The Pacifist Aggressive

The Leader , our denominational worship-planning-helper publication from MennoMedia suggests the Advent theme of "What are you waiting for?" with two weeks addressed to God, a week to ourselves (as individuals) and a week to ourselves (corporate.) A suggested vibe for Advent 1 Year A was frustration and I can definitely get behind that. I can rail at God with the best of them. I used the Matthew 24 lectionary reading as my main text, but, TBH, I mostly just leaned in to the idea of apocalypse which is the common thread through this week's lectionary texts. I, for one, welcome the apocalypse. So, here is a meditation(?), angry rant(?), asking "God, what are you waiting for?" that leans into the HOPE that the apocalypse is, draws comparisons with Matthew's Kingdom of Heaven, and leaves us asking, "Who is this Good News for?" Spoiler Alert: It depends on where you stand. Credit to Will Willimon and his solid interpretation from whom...

The last four weeks we covered Jonah in our Sunday morning services--one week per chapter. I really could have gone a couple of extra weeks, but they try to reign me in. For chapter four I had a sermon planned contrasting Jonah as a/n (anti)type for Jesus. Dead 3 days. Jonah went down; Jesus was raised up. Terrible prophet; great prophet. However, on Wednesday afternoon I took a nap. When I woke up this short play and the reflection were in my head. When the Holy Spirit messes up my sermon, I figure I ought to obey. Something I have been considering is that we average around 25 people at worship on Sunday morning and five of them are children ages 4-11. If kids are 25% of our worshiping body, how does our service reflect this? How are they invited in, nurtured, included, and asked to participate and lead? I talked to all of the children before the service, explained what was going on, and invited them to join in. I made clear that it was optional. They all loved it. The congregat...

I really love the Book of Jonah because the prophet Jonah sucks  so bad . I managed not to say "sucks" from the pulpit because it's tacky, but that's what I was thinking. Also, I didn't say "bigass fish" or "bigass storm" but I really like that as a translation for  גדול  ( gadol)  and would probably have turned it in for a class because hyperbole is a a mark of satire. Sermon  actually starts at 0:24; I need to figure out how to trim audio. The first thirteen (13!!) minutes explore what it means for the Book of Jonah to be satire, "I am more worried about taking scripture seriously than literally." The next 14ish minutes (re)tell the biblical story in light of that satire. >> My official pastoral responsibility to my congregation is part-time. It's awesome. Super great for my mental health. This set up means I preach 1st and 3rd Sundays and other people from my congregation and guests fill in the other Sundays. It...

I gave this sermon on 1 Peter 4:8-10, on Sept. 1, 2019, as part of our 12 Scriptures Project series at MCotS. It centers on hospitality as love of the Stranger--literally philoxenos. In it I cite this podcast Civil War is Solvable  and read this article about Pastora Mira Garcia . I really wanted to go into greater depth exploring the idea, the comparison, that hospitality is the opposite of gangrene. Gangrene is this slow spreading tissue death caused by lack of blood supply, lack of oxygen. But hospitality slowly breathes life back into places of death (esp. in in Pastora Mira's story). This connection to breath, new life, the Holy Spirit--there's something there. But there's only so much time in each sermon, so I will leave the fleshing out (gross pun!) of this idea for another day. " We have been talking about welcoming the stranger. It’s pretty clear what that does for the stranger--food, warmth, safety, but I am considering this week, how hospitality changes...