Join Pastor Megan in a reflection on the story that begins with dirt in a garden. We've heard it so many times, through so many tellings and retellings. What table was set in that garden by a trickster and a very human Eve? Sermon begins at minute marker 4:41 Genesis 3:1-7; Matthew 7:15-20 Image: Photo by Rachel Claire: https://www.pexels.com/photo/table-set-on-lawn-in-forest-4992937/ Hymn: Voices Together 642, Healing River of the Spirit; text: Ruth Duck (USA), 1994, © 1996 The Pilgrim Press mu...
Mar 05, 2023•18 min
Join us as Pastor Megan reflects on our Story's beginnings. Humans and gardens and all good, life giving stories begin in the dirt. Sermon begins at minute marker 6:35 Genesis 2:7-9, 15-25; Mark 16:9-15 Image: Photo by Gabriel Jimenez on Unsplash Hymn: Voices Together 550, God Who Touches Earth with Beauty text: Mary S. Edgar (Canada), 1925, music: alt. Alfred V. Fedak (USA), 1988, © 1989 Sacred Music Press. Permission to podcast the music in this service obtained from One License with license #...
Feb 26, 2023•16 min
In this scripture, we come to the “ending credits” of the story of Mary that we have been following for the past several months. Using the musical West Side Story, Dustin urges us to ensure that we give credit to everyone who contributed to the story. Sermon begins at minute marker 8:00 Luke 3: 21-23; 31-38 Resources Gospel of Musical Theatre podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-gospel-of-musical-theatre/id1565558402?i=1000544599942 & https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-g...
Feb 12, 2023•27 min
Jesus’ ability to choose his baptism matters. Our ability to choose baptism, to choose discipleship, to choose joining the the Jesus movement, to choose walking in the Way, to choose covenant with one another ALSO matters. Despite how it may sound, this is not a generic U.S. American style rugged individualism. But instead, our individual agency leads us to a voluntary collectivism in which an “I” becomes a “we” in which each “I” is honored. Our community covenant is like a campfire that we keep...
Feb 05, 2023•15 min
This sermon is a wondering, a story, a reflection, and - at the last - a blessing. A wondering about the treasures stored in Mary’s heart. A story about an aunt and her nephew ice skating. A reflection about Jesus at 12-years-old, about ALL 12-year-olds, and about belonging. A blessing for each beloved one… those on the way to, presently at, or well on the other side of age 12. Sermon begins at minute marker 6:05 Scripture: Psalm 36:5-10 & Luke 2:41-51 Resources A Woman’s Lectionary for the ...
Jan 29, 2023•21 min
Join us as Weldon reflects on prophecy and the prophets he has known and worked with in Iraqi Kurdistan. His work with CPT has brought him in contact with prophets, particularly women prophets, who are challenging and provoking the systems of oppression around them. Sermon begins 7:18 Hymn: Voices Together 208, With Mary Sing Magnificat. Words - ©2000 Jeannette M Lindholm Augsburg Fortress Publishers. Music - English traditional; Ralph Vaughn Williams, harmony. Permission to podcast the music in...
Jan 22, 2023•32 min
Magi from the East, travel (for two years) guided by a significant astrological event. Along the way (in the opera, Amahl and the Night Visitors ) they stop at the home of a poor widow and her son; before finding their way to the chaotic home of Mary, the harried mother of toddler Jesus in Dustin’s dramatic interpretation of the familiar tale. Paralleling that energetic telling of the journey of the Magi with the somber story of the small French town of Dieulefit, who sheltered and saved its Jew...
Jan 08, 2023•33 min
Jesus’ formation began when he was still in utero , when his mama sang the revolutionary songs of her own foremamas, and when Joseph drew a circle of family around a child not his own. Years later when Jesus’ own ministry proclaimed a liberation of systems where thrones and lowly unjustly co-exist, and dramatically redefined family, Mary & Joseph should have been the very least surprised of all. It is exactly who they formed the child Jesus to be. May we similarly form and be formed by the p...
Dec 11, 2022•17 min
Elizabeth exclaimed with a loud cry, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb.” Who was the blessed woman, and what does it mean to be blessed in the first place? Dustin is an emerging Mariologist, and he walks us through the unfamiliar early life of Mary before Jesus as he explores what it means to be beloved and blessed by God, and the way he sees the SMC community fulfilling that blessing. Sermon begins at minute marker 4:53 Genesis 17.15-22; Luke 1.39-45 Photo from...
Dec 04, 2022•29 min
When Mary said yes to Gabriel's invitation to be the bearer of Jesus, she did so as one in the long story of women partnering with God in creation. Each of us, like Mary, may be storytellers of God, helping to birth new things in our own lives and in the world: new families, new ideas, new art, new life. Sermon begins at minute marker 5:30 Genesis 16.7-13 , Luke 1.26-38 Image: File:Henry Ossawa Tanner - The Annunciation.jpg - Wikimedia Commons Hymn: Voices Together 251, There Were Angels Hoverin...
