blip : Beyond Lost Intellectual Ponderings :

Below is an excerpt from my sermon this past Sunday. I used four Psalms to think through some of the stories I heard while visiting Salem-Zion Mennonite Church in Freeman, South Dakota.
Sometime in 1918, Joseph and Michael Hofer were arrested for refusing to serve in the military. Because they did not cooperate with the draft, [...]

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I recently preached a sermon on Mennonites and Jews. I reflected on my experience of worshiping with First Mennonite in San Francisco. They rent space from a Jewish synagogue, which has led to an interesting relationship. Here’s an excerpt from the sermon:
Mennonite church in San Francisco rents space for worship from a Jewish Synagogue, Israel [...]

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I haven’t been preaching much this summer. The church has given me a wonderful break, which I have spent traveling around visiting other Mennonite congregations in the U.S.

But last Sunday I was back at church in Chapel Hill and got to preach. Much of my sermon was a reflection on a Mennonite church I visited [...]

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“Somos el Pueblo de Dios”—that’s how pastor Juan Limones talks about his Mennonite church in Dallas, Texas. I was able to join his congregation for a little over a week. I used my experience with him and his congregation to shape my sermon this past Sunday. Here’s the beginning of my sermon:
Part of what I [...]

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I’ve been told that Easter is a supposed to be an easy sermon for pastors. But every year I preach on Easter the texts get more interesting and a little harder to preach. This year I wrestled with Peter’s offer of Christ’s forgiveness in the story from Acts. Here’s an extended passage from my sermon:

Easter [...]

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For Holy Thursday a bunch of gathered at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention center in Cary, North Carolina, and held a footwashing worship service—we told them we wanted to wash the feet of the people detained inside. If you haven’t heard about these ICE detention centers, that means the federal government is good [...]

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There has been a lot on controversy around the recent decision of Goshen College (a Mennonite university in Indiana) to play the national anthem before athletic events. The college has never played the anthem on campus because of the song’s praise of violence (“bombs bursting in air,” etc.). So, needless to say, due to the [...]

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For the fourth Sunday of Lent I preached about sin. The assigned lectionary passage was the story of the “prodigal son” from Luke 15. Here’s a part from the middle of it:
That’s what guilt does to us. It’s a voice that convinces us that no one will ever love us again because of what we [...]

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This past Sunday I preached one of the sermons for the installation service for Ervin Stutzman, the new Executive Director of Mennonite Church USA. The worship planners tasked me to preach on the imagery of fruit in John 15:1-5John 15:1-5English: Contemporary English Version (1999) – CEVJesus Is the True Vine

1 Jesus said to [...]

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Yesterday I preached a sermon for the second Sunday of Lent. A bit of it is posted below:
We are restless—in a constant frenzy of innovation, always on the move, reaching beyond our limits, our desires are never satisfied. In their Manifesto, Karl Marx and Fredrick Engels prophesied an age of “everlasting uncertainty and agitation.” We [...]

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