Solomon sets out to build a house for God, as people across time and place have done over and over again. But even in the dedication prayer, Solomon acknowledges that God cannot be contained by a building, regardless of size or grandness or even how delicious it smells. Just as Pastor Megan’s delicious-smelling cedar chest could never contain her bounty of beautiful quilts, so too Solomon’s cedar temple could never contain the enormity of God. Houses for God have never been about or for God, so ...
Oct 27, 2024•24 min
Whether in tents or temples, God is present and abiding with the Israelites and their descendants. God's living promise is a loving extensive, generational commitment/covenant among, between and with us just as we are: the only tabernacle God needs. Sermon begins at minute marker 4:47. 2 Samuel 7:1-17 Resources BibleWorm podcast: Episode 608: I’ll Build You a House , Amy Robertson and Robert Williamson, Jr Image: Comet traversing twilight sky Hymn 748 Take, O Take Me As I Am Text: John L. Bell (...
Oct 20, 2024•23 min
Hannah’s Song, often referred to as The Magnificat of the First Testament, is a collection of Hannah’s utopian dreams. She sings of a world where the bows of the warriors are broken and where God lifts the poor from the ash heap and sits them with princes. This sermon explores Hannah’s life and story, from which her dreams grew, and it follows the flow of Hannah’s dreamsong as it cascaded down through the centuries, inspiring Mary of Nazareth and inspiring us. “Hannah’s Dreamsong” was delivered ...
Oct 13, 2024•17 min
The Hebrew people grow weary of their supposed leader leaving them behind, and - in Moses’ absence - they ask for a symbol to represent God? Replace God? Hold them together as a community in a very destabilized time? Unclear, but even as we seek to empathize with a people who long for SOMEthing to keep them together, God and Moses are nonetheless displeased. And set about bickering over whose people they are. In the midst of this squabble, Moses appeals to God’s reputation: “What will the Egypti...
Oct 06, 2024•24 min
A sermon about a 25 chapter novella, in three parts: 1) Joseph actually had an amazing technicolor princess dress , and isn’t that both telling and fabulous?! 2) Love unevenly distributed produces division, resentment, and - in this story - the hate-filled action of a band of brothers who traffic their beloved brother into slavery, and it’s that terrible?! 3) If (or when) you go through hell, don’t come out empty-handed, and isn’t it tricky to say anything at all about suffering and the good we ...
Sep 29, 2024•21 min
Abram longs for a child that he believes God has denied him. God meets Abram in that specific need, but then leads him to a more expansive - even cosmic - view. This is a story that might be easier for aunties like me to understand: I absolutely don’t have one or two or three children. I either have zero children, or I have children that number the stars. I choose the latter, and in this story God seems to agree. As a church, we claim all our children as belonging to all of us. And we explicitly...
Sep 15, 2024•12 min
We start a new Narrative Lectionary year at a very good place to start: In the beginning… We begin with the genesis of all things, and it doesn’t take long for everything to devolve into deception, messing up, shame, hiding from God, and scapegoating. If our ancient Hebrew forebears in the faith told this story because they - like us - knew their overwhelming capacity to screw up royally, then I think it’s telling to back up a few steps and see how they START that story. Despite what some may ha...
Sep 08, 2024•19 min
Join Keyan, Eden and Rita as they share stories of discernment in the last of our series. This summer we asked congregation members if they would be willing to share stories from their lives about moments of discernment. Sermon begins at minute marker 3:46 Job 12:7-10 Resources BibleWorm podcast Rita's written text Image: Photo by Bakr Magrabi on pexels: https://www.pexels.com/photo/compass-on-hand-3203659/ Hymn: Voices Together, 537 Lord, You Sometimes Speak. Text: Christopher Idle (England), 1...
Jul 28, 2024•19 min
Join us to hear personal stories of discernment from Ken and Beth Miller Kraybill. They share about times of transition and decision in their lives. Sermon begins at minute marker 5:00 Matthew 4:18-22 Resources BibleWorm podcast Image: Photo by Neslihan A. on pexels.com https://www.pexels.com/photo/stairs-in-tunnel-16817922/ Hymn: Voices Together, 283 Lord, You Have Come to the Lakeshore Text: Spanish; Cesáreo Gabarain (Spain); trans. composite Gertrude C. Suppe (USA), George Lockwood IV (USA), ...
Jul 14, 2024•20 min
Join us as Charlene Epp and Lauren Good share stories about times of discernment in their lives. This is the first part of a series. Each Sunday for a few weeks at least two people will share stories from their lives highlighting the ways they have discerned paths and truth. Talks begin at 5:54 1 Corinthians 12:12-27 Image by Khanh Nguyen on pexels Hymn: Voices Together 568, Christ Has No Body Here but Ours Text: based on a prayer attr. Teresa of Ávila (present-day Spain), 16th c.; paraphr. Bria...