Nov 27, 2022•23 min
An opening question for our sermonic adventure: Of all the Marys in our gospels, WHICH MARY is the Mary in John 11 and John 12? If you think you know the answer, your answer may be complicated by what you hear here. The biblical world has been shaken by the research of Elizabeth Schrader, and many of us have been introduced to Schrader’s incredible findings about Mary Magdalene in John’s gospel thanks to Diana Butler Bass preaching about it during the Wild Goose Festival in summer of 2022. A par...
Nov 20, 2022•31 min
Drama heightens in the exaggerated, fantastical tragi-comedy that is Esther. After a moment of reluctance, Esther rises to the occasion to successfully execute a plan to protect her people (and literally execute - on a 75-foot-high stake - the enemy of her people…). Speaking the language of the powerful, following every royal protocol, and understanding how both laws and egos work, Esther drives the plot of this raucous, fictional narrative. A minority gender of a minority people in the grips of...
Nov 13, 2022•25 min
Before there was Rosa Parks, there was Ida B. Wells. Before there was Esther, there was Vashti. And after all of them was Brenda Salter McNeil. Those who say “No!” stand on the shoulders of many others who also had the courage to resist before them, making the powers tremble. We too have the opportunity to say “No” to oppression and exploitation. Do not fear being reduced to a naysayer, for our “No” ultimately allows for a “Yes”; a YES to the liberating, loving, and just Way of Jesus. Sermon beg...
Nov 06, 2022•27 min
All Saints Sunday was a wonderful chance to eat together and share stories of our saints. We even got to make icons and hear part of the story of Ruth read out loud by four voices. Listen as Dustin reflects on the stories of his saints, his icons, and one of his favorite books of the bible, Ruth. Sermon begins at minute 7:02 Ruth 1:14-18 and 3:1-1 Photo by Kampus Production on pexels VT 209, We Dream of a Turning, Music - ©2019 MennoMedia Inc. Contributor: Kathryn Harsha...
Oct 30, 2022•20 min
As much as we learned otherwise in Sunday school, Boaz is not the romantic lead of a storybook romance. He is, however, one of the best examples we have in the Bible of how to use privilege, power and wealth in a way that offers a place to those who don't have those things and influences others to do the same. Sermon begins at minute 8:19 Ruth 2:1-20 and 4: 9-17 Resources Modern Love series by Alisha Rai (Ruth is not a romance, but these books are ) The Forgotten Books of the Bible: Recovering t...
Oct 23, 2022•26 min
The Bible has taught us well to allegorize stories by substituting God for the male figure in a story, and Jerusalem or Humanity for the female figure. However, Hebrew poetry lends itself to double entendres and multiple meanings. With the help of the 1957 Broadway musical The Music Man, we will examine the well-established structure of this poem with curiosity; asking, “Can this song be sung a different way?” Sermon begins at minute 6:36 Song of Songs 5:2-9 and 8:5-10 Resources: See the SMC web...
Oct 16, 2022•27 min
No bones about it: Song of Songs is steamy. Before this sermon is through, we will acknowledge that people do, in fact, have sex. We will hear about desire and the clandestine rendezvous of lovers. We will learn that Pastor Megan has become an avid reader of romance novels, and bear witness as she practices more unapologetically owning that. We will celebrate bodies and the joy of human sexuality. We will dwell in the Sublime Song of young lovers who love themselves and one another with sensuous...
Oct 09, 2022•27 min
When at last the communal voice enters the lamentation, closing out the book of Lamentations, the community finds a way to speak in a singular voice with enough spaciousness to embrace its diversities. It’s almost magical how they pull it off. Have we, could we, might we do the same with our various experiences in this lingering, never-ending pandemic? Sermon begins at minute 7:58 Lamentations 3.1-3, 17-33 and 5.1-3, 19-22 Image: Photo by Chang Duong on Unsplash Hymn: Voices Together 712 God of ...
Oct 02, 2022•33 min
It feels bad to feel bad! So often feelings and embodiments of anger and despair are punished or policed - especially in women and people of color. Maybe that's why we so often turn past the book of Lamentations: it leans fully into those shamed expressions of outrage, pain and grief. We don't want to feel those feelings, but right there in our sacred text we are given permission to not only feel them but to express them fully and forcefully. Being able to give voice to our outrage before God an...
Sep 25, 2022•28 min
We encounter the timeless poetry of Ecclesiastes about the seasons of our lives. Pete Seeger iconically set this poetry to music so poignant and beautiful that it is known to nearly all of us. Like all good poetry, there is spaciousness to enter it from our many and varied places in life. Some of us may find in these ancient words a seed of despair, some of us a melancholic sort of hope, and still others enormous freedom. There is a time to hear from one another, and today seemed to be that time...
