Raleigh Mennonite Church Raleigh Mennonite Church

Scripture: Mark 4:26-34



In this Sunday's message, Melissa wove together the parables of the sower scattering seed and of the mustard seed growing with the tremendously destructive dispensationalist theology made popular by Hal Lindsey. Dispensationalism is a reading of scripture that is the basis of Christian Zionism, a violent anti-Semitic, literalist misuse of scripture. It is also the underpinning, for many US policies and attitudes towards the modern state of Israel.



Unlike the coercive theology that runs through Christian Zionism, we see in today's passage that the kingdom of God is a mystery, one of the Gospel of Mark's favorite words. It's not a mystery in the sense that we don't understand it or can't comprehend it. It's a mystery in our lack of ability to bring it to pass. The lies of Christian Zionism are manifold, but the most central is this, that we can control history. That we can manipulate God's action that we can spur on a desired future through geopolitical maneuvering. And once you're there. Once you start down this path, you have lost the Jesus plot altogether.



This is an occasion for us to look at the ways we may also think God needs our help to make history turn out right. What are the ways that we insist that particular political ends, no matter how destructive or violent, may be necessary? What are the ways that we say compromise and capitulation is simply part of the calculus of the greater good? Because there's just no room for that here. And in the seed parables we discover that we live out of control. That is part of the mystery.

Matthew 19:1-12 and John 1:14-16



Melissa wraps up the series about questions the congregation has asked this Sunday, focusing on the question of sex, and intertwines it with the need for grace.



Just before his conversion to Christianity the saint and theologian of the church, Augustine of Hippo, is in a garden and he prays a prayer. "God, give me chastity and countenance. But not yet." What does God have to say to us who are living, breathing bodies? One place we can begin is to acknowledge that our sexual lives are accommodations of grace; even those of us who are married.



For most of our religious history in the church, the church has placed a huge emphasis on getting sex right. Rowan Williams rightly says that this is always a doomed task. But the fact that it's a doomed task is also the key to understanding why sex matters to Christians at all, and it surely does.



We exist within a wide range of relationships that affirm to us that the bodies that we are, are desired and delighted in. Ethics is never a matter of just abstract rules. For Christians, it is a matter of living the mind of Christ. Sex is one area in which we order our lives in a way that tells the world the story that animates our being. We are created to be incorporated into God's love because we are loved.

Jeremiah 29: 1-9



Isaac Villegas guest preaches in our ongoing sermon series "I'm not so sure about that" on the topic of pacifism. Isaac explores the concept of peace through the lens of prisons. Using the above passage in Jeremiah, Isaac compares the exile of jews in Babylon to the exile that takes place within modern prisons as well as the awkward position that pacifists are confronted with regarding the part of current society that we do not have the power to change: We depend on prisons to protect society from violence even as prisons themselves commit violence on their occupants and even preserves the institution of slavery. Isaac Villegas tells us stories of his and others' experiences working in prisons to help us understand the intractable complexity of living out pacifism in such an environment, searching for the acceptance of things we cannot control while seeking out opportunities to change whatever we can to bring the kingdom of God here on earth.

Acts 2: 1-21
This Pentecost Sunday Melissa Florer-Bixler preached on the connection between the enormous changes that have recently taken place in our church life and membership, and the changes that took place with the fledgling Church on the day of Pentecost. The crowd didn't just hear a translation of God's message, they heard it in the language of their home (and heart), and thus the Holy Spirit knitted together of new community of believers that shared a new common identity while still retaining their own unique selves. In much the same spirit, Melissa reflected on how we have added new people, languages, generations, activities that advocate justice and build community, and much more besides as well as the conflicts, losses, illnesses, and deaths that we have had to processes and work through together in the "stickiness" that inevitably occurs in a family of faith struggling to walk through this difficult life together. We invite you to listen to our reflection on how the Holy Spirit has transformed and knitted together Raleigh Mennonite Church and share in our joy and awe at God's marvelous works.

2 Timothy 3: 14-17



In the RMC sermon series "I'm Not So Sure About That," which addresses questions offered from the congregation, Melissa Florer-Bixler helps us to understand why there are so many disturbing stories, deeply flawed servants of God, and appalling deeds that appear in the Bible. Melissa shares with us that as Christians, we are a people of the Book and as Anabaptists, we share with each other on a regular basis where we hear from the Holy Spirit. The Bible is critical to our faith but does not achieve its function in isolation from shared context and interpretation. The stories from the Bible are our stories and spiritual history, yet we cannot learn from our mistakes or about God's deep love and commitment to us (despite our failures to reciprocate) if we exclude or downplay these difficult passages. If we listen and speak the Word together, embracing this complexity as the breath of God standing ready to enter our lives, with the guidance of the Holy Spirit, we can find the person of Jesus waiting there to love, guide, and redeem us.

Genesis 1: 26-31



Our recent societal and political experiences with the concept of gender are highly charged, to say the least, and often the insistence of a black and white interpretation of God's word is used as a club to injure others who do not share our viewpoint. Sarah Neff, a student at Duke's Divinity School, guest preaches today at Raleigh Mennonite on the topic of God's gender in our ongoing sermon series, "I'm not so sure about that." Sarah asks us to give the book of Genesis room to breathe and some well needed pauses to separate verses we have unwittingly entangled when we speak of God's image and the creation of genders in humans. We may be created in God's image as male and female but the triune God in their wholeness has no gender as we know it and is not made in our image. Moreover, even the seemingly binary creations of male and female, day and night, and water and land in Genesis, which seem clear and proscriptive for use in developing theology, upon further examination appear less an exhaustive instruction manual for world-building and more a poetic reflection on the good gifts of God's creation, with humans as the capstone. Twilight, dawn, estuaries, and marshes, not included in Genesis, are all less than binary expressions of day and night or water and land, yet we know God made and loves these creations as well. Ultimately, Sarah reminds us that our ultimate example of understanding gender and yet breaking gender binaries resides in the life of Jesus. Although born a male, Jesus used his privileged position to dignify and uplift women and the "other" as equal in society. Amongst other males, he eschewed violence, patriarchal displays of dominance and self-aggrandizement, and taught mercy, love, and sacrifice. If we can find it within ourselves to give room for the scripture to breathe, perhaps we can then follow Jesus's example and give room for a theology beyond a rigid binary.