Text: Luke 7:18-35Speaker: Amanda Gross

In 1989, I was the first Mennonite to graduate from Kindergarten at Anne E West Elementary. This marked both the first of my 13 years of studies in the Atlanta Public School System and also the start of my defining Mennonite for non-Anabaptist audiences. When my brother was old enough for school, I was no longer the only kid educating my classmates and teachers about Mennonite identity.

Later in high school, a third Mennonite enrolled just in time for the fear and patriotic fervor that followed the 9/11 attacks. Out of 900 students, three Mennonites felt like critical mass. Or at least emboldened me enough to pen an op-ed for the school paper explaining my faith-based conviction for nonviolence, the only voice in the school paper against U.S. military retaliation.

Over those years, shaped by—not one, but two—Atlanta-area Mennonite church communities and by my Swiss German Mennonite family at home, I got plenty of practice providing context for my confused and often curious classmates and friends:

What’s a Mennonite? They would ask. I would respond from a drop-down list of options depending on my mood, the weather, and whether or not I thought they’d been to Pennsylvania. We’re like the Amish but with fewer horses and buggies. Or. We don’t believe in baptizing babies. Or. We’re pacifists, who don’t fight in wars and died for our beliefs. Or: We’re Christians from the Anabaptist movement in Europe that wanted to get back to Jesus’s Way.

Yet, as I got older, I began to learn some of the contradictions behind my educational talking points. For example, despite the emphasis on adult choice, in my home congregation young teens got baptized in clusters because it was the thing to do. Despite the ethic of nonviolence, there are Mennonite churches who have members…

Text: Luke 7:1-19Speaker: Joel Miller

Interwoven. 

Our banner for this month doesn’t have a name, but if it did, Interwoven would be a good one.  It was made for a different occasion by Connie B from Cincinnati Mennonite Fellowship.  We get to repurpose it for this series. 

The bottom panel shows two lines on a green and blue background, two intersecting lives within creation.  The next panel multiplies those lines.  It’s the interweaving of family, neighbors, community.  The third panel up shows lives so tightly interwoven they merge for a time.  In the top panel the green shows up again, then the golden sky, two lines now more vertical, reaching up to the heavens in a kind of mutual holy longing.  All of this is connected with three interwoven threads – a Trinity bottom to top, top to bottom, ever present throughout.  Even God is interwoven within Godself.   

This four week series is all about the interweaving of lives and communities and histories and God.       

The story of the healing of the centurion’s slave in Luke chapter 7 shows just how complicated this interweaving can be.  Consider the people involved.  There is the centurion who, as the title suggests, had charge of 100 soldiers.  These were Roman soldiers, the colonizing and occupying forces of the 1st century Mediterranean world.  There is the sick man close to death, who some translations call a servant and others a slave of the centurion.  There are the Jewish town elders who, perhaps surprisingly, advocate for the centurion who wishes that his slave be healed.  They say: “This centurioun, he is worthy.”  “He loves our people.”  “It is he who built the synagogue for us.”  There are the “friends,” other brokers sent by the centurion.  And there is Jesus, the indigenous Jew. Jesus the teacher.  Jesus the wandering…

Texts: Proverbs 8:1-4; Wisdom of Solomon 7:24-27; Ephesians 3:1-10Speaker: Joel Miller

I have, in my mind, a pastoral scenario I’m yet to act out. 

It would happen during one of those conversations where someone asks : So, what you do?  Usually, when I say I’m a pastor, there’s not much interest after that.  They may ask the name of the congregation, and, if they’re really brave, they may ask What’s a Mennonite?

But how, I wonder, would folks respond, if, rather than saying “I’m a pastor,” to the question “What do you do?” I would say something like this:      

I help lead a local chapter of a global, 2000-year-old nonprofit organization.  We are 100% member-owned and donor-supported, but open to all.  We have voluntary multigenerational weekly meetings where children are celebrated and adults share their gifts.  Our vision is the reconciliation of all things; our mission is to do justice, love mercy, walk humbly; and our bottom line is love.

I’m not sure if that would extend, or abruptly end the conversation, but maybe some brave day I’ll find out. 

Put that way, it does sound pretty sweet – or like the church PR department went a little overboard.  But it’s not too far from how the New Testament letter to the Ephesians talks about the church.

Ephesians is most likely a second-generation letter.  It opens in the voice of Paul the apostle, but the language and themes point to a disciple of Paul.  This need not be scandalous.  Writing in the name of a respected, recently deceased, mentor was a common practice in the ancient world.  Rather than a brand new gathering of believers, the recipients of this letter had probably been at it a while.  They’re the kids who grew up in Sunday school, now adults, rethinking what it is they’re part of.   

What they’re…

Jesus Sophia Text: John 1:1-5,14; Matthew 11:28-30Speaker: Joel Miller

“Those who seek should not stop seeking until they find. When they find, they will be disturbed. When they are disturbed, they will marvel, and will reign over all. And after they have reigned they will rest.”

These are the words of Jesus.  Maybe.  Probably?  

That first part might sound familiar.  In Matthew chapter 7, part of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says, “Ask and it will be given you; search and you will find…for everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds.” 

This is similar, and different: “Those who seek should not stop seeking until they find. When they find, they will be disturbed. When they are disturbed, they will marvel, and will reign over all. And after they have reigned they will rest.”

This is not found in the gospel of Matthew, or Mark, or Luke, or John.  Instead, they are the opening words of Jesus in the Gospel of Thomas.  If you don’t remember learning that one with the books of the New Testament it’s because it’s not in the Bible.  The Gospel of Thomas was unknown in the modern world until it was found with other scrolls in the Egyptian desert in 1945.  Scholars agree that it’s old.  Maybe older than the other four gospels.  More likely, composed just a bit after. 

Thomas is a collection of wisdom sayings, rather than a story.  There are no miracles, not even the resurrection, or the crucifixion.  It is 114 sayings of Jesus.  About 2/3 match up well with other gospels.  Like the parable of the seed scattered on different soils, and the mustard seed and other parables;  Jesus blessing the children; most of the beatitudes.  Others are unique to Thomas.  Like when Jesus says, “Split a piece of wood; I am…

Text: Esther 1 (selections)Speaker: Mark Rupp

In preparation for this second sermon in our Wisdom series, I spent a lot of time these last few weeks mulling over the concept of wisdom. What is wisdom? How do we become wise? What is wisdom’s opposite? What makes someone or something wise? How do we listen when wisdom is calling?

At some point I realized that my understanding of wisdom has been deeply influenced by the time I’ve spent over the last few years playing DnD, which for the uninitiated, stands for Dungeons and Dragons. It is a tabletop roleplaying game, which means it’s somewhat like a video game but instead of sitting in front of a screen waiting for a computer system to react to the choices you make–choices which are more or less limited by the certain combination of buttons you can push–in DnD you sit around with other humans in front of someone acting as the Gamemaster, who reacts to the choices you make for your character–choices which, for the most part, are limited only by your imagination. 

I often like to describe the game simply as collaborative storytelling using dice to add an element of chance. If you watched any of Stranger Things on Netflix, the kids in that show were playing a much older version of DnD. What we do nowadays is waaaaaaay cooler and not nerdy at all…Just kidding! I’m pretty sure I reached peak nerdiness a few years ago when I realized that I had just spent the last half an hour sitting around a table with fellow adults buying imaginary hats for our imaginary characters from an imaginary store called Gnome Depot. 

But I digress. My understanding of wisdom has been shaped by experiences with DnD because it is a game where you create characters using 6 main…