We start our new year with the Narrative Lectionary “In the [very] beginning…” (a very good place to start…). The first creation account, in Genesis chapter one, reveals a Creator God who creates and co-creates, makes and beckons forth life. And God sees all that comes to be and declares: “good, good, good, good, good, good, and SUPREMELY good.” Today is a good day to remember that “supremely good” is our original condition, our birthright, our truest and deepest core. Sermon begins at minute 6:...
Sep 12, 2021•17 min
Summary: This one stumped Pastor Megan. We again ask: “Why do we worship?” And this week’s response, taken from our Voices Together hymnal, is: “To praise and give thanks.” Listen as Megan meanders through reflections on gratitude, even as she doesn’t feel very much like praising or giving thanks. And as she finds her way toward a genuine experience of gratitude, thanks to our gathering together as community for worship and shared life. Series: Summer-Ordinary Time 2021 Resources Scripture: Reve...
Sep 05, 2021•16 min
Summary: Pastor Amy realizes that God plays favorites! We, God's people, are the ones who God returns to again and again, we're invited to return to God's presence to be formed in worship. In worship we are shaped by the language in song, prayer and preaching. Week after week we tell the story of God and God's favored people. We come to understand who God is and who we are in relationship to God. In the Magnificat, Mary's worship tell's God's story. She passes the scripture and story and traditi...
Aug 29, 2021•19 min
Summary: Our pastors Melanie and Jonathan Neufeld have been with our congregation for the past 14 years, building a ministry with people experiencing homelessness, expanding the community of people who care about those living outside into a network, and offering companionship and love to those in our congregation. They share from their experience of ministry in Lake City as we prepare to bless them on their way to a new beginning. Series: Summer-Ordinary Time 2021 Resources Scripture: Psalm 13 (...
Aug 22, 2021•19 min
Summary: As we return to our church building for the first time in more than 17 months, we ponder the question: Why do we worship? Our new hymnal and worship resource, Voices Together , guides us through some of the foundational responses to that question. Firstly, we worship in order to be gathered as community. Summoned by the God who made us, we come home to God and to one another, finding (AND extending) belonging, welcome, transformation, liberation. However imperfectly: Welcome home, churc...
Aug 15, 2021•11 min
In solidarity with Water Defenders at Line 3 in Minnesota, Christian Peacemaker Teams called on churches across Turtle Island to a Sunday of prayer and action during Eastertide this past spring - to better understand and support Indigenous-led resistance. Our own Weldon Nisly helped put the worship resource together and we were blessed to have him preach for us, weaving together several short stories that amplified the voices and bore witness to the lives of powerful, prophetic women. Series: Su...
Jul 18, 2021•1 hr 3 min
Jesus told a parable “toward the necessity” that his hearers might be urged to pray persistently and not be discouraged. It was the story of a woman - a widow - who nevertheless persisted in crying for justice from an unjust judge who self-avowedly neither feared God nor respected people. As we emerge to resurrected life as a church community, may we grow in resilience and persistence - in the face of all that is different, hard, uncomfortable. And may we tune into the voices around us persisten...
Jun 27, 2021•39 min
Jesus is on a resurrection tour! He appears to the disciples not once but time and again - and then again when different ones among them are gathered. His set-list stays the same: Peace! But he changes the way he communicates. Likewise, we will need to communicate again and again the ways that we gather, our consent, our needs and what this new way of being looks like. We'll have to be patient and grace filled, even with the doubters. May Jesus bless us with his Spirit! [Sermon at 24:08] Permiss...
Jun 20, 2021•53 min
On the Day of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit came to bless and honor difference, by allowing for bridging and understanding amongst differences. As we navigate the many differences in how we communicate, how we gather, and how we worship, especially in this season of transition toward resurrected life together, may we practice curiosity with ourselves and one another. Pastor Megan’s sermon, a continuation of our worship series “Presence in a Time of Transition,” begins at minute 17:05. Series: Summe...
Jun 13, 2021•48 min
Bartimaeus is blind and cries out asking Jesus to have mercy on him. Rather than assuming he knows what Bartimaeus means by ‘having mercy’, Jesus asks him a direct and open-ended question: "What do you want me to do for you?” Jesus creates space for Bartimaeus to have full agency in answering for himself, naming his need and his longing. As we prepare ourselves for returning to embodied community together, we too will claim the practice of seeking robust and enthusiastic consent, in the spirit o...
