Sarah Augustine preached on the story of the boy Jesus in the temple. We connected deeply with Mary, dealing with a shamelessly unapologetic pre-teen son. And then - firmly identifying with his parents - Sarah invited us to see the freedom and unencumbered way of youth as the gift that it can be and - indeed - is . Unsettling as it can be. We are often tempted to dismiss youth as naive, unrealistic, or even just rude and demanding. May we grow in rejoicing at those who will not (yet) justify the...
Jan 03, 2021•48 min
The Holy Spirit is on the move! The prophets Anna and Simeon are channeled by our own resident prophet Rita Kowats, this first Sunday of Christmas. The elders of Jerusalem wait, looking for the Spirit, ready to receive the infant Jesus and to declare the salvation of Israel. We are encouraged by these beloved elders - in scripture and in our midst - to also be God-receivers. Plus, Pastor Amy sings the children's time. Sermon at 16:30 Children's Time at 8:00 Resources: Hark the herald angels sing...
Dec 28, 2020•47 min
This week in worship we continue to explore the rich and fertile darkness of Advent, hearing with Mary the invitation to partner with God in offering a home for God-with-us in her own body. And we experience a pageant like we've never done it before! Our families rose to the challenge of enacting and dramatizing the Christmas story from their own homes, speaking and acting and creating something our whole congregation could enjoy. -- Pageant begins at minute 20:20. Scripture: Luke 1.26-56 Image:...
Dec 21, 2020•52 min
Seeds are germinated and nurtured in the deep dark black of soil. A newly liberated people draws on this rich metaphor in understanding how God's jubilee vision grows in them: from tender shoots of justice and praise, into oaks of righteousness. The prophet Isaiah helps proclaim God's release to these former captives, attending to their bodies and their cities, restoring both dignity and structures of justice. Seattle Mennonite Church has similarly long been called into the prophetic Community M...
Dec 13, 2020•55 min
Anyone who has gone hiking or walking in the nighttime knows that darkness doesn't lead to not seeing; darkness leads to seeing differently . The prophet Joel writes that God's mothering, raven Spirit will be poured out on all flesh; causing children to prophesy, elders to dream dreams, and young ones to see visions. The nurturing embrace of darkness allows us to see differently so that we may first imagine , then believe , and finally begin to live into our elders' dreams and our young ones' vi...
Dec 06, 2020•49 min
In this worship we begin exploring in the dark. So much of the time language and culture teachers that all that is good and right an beautiful is full of light and all that is evil and terrible is dark. And thus that dark is something to fear and avoid. As we enter Advent with Daniel in the den of lions, we too may feel entombed: the darkening days, the fear of COVID, unknowns in political leadership. Yet we learn from Daniel's experience that though the dark is fraught and fearful, there is hop...
Nov 30, 2020•53 min
The prophet Jeremiah records in a scroll God's words for God's people. The King, cozied up to a warming fire in his winter apartment, takes a penknife to the scrolls, excising and then burning God's words for God's people. But God's words have already been read in the hearing of all God's people; have already been inscribed on their hearts. So when God instructs Jeremiah to create a new scroll with the old words, Jeremiah is not only able to do so, but "many similar words were added to them." Go...
Nov 22, 2020•45 min
As I've lived with Isaiah's bizarre, fantastical, and awe-some / terrifying vision, I began to experience it as a musical composition: Introduction - In the year that King Uzziah died... Movement 1 - The Skirts of God Movement 2 - Frankenstein Movement 3 - Hineni Coda - Prayer of the Seraphim: Holy, holy, holy Once through, I played with a musical variation of the whole composition for our congregation . I'm eyes wide open on how cryptic this description is. Trust me: it's fitting. I invite you ...
Nov 15, 2020•45 min
Jonah is dramatically, laughably angry about God's mercy for the Ninevites, and carries on a stompy, pouty tantrum. Often I laugh at his expense; this week I relate. We also recall that God's mercy for Nineveh follows sincere repentance and reparation of harm on the part of the powerful; and that Jesus centered his life and ministry among those at the pointy end of the State's violence. May we seek to do the same as we spread the faith. [sermon begins at 19:03; child dedication at 32:55] -- Scri...
Nov 08, 2020•1 hr 11 min
We may be able to identify with the widow of Zarephath who, in a time of a devastating, nation-wide crisis feels ready to die. In the midst of this certainty that she will not make it through, God provides a companion and the hope that each day she and her household will have just enough to make it. Pastor Amy invites us to find hope in that idea that, though we will never be completely satisfied, when we feel alone and desperate God will give us the resources we need to make to the end of each ...
