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 Manuscript
Hans Denck: Polarization, Pestilence, and Divine Love 
Texts: Matthew 5:1-10; 1 John 4:7-8

Speaker: Joel Miller

January 21, 1525 – That’s the date most frequently cited as the beginning of the Anabaptist movement.  That’s the day a group of mostly young dissidents met in a home in Zurich, Switzerland.  It was a tumultuous time – religiously, politically, economically.  After discussion and prayer, this small group decided this was the day each of them was going to be baptized – re-baptized.  Their infant baptism had joined them to a church they could no longer claim as their own.  It was their conviction that this second baptism, as free-willing adults, was a public statement of their commitment to follow the way of the gospel and to live out its economic, political, and religious implications. 

That very same day, January 21, 1525, over 250 miles away in Nuremberg, Germany, a young headmaster at a prominent parish school named Hans Denck was banished from that city for his not-orthodox-enough theology. 

These were the early rumblings of an Anabaptist movement from which Mennonites came. 

A bit of math shows we’re approaching the 500 year anniversary of those beginnings.  The baptism workshop we hosted at the church yesterday, led by professor John Roth of Goshen College, was one of numerous events leading up to that anniversary.  It’s a sign of the different time and circumstances we’re in that the Lutheran and Catholic presenters were warmly received and made no attempts to banish the Mennonites from the city.  We did have them outnumbered. 

Regardless of how close we might be to a big anniversary, I like to use this…

CMC Sunday Worship 10.31.21 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.

Order of Worship | Worship and Visual Art 

Prelude

Welcome 

Land Acknowledgement | VT 878

Call to Worship | VT 13 | Isaiah 2:3-4

Peace Candle 

VT 44 | We Long to Know Her 

Children’s Time 

Offering/Dedication Prayer

Scripture | Psalm 19:1-10

Reflections on Worship and Visual Art

     VT 12  | Tree of Life by SaeJin Lee

     VT 11  | Mountain of God 

   VT 104 | Sing the Goodness by Meg Harder

   VT 103 | Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee  

   VT 230 | We Owe Them a Complicated Debt by Rachel Epp Buller

   VT 229 | Unexpected and Mysterious

   VT 817 | Migrant Journey by Rafael H Barahona

   VT 816 | Guide My Feet

   VT 780 | At the Impulse of God’s Love: A Re-envisioning of Dirk Willems Saving His Captor’s Life (1685) by Jan Luykens by Michelle L. Hofer

   VT 779 | You’re Not Alone 

Silent Reflection

Sharing of Joys and Concerns

Pastoral Prayer 

Passing the Peace

Extinguishing the Peace Candle 

VT 843 | Kirisuto no heiwa ga (May the Peace of Christ) 

Benediction | VT 826 | Numbers 6:24-26

Announcements 

Christian Education | 11:00 am

Thanks to everyone who helped lead today’s service

Reflections | Sarah Werner and Phil Yoder

Worship Leader | Sarah Werner

Music coordination | Phil Yoder

Musicians | Thomas Leonard, Joel Call, Katrina Brown

Children’s Time | Tim Stried

Peace Candle | Coble Family

Scripture Reading | Sarah…

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 Manuscript

Worship and Names for God

Texts: Genesis 1:1-5; Genesis 3:8-10; Isaiah 42:13-16; John 3:1-5

Speaker: Joel Miller

The American theologian Marcus Borg liked to say: “Tell me your image of God, and I will tell you your politics.”

Mary Daly, an early feminist theologian, wrote: “If God is male, then the male is God.” (Beyond God the Father, 1973).

The writer Anne Lamott proposed: “You can safely assume you have created God in your own image when it turns out God hates all the same people you do.”  (Bird by Bird, 1994).

What these writers are naming is something we already know on a gut level: The images and language we use for God matter.  They shape us from a young age and follow us into adulthood. 

Very few if any of us have a blank slate when it comes to God-language.  We’re either repeating, rejecting, or reimagining it; embracing, escaping, or ignoring it.  Not that everyone does this consciously every day.  But that’s kind of the point.  Language and names for God often work in unconscious ways, even if we no longer find God language helpful at all. 

When our daughters Eve and Lily were still quite young I was having a conversation with a friend who had similar aged daughters.  He said he and his wife had decided to use feminine pronouns, She and

Her, whenever they were talking with their daughters about God.  His reasoning was that since God is neither/nor, both/and masculine and feminine, his daughters would most benefit early on from language that reinforced their ability to see themselves in the Divine. 

Abbie and…

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 | Worship Forms Community

Text | Mark 10:35-45

Speaker | Mark Rupp

I have a very vivid memory from when I was in High School and got the opportunity to attend some kind of youth leadership seminar.  Now, I don’t remember anything about what the speaker had to say, but what has always stuck with me was one of the illustrations he used.  He had the entire assembly stand up, then he gave pitches to have us sing a major chord, starting with low voices and building on up. 

I don’t think this seminar was specifically for choir kids, but I do think it’s scientifically proven that all the best leaders have at least some musical ability.

The group was fairly large, and so the chord we built was really nice and full, and we all sort of basked in this unexpected moment of harmony.  But that wasn’t the end of the illustration.  Once the speaker had established the chord in our minds, he told us we were going to sing it again.  But this time, he would give a signal after a few seconds, and on that signal we were supposed to keep singing and reach out to hold the hands of the people next to us. 

Because we were high schoolers, there was a fair bit of awkward snickering at the notion of holding hands, but since we were all super mature future leaders, we all pulled ourselves together with just a fair bit of curiosity about this strange task.  The speaker built the chord again and it was just as nice as before.  We held our notes, anxiously…

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 | Worship and Justice 

Texts: Micah 6:6-8; Mark 15:16-24

Speaker: Joel Miller

If you came to church this morning needing some good news, here you go: The Ohio legislature is close to abolishing the death penalty in our state. 

If you checked in to worship feeling isolated and disconnected from community, then consider this: We are one of many participants in the Death Penalty Abolition Week for Ohio Faith Communities.  As the Cleveland Jewish News reports:  “The faith communities involved represent a broad spectrum of beliefs, including Judaism, Sikhism, Paganism, Zoroastrianism, Catholicism, interfaith communities, and several Christian denominations like Methodists, Episcopalians, the United Church of Christ, Evangelical congregations and the Mennonites.” 
Something interesting has to be going on when Mennonites end up on the same list as Pagans, Evangelicals, and Zoroastrians. 

Throw in Pope Francis’s 2018 edit to the Catholic Catechism and we’re really in business:

“The Church teaches, in the light of the Gospel, that ‘the death penalty is inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person’ and she works with determination for its abolition worldwide.” (Catholic Catechism 2267)

Death Penalty Abolition Week shows up on this second week of our worship series: Voices Together and the worlds worship creates.  It’s a good chance to explore the relationship between worship and justice.

A go-to scripture for justice matters is Micah 6:8 – “God has shown you, o mortal, what is good, and what does the Lord require of you, but to do justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God.”  This is the scripture we chose to put on our church…