WildWords: Sermons from Wildwood Mennonite Church

The Bible is full of wars and enemies, of depictions of God-is-with-us-against-them. But there are plenty of hints of the limits of this perspective, of God showing up surprisingly to offer blessings to those on the other side of the lines we draw. What if our lines are not as clear or as holy as we would like them to be? What if our enemies are as human as we are? And what if God is on the side o...

Biblical cultures can seem dry and serious, all of that focus on religion and politics and agriculture… Yet an entire clan of Levites is devoted to creative worship of YHWH, in art and music and dramatic presentations. Celebration and beauty and joy matter and deserve recognition and resources.

God loves sex workers. This shouldn’t be a controversial statement for Christians who believe that God loves everyone. And yet, our attitudes towards and treatment of those who work in the sex trades generally fail to uphold their dignity, autonomy and well-being in the unconditional love of God. Morality matters, for sure--yet whose power and interests are preserved in how our society views and a...

Humans are the main characters of the Bible, obviously. But from the beginning, humanity is placed in context as part of the larger Creation filled with God’s wonder and beauty. "Consider the Ant" the Proverb teaches: wisdom and majesty and mystery are everywhere we care to look. Wherever we find ourselves, God is present amidst even the smallest characters on this planet’s stage. Let’s...

Strangers make frequent appearances in the Bible. While strangers do invade Israel (i.e. Babylon and Rome) there are times when strangers are blessings on Biblical characters. This sermon strives to emphasize that strangers can be a deep blessing and that God can work through strangers in our lives. All people are welcome to be a part God’s family, so we should spread God’s love to those we encoun...

The Bible presents families of many different shapes and sizes: from small mother-and-child units to monogamous couples to large extended families to polygamy and other, uh, creative arrangements. What does this diversity--and its gifts and limitations--say about God and humanity? What, if anything, defines a “biblical” family?

Randy Klassen, Indigenous Neighbours Coordinator for Mennonite Central Committee SK, joined us this week for Part 1 of our four part “Reflection on Reconciliation” series. Note: We had some audio glitches this week. If the sound cuts out stay with us and we will return shortly.

Christ is Risen!  Now what does that mean for us, exactly? On Easter, our prayers and songs are jubilant, often rejoicing in Jesus' victory over the grave and celebrating the hope of a future beyond death. Yet we live in the meantime, where life is still filled with plenty of loss and fear and struggle and mortality. Can we hold together the darkness of Good Friday and the light of Easter, tru...

"Called to Life" a '5-Minute Focus' from Eileen Klaassen⁠ Hearing the story of Lazarus’ death might cause us to ask ourselves: How comfortable are we with the season of Lent, with contemplating Jesus’ impending death, or even our own? From what do we need to be unbound and set free? Like the snowman’s days, our days are numbered. Does recognizing this change how we live our lives...

Our sermon time this week was a multi-sensory experience. First, we listened to a clip from the podcast “Ask Science Mike,” as Mike McHargue gave us an introduction and background to visual and experience-based prayer. Then we tried out one of those experiences, with five minutes of a candle prayer. You can find the full "Ask Science Mike" podcast episode here: https://liminalventura.org...

After all that they've seen of God's faithfulness already, how could they possibly complain about a little thirst? How could they let their worries keep them from resting in God's good hands? Or is the human condition always caught in between fear and trust? This Sunday morning worship service wove together Scripture, music and ritual in a contemplative and imaginative setting. It’s hard to r...

"Is this the darkness of the tomb or the darkness of the womb?" Valarie Kaur asks in the face of global, local and personal uncertainty. This echoes the call of Jesus to Nicodemus in John 3: "if you want to see, you must be reborn, remade from top to bottom." What might that mean for us in our own times of darkness?

What does it mean to love God with our whole selves? What do you need to be fully and utterly you? And what if, as a church, we listened to these needs within us and in our world and organized our worship and other practices accordingly?

Dwight Eisler wraps up our series on Social Justice with a focus on the individual. God sitting with our pain and sitting with each other in our pain. A clip from The Chosen Season 2 Episode 2 has been removed due to copyright.

"What we all want to create is a community of kinship such that God in fact might recognize it." This is the foundation of Justice, as explained by Father Greg Boyle of Homeboy Industries , largest gang intervention program in the world. What does kinship look like? This Sunday we were inspired by Father Greg's video message. *warning: strong language and difficult content

Do you love mercy? Many of us resonate with the beginning and ending lines of the call of Micah 6:8 "to live justly, to love mercy, to walk humbly with our God." But mercy seems... soft, out of balance, vulnerable. And yet, this is the way of Jesus. Do we dare to follow that vision?

Justice happens in community. From the ancient conquest of the land of Canaan to modern criminology, the evidence is clear that both causes and effects of crime and punishment are always shared. As themicahmission.org puts it, "crime control lies primarily in community." Got your superhero costume ready??

Punishment alone does not often address the root causes of harm or change behaviours. The goal of restoration is not balancing the scale (it was likely never balanced in the first place) or undoing the harm, but of taking responsibility, repairing damaged relationships and honoring the humanity of victims and offenders alike. We were pleased to have Dave Feick, Executive Director at Micah Mission,...

Justice is complicated. Humans have a variety of reactions when things go wrong--some less healthy than others. Revenge offers a shortcut to restoration: balance is achieved by subtraction, taking something away from another to compensate for what has been taken from me. But another way to reclaim balance is addition: acknowledging, feeling and understanding what has been lost and allowing hu...

How can something be so ordinary but also so special? The Christmas season is different from the rest of the year... but the same kind of difference as it was last year, and the year before that... Going all the way back to the nativity of Jesus, the story of God-With-Us has always been about ordinary people and ordinary lives being revealed as sacred--the mundane packaging for the very presence o...

Restoration takes vision, planning, creativity, development: the hard work of getting from here to there. You look ahead, you anticipate what’s coming, and you get ready for it. But how do you prepare when you have no idea what’s coming? Brace yourself...and click onward!

Restoration is near!  Great! That sounds like just what we need--but what does it even mean?!? The prophet's vision at the start of the book of Isaiah weaves together images of the glory days of the past together with an idealistic imagination of the future. Exciting, inspirational stuff--but then nothing happened. Likewise, we often long for Order or Reorder, but find ourselves caught in Dis...

On Eternity Sunday each year, we pause to reflect on our losses from the past year and from a lifetime of human frailty. "Comfort, comfort my people" is the offering from God through the voice of the prophet Isaiah. What does that comfort look like and how do we receive it? Join us for a view of God in the rocking chair.

"Non-duality is the highest level of consciousness. Divine union, not private perfection, is the goal of all healthy religion"  (Richard Rohr et al). Non-duality is a bit of a puzzle for some of us, not exactly words a ton of Mennonites use to describe our spirituality. What do we make of this final tenet in the Alternative Orthodoxy series, and what does it mean to make divine union the goal...

This Peace Sunday Heather Peters, Peacebuilding Coordinator with MCC Saskatchewan, challenged us with these important questions: How do we humanize our enemies? How do we help others find peace when we’ve been victimized ourselves? How do we open ourselves to the wonder of forgiveness? All these questions bring us back to the question of the central theme: how do we ensure peace is more than a wis...