Sermon Archives

May 7, 2017

The Fountain of Hospitality

Four weeks ago today, on April 9, United Airlines in Chicago removed a doctor, David Dao, from a plane by forcibly dragging him out of his seat. Other passengers filmed the incident on their smart phones and uploaded the video to social media. On the video you can hear the doctor screaming that he doesn’t […]

April 30, 2017

Bearing One Another’s Burdens

(Skit, “To Tell The Truth”, done before sermon.) In a light-hearted way, this skit gives you a glimpse into Stephen Ministry, and the differences between Stephen Ministry and psychotherapy or theological education. The motivation for this ministry, as well as the training received in order to do it, grow out of love and the desire […]

April 16, 2017

Remembering . . . and Encountering

About 25 years ago, my mother died. Her death affected me so much that for several months afterward, I was disoriented. I had trouble mentally focusing on things and spent more time than usual staring out the window, daydreaming, thinking about her, trying to imagine what life would be like without her. I also had […]

April 9, 2017

Where Was God?

We whites would like to forget about it. We would like to pretend it never happened. Nevertheless, one of the terrible truths about American history is that from approximately 1880 through 1960, white Americans lynched around 5,000 blacks in this country.[1] Most of the lynched people were men, but about 2% were women.[2] Usually lynching […]

April 2, 2017

Breathe the Breath

In the United States at the present time, fear of the other is perhaps more powerful than it’s been in recent memory. We hear people demean others who look different, act different, or think different. National rhetoric urges us to be afraid of “radical Islamic terrorism,” or to be suspicious about “enemies of the people,” […]

March 26, 2017

We See

It’s bad enough being a kid and having your mother give you a spit bath, but to be an adult, and have some complete stranger wipe their spit on your face, well, that’s just going a bit too far! And it wasn’t just spit, but spit mixed with dirt to make mud! What was Jesus […]

March 19, 2017

We Thirst

I was tempted to re-use the sermon I preached here 3 years ago, because it still seemed to be so relevant to what is going on in the world. In that sermon, I talked about how Jesus crossed many boundaries and borders in his interaction with the Samaritan woman. We live, still, in a world […]

March 12, 2017

Looking to Jesus

Once in a while, you will hear people say that the Bible doesn’t deal with politics. The Bible only deals with spiritual things, they claim, and has nothing to say about economics, race relations, refugees, and especially politics. For these people, the Bible only addresses spiritual issues. The Bible isn’t political. But we who read […]

March 5, 2017

Hope for the Struggle

Over the last four months I’ve participated in a number of conversations with other Mennonites about the new reality here in the United States. In these conversations people name at least three aspects of our new reality, which I list here in no particular order. The reigning political climate openly vilifies immigrants and refugees, some […]

February 26, 2017

Taking Jesus Seriously and Ourselves Less Seriously

Taking Jesus Seriously and Ourselves Less Seriously

One day, years ago, the phone rang, and the caller said, “Mrs. Froese?”, when I answered. Now, whenever I hear someone call me Mrs. Froese, or in some way mispronounce or stumble over my name, I assume that this is a marketing call, I don’t know them, more importantly, they don’t know me, and I […]

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