Seattle Mennonite Church Sermons

God delights in God’s playground - all of creation is meant to be enjoyed and to participate in the purpose of the rest of creation.  This sermon is a celebration of all that God has created, called good, and invited us to participate in. Sermon begins at minute marker 7:22 Psalm 104 Resources BibleWorm podcast  Image: El Rio de Luz (The River of Light) 1877 Voices Together, Hymn 539, God Speaks t...

Brisa Peacock from Camp CAMREC shared a sermon as part of our series on Creation Care, offering a glimpse into how SMC's and WMF's relationship with CAMREC continues to contribute to the region's stewardship of land and waterways. She also reflected on how CAMREC's programs and hospitality efforts are propelling our neighbors, other Churches and faith groups, and schools not on...

Creation itself, the morning stars and divine beings and whatnot – they were celebrating the foundations of the world itself before humans were even a thing.  God and nature itself celebrated and called things good before human beings were even here.  There’s a bigger picture here that requires removing ourselves from the center of our small, individual universes, and calls us to listen.  So this...

Cultures and traditions - including religions - all have multiple creation stories.  Today we hear one from our scriptures told in Genesis, and our sermon shares another one - in the form of the children’s book “Big Momma Makes the World” by Phyllis Root. Sermon begins at minute marker 8:32 Genesis 1:1-2:4a Resources Image: https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/big-momma-makes-the-world_phyllis-root/78096...

Paul binds the physical body with resurrection, a holistic change from life as we have structured and understood it to that which is eternal as Jesus' life, death and resurrection gifted us. Our faith is intricately tied to a belief in the unbelievable while living and loving as Jesus did, attending to the needs of bodies in the here and now. Bodies matter now and in a future we can not know...

There is one church for every prisoner in Washington State. Chris Hoke from One Parish One Prisoner brings reflections on the challenges and blessings of working with churches and prisoners. Sermon begins at minute marker 4:16 John 11:33-44 Resources One Parish One Prisoner Image: Christ standing on the gates of hell Hymn:  Voices Together, 348 Come Ye Faithful Raise the Strain, Text: John of Dama...

Relationships are a primary nourishment and fuel for a transformed community.  Paul wrote letters only AFTER he engaged in relationship making.  His work was able to flourish because he seeded intentional relationships with people that developed trust.  How might we choose to nourish relationships in our lives, with our neighbors, with our community? How might we use Paul as an example to develop...

Just as the Jewish community at Thessalonica was disrupted by the arrival and teachings of Paul and Silas, so, too, are we disrupted by things we often don’t feel prepared for.  What does it mean to look disruption in the eye and experience it as an opening for Jesus to enter our lives anew? Sermon begins at 5:03 Acts 17:1-9 Hymn: Voices Together, 553, How Many Times We Start Again. Text: Thomas H...

The crippled man and the disciples both experience surprise and interruption in the norms of what they think might happen for them this day.  The man expected the same - people offering him coins or ignoring him.  It has been the same day in and day out for years.  Peter and John expected to continue in their grieving and confusion at the loss of their mentor and friend Jesus, and planned to go to...

In the aftermath of Jesus’ death and resurrection, Jesus offers comfort and presence to his disciples. He continues to remind them he has not come to establish a nation state, rather that the disciples would be the ones to carry forward Jesus’ mission. Requirements for this include more waiting, receiving the power of the Holy Spirit. Devotion to prayer may be what will prepare them for what’s nex...

Jesus lives an increasingly life of truth-telling to civic and religious authorities. All the while he enfolds the marginalized and oppressed into a just and merciful embrace of care and love, calling disciples to do the same. Up to his impending death disciples cannot grasp what this will cost him. A woman enacting honor and love provides Jesus’ followers, then and now, with an example of unbridl...

News of wars, natural disaster, and human suffering greets us every evening, without fail. Where is God in this? Does God not see? Jesus warns his disciples of the temple’s destruction, and worse, yet to come. Indeed, God in Christ does see what human beings are doing to one another. It is we who cannot stand to look, listen, or respond to the fires, the famines, the faces of suffering around us....

Struck by Mark’s mention that Jesus sits across from the treasury box in the Temple, observing HOW each person gives their money, Pastor Megan ponders what Jesus might observe in how SHE lives with her own money (and for this Way walked together, how WE live with ours). Would Jesus be glad that the widow gives her last mite and has nothing to live on, or might Jesus be praising the widow for revea...

Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem is a deliberate act of political confrontation with the Roman Empire’s powers-that-be. After casing the mostly deserted late evening Temple, he makes plans to return the next day to make a royal mess of things; to disrupt business as usual. The Way Jesus walks, the Way that Jesus calls us to walk (together!), is a Way lined with palms that leads to confrontation with Em...

The cries of the suffering are not always polite. When we are suffering, can we let loose and trust our community to hold us? When our neighbors are suffering, can we build our resilience in the face of their screams for justice, for relief, for healing, for mercy? Sermon begins at 6:41 Resources BibleWorm podcast: Episode 527 – The Healing of Bartimaeus , Amy Robertson and Robert Williamson, Jr....

Jesus’ guide for discipleship invites us to rethink our expectations of what discipleship means and who disciples are. Embedded in the invitation is a deep look meeting the soul of our being with enduring love and perpetual hospitality  to embrace the next steps of faith-filled following the Jesus Way. Sermon begins at minute marker 5:37 Mark 10:17-31  Resources BibleWorm podcast: ⦁ Episode 526 –...

I can talk about a woman who experiences a minimum of three healings in one healing story. The first is busting through all sorts of internal and external barriers to step out her door and into a crowd. The second is reaching for the hem of Jesus’ cloak to seize a cure for her illness. And the third is - with one word - being restored as family, reclaimed as belonging. I can talk about Jesus makin...

Tempted to avert our gaze from the mention of “evil spirit” or “demon”, instead Pastor Megan chooses to hold this story’s gaze and look for what may be true… then and now. What is true? What binds humans is indeed legion. What liberates humans is indeed Jesus. Who liberates humans is indeed us. Whew. Buckle up as we explore what makes demons tremble. Sermon begins at minute marker 5:05 Mark 5.1-20...

Jesus' parables meet us in story form about ordinary livelihood understandings. Throwing these stories alongside life experiences of these livelihoods can provide spirit openings to fuller understanding of what it means to be kindom people. With these parables Jesus invites followers to be and embody kindom messaging without expectation and with generosity. Sermon begins at the 9:06 minute ma...

Christine Sine teaches us about where Jesus was most likely born, how the Inn we traditionally invoke probably wasn't what we consider an Inn at all. She reminds us of the Mennonite tradition of radical hospitality and encourages us into Chalking our doors as a blessing for all who enter our homes and to consider who we might be excluding from those homes and blessings. Sermon begins at minut...

Rita and Janet lead us through reflections for the Christmas season on angels and being angels. Sermon begins at minute marker 7:05 Mark 1.1-20 Resources Image: Photo by Julia Kadel on Unsplash Hymn:  266 Where is this Stupendous Stranger.  Text: Christopher Smart Hymns and Spiritual Songs ..., 1765, alt. Music: © 1989 Joan Fyock Norris. Permission to podcast the music in this service obtained fro...

Pastor Megan contemplates modern day child prophets and the purposefulness of God coming embodied as a lowly infant. She shares the story of young girls from our community acting on their convictions and their callings. Sermon begins at minute marker 6:12   Luke 1.5-25, 57-80 Image: by Anastasia Shuraeva on pexels  Hymn: Hymn 223 - Bless’d Be the God of Israel. Text: based on Luke 1:68-79; Michael...

 “All of the people shouted with praise to God because the foundation of God’s house had been laid. But many of the older priests and Levites and heads of families, who had seen the first house, wept aloud when they saw the foundation of this house, although many others shouted loudly with joy. No one could distinguish the sound of the joyful shout from the sound of the people’s weeping, because t...

Jeremiah pens some of the most beautiful words of hope to his community. But those hope-filled words are smack in the middle of horrors. Pan back even just a few verses, and one can see that Jeremiah is writing from prison, where his people are under siege by the Babylonian Empire, their towns and cities are ravaged, homes and even palaces are in rubble, and the streets are filled with corpses. si...

When the Very Good King Josiah is informed that a long lost scroll has been found in the dusty corner of a closet, he rends his garments in mourning for himself and for his people. Despite his commitment to just labor practices, and the narrator’s assurance that he did what was right in God’s eyes, the rediscovered scroll of Deuteronomy makes clear that he and his people had been called to an even...