Nov 02, 2020•1 hr 7 min
From the womb of wild nature, Pastor Jonathan reflects on King David, new to kingship and in love with his royal residence. God too should have a divine place to dwell, David thinks! But God reminds David that the Divine has always dwelt with the people, roamed in the wilderness and been present in and through all things. Pastor Jonathan reminds us that our indigenous relatives have always understood this and that like King David, we have some un-learning to do about our desire to domesticate Go...
Oct 26, 2020•53 min
Both in her "wretched" distress and joyous confidence, Hannah prays. She brings her "hot, holy mess" to her God, and she also prophetically sings of God's joyous and just Jubilee vision before it is visible to her or realized in the world. Perhaps her witness can serve as an invitation to those us of us also feeling a hot mess, whether or not we ever get our happily ever after. [reading from 1 Samuel in the voices of many SMC women and girls at 17:40; sermon begins at 21:03] -- Scripture: 1 Samu...
Oct 18, 2020•46 min
God is angry at the Hebrew people over their casting of a golden calf for false worship, mere months after God has liberated them from slavery. God is angry. SO angry, in fact, that God seems ready to destroy them all... again. God ultimately relents from punishment and destruction, thanks to Moses and remembered belovedness. But the whole story prompts Pastor Megan to ponder her/our desire for a God of love, the reality of God's anger, and how often love looks more like anger than civility. Com...
Oct 11, 2020•50 min
The Mennonite congregations across Washington State worked together to create a celebration video in honor of Mennonite Central Committee turning 100 years old. Normally we would have gathered this weekend for the annual Mennonite Country Auction, but this year we had to get creative about how to connect and experience community with one another. Listen to our full worship service here, but when you get to the celebration video at minute 14:15, consider switching over to youtube to actually WATC...
Oct 04, 2020•55 min
As a powerful Egyptian ruler, Joseph welcomes his family back into relationship and care saying, "Even though you intended to do harm to me, God intended it for good." Though many people interpret this to mean that terror or trauma experienced by people or creation is a part of a Divine plan. But God's dream for humanity is not terror but love and connection. It is dreamers like Joseph who connect us to the dream of God and who can inspire us to continue to pursue God's dream. Sermon begins at 1...
Sep 28, 2020•48 min
We joined with Mennonite World Conference congregations around the globe in celebrating Peace Sunday. According to 1 Corinthians, when one of us suffers all of us suffer, and when one of us rejoices all of us rejoice. This, we as global Mennonites were urged to recognize, is peacemaking as accompaniment and solidarity . We got to hear a powerful story from our own Sarah Augustine of solidarity with the Wayana indigenous peoples of Suriname, and specifically with her friend Linia, who longs to pr...
Sep 20, 2020•45 min
We are back to the Narrative Lectionary, and we kick off this year's journey through the biblical text with a Genesis creation account. In it, humans are created from the earth, for the plants, intrinsically connected to one another, and intimately sculpted and in-spired by God our Maker. Almost as soon as these relationships with earth, humans, and God are crafted, there is fracturing of our primal inter-connectedness. Is there any word of hope for we who are choking on the wildfire smoke of th...
Sep 13, 2020•56 min
We spend one final summer week with commentator Willie James Jennings, the Book of Acts, Paul imprisoned (yet again...), and the Holy Spirit calling Jesus-followers into common life and common space with one another. [sermon begins at 20:38] -- Scripture: Acts 28:16-31 Photo by Karim MANJRA on Unsplash -- Permission to podcast the music in this service obtained from One License with license #A-726929. All rights reserved. Longing for light - Words and Music by Bernadette Farrell. © 1993 Publishe...
Sep 06, 2020•52 min
In this last Sunday of hearing from in our summer series: Jerrell Williams, pastor of Salem Mennonite Church, a fellow Pacific Northwest Mennonite Conference congregation. Jerrell takes us on a journey with Hagar into the wilderness, a journey in which she encounters and names God El Roi, the God-Who-Sees-Me. This God who sees is also the God who walks with, who accompanies, who facilitates Hagar's survival and blesses Hagar with the promise that through her son Ishmael she has birthed a nation....
Aug 31, 2020•1 hr 6 min
"Disciples of Jesus should be desperate citizens. The desperate citizen will press their citizenship as far as possible for the sake of thwarting death and its agents." Pastor Amy explores the work of theologian Willie James Jennings and discusses the way our citizenship in nation should be engaged in relationship to our citizenship in the Reign of God. Now is not the time to opt out, when so many have had to fight desperately to be included. Sermon begins at 22:32 Permission to podcast the musi...