Jul 07, 2024•16 min
When we think we need to be in control of everything, we become anxious about our capacity to control. Letting our sense of control go and trusting in God and the provision that God has offered seems so terribly hard. What happens when we lose track of the fact that we’re part of the magnificently interconnected system, and we begin to imagine that we can, or even that we must function on our own? Sermon begins at minute marker Leviticus 26:3-22, 34-35, 40-45 Resources BibleWorm podcast Blessing...
Jun 23, 2024•19 min
God delights in God’s playground - all of creation is meant to be enjoyed and to participate in the purpose of the rest of creation. This sermon is a celebration of all that God has created, called good, and invited us to participate in. Sermon begins at minute marker 7:22 Psalm 104 Resources BibleWorm podcast Image: El Rio de Luz (The River of Light) 1877 Voices Together, Hymn 539, God Speaks to Us in Bird and Song. Text: Joseph Johnson (England), 1888, alt. Music: Pax Ressler (USA), © 2016 Pax...
Jun 16, 2024•13 min
Brisa Peacock from Camp CAMREC shared a sermon as part of our series on Creation Care, offering a glimpse into how SMC's and WMF's relationship with CAMREC continues to contribute to the region's stewardship of land and waterways. She also reflected on how CAMREC's programs and hospitality efforts are propelling our neighbors, other Churches and faith groups, and schools not only to contribute to CAMREC's stewardship efforts but also to pursue Creation Care efforts when they return home. Sermon ...
Jun 09, 2024•29 min
Creation itself, the morning stars and divine beings and whatnot – they were celebrating the foundations of the world itself before humans were even a thing. God and nature itself celebrated and called things good before human beings were even here. There’s a bigger picture here that requires removing ourselves from the center of our small, individual universes, and calls us to listen. So this sermon is about the work, challenge, and delight of listening to creation and to one another and oursel...
Jun 02, 2024•19 min
Cultures and traditions - including religions - all have multiple creation stories. Today we hear one from our scriptures told in Genesis, and our sermon shares another one - in the form of the children’s book “Big Momma Makes the World” by Phyllis Root. Sermon begins at minute marker 8:32 Genesis 1:1-2:4a Resources Image: https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/big-momma-makes-the-world_phyllis-root/780964/#edition=3554170&idiq=4077937 Big Momma Makes the World by Phyllis Root Hymn: Voices Together 1...
May 26, 2024•20 min
Paul binds the physical body with resurrection, a holistic change from life as we have structured and understood it to that which is eternal as Jesus' life, death and resurrection gifted us. Our faith is intricately tied to a belief in the unbelievable while living and loving as Jesus did, attending to the needs of bodies in the here and now. Bodies matter now and in a future we can not know or understand - for now. Sermon begins at minute marker 6:03 I Corinthians 15:1-26, 51-57 Resources Belie...
May 12, 2024•34 min
There is one church for every prisoner in Washington State. Chris Hoke from One Parish One Prisoner brings reflections on the challenges and blessings of working with churches and prisoners. Sermon begins at minute marker 4:16 John 11:33-44 Resources One Parish One Prisoner Image: Christ standing on the gates of hell Hymn: Voices Together, 348 Come Ye Faithful Raise the Strain, Text: John of Damascus, "First Ode of Canon for the Sunday after Easter," 8th c.; trans. John Mason Neale (England), Ch...
May 05, 2024•35 min
Relationships are a primary nourishment and fuel for a transformed community. Paul wrote letters only AFTER he engaged in relationship making. His work was able to flourish because he seeded intentional relationships with people that developed trust. How might we choose to nourish relationships in our lives, with our neighbors, with our community? How might we use Paul as an example to develop good trust in our relationships? Sermon begins at minute marker 4:28 Acts 18:1-8 Image: by John-Mark Sm...
Apr 28, 2024•17 min
Just as the Jewish community at Thessalonica was disrupted by the arrival and teachings of Paul and Silas, so, too, are we disrupted by things we often don’t feel prepared for. What does it mean to look disruption in the eye and experience it as an opening for Jesus to enter our lives anew? Sermon begins at 5:03 Acts 17:1-9 Hymn: Voices Together, 553, How Many Times We Start Again. Text: Thomas H. Troeger (USA), © 2009 Oxford University Press. Music: Scottish traditional, The Scottish Minstrel, ...
Apr 21, 2024•18 min
The crippled man and the disciples both experience surprise and interruption in the norms of what they think might happen for them this day. The man expected the same - people offering him coins or ignoring him. It has been the same day in and day out for years. Peter and John expected to continue in their grieving and confusion at the loss of their mentor and friend Jesus, and planned to go to the temple for a routine prayer service. Neither expectation happens, and they - and we! - are all bet...