Jun 06, 2021•54 min
Looking to the sacred text of John’s gospel, and the sacred text of creation, Pastor Megan ponders resurrection as not only a powerful Way of Life, but specifically as we emerge from the worst of the pandemic and begin our journey of return to incarnational community together. Bear witness to the powerful witness of fireweed at Lawetlat'la (name given by the indigenous Cowlitz people for the mountain many know as Mt. Saint Helens), regeneration of a renewed landscape of life, and the resilience ...
May 30, 2021•47 min
The Holy Spirit comes to a community in the Pentecost story. And so we hear Scriptural reflections from our community. Pastor Megan shares what our Spiritual Leadership Team noticed and wondered about together as we dwelt in this story during Saturday’s meeting (in our morning practice of lectio divina). We are a people who gather around our center, covenanting with one another and our God. We are a people both gathered in and sent out by God’s Spirit. Thanks be to the Holy Spirit of wind and fl...
May 23, 2021•52 min
Paul insists to the Galatians that all who follow Jesus are adoptees into the family of God and thus we receive our inheritance...not gold or property but Spiritual riches. As all adoptees know, family is the people who take care of you and who you take care of. Through the Spirit we can focus not on selfish desire but on taking care of each other and building unity. Series: Narrative Lectionary - Year 3 - Eastertide Permission to podcast the music in this service obtained from One License with ...
May 16, 2021•54 min
All of Acts is a story about a community / communities in transition; a story about finding a way together through much sorting and discerning; a story about claiming and releasing and improv; a story of a community’s long journey of becoming . All in the service of following Jesus together, as empowered by God’s Spirit. Today, Melanie and Jonathan share with us a story of our becoming, and theirs; a story of Community Ministry seeded in the rich soils of Seattle Mennonite Church and the Lake Ci...
May 09, 2021•56 min
At first blush, Philip seems to be the hero of this remarkable story in Acts, being willing to expand the circle of the Jesus-following community. Philip offered baptism to the Ethiopian eunuch, a gender-variant foreigner from a racial minority. But Pastor Joanna Harader (of Peace Mennonite in Lawrence KS), invites us to take another look at the Ethiopian eunuch, and find a resilient and insistent faithfulness that has survived every possible barrier or attempt to cast out. Blessed be the resili...
May 03, 2021•1 hr 4 min
We had a 15 minute service of worship and prayer today followed by continuation of our Congregational Meeting from last week. Holy Work! Permission to podcast the music in this service obtained from One License with license #A-726929. All rights reserved. Holy Spirit Come with Power - Text: Anne Neufeld Rup © 1970, Spanish trans. Barbara Mink © 1980; Music: The Sacred Harp , 1844, Harm. Joan Fyock Norris © 1989 Renew Your Church - Text: K. L. Cober © 1960, renewed 1985; Music: American Tradition...
Apr 25, 2021•20 min
Acts tells us that as the community of disciples grew in number, “a dispute arose…” Not shocking for any of us who have ever been part of any human community: As numbers grow, disputes are surely to arise! This story of the early Jesus-following community trying to figure out how to organize themselves in the wake of Jesus’ death and resurrection, as their numbers are growing by the day, offers some insight into our own adventures in being community together. May we have ears to hear, and the gr...
Apr 18, 2021•52 min
The disciples on the road to Emmaus didn't recognize Jesus while he was walking with them. But like a flower that knows in its cells how to bloom, they knew in their bodies that to be disciples was to offer hospitality. They had been at hundreds of tables with Jesus offering welcome to strangers and sinners. Just like the disciples, we're living in a time of uncertainty, unsure of what comes next. Perhaps if we let the DNA of discipleship form us - welcome, hospitality, empathy and compassion - ...
Apr 11, 2021•1 hr
We gather to celebrate the risen Christ with music, song and story. Children and their families bring their joy and creativity to the Easter story in a mini video-pageant and we conclude our worship with our tradition of belting out the Hallelujah Chorus (well, we hear ourselves singing from a couple years ago - but we belt along at home.) Alleluia! Christ is risen! Series: Narrative Lectionary - Year 3 - Easter Luke 24:1-12 Permission to podcast the music in this service obtained from One Licen...
Apr 04, 2021•58 min
Jesus is always surprising the crowds around him with his attentions; sometimes offending with his attentions. To whom is Jesus drawn? How often Jesus walks his body to the edge of the crowd and speaks directly to the marginalized or stigmatized one; calling them by name, or asking what they want, or offering them healing of some kind, or going to their home for a shared meal. And the crowds are left befuddled, or occasionally outraged. When Jesus gives his attention to a shouting blind beggar, ...
