Sermon Archives

September 24, 2017

Tending the Mission of God in the World

Some years ago, I had the privilege of participating in several consultations that our denomination was a part of that was led by Church Innovations, a church consulting organization based at Luther Seminary in St Paul, Minnesota. The leadership for Church Innovations was a group of PhD and professor types that were trying hard to […]

September 17, 2017

Jesus Tending Community and God’s Mission

Last week we considered the spiritual formation work that Jesus needed to engage…in order to prepare him for the mission he was sent on. Jesus submitted himself to be identified with the fresh spiritual awakening that was occurring. John the Baptist offered a baptism of repentance and Jesus chose to participate even though repentance didn’t […]

September 3, 2017

Picking up the Cross: A Christian Response to Charlottesville

Several weeks ago I received an email inviting my participation in a counter-protest happening in Charlottesville, Virginia. People from a non-Mennonite faith community I was a part of in D.C. invited people of faith to a non-violent collective action to protest Neo-Nazis, alt-right supporters, and White nationalists gathering to respond to the city’s intent to […]

August 20, 2017

The Time Between the Times

In the spring of 1972 I started a love affair with the writings of Luke… the traditionally accredited author of “The Gospel of Luke” and “Acts of the Apostles.” I’ll blame Professor Howard Charles with leading me down this path. Luke is the only gentile writer of Biblical text. His two volume record has a […]

August 6, 2017

Loss

In February 2016, Laura Kelly Fanucci gave birth to identical twin daughters, named Margaret and Abigail. Both babies were premature, both had twin-to-twin transfusion syndrome, and both died in their parents’ arms within two days. Laura, the mother, was well-acquainted with loss and grief long before the death of her twin daughters. When she was […]

June 25, 2017

An Act of Resistance

When I was a child, we sang a song about Zacchaeus in Sunday school. Perhaps you know the song: “Zacchaeus was a wee little man, and a wee little man was he. . . .” One detail about that song puzzled me. Why did the songwriter emphasize Zacchaeus’s height? Yes, I know Luke 19 says […]

June 18, 2017

Practicing God’s Presence at the Table

“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength. And you shall love your neighbour as yourself.” Perhaps it is fitting, that in the midst of this series on hospitality, and on the Sunday in which we say […]

June 11, 2017

The Berkey Table: Who is Missing, Unseen and Invisible?

This is a sermon in 3 parts. Lament We don’t always offer the welcome we want to. For various reasons, there are people and situations that we don’t see or respond to: maybe we don’t know how to respond, maybe we unintentionally avoid people or situations, maybe our mostly homogeneous appearance is the closed door. […]

May 14, 2017

The Table of Hospitality

The idea for this series grew out of conversations at Worship Commission about how we get to know each other. We reflected that we are good at welcoming people when they come through our doors, and start to attend regularly. But once people have been with us a while, we wondered how do we get […]

Page 26 of 44