Texts: Isaiah 11:1-10, Matthew 3:1-12

 The psychologist Carl Jung once said: “When religion stops talking about animals it will be all downhill.”  I wonder how we’re doing with that – if the nonhuman creaturely world has a strong enough presence in our psyche, our souls, or if we have been headed downhill for decades, or centuries.

If we are in danger of losing touch with animal nature, today it’s Isaiah to the rescue.  Although you wonder if Isaiah could benefit from learning a little more himself about how the natural world really works.  He presents a picture, populated with all sorts of animals that no one in their right mind would put in the same room together, or the same pasture.

“The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them.  The cow and the bear shall graze, their young shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.”

From where I stand, literally, right here, I have noticed that this congregation has one major banner in the sanctuary.  And that this banner is based on this very passage from Isaiah 11.  It fits well with our core value of peace, and I was curious where the banner came from and how it got there.   Here’s what I found out, the story of the animal banner at Columbus Mennonite.

It was made around 1990 by Jhan Yoder-Wyse and her mother Jean when they attended South Union Mennonite Church in West Liberty, Ohio.  It was created for a peace conference put on by the Women’s Missionary and Service Commission and each congregation in attendance was asked to make a banner for the event.  So it began its life as one…

Texts: Isaiah 2:1-5, Matthew 24:36-44

In some ways Advent is one of the least surprising and mysterious seasons there could be.  Because we’ve been here before.  We’ve gone through it many times.  We know the words, the songs, the stories.  We know exactly what’s going to happen, how this is all going to unfold.  Jesus is going to be born to Mary and Joseph in the most humble of settings, will be heralded by angels, visited by shepherds and stargazers from the East, and honored as the savior of his people.

You know this story, and there’s a great comfort in knowing it, and hearing it again.

Advent means “coming,” and this is a time when we look again for the coming of Christ.

What always strikes me about the first Sunday of Advent, is that the texts each year seem intent on unsettling us from what we think we know is supposed to happen.  Instead of preparing us for the coming of a gentle birth – a memory of something long ago, something from out of the past – we are confronted with words from the adult Jesus, spoken in future tense, declared in his final days, spoken as if the world, or at least the world as we know it, is about to be shaken to its core.

“Many will come in my name claiming, ‘I am the Messiah,’ and will lead many astray.  And you will hear of wars and rumors of wars; see that you are not alarmed.”

“The sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light; the stars will fall from heaven, and the powers of heaven will be shaken.  Then the Son of Man will appear in heaven.”

“But about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven nor the Son, but…

Text: Psalm 46

It’s hard to be still.

If you make the space, the time, the effort, to still your body and to simply be, without distractions,  chances are one of two things will happen.  One possibility is that you’ll fall asleep, which is a pretty good indicator that you’re not getting enough of that.  The other possibility is that even though you have stilled your body you will quickly discover that it’s even harder to still your mind.  Thoughts, images, anxieties, old conversations, plans for next week, what you wish you would have said on the phone call, the cleverly crafted phrasing of your next Facebook status update, what you’re having for supper, what you wish you were having for supper – the mind is not easily stilled.  Our feet may be resting in one place, but the squirrel in our head keep bouncing around, these thoughts keep clamoring through our brains as if they run the place.

It’s the Sunday before Thanksgiving, we have a Bountiful Table spread before us, and the lectionary Psalm, Psalm 46, contains this phrase that feels like something of a prelude for entering into a spirit of gratitude.  “Be still and know that I am God.”

It’s a dense enough phrase that it could be the subject of a whole book.  Or at least a sermon.  “Be still and know that I am God.”

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“Sink down, Of hay in flame.”  If you were to get your hands on a copy of the authoritative book on biblical Hebrew translation – which, by the way, would make an excellent stocking stuffer for that special someone in your life – The Brown, Driver, Briggs Hebrew-English lexicon – and if you were to look up the Hebrew word in Psalm 46 translated “Be still,” RaFaH, you would note that this one…

Text: Luke 20:27-40

There’s a piece of legislation in the book of Deuteronomy called the law of levirate marriage.  In a patriarchal society in which children were seen not only as a sign of blessing and prosperity, but also as a way for a man to ensure the survival of his own name, his family line, levirate marriage was a way of seeing that there would be a son to continue that name even if a married man died before having children.  According to the law, it was the duty of the dead man’s brother to marry the childless widow, and the firstborn son that they produce together  would not be his, but would be the legal offspring of the deceased brother.  And by doing this the surviving brother would redeem his dead brother’s lineage, and keep his name alive in Israel.  That was the point of the law.

The sermon title, “All of them are alive,” is taken from the final phrase that Jesus says in a conversation he has with the Sadducees in which they reference this law.  This is the only time in Luke’s gospel when the Sadducees have an exchange with Jesus.  Just this once.  They want to talk about resurrection, which they don’t believe in, and in case that wasn’t heavy-duty enough, for good measure they mix in the politics of marriage and biblical interpretation.  Take a sip of that cocktail, and you’ve got to admire the Sadducees for making the most of this one opportunity to ask Jesus a question.  That this is an important exchange in the memory of the early church is reflected in the fact that it is recorded in almost the exact same form, in the same narrative location, in Matthew, Mark, and Luke.

Despite its apparent importance, I admit I’ve never…

Text: Luke 19:1-10

Here’s a question:  Can a good person get caught up in a bad system and do bad things that the system expects them to do?  Is it possible for a decent human being to do indecent acts that are harmful to others simply by carrying out their duty and doing their job?

It’s not a very hard question to answer.  We don’t have to think very long before we can say that Yes, this has happened and continues to happen all the time.  It can happen to the soldier, it can happen to the business manager, it can happen to anyone within an institution where there is corruption.

For someone who finds themselves living more like a cog in a machine than a caring human being, what does salvation look like?  In an inhuman system, is it possible to live humanly and save your own soul, while also extending grace to others?

Abbie and I recently rewatched the film The Lives of Others, which works with some these kinds of questions.  The film takes place in East Germany in 1984, five years before the fall of the Berlin wall.  One of the main characters, Gerd Wiesler, works as an agent of the East German secret police and is firmly committed to the communist regime.  He is an expert in interrogation techniques for getting people to admit to acts they have done against the state.  He takes on an assignment of spying on a popular playwright named Dreyman whose support for the communists is in question.  Wiesler and his team bug Dreyman’s apartment and set up their equipment in the attic space of this building.

The film goes back and forth between the lives of this playwright and his actress girlfriend and other friends, and the life of this secret policeman…