Sep 18, 2022•19 min
If all of life is “vanity” or breath or vapor, as the Teacher of Ecclesiastes repeats, is it then “perfectly pointless”? If life is unfair, inscrutable, beyond our control, and destined for the grave, as the Teacher describes, is it then meaningless? Perhaps. Or Perhaps it’s simply precious, for the moments given to us as our portion. Whatever the case, do know that “a living dog is better than a dead lion”! Ahhh… What fun to adventure in this book that’s been mostly ignored within Christian com...
Sep 11, 2022•16 min
In 2020 Seattle dollars, Mary pours out $100,000 worth of perfume on Jesus’ feet. Why? And when Judas questions her choice, citing how much further those dollars could have gone if given to the poor, doesn’t he have a point? Yep. But come along for this sermonic ride, exploring the honoring of bodies, and averted public shaming, and loving God with one’s all, and the many flavors of scarcity mindset, and Tanya Tucker’s gorgeously defiant “If your heart is in them flowers, bring ‘em on…” Sermon b...
Jul 31, 2022•26 min
Jesus’s example of how to pray helps us see economic justice in a new way, helps us remember who we are to God and to each other, and helps us see that admitting dependance on God can lead to justice for everyone. Sermon begins at 6:12. Matthew 6.7-15, 19-21 , NRSV Updated Edition Photo by Nicole Michalou via Pexels Hymn: VT 740 Music & Text Daniel Iverson, 1929 arr. Herbert G. Tovey, 1935, 1963. CCLI #23488. Permission to podcast the music in this service obtained from One License with lice...
Jul 24, 2022•17 min
Just how easy is it for a camel to get through the eye of a needle? Pastor Debbie takes us through many translations and interpretations around the familiar quip. Did Jesus really mean what he is reported to have said - either literally or metaphorically? Who was this lesson even for? Maybe there are more questions here than answers. Sermon begins minute 6:43 Scripture: Luke 4.16-21; 18.18-30 Image: uncredited gif Hymn: VT 6 Let's Walk Together Music - ©2006 Abingdon Press: Mark A Miller Text: L...
Jul 17, 2022•19 min
Some of the most beloved words of Scripture - “Do justice, love kindness, walk humbly with your God” - are surrounded by some decidedly less beautiful words, to put it mildly. We know the gift of the beautiful and familiar nugget contained in Micah 6.8, but is there also gift in the tough stuff that comes before and after? Pastor Megan notices in the surrounding chapters a PROBLEM: the mundanity of everyday wickedness. An ANTIDOTE: sabbath interruption of the steady progression and accumulation ...
Jul 10, 2022•24 min
Leviticus is confusing. It wasn’t written to us or for us and we don’t even know who wrote it! Can we find some guidance for today in this text? Is it even relevant? Sermon begins at minute 3:55 Scripture: Leviticus 19.9-18, 33-37 Photo by Sincerely Media on Unsplash Hymn: VT 206, Seek the Peace of the City, Words and Music - ©2004 Church Publishing, Inc. Contributors: David Wright/James E. Clemens...
Jul 03, 2022•19 min
The law in Deuteronomy is clear: every seven year all debt is to be canceled. But because people are people, it's pretty hard to live it out practically. What the law depends on and encourages is building a community of trust in which we know each other well enough to give and receive financial care from our neighbors. It also encourages us to interrupt our contemporary systems that depend on predatory lending and personal indebtedness. Cancel all debt! Period. Sermon begins at minute 16:37 (thi...
Jun 26, 2022•34 min
On this Sunday when we celebrate the baptism of two young adults in our congregation, Pastor Amy explores the way baptism blesses and call us. In Jesus baptism, he was pronounced his allegiance not to the emperors and kings who ruled over his people but to God alone. He did so along with a community who, like him, were committed to hearts and lives oriented to the practical purpose of sharing resources, helping those in need and seeking justice. And ultimately his baptism was a moment of persona...
Jun 19, 2022•18 min
We wrap up another Narrative Lectionary year with the lovely close of Paul’s letter to the community at Philippi. These words of encouragement, consolation, and assurance are bedside words: one can just as easily imagine reading them to a beloved child at bedtime, or a beloved elder at the time of death. They are a benediction of sorts, functioning as a semicolon - a pronounced pause - between the two main clauses of waking and sleeping, or living and dying, or worship and work. Listen to Pastor...
Jun 12, 2022•15 min
Philippians chapter 2 contains what is thought to be the earliest Christian hymn. Paul’s words to his beloveds in Philippi can be likened to a music director’s instructions to a singing group. Seattle Mennonite Church is like a choir with many voices, singing a complicated oratorio. Using this metaphor the instructions to the singers become: highlight your own part, practice and then listen to others so you know when to come in. Sermon begins at minute 5:02 Philippians 2.1-13 Image: Goshen Women...
May 29, 2022•17 min
