These are intense and anxious times and we long for a sense of family and communal healing and cohesion. We struggle to know where, and how, to bring some sanity into our many broken relationships. A story is told about two warring congregations that were once were one. An intense Read more…
(Note: The audio version of this sermon includes sharing from the Dear White Christians book group: Ruth Shantz, Shelly Weaverdyck, Max Eckard, Laura Brubacher and Terri Friedline). There are many beginnings to this sermon, but no endings. Perhaps much of the Christian life is like this. We come into our Read more…
God reconciles all things. That is our vision of the how the world goes, in a nutshell. But there are some things that are irreconcilable. Each of us could make our own list: murder, rape, abuse of children, dipping French fries in mayonnaise. There is a definitive category of actions Read more…
I’ve mentioned before that one of the things that gives me hope for the new year is the election of Eli Savit as Washtenaw County Prosecutor. I enjoyed spending some time yesterday afternoon watching Eli and his Chief Assistant Prosecutor, Victoria Burton-Harris, being sworn in and attending a reception celebrating Read more…
There is an old story about a long one lane road. An Amish farmer and his friend were driving their horse and buggy along the road when they met a car driven by a cantankerous English man. The English man got out of his car and yelled at the Amish Read more…
Judges 4:1-9, 12-24 I want to take a moment, first, to revel in the beauty of a good revenge story. Here we have the King Jabin and his General Sisera. (This Jabin with a b, totally etimologically unrelated to our own Javan.) Together, Jabin and Sisera anchor an oppressive regime. Read more…
Elizabeth Reimer and Zack Begly, two Goshen College students who are advocating within the Mennonite Church for a greater engagement with mass incarceration and its impact in the U.S. wrote a proposed resolution for the 2021 Mennonite Convention–read it here–and discussed it with Shalom in this weeks message.
Matthew 5:38-42Matthew 14:13-21Matthew 17:24-27 I would like to begin this morning with a reading from Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. If you’d like to follow along, it begins on the bottom of page 132 or so in your pew copy, depending on your translation. [This is the scene Read more…
The common housefly, Musca Domestica, has lived alongside humans for as long as we have been human. We regard these creatures as pests. And with good reason, for although their living alongside us is commensal offering neither benefit nor harm directly, they are significant vectors of both disease and filth. Read more…