Sermons

Worship | Soul Work and the Great Work | September 5

CMC Worship Service 9-5-21 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.

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Sermon | The next circle outward

Speaker: Joel Miller

To hear the story of Jesus and the Syrophoenician woman is to witness a transition in the making.

One of the pulls for me toward focusing on transitions this summer was personal. Maybe it had to do with turning 40 a few years ago. Or maybe it had to do with the realization that our oldest daughters are now closer in proximity to young adulthood than I am – they approaching the front door, me having exited the back door – whenever that was. Maybe it has to do with an evolving inner sense of time, more aware than ever of how this life I call my own extends back well before my birth through ancestors and geological time, and forward past my own death.

One of the responses from people I’ve talked with about this theme is that we’re always in transition. It never stops. Which is undeniably true, which, I think, makes it all the more valuable to look at the larger picture.

Frameworks. Metaphors.

Am I riding the hinge between the first half and second half of life? Or is it better thought of in thirds, in which case I am now solidly middle age, which could also be split into thirds making me early middle age?

In ancient Hindu philosophy I would be in the second of four life stages, known as the householder, focused on obligations to home, family, and community. Next up would be forest dweller, less focused on material stability. More focused on spiritual…

Worship | Soul Work and the Great Work | August 29

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: When the plant talks back

Text: Exodus 3:1-14

Speaker: Joel Miller

This past week I stood in this very spot several times, looking around, imagining, remembering…. Mostly to practice not crying. Not that I mind crying in public, not a problem, it just makes it hard to talk. Along with the three-month Sabbatical, it’s been a year and a half since I’ve been a part of this here. So there’s that. And then there was this hope I had, fantasy really, that this end of summer time, more than “Hey, I’m back”, was going to be a much fuller “Hey, we’re back” – celebrating being on the other side of the biggest challenges of this pandemic. Which is not the case. So, there’s that too.

So here we are, and “here” is many places. And “we,” by God’s grace, is still one body, held together in spiritual and cosmic union in Christ.

Today and next week I do want to bring forward some of what I thought about and worked on during the Sabbatical, first through this Exodus story of Moses and the burning bush, and next week with the gospel story of Jesus and the Syrophoenician woman. I assure you the Sabbatical had plenty of time for play and doing things entirely unrelated to church, including this new thing we discovered called weekend trips out of town. Highly recommended, in moderation.

But I did have roughly half of the Sabbatical for study and creation of some materials for what I hope to become an annual offering at CMC – a small group of adults, young and old going deeper into…

Worship | Cultivating Beloved Community | August 22

Due to technical difficulties, we do not have the first part of the service recorded. The recording picks up during children’s time but as usual, does not include the time for sharing.

Permission to podcast/stream the music in this service obtained through One License with license A-727859.

Gathering in God’s Name

Cultivating beloved community. This was a worship theme that was born in part out of a hope that by the time we got to the series we would be in the process of returning to in-person worship services. I suppose that hope has become somewhat of a reality, but I also recognize that this transition has been and continues to be more difficult than we probably would have guessed way back in that long-ago oh-so-naive time period known as just a few months ago.

Regardless of how far we are into this transition, this worship series has coincided nicely with the start of that transition back to in-person services; however, we should not see them overlapping so much as to give the impression that cultivating beloved community only happens in person. Whatever the next few weeks, months, or even years hold for us, it seems as though some form of hybrid community is here to stay. And while it was hardly ever easy, the pandemic has shown us just how much we need connection to sustain us and just how much beloved community can be cultivated in lots of different ways.

So while this series has coincided with the return to in-person services, it was perhaps equally as much born out of a recognition that the pandemic has caused many of us to reassess the relationships in our lives. Maybe we found ourselves asking which friendships are most important for us to maintain even…

Worship | Cultivating Beloved Community | August 15

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

Prelude

Land Acknowledgement

Welcome

We acknowledge we are gathering on land where Miami, Osage, Shawnee, and other Indigenous peoples have lived and labored, fought and loved. We continue to work and pray for justice and conciliation.

Call to Worship

As we gather, virtually and in-person, we collectively take a full and nourishing in-breath.