Seattle Mennonite Church Sermons SMC preachers

The crippled man and the disciples both experience surprise and interruption in the norms of what they think might happen for them this day. The man expected the same - people offering him coins or ignoring him. It has been the same day in and day out for years. Peter and John expected to continue in their grieving and confusion at the loss of their mentor and friend Jesus, and planned to go to the temple for a routine prayer service. Neither expectation happens, and t...

In the aftermath of Jesus’ death and resurrection, Jesus offers comfort and presence to his disciples. He continues to remind them he has not come to establish a nation state, rather that the disciples would be the ones to carry forward Jesus’ mission. Requirements for this include more waiting, receiving the power of the Holy Spirit. Devotion to prayer may be what will prepare them for what’s next. But that isn’t here yet. They must prepare themselves to be led by the Holy Spirit. Sermo...

Jesus lives an increasingly life of truth-telling to civic and religious authorities. All the while he enfolds the marginalized and oppressed into a just and merciful embrace of care and love, calling disciples to do the same. Up to his impending death disciples cannot grasp what this will cost him. A woman enacting honor and love provides Jesus’ followers, then and now, with an example of unbridled recognition of who Jesus is. What is imprinted on our being? How can we break alabaster jars t...

News of wars, natural disaster, and human suffering greets us every evening, withoutfail. Where is God in this? Does God not see? Jesus warns his disciples of the temple’sdestruction, and worse, yet to come. Indeed, God in Christ does see what humanbeings are doing to one another. It is we who cannot stand to look, listen, or respond tothe fires, the famines, the faces of suffering around us. And yet, and yet. Jesus comesamong us to announce God is near at hand, God’s gracious will is carryin...

Struck by Mark’s mention that Jesus sits across from the treasury box in the Temple, observing HOW each person gives their money, Pastor Megan ponders what Jesus might observe in how SHE lives with her own money (and for this Way walked together, how WE live with ours). Would Jesus be glad that the widow gives her last mite and has nothing to live on, or might Jesus be praising the widow for revealing - by her courageous and some might even say confrontational act - the baked-in injustice of ...

Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem is a deliberate act of political confrontation with the Roman Empire’s powers