West End UMC Podcast Audio Podcast

We welcome you to listen to our Lenten podcast which will offer guided readings of the Common Prayer liturgies from your pastoral team. We are offering the podcast today, Ash Wednesday, and every day during Holy Week. ...

This is our annual Shrove Tuesday Jazz Mass, a celebration before Ash Wednesday and the beginning of Lent. Aimee Baxter, our Pastor of Young Adults delivers the Communion Meditation, and she begins by giving a number of examples of someone being up, then down. It is much like we will experience with this Shrove Tuesday of celebration and then tomorrow’s Ash Wednesday. The scripture is the Markan v...

Invited to the Thin and Thick Places – This is Transfiguration Sunday, and we read the story from Mark where Jesus takes Peter, James, and John with him to a mountain, and he was transformed before them with Elijah and Moses appearing, too, certifying Jesus as the fulfillment of the law and the prophets. As she delivers this sermon, Carol gives examples of times when she has been filled with the l...

We have been reading through the first chapter of Mark, and in today’s reading Jesus and the first four disciples go to the house of Simon and Andrew. There they find Simon’s mother-in-law is sick with a fever. Jesus heals her. Then that evening, everyone in the town gathers in front of Simon’s house, and Jesus heals many who are ill or afflicted with demons. The next morning Jesus goes out by him...

You’re Invited into Healing Liberation – Today’s passage is from Mark, early in Jesus’ ministry but after he has called the first four disciples. He is in Capernaum, enters the synagogue and begins teaching, and the people are astounded by his authority in that teaching. Then a deranged man cries out, and Jesus exorcises the demon in the man, healing him. Both are demonstrations of the person and...

Today’s scripture from John 1 is about Jesus meeting Philip and calling him into discipleship, but it is also about Philip, in turn, inviting Nathanael into discipleship, too, with the invitation to “come and see.” The Gospel of John uses that phrase several times, and we are invited to share in the excitement and the invitation. Nathanael’s initial response to the invitation demonstrates some pre...

Today, using the account in Mark, we read about the baptism of Jesus by John at the Jordan, and we remember and celebrate our own baptism. A question that often arises with the baptism of Jesus is why would Jesus need to be baptized like the sinners to whom John was preaching, “Repent and be baptized”? Maybe Jesus was baptized and the spirit descended to proclaim he was beloved in order to demonst...

Invited to Another Road – This is Epiphany Sunday, the day we remember the trip of the Magi to see the baby Jesus. Although many legends about the magi have grown through the centuries, the account in Matthew is the only account available, and it does not reveal how many magi were in the group, where they came from (it says only “the East”), or how old Jesus was when they made this trip. What we d...

We have now celebrated the birth of Christ and are at the brink of a new year. The scripture for today is from Joshua, the account of the people crossing the Jordan River into the Promised Land, and God tells them to set up a pile of 12 stones, one for each tribe, as a memorial. Rev. Stacey Harwell-Dye, our Pastor of Mercy and Justice ministries is preaching and says that on New Year’s Eve we ofte...

Today, the fourth Sunday of Advent and also Christmas Eve, the scripture is the section of Luke where the young Mary responds to the announcement of her pregnancy with “the Magnificat,” praising God for raising her from her modest place to this place of honor as mother of this holy infant. This comes when Mary famously visits her cousin, Elizabeth, who is also pregnant, blessed at an old age with...

As we enter the fourth week of Advent, take a few minutes to stop, center yourself and ponder this guided meditation on love, led by Rev. Will McLeane.

– In the season when many people are joyous over the birth of the Christ child, gift giving and receiving, and family gatherings, many among us are experiencing loss, aloneness, grief. This service, held on the longest night of the year, is meant to provide comfort and hold a safe place for those who need quiet reflection. The service incorporates scripture, lighting of candles, prayer, communion,...

Justice and Joy – Through this Advent season we are reading words of Isaiah, and today’s prophecy from chapter 64 comes again to a people in despair but offers a glimmer of hope, and beyond that hope it offers comfort and joy. Today, the third Sunday of Advent, we light the third candle, a pink one representing joy, and in that sense this section of Isaiah fits. In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus preach...

As we enter the third week of Advent, take a few minutes to stop, center yourself and ponder this guided meditation on peace, led by Rev. Aimee Baxter.

Through this Advent season we are reading words of Isaiah, and today’s prophecy of “Comfort Ye, Comfort Ye My People” comes from chapter 40 but is also familiar to us as the first choral movement in G. F. Handel’s Messiah. The message comes to a people whose city, Jerusalem, has been devastated, the temple destroyed, and they have been displaced and are certainly in need of comfort. That message o...

As we enter the second week of Advent, take a few minutes to stop, center yourself and ponder this guided meditation on peace, led by Rev. Shannon Baxter.

This is the first Sunday in Advent, and our scripture is from Isaiah’s words to people who had great reason to feel that God had abandoned them. The prophet describes a God who had done awesome deeds in the past, but then God’s abandonment had given rise to the people’s abandonment of God. The prophet speaks of repentance, a turning around of the people, and a cry out to God to return with all of...

As we begin the season of Advent, we will be guided by the prophets and by the poetry of E.E. Cummings. Be sure and pick up your Advent guide at church on Sunday or let us know if you need one sent to you. As an added practice each week, we will provide a brief guided meditation through one of Cummings’ poems. Here is the first one to lead us into Sunday.

– In January we began a year-long journey through the Bible with Genesis, and today we end that journey with a reading from the last chapter of Revelation. In this final vision of final days John of Patmos sees a city wherein all things are reconciled. A Tree of Life is the focal point, somehow reminiscent of that tree in the Garden of Eden that broke down relationships between God and humans, bet...

The Alpha and Omega – In January we began a year-long journey through the Bible with Genesis, and today and next Sunday we end with readings from Revelation. Today’s reading comes from the first chapter where the visionary, John, reports on his encounter with the risen Jesus. The book of Revelation is and has been controversial through the millenia with some people citing it to predict the coming...

Continuing our journey through the Bible, this week’s reading is from the epistle of James with a particular focus on James 1.19-20 where the writer, writing to a congregation that has apparently had some conflict, cautions them to be “quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger.” It is a caution appropriate for our era of social media and political division and a teaching that sounds like one J...

Continuing our journey through the Bible, this week’s reading is Paul’s letter to Philemon, a letter filled with familial terms, and it is clear that the focus of the letter, Onesimus, has been a slave of Philemon. Although we don’t know how or why Onesimus is currently and has been with an imprisoned Paul, it is clear that Paul is sending Onesimus back to Philemon. Onesimus has become a convert t...

Continuing our journey through the Bible, this week’s reading is from Paul’s letter to the Galatians. In this letter, Paul is frustrated with the church he had helped to form in Galatia. They were largely Gentiles, but apparently some Jewish had moved in and demanded that those in that church obey the Jewish law, including such things as circumcision. Paul says it is not about earning God’s love t...

A God Ever Faithful – This is the Sunday we are celebrating the 150th anniversary of our church. One of the things we are doing through this 150th year is reading through the Bible and, on Sundays, taking our scripture readings from the books of the Bible in sequence. Today we are looking at a passage from Paul’s letter to the Philippians, which is a little out of order, but it applies to our own...

We continue our trip through the Bible with today’s reading from 1 Corinthians. Rev. Shannon Baxter, our Pastor of Congregational Connection, is preaching. The text is Paul’s familiar comparison of the community of the church to the members of the body, an analogy that can surely be understood by anyone. Historically, the Corinthian congregation must have had need of such encouragement to come tog...