Seattle Mennonite Church Sermons

The law in Deuteronomy is clear: every seven year all debt is to be canceled. But because people are people, it's pretty hard to live it out practically. What the law depends on and encourages is building a community of trust in which we know each other well enough to give and receive financial care from our neighbors. It also encourages us to interrupt our contemporary systems that depend on...

On this Sunday when we celebrate the baptism of two young adults in our congregation, Pastor Amy explores the way baptism blesses and call us. In Jesus baptism, he was pronounced his allegiance not to the emperors and kings who ruled over his people but to God alone. He did so along with a community who, like him, were committed to hearts and lives oriented to the practical purpose of sharing reso...

We wrap up another Narrative Lectionary year with the lovely close of Paul’s letter to the community at Philippi. These words of encouragement, consolation, and assurance are bedside words: one can just as easily imagine reading them to a beloved child at bedtime, or a beloved elder at the time of death. They are a benediction of sorts, functioning as a semicolon - a pronounced pause - between the...

Philippians chapter 2 contains what is thought to be the earliest Christian hymn.  Paul’s words to his beloveds in Philippi can be likened to a music director’s instructions to a singing group.  Seattle Mennonite Church is like a choir with many voices, singing a complicated oratorio.  Using this metaphor the instructions to the singers become: highlight your own part, practice and then listen to...

Paul writes from prison in a tradition repeated since his time by many activists, scholars and prophets of the Gospel. But this letter is less prophetic and more a love letter to a beloved congregation. In the style of Paul's letter to the Christians in Philippi, Pastor Amy writes her own letter of thanksgiving and encouragement to the Mennonites of Seattle. Sermon begins at minute 6:50 Scrip...

 What if taking a break is okay? What if being Beloved is enough? Sermon begins at minute 4:09 Acts 17:16-34   BibleWorm podcast: Episode 342 – Paul in Athens , Amy Robertson and Robert Williamson, Jr. “ Nonprofit AF taking a break this week; here’s a picture of a kitten ,” Vu Le, May 8, 2022. “The Love of God” VT 162. Public Domain. Text: F. M. Lehman (USA), c. 1917, stanza 3 based on Rabbi Meir...

We zoom in on the powerful image of Paul and Silas, political prisoners, behind bars, surrounded by other prisoners listening to them, as they SING HYMNS to God. They are singing before the miracle. They are singing as strategy, as prayer, and as soul-nourishment individually and collectively. We hear stories from some Mennonite sisters in the contemporary Jesus Uprising, as we ponder our own sing...

Rev. Dr. Randy Woodley looks at Luke's story of Jesus' parents losing him on a trip to the Temple in Jerusalem. He reflects on the ways that we can find hope in our younger generations. We may not understand them, but, they are evidencing all kinds of changes in our usual way of being in the world and in religion. Dr. Woodley reflects on what it would mean for The Church to work at being...

Yes, it’s exceedingly unfair that Thomas gets such a bad rap. But that’s a sermon that’s been preached a thousand times, including several times by Pastor Megan. Instead, this week she dives deep into what she’d always previously glossed right over. Jesus says to the gathered, frightened, newly Spirit-filled disciples: “As my Abba God sent me, so I am sending you.” With a huge nod to the BibleWorm...

Death may not be the end of the story, but death is in the story. Like many of us, Mary is deeply feeling grief, loss and trauma after the loss of a beloved friend. She goes to the tomb, sad and disoriented and from the midst of those feelings, she encounters God. The resurrection joy she experiences does not take away her trauma but it does transform it. God is calling each of our names too, comi...

Who is Jesus? Throughout John’s gospel, Jesus makes a series of key “I AM…” claims to various groups of people. I AM… the good shepherd, true vine, gate, living water, light of the world, way-truth-life, bread of life, the resurrection and the life. Additionally, John’s gospel begins - in gorgeous poetry - by naming Jesus as Word. Incarnate and embodied Word. Word made flesh, who tented among us....

We are in our third week in a row of Jesus’ trial, and the story is getting increasingly painful to endure. If we stick with it enough to actually take it in, to allow ourselves to feel all we feel, we might notice that - while horrific - it’s not actually all that exceptional. Jesus is getting slowly and brutally churned up by the carceral system of his day, in the same way that beloved humans ar...

