular joining of God's people which enables collective boldness, criminal discipleship, and shared life. Pastor Megan reflects on insights gleaned through engagement with Willie James Jennings ' magnificent commentary on the book of Acts as...

Blessings for graduates abound! Today's homily by Pastor Megan (starts at 19:00) is a pastoral blessing for high school graduates and ALL. About not losing heart... until we inevitably do... and then what?? Also: pudgie pies & inherited tradition, but you're going to have to listen to make that "infinitely more tasty" connection. What a joy to be led by Pastor Amy (starts a...

Today, we tented with some Black Anabaptist kindred: Osheta Moore, Jerrell Williams, and Glen Guyton. Sister Osheta called her "Dear White Peacemakers" following to show up for anti-racism in better ways than we are. Pastor Megan follows her lead: I'm sorry. I'm listening. I'm learning. Also: Mennonites & Police Abolitionism - if we don't have the ancestors we nee...

In the days of protest, riot and rage over police violence against black people and the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Tony McDade and many others, we gather for Pentecost.  We call on the Holy Spirit to come with power.  We call on the Holy Spirit to burn and breathe in us as we kindle a fire under white supremacy in ourselves and in our systems.  We remember that the Spirit breathes...

Death swallowed up in life? That might be a little hard to swallow, considering the mounting statistics or loss of beloved ones in our lives.  But when it comes down to it, what Paul is trying to communicate to the Corinthian church is how important our bodies are to God - in life and in death. That Jesus put on a human body to heal and feed and minister to other bodies like ours mattered to God t...

What can be said of 1 Corinthians 13, the "love chapter," that you haven't already heard at one hundred weddings? How might we refuse to dismiss it as just another smarmy love song, and instead live every more fully, beautifully, heartachingly into its sacred siren song of love incarnate? Listen in as we sing together, pray together, and hear a familiar Scripture anew in the prophet...

The early community of Jesus-followers in Corinth struggled with factionalism - over-identifying with particular leaders. Just as Paul urged his friends to re-center Jesus, we too seek to center our collective call to discern how to walk the Jesus Way together in the particularities of our time and our place. It's Leadership Discernment season at SMC, and the very good news is this: we are a...

What does the Thessalonian community have to do with popular broadways musical Hamilton? Like the musical's tribute to the battle of Yorktown, Paul's arrival in Thessalonica shook up the established Jewish community and turned their world upside down.  Unlike the American revolutionaries, Paul calls the new believers to a revolution of non-violent love and justice. Knowing all about what...

Joy infuses our worship and singing together; longing ignites our prayers. Pastor Megan's homily explores how biblical stories that seem to equate healing with miraculous physical cures, at best confound the deeper and more beautiful complexity of what we know about healing, and at worst cause great harm. At first glance our story from Acts 3 appears to be a transactional healing story (in th...