Loss
Dan Schrock
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 […]
An Act of Resistance
Dan Schrock
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 […]
Practicing God’s Presence at the Table
Marilyn Rudy-Froese
“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 […]
The Berkey Table: Who is Missing, Unseen and Invisible?
Marilyn Rudy-Froese
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. […]
The Table of Hospitality
Marilyn Rudy-Froese
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 […]
The Fountain of Hospitality
Dan Schrock
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 […]
Bearing One Another’s Burdens
Marilyn Rudy-Froese
(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 […]
Remembering . . . and Encountering
Dan Schrock
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 […]
Where Was God?
Dan Schrock
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 […]
Page 29 of 46
