Sermon Archives

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

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 […]

February 12, 2017

Keeping Sabbath, Practicing Trust, Living Shalom

This sermon is in many ways part 2 of my sermon a few weeks ago on chaos. In fact, I had intended to include aspects of Sabbath in that sermon, but for various reasons, not least of which was the length of the sermon, I dropped the Sabbath aspect. The discussion in the sermon response […]

January 22, 2017

Chaos, Creation and Sabbath: A Divine Dance of Trust and Hope

First, thank you for giving your pastors sabbaticals! While some of the fruit of sabbatical may not be apparent for a while, the immediate effects are a feeling of renewal. It was pure gift—I frequently used the word ‘decadent’—to have the time and space to be removed from the daily life of the congregation in […]

January 8, 2017

God’s Counter-Move

For most Americans, Christmas ended two weeks ago. The holiday meals have been eaten, the presents have been opened, the carols have been sung, and most of the decorations have been taken down. For most people, Christmas is over. We in this building are different. We who read the gospel of Matthew and call ourselves […]

January 1, 2017

New Day, New Management

Today, January 1, begins a new year.  But what is really new today?  The naming of this day as beginning the new year is just an arbitrary designation.  Nothing much is really new today.  It is just another Sunday.  It is just another holiday in the Western world. But what does it mean that something […]

December 18, 2016

Seeds of Hope

A few months ago during sharing time, I spoke about the peace accords in Colombia and how they were drawing to a close. After a war of more than 50 years, a war responsible for displacing 6.4 million people (second only to Syria), the FARC guerrilla group and the government planned to cease hostilities and […]

December 4, 2016

“What kind of leaders do you want?”

“Make America great again.”  We have heard this phrase over and over again for the last year.  Who wouldn’t like to see America be great?  But what are we hoping for when we want “greatness”?  Power?  Wealth?  Security?  Privilege?   And what would we hope for if we said “Make Goshen great again”?  Or if we […]

November 27, 2016

Living in the Present Moment

This year in July, Tim LaHaye died. He was co-author of the Left Behind series, a set of 12 fictional books on the end times. The Left Behind books tell the story of how all the true believers in Christ are instantly raptured away into heaven, leaving the world in chaos. In this chaos, a […]

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