Mar 21, 2021•59 min
Jesus keeps on telling stories about wealth and money. Pastor Amy preaches on the rich man and Lazarus and the way, like the rich man in the parable, we are gatekeepers with wealth and resources. Unlike the rich man, we still have the opportunity to open the gate instead of stepping past those hustling for crumbs. [Sermon at 29:10] Scripture: Luke 16.19-31 Permission to podcast the music in this service obtained from One License with license #A-726929. All rights reserved. Here in this place - T...
Mar 14, 2021•1 hr 1 min
Jesus’ parables contain an “excess of meaning” which makes preaching three of them on a single morning quite the challenge. What is one to do with the excess upon excess upon excess?? Instead of choosing just one sermon of the hundred variations a preacher might preach, Pastor Megan offers a whole series of vignettes, noticings, wonderings, sneak peeks of the sermons that might have been and might still could be. “I can talk about…” becomes a refrain for noticing the many noteworthy things in th...
Mar 07, 2021•53 min
Summary: Jesus tells the truth about the violence his people were both experiencing and perpetrating. That truth-telling leads to lament: “Jerusalem, Jerusalem… How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!” And only then, in the wake of truth-telling and collective lament, can people find their way to the imaginative, healing, liberating path of Jesus. The writing of Joanna Lawrence Shenk leads us into engaging so...
Feb 28, 2021•1 hr 5 min
I make plans. I create checklists. Checking boxes on those checklists is one of my greatest joys. And I’m TOAST without my calendar and its checklists. But Luke’s gospel gives us two very familiar stories in a row (Jesus at the home of Martha & Mary, and the parable of the Samaritan that many call ‘good’), and when taken together, a thread emerges. A thread of invitation beyond the plans. Even the Very Good Plans that we have for our time, our money, our energy. This does not mean that plans...
Feb 21, 2021•50 min
A group has been meeting weekly for the past couple of months, going chapter-by-chapter through "Pursuing God's Will Together" by Ruth Haley Barton, a foundational text for the spiritual discerning we have done as church the past 7+ years. Jennifer Delanty was commissioned by the group to share with our congregation some of what they've been learning, wondering, and practicing together. Listen as she explores Jesus' experience of transfiguration, alongside our own experience of transformation, a...
Feb 14, 2021•1 hr 2 min
We’ve got ourselves a BADnews - GOODnews situation with the pair of stories from Luke 7. Jesus is moved by a widow’s suffering to bring healing and a restoration of her wholeness in the community. Yet Jesus also brings healing to the “treasured” slave of a Roman military commander without liberating that slave from slavery. Additionally, Jesus calls that Roman military officer’s description of his own power and commanding authority “faith.” What?? On the one hand, Jesus’ mercy embodies his good ...
Feb 07, 2021•46 min
We worship with Jesus in the field and in the synagogue. Jesus debates with his fellow Jewish leaders about God's gift of the Sabbath. The Pharisees and legal experts were trying to fence up the law, protecting it and their community. Jesus argued that the gift of rest and restoration for all of creation should not limit life and wholeness. Sabbath should not prevent God's people from sharing food to with hungry or from healing to those who are ill. For Jesus' disciples today, this story tells u...
Jan 31, 2021•16 min
Today's Scripture reflections feature Jesus, a heap of fish, and pondering the BRAVERY of following. That leads directly into Brenda Salter McNeil's powerful storytelling of clergy in Ferguson in 2014 being asked by the young generation of leaders who'd witnessed a lack of integrity in the church: "Are you coming or not?" It is brave to show up, brave to receive critique, brave to change plans, brave to cede power, brave to remain rooted, brave to be humble, brave to follow. -- Sermon begins at ...
Jan 24, 2021•56 min
Crowds. They can be riotous, violent, insurrectionist mobs, afraid of losing power and hellbent on throwing a prophet off a cliff. Or they can be boisterous, hope-filled, sleeves-rolled-up masses resolved to build a movement for liberation. We meet both kinds in Luke's gospel and in our nation, both past and present. Recalling Jesus' inaugural teaching in his hometown, and honoring the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Pastor Megan ponders finding a home in the hope-filled crowd that support mov...
Jan 17, 2021•52 min
My words are stuck God Do I rage or do I weep? Wrap me in your grace “Haiku prayers” posted by John Stevens in Narrative Lectionary facebook group -- This week's images of white supremacy storming and occupying our Capitol have caused many of us to rage and weep. In short, to grieve. This was supposed to be a sermon about discerning paths, and in many ways it still is. Listen in as Pastor Megan explores the question of those who followed John the Baptizer into the wilderness, the same question m...
Jan 10, 2021•54 min