The scene in Jerusalem during this time of Passover is fraught, and occupying imperial power is tenuous. Crowds travel all across the Judean landscape to convene in Jerusalem for an annual pilgrimage in which they retell a story of their ancestors finding liberation from oppressors. The contemporary oppressive overlords tremble at the prospect that the power of the people may rise up against them....

On our Lenten journey in John's Gospel, Jesus is falsely arrested and accused for embodying truth that exposes the lies of powerful authorities, while Peter struggles with the call and cost of discipleship. That 1st century struggle between truth and lies is reflected in a 21st century reality in Iraqi Kurdistan, where activists and journalists are falsely arrested, accused, and imprisoned fo...

Jesus was completely unruly at the margins of one of his community's most sacred celerations. Disruptions to Solemn Ceremony are very unexpected and annoying. But, Pastor Megan invites us to look for the life amongst the disruptions, to find the path of love that allows us to hear what the Disruptors, like Jesus, have to say. Sermon begins at minute 2:20 John 7:37-52 Photo by Thirdman from Pe...

To be frank: John is a bit extra. John’s gospel will take anything that Jesus says or does in Matthew, Mark, or Luke, and turn the dial all the way up to “whaaaat?!” Following the feeding of way-more-than-5000 with 5 barley loaves and 2 dried fish, Jesus begins his discourse with “I AM the bread of life.” Which sounds positively quaint by the time he gets to the rather graphic proclamation that on...

We're all on the lookout for a sign - the thing that tells us we're on the right track, headed in the right direction - even if we're not superstitious.  In the Gospel of John, Jesus is performing miracles, but John calls them signs, and they serve that strategic function of pointing the way to the big picture of God's love and God's kin-dom.  In today's text, Jesus o...

Okay, they don’t precisely “walk into a bar”, but they do meet at their local “watering hole”... the well… literally a hole with water in it. Ha! Do I have your attention yet?! Two people like them are NOT supposed to interact at all, but these two beloved humans conspire to cross religio-socio-cultural boundaries to encounter one another: human to human. Neither do they shy away from the most pre...

Pastor Rachael Weasley of Community of Hope in Bellingham reflects on our church and hers, and gives us a teaching from John. She reflects on how this passage qualifies as a parable and on what it teaches us about where the wind, or Spirit, takes us. She brings us double meanings, gratitude for playful spirits and thoughts about how and what we know without seeing. Reflections on our churches begi...

We are now a few weeks into the mystical, strange, poetic, beautiful, mysterious, harrowing, polemical, and prophetic Gospel of John. Since we’ll be slowly walking through John’s gospel for the next several months, it seems important to address John’s mixed legacy in Christian history, as well as the fraught context within which John’s gospel was written. Trust me: it’s more interesting than it so...

This passage of John continues the story of the "Word Made Flesh" in John 1 with the story of Jesus' first disciples.  There are three things Pastor Amy can talk about in this passage from: How the gospel of John is next level (everything in John has multiple meanings), how quality time is Jesus' love language (the disciples who find Jesus abide with him), and how discipleship...

Our final text in the Hebrew Bible, before arriving at the Gospel of John next week, is the beautiful poetry of Isaiah. We hear of God’s shalom vision: a great feast where thirst is sated and hunger no more; where none has need and we are shown that we’ve always had enough - plenty - abundance for all. As we seek God’s ways and reject all that blocks God’s feast, we become conduits of God’s Life t...

Elijah is having a “No Bones Day” (check out the links re: Noodle the 13-year-old pug to understand this reference!), and his people are having a whole “No Bones” season. Surrounded by the bleak and very dead pile of dried out bones, Elijah has no reason to feel optimism when God asks, “Mortal, can these bones live?” and they so obviously cannot. But Elijah doesn’t need to feel optimism; that’s no...

Advent is all about the messy middle. Smack dab in the middle of exile, destruction, and the crumbling of a people’s sense of identity, Jeremiah pens a letter encouraging his kindred to live now , thrive now. Build homes, grow food, and create families, he writes. Don’t wait until you’ve emerged out the other side of this unmooring experience, he seems to say, but claim life now . In your longing...

The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light.  But light is complicated. It can burn and glare.  The familiar and beloved song from the prophet is about military conquest and might, a leader whose rule is absolute.  Yet it still reflects God desire for a reign of justice and righteousness. Sermon begins at minute 2:30   Isaiah 9.1-7 Woman Walking on Pathway Under The Sun by Andrea Pia...