Seattle Mennonite Church Sermons

 The prophets bring us beautiful poetry and powerful challenge. Amos is clear that justice must be established at the city gate, at the entry point, at the first. Everything else flows from that. Without justice at the start, God **can’t even** with our worship…! Without justice, our songs and praises are empty at best, nails on a chalkboard at worst. Let justice roll down like waters, and righteo...

We continue our journey through the Hebrew Bible and hear a story from 1 Kings of God speaking to the prophet Elijah. Listen to our preacher’s reflections on the nature of God, God’s voice, God’s silence, our experience of the pandemic, and how to navigate when God shows up in unexpected and new ways. Sermon begins at minute 4:04 1 Kings 19.1-16 [NRSV] Rain Down , Text and music © 1991, Jaime Cort...

We remember our beloved saints who have passed on by reflecting on Jesus’ blessing, spoken to those who grieve: You shall laugh. And Jesus’ woe, delivered to those who laugh: You shall grieve. We are each one of us both, of course - those who laugh and those who grieve. Often all at the same time. And even when we experience a (brief) reprieve from one or the other, we are given to one another in...

You are beloved and God’s Spirit is with you. Y’all are beloved and God’s Spirit is with y’all. We are beloved and God’s Spirit is with us. Sometimes the sermon is a mantra. With a couple of plump, plucked cherries atop. Sermon begins at minute 4:20. Scripture: 1 Samuel 16.1-13; Psalm 51.10-14 Image: Photo by Mae Mu on Unsplash . “Beloved is Where We Begin,” Jan Richardson, from Circle of Grace: A...

The story  of Samuel and Eli is a study in how to listen and relate not just to God but between generations.  It's easy for elders in the church to dismiss those who are young(er) as too inexperienced or idealistic to lead, and for the young to dismiss those who are old(er) as irrelevant or out of touch.  What this story teaches us is that listening to each other allows us to hear God and be...

Though we think of manna as the bread that God rained down on the wandering Israelite community in the wilderness, “manna” was first a question. “What is it?!” The Israelites draw near enough to the strange flaky substance on the ground to ask “Manna?” and in so doing encounter the answer “Manna!” How might this story, along with the crowd asking Jesus for a daily dose of “bread of life”, inform o...

Names can shape identity or character in powerful ways. When Moses asks God’s name, God responds with a verb: “I am becoming who I am becoming.” What does it mean, then and now, to be in relationship with a God who claims a name that is an action, a movement, a verb, a becoming… ? Even as we weary of the constant adaptation required of us, especially now , may we experience some comfort knowing th...

All of my first-born, rule-following instincts are troubled by this story of a younger son employing devious and conniving tactics to “steal” the blessing of his elder brother. But how was this story liberative to the people who remembered, told, recorded, and passed it down? Looking at the story again, with that question at the fore, reveals the subversion of power structures, within a trickster...

The history of testing is troubling and it's been revealed how biased and even harmful tests can be.  In the familiar passage of the binding of Isaac, God is giving the test.  This story of God asking Abraham to sacrifice his child and Abraham proceeding to carry out this test without challenge or question is a troubling one for those of us who believe in a loving and merciful God.  We ask, &...

 We start our new year with the Narrative Lectionary “In the [very] beginning…” (a very good place to start…). The first creation account, in Genesis chapter one, reveals a Creator God who creates and co-creates, makes and beckons forth life. And God sees all that comes to be and declares: “good, good, good, good, good, good, and SUPREMELY good.” Today is a good day to remember that “supremely goo...

Summary: This one stumped Pastor Megan. We again ask: “Why do we worship?” And this week’s response, taken from our Voices Together hymnal, is: “To praise and give thanks.” Listen as Megan meanders through reflections on gratitude, even as she doesn’t feel very much like praising or giving thanks. And as she finds her way toward a genuine experience of gratitude, thanks to our gathering together a...

Summary: Pastor Amy realizes that God plays favorites! We, God's people, are the ones who God returns to again and again, we're invited to return to God's presence to be formed in worship. In worship we are shaped by the language in song, prayer and preaching.  Week after week we tell the story of God and God's favored people.  We come to understand who God is and who we are in...

