The video above includes the full service, except for the time for sharing.

Permission to podcast/stream the music in this service obtained through One License with license A-727859. Copyrights for songs given after the sermon text.

Itching Ears

Scripture: 2 Timothy 3:14-4:4

I was asked if I would give a short meditation today as part of our hymn-sing service, but my hope is to leave space for as much singing as we can possibly fit into these precious few minutes of our Sunday morning together. A hymn-sing is a great day to continue exploring my sabbatical theme of creativity and spirituality, so I looked to the lectionary to see if any of the texts for today fit that theme. The one I chose might seem like an odd choice, but there was something about these words to Timothy that I couldn’t quite shake as I thought about what it means to practice faith from a place of creativity and expression. 

This is one of the many books in the Bible attributed to Paul but which most scholars believe was not written directly by him. What’s more, many scholars also believe that by the time this letter was written, the person named Timothy would have been long dead. So, this letter is what one commentator calls a work of “epistolary fiction.” The names of Paul and Timothy are used as stand-ins to provide rhetorical weight to the author’s goals of instructing the churches.

It’s religious fan-fiction that somehow got incorporated into the official canon of scripture. In the last few years, it seems like there has been an explosion in the use of the word “canon” as fans of various book series, movies, or comics argue over what counts as officially part of the story and what can…

CMC Worship 10_9_22 from Gwen Reiser on Vimeo.

The video above includes the full service, except for the time for sharing.

Permission to podcast/stream the music in this service obtained through One License with license A-727859. Copyrights for songs given after the sermon text.

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Sermon 
Healing, feeling | 9 October 2022      
1 Kings 5:1-3,9-14; Luke 17:11-19
Speaker: Joel Miller

Resmaa Menakem begins his book My Grandmother’s Hands by telling a story about just that – the hands of his maternal grandmother.  When he was young, he and his grandma would curl up together on the couch when they watched TV.  Because she often felt pain in her hands, she would ask Resmaa to massage her hands in his.  As he did this, he would notice how broad her fingers were on her small body, with thick callouses on each thumb.  One day he asked her why her hands were like this.  She replied that when she was his age the family was sharecroppers and she had picked cotton.  The sharp cotton burr would tear the skin on her hands.  But the more years she picked, the thicker her hands became until she could pull out the cotton without bleeding.  It had been a while since she had brushed her hands up against those burrs, but the body’s response to their sharp edges remained, right there in her hands, held within the hands of young Resmaa (p. 4).  

The subtitle of the book is “Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies” and the image of his grandmother’s hands serves the message Menakem returns to time and again: Racialized trauma and the myth of White supremacy is held not so much in our minds as a collection of ideas that can…

CMC WorshipService 09.25.2022.mp4 from Gwen Reiser on Vimeo.

The video above includes the full service, except for the time for sharing.

Permission to podcast/stream the music in this service obtained through One License with license A-727859. Copyrights for songs given after the sermon text.

Sermon: A Listening Heart
Texts: 1 Kings 3:1-10; Luke 11:33-36
Speaker: Joel Miller  

With our friends from CDC here today as part of the “Sacred Listening” process, I’d like to reflect on the gift of listening.  In a slightly roundabout way, through this story of King Solomon.  

The story in 1 Kings 3 contains a question just about everybody fantasizes about some time in life.  If you were granted one wish, what would it be?  Just thinking about it for a few seconds can get your heart rate up.  We have a birthday in our house this week, today is Ila’s 10th birthday, so that question shows up in its diminished and much more limited form: What present would you like?  Riches and fame we cannot promise, but some cool cash, a month of Disney +, and some fun outings are all within our power.   

When King Solomon sleeps and dreams at Gibeon and hears the voice of Yahweh say, “Ask, what shall I give you?” he had only recently become the third king of Israel.  After coming out of slavery in Egypt, entering the Promised Land, and living under a tribal confederacy for a couple hundred years, Saul had been selected as the first king – chosen in part because he was a head taller than other men, exceedingly handsome, and from a wealthy family.  David followed Saul, a surprise choice since he wasn’t related to Saul, and since he was the youngest of eight sturdy brothers, a shepherd boy,…

CMC service 9-18-22 from Gwen Reiser on Vimeo.

The video above includes the full service, except for the time for sharing.

Permission to podcast/stream the music in this service obtained through One License with license A-727859. Copyrights for songs given after the sermon text.

Postcards from Sabbatical

Postcard #1 (St. Petersburg, FL)

To the church of God (and of Menno) that is in Columbus: Grace to you and peace from God the Creator, Jesus our Mentor and Model, and the Holy Spirit our Artist-in-Residence. 

First, I thank God for all of you and your generosity in allowing me this sabbatical time away to rest, to renew my spirit, and to reflect on the ways God is breathing new inspiration into my life and the life of our congregation. As I have written to you before, my hope was to spend this time focusing on the intersections of spirituality and creativity and their role as meaning-making endeavors in all of our lives. 

As I set out in this work, I am reminded of Paul’s words in his letter to the Church in Ephesus.  The beginning of Chapter 2, verse 10 is translated in many different ways: “for we are what God has made us…”; “for we are God’s workmanship”; “we are God’s masterpiece”, “God’s handiwork”, “God’s design”, “God’s mastercraft.”  The Greek word that is used there is poiema, which is where we also get the word poem. 

We are God’s poem. 

Now I know many of you have instant negative reactions to the idea of poetry, perhaps because you’ve been taught that the point of reading a poem is to tie it down and interrogate it until you’ve managed to beat some sort of meaning out of it.  But my favorite way to think about poetry comes…

CMC Worship 9_11_22 from Gwen Reiser on Vimeo.

The video above includes the full service, except for the time for sharing.

Permission to podcast/stream the music in this service obtained through One License with license A-727859. Copyrights for songs given after the sermon text.

Sermon | Ownership, Stewardship, Discipleship | September 11 

Texts: Genesis 2:15-17; Genesis 14:17-24; Matthew 6:19-21

Speaker: Joel Miller

I recently came across a blurb about a church that uses the parking lot of a nearby business on Sunday mornings.  That’s a pretty typical arrangement for churches in cities and older neighborhoods.  Like ours.  We benefit from the neighborliness of four such businesses between us and High Street – Clintonville Apartments, Central City Solutions, High Street Dental, and SMART Federal Credit Union.  Some of you are parked in those spots this morning.

What made this other arrangement unique is that one Sunday a year folks from the church aren’t allowed to use the parking lot.  Not because the business has a special event.  But because the business owner wants to remind the church this isn’t actually their parking lot.  So on a random Sunday every year, it’s off limits. 

As inconvenient as this might be from the church’s perspective, I think this is a brilliant theological practice.

Take, for example, the story of the Garden of Eden.  There, creation begins as ground and stream, with nothing yet alive.  The Creator then forms out of the ground an earth-creature and breathes into their nostrils the breath of life.  After which this is placed in a garden, Eden.  Their purpose is to till and keep the garden.  To take care of it on behalf of the Creator.  In this garden there are many trees from which the human can eat.  Except for one.  That tree…