Aug 17, 2020•48 min
We continue our summer worship series in which we listen to and learn from Black preachers. Today: Shannon Dycus, former pastor of First Mennonite Church in Indianapolis IN, and current Dean of Students at Eastern Mennonite University. We listened to Shannon’s 2016 sermon , delivered at Christian Theological Seminary, in which she in which she invites us to consider lament - Jesus’ and our own - in light of Jesus' image of our mother hen God gathering her brood to her breast with tenderness and ...
Aug 09, 2020•46 min
We continue our summer worship series in which we listen to and learn from Black preachers. Today: Austin Channing Brown, author of best-selling book, I'm Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness , and a powerful preacher. We listened to Austin's sermon , from the Evolving Faith Conference 2018, in which she revisits the story of Rizpah, whose sons were killed by King David because of their potential claim to the throne as descendants of former King Saul. In an act of final reveng...
Aug 02, 2020•55 min
Nothing about the yoke of intractable racism feels easy. Nothing about the burden of a runaway pandemic feels light. Is there any good news at all in these supposedly comforting words of Jesus? And what's the deal with all those words of judgment that *precede* the supposed comfort? Pastor Megan explores the good news of a well-placed "y'all" and steals her most memorable line (attributed, of course) from Pastor Melanie, "I'm in it for the shalom, [y'all]!" You'll have to listen in to connect al...
Jul 26, 2020•42 min
We continue our summer worship series in which we listen to and learn from Black preachers. Today: Glen Guyton, the Executive Director of our denomination, Mennonite Church USA. He loves pie and is funny (though his wife may disagree). And he preaches a good word: When we flee from our path, or lock ourselves away in fear, God invites us back again and again ("I got you..."), and Jesus breathes the Holy Spirit on us, empowering us for the work of transformation and perhaps even some "good troubl...
Jul 19, 2020•55 min
We begin our summer worship series in which we listen and learn from Black preachers. We start with Rev. Dr. Otis Moss III, pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago. With him we cry in lament for Ahmaud Arbery and so many other Black lives lost to the violence of white supremacy. With him we reach back into the history, celebrating the ingenuity, genius and resilience of Black people in American from enslaved to this moment. With him we are called from prayer into action on behalf of...
Jul 13, 2020•1 hr 1 min
In our annual Interdependence Day worship - on the Sunday nearest the 4th - we again expose the lie of supposed independence, and instead claim the joy of justly-ordered mutual dependence and collective liberation! Willie James Jennings 's fiery, faithful commentary is our conversation partner as we engage the imprisoned Jesus-followers in the Book of Acts. We know that God's deepest desire is for the shaking of every prison foundation, the liberation of each imagination, and the release of ever...
Jul 05, 2020•50 min
With our sibling congregations from around Pacific Northwest Mennonite Conference, we lament not being gathered together for our annual assembly and we celebrate with the prompt, "Thanks be to God". Though, like the Psalmist in Psalms 9-10 we are experiencing the distress and anger of confronting injustice and oppression, we give thanks to God. Our Creator is a God of love and justice. Message from Kathryn Jamison Pitts, our Conference Minister is at 14:47 Sermon from Pastor Amy Epp is at 24:54 ...
Jun 28, 2020•45 min
In the drama of Acts, the Holy Spirit is the main character and the plot is The Common. What IS "The Common"? In short, it's the spectacular joining of God's people which enables collective boldness, criminal discipleship, and shared life. Pastor Megan reflects on insights gleaned through engagement with Willie James Jennings ' magnificent commentary on the book of Acts as a "revolution of the intimate" (sermon begins at 22:20). +++ SCRIPTURE: Acts 4:1-21; 31-35 IMAGE: Photo by Tirachard Kumtano...
Jun 21, 2020•57 min
Blessings for graduates abound! Today's homily by Pastor Megan (starts at 19:00) is a pastoral blessing for high school graduates and ALL. About not losing heart... until we inevitably do... and then what?? Also: pudgie pies & inherited tradition, but you're going to have to listen to make that "infinitely more tasty" connection. What a joy to be led by Pastor Amy (starts at 27:35) in wrapping each of our high school graduates in a hand-made comforter made just for each one, to bless them, a...
Jun 14, 2020•52 min
Today, we tented with some Black Anabaptist kindred: Osheta Moore, Jerrell Williams, and Glen Guyton. Sister Osheta called her "Dear White Peacemakers" following to show up for anti-racism in better ways than we are. Pastor Megan follows her lead: I'm sorry. I'm listening. I'm learning. Also: Mennonites & Police Abolitionism - if we don't have the ancestors we need in this work, then our call is to BECOME the ancestors we wish we had. [sermon begins at 22:10] +++ PHOTO: "Defund SPD," by Mega...
Jun 07, 2020•55 min