Summary: Our pastors Melanie and Jonathan Neufeld have been with our congregation for the past 14 years, building a ministry with people experiencing homelessness, expanding the community of people who care about those living outside into a network, and offering companionship and love to those in our congregation.  They share from their experience of ministry in Lake City as we prepare to bless th...

Summary: As we return to our church building for the first time in more than 17 months, we ponder the question: Why do we worship? Our new hymnal and worship resource, Voices Together , guides us through some of the foundational responses to that question. Firstly, we worship in order to be gathered as community. Summoned by the God who made us, we come home to God and to one another, finding (AND...

 In solidarity with Water Defenders at Line 3 in Minnesota, Christian Peacemaker Teams called on churches across Turtle Island to a Sunday of prayer and action during Eastertide this past spring - to better understand and support Indigenous-led resistance. Our own Weldon Nisly helped put the worship resource together and we were blessed to have him preach for us, weaving together several short sto...

  Jesus told a parable “toward the necessity” that his hearers might be urged to pray persistently and not be discouraged. It was the story of a woman - a widow - who nevertheless persisted in crying for justice from an unjust judge who self-avowedly neither feared God nor respected people. As we emerge to resurrected life as a church community, may we grow in resilience and persistence - in the f...

Jesus is on a resurrection tour! He appears to the disciples not once but time and again - and then again when different ones among them are gathered.  His set-list stays the same: Peace! But he changes the way he communicates.  Likewise, we will need to communicate again and again the ways that we gather, our consent, our needs and what this new way of being looks like.  We'll have to be pat...

On the Day of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit came to bless and honor difference, by allowing for bridging and understanding amongst differences. As we navigate the many differences in how we communicate, how we gather, and how we worship, especially in this season of transition toward resurrected life together, may we practice curiosity with ourselves and one another. Pastor Megan’s sermon, a continua...

Bartimaeus is blind and cries out asking Jesus to have mercy on him. Rather than assuming he knows what Bartimaeus means by ‘having mercy’, Jesus asks him a direct and open-ended question: "What do you want me to do for you?” Jesus creates space for Bartimaeus to have full agency in answering for himself, naming his need and his longing. As we prepare ourselves for returning to embodied commu...

Looking to the sacred text of John’s gospel, and the sacred text of creation, Pastor Megan ponders resurrection as not only a powerful Way of Life, but specifically as we emerge from the worst of the pandemic and begin our journey of return to incarnational community together. Bear witness to the powerful witness of fireweed at Lawetlat'la (name given by the indigenous Cowlitz people for the...

The Holy Spirit comes to a community in the Pentecost story. And so we hear Scriptural reflections from our community. Pastor Megan shares what our Spiritual Leadership Team noticed and wondered about together as we dwelt in this story during Saturday’s meeting (in our morning practice of lectio divina). We are a people who gather around our center, covenanting with one another and our God. We are...

Paul insists to the Galatians that all who follow Jesus are adoptees into the family of God and thus we receive our inheritance...not gold or property but Spiritual riches.  As all adoptees know, family is the people who take care of you and who you take care of.  Through the Spirit we can focus not on selfish desire but on taking care of each other and building unity. Series: Narrative Lectionary...

All of Acts is a story about a community / communities in transition; a story about finding a way together through much sorting and discerning; a story about claiming and releasing and improv; a story of a community’s long journey of becoming . All in the service of following Jesus together, as empowered by God’s Spirit. Today, Melanie and Jonathan share with us a story of our becoming, and theirs...

 At first blush, Philip seems to be the hero of this remarkable story in Acts, being willing to expand the circle of the Jesus-following community. Philip offered baptism to the Ethiopian eunuch, a gender-variant foreigner from a racial minority. But Pastor Joanna Harader (of Peace Mennonite in Lawrence KS), invites us to take another look at the Ethiopian eunuch, and find a resilient and insisten...

We had a 15 minute service of worship and prayer today followed by continuation of our Congregational Meeting from last week.  Holy Work! Permission to podcast the music in this service obtained from One License with license #A-726929. All rights reserved. Holy Spirit Come with Power - Text: Anne Neufeld Rup © 1970, Spanish trans. Barbara Mink © 1980; Music: The Sacred Harp , 1844, Harm. Joan Fyoc...