Apr 14, 2024•14 min
In the aftermath of Jesus’ death and resurrection, Jesus offers comfort and presence to his disciples. He continues to remind them he has not come to establish a nation state, rather that the disciples would be the ones to carry forward Jesus’ mission. Requirements for this include more waiting, receiving the power of the Holy Spirit. Devotion to prayer may be what will prepare them for what’s next. But that isn’t here yet. They must prepare themselves to be led by the Holy Spirit. Sermon begins...
Apr 07, 2024•26 min
Jesus lives an increasingly life of truth-telling to civic and religious authorities. All the while he enfolds the marginalized and oppressed into a just and merciful embrace of care and love, calling disciples to do the same. Up to his impending death disciples cannot grasp what this will cost him. A woman enacting honor and love provides Jesus’ followers, then and now, with an example of unbridled recognition of who Jesus is. What is imprinted on our being? How can we break alabaster jars to d...
Mar 24, 2024•25 min
News of wars, natural disaster, and human suffering greets us every evening, without fail. Where is God in this? Does God not see? Jesus warns his disciples of the temple’s destruction, and worse, yet to come. Indeed, God in Christ does see what human beings are doing to one another. It is we who cannot stand to look, listen, or respond to the fires, the famines, the faces of suffering around us. And yet, and yet. Jesus comes among us to announce God is near at hand, God’s gracious will is carry...
Mar 17, 2024•25 min
Struck by Mark’s mention that Jesus sits across from the treasury box in the Temple, observing HOW each person gives their money, Pastor Megan ponders what Jesus might observe in how SHE lives with her own money (and for this Way walked together, how WE live with ours). Would Jesus be glad that the widow gives her last mite and has nothing to live on, or might Jesus be praising the widow for revealing - by her courageous and some might even say confrontational act - the baked-in injustice of the...
Mar 10, 2024•30 min
Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem is a deliberate act of political confrontation with the Roman Empire’s powers-that-be. After casing the mostly deserted late evening Temple, he makes plans to return the next day to make a royal mess of things; to disrupt business as usual. The Way Jesus walks, the Way that Jesus calls us to walk (together!), is a Way lined with palms that leads to confrontation with Empire. Sermon begins at minute marker 5:03 Mark 11.1-19 Resources BibleWorm podcast: Episode 531 – Th...
Mar 03, 2024•24 min
The cries of the suffering are not always polite. When we are suffering, can we let loose and trust our community to hold us? When our neighbors are suffering, can we build our resilience in the face of their screams for justice, for relief, for healing, for mercy? Sermon begins at 6:41 Resources BibleWorm podcast: Episode 527 – The Healing of Bartimaeus , Amy Robertson and Robert Williamson, Jr. Image: Melissa Kelly VT 610 Precious Lord, Take My Hand #73682 Words: Thomas Dorsey, Music: George A...
Feb 25, 2024•24 min
Jesus’ guide for discipleship invites us to rethink our expectations of what discipleship means and who disciples are. Embedded in the invitation is a deep look meeting the soul of our being with enduring love and perpetual hospitality to embrace the next steps of faith-filled following the Jesus Way. Sermon begins at minute marker 5:37 Mark 10:17-31 Resources BibleWorm podcast: ⦁ Episode 526 – The Eye of the Needle, Amy Robertson and Robert Williamson, Jr. Mark: Believers Church Bible Commentar...
Feb 18, 2024•24 min
I can talk about a woman who experiences a minimum of three healings in one healing story. The first is busting through all sorts of internal and external barriers to step out her door and into a crowd. The second is reaching for the hem of Jesus’ cloak to seize a cure for her illness. And the third is - with one word - being restored as family, reclaimed as belonging. I can talk about Jesus making a powerful one wait in order to give his full attention and presence to a marginalized one. And I ...
Feb 04, 2024•15 min
Tempted to avert our gaze from the mention of “evil spirit” or “demon”, instead Pastor Megan chooses to hold this story’s gaze and look for what may be true… then and now. What is true? What binds humans is indeed legion. What liberates humans is indeed Jesus. Who liberates humans is indeed us. Whew. Buckle up as we explore what makes demons tremble. Sermon begins at minute marker 5:05 Mark 5.1-20 Resources Intersectionality : In the sermon, I credit the origin of intersectionality to the women ...
Jan 28, 2024•24 min
Jesus' parables meet us in story form about ordinary livelihood understandings. Throwing these stories alongside life experiences of these livelihoods can provide spirit openings to fuller understanding of what it means to be kindom people. With these parables Jesus invites followers to be and embody kindom messaging without expectation and with generosity. Sermon begins at the 9:06 minute marker Scripture: Mark 4.1-34 Photo by Şahin Sezer Dinçer on pexels Hymn VT 519 God, Give Me Faith Like A C...
Jan 21, 2024•30 min
