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.

Sermon | Return from the depths, turning toward life

Texts: John 19:38-20:1,11-18; 1 Peter 3:18-22

Speaker: Joel Miller  

When I say “Christ is Risen” you say “Christ is Risen Indeed.”

Christ is Risen…

Christ is Risen…

Every story, we are told, has a beginning, middle, and end.  Our lives track this simple outline with our birth, our life, and our death.

It’s one of the great wonders and delights of Easter to break the mold of this story. 

On Easter morning, “early on the first day of the week,” as John and the other gospels tell us, Mary Magdalene, and other women, visit the tomb.   This is a story that starts with a tomb.  Good Friday, the day of Jesus’ death on a cross, is what begins the Easter story. 

The cross has come to be a primary symbol for Jesus followers.  You can put it up on a banner in church, you can wear it on a t-shirt, you can buy it in gold and hang it around your neck, but let’s be clear: the cross was absolutely a symbol of death.  And not just a symbol.  People died on crosses.  And Rome made sure these were very public events.  The power to inflict death was what kept the world spinning, kept life in submission, kept the order ordered.

The Easter story starts with death, which is to say an ending so final and disorienting one barely knows what to do next.    

To enter most fully into this story, is to bring our own experiences of endings.  Perhaps this is the actual death of a loved one without whom the world…

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.

Prelude

     Guitar improvisation

     Quartet – VT 325 | O Sacred Head Now Wounded, Vs. 1 and 2

Welcome

Call to Worship

On this night, as the shadows deepen,

           We come to be present with Jesus.

With the glory of Palm Sunday behind us and the victory of Easter not yet come,

           We will sit together in this space with our listening and breaking hearts.

In this world that is at once beautiful and tragic,

           We seek to be present with all who suffer. 

We will be present with ourselves

In the dark valleys of life, when sorrow threatens to overwhelm,

           We long for a safe and sacred space to sit with our grief and our questions.

Jesus Christ, holy friend,

           We know that you are here with us.

Let us be here with you. Amen.

VT 317 | Go to Dark Gethsemane

Prayer of Confession | VT 1012

 O Tree of Calvary,

           send your roots deep down into my heart

Gather together the soil of my heart,

           the sands of my fickleness,

           the mud of my desires.

Bind them all together, O Tree of Calvary,

           interlace them with your strong roots,

           entwine them with the network of your love.

VT 318 | ‘Tis midnight and on Olive’s brow

Prayer

Holy, loving, suffering God,

           Give us eyes to see

the injustice and suffering that abound.

           Give us hearts to feel

the depth of this world’s brokenness.

           Give us ears now to hear

the words of your passion.

Amen.

TENEBRAE

THE DEAL

Luke 22:1-6

VT 319 | Stay with Me, the Night Has Come, v. 1 “Stay with me…”

THE ROOM AND TABLE

Luke 22:7-23

VT 465 | Prepare…

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.

Sermon | Parades and parables of peace | Palm Sunday 
Text: Luke 19:28-42
Speaker: Joel Miller

We all have places we return to each year.  These are the places that remind us who we are.  Or at least give us a chance to reflect on who we’ve been and who we are becoming.  I’m likely in the minority of people my age whose parents still live in the house where I was born and raised.  Going back to Mom and Dad’s, or to the farm, or 1471 – the county road address I memorized at a young age – Going back there, even if for a brief stop, is always full of memory and meaning.  A family cabin, or a camp, or a beloved destination spot can become a spiritual home that we return to, a place we can come back to ourselves.  A place of return could also be the soil in one’s own backyard, or front flower bed.  Putting hands in the dirt right about this time of year can be a return to the earth’s regenerative powers, a reminder that those powers also flow through us.

Even if not a literal place, we find other forms of return to call us back to ourselves.  A favorite book.  A friendship we keep alive across distance.  Perhaps this very service, Palm Sunday, or Easter next week, serves this purpose for you.  A similar point of reference each year, but a little different, because you are different, and so is this world that shows very little interest in staying the same.

This is what’s going on within the Palm…

CMC Worship Service 4/3/2022 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.

Sermon by Carolyn May

Over the course of this Lenten season our theme has been Turn/Return. Our gospel reading today begins with Jesus’ return to a town called Bethany. The last time he was in Bethany was in the chapter just prior to this one. In that chapter he went to Bethany because his dear friend Lazarus had fallen ill. By the time he actually arrived at Bethany he learned that Lazarus had been dead for four days already. Jesus is greeted by the same sisters we encounter in our story today, Mary and Martha. Martha first meets Jesus and they have an exchange in which Jesus tells Martha that he is the resurrection and the life and that surely Lazarus would rise. When Mary comes to Jesus she immediately falls to his feet and weeps. She says, Lord, if you had been here my brother would still be alive. Mary’s grief, perhaps, stirred up Jesus’ own as we are told that he loved Lazarus. He is taken to the tomb and he tells those gathered to roll away the stone. Martha, always the practical one, warns against that idea alluding to the stench that must be present after four days. Nonetheless, the stone is rolled away and Lazarus returns to life.

So we have Lazarus returning to life and Jesus returning to Bethany. The two are described as lounging around a table along with some of Jesus’ disciples. Martha, we are told, is serving those gathered. Classic Martha, right? She’s the same one described…

3-27-22 CMC service 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.

Sermon | Inheritance
Text: Luke 15:1-2;11-20
Speaker: Joel Miller

What if, you could have your inheritance now?  All of it.  What if all you had to do was ask?  “Mother, Father, give me the share of the property that will belong to me.”  And they do it.  Everything divided out in proportion to what would have been yours is now yours.  You can do with it as you please. 

There’s the furniture – with the end table your grandfather made from the maple in the fencerow.  The piano.  That favorite chair that survived every move, mostly.  Some quilts and rugs and paintings and books.  So many books.  Your mother’s wardrobe and the scarves that belonged to her mother.  The silverware and plates are yours to use or sell or give away.  I’m making this up, but you get the idea.  Fill in your own details. It’s all yours. 

Diaries and journals.  Boxes of pictures, from back when you put pictures in boxes.

Then there’s the house.  It has a new roof, but the furnace has been acting up and one side of the basement floods during a heavy rain.  What do you and your siblings each do with 1/4th of a house?  And the land.  The land is yours too.

For many of you this is not hypothetical.  You could lead a seminar or three about how to care for aging parents, what to expect as an executor of an estate, your own story of what you did and are doing with the inheritance. 

And there’s more.  As we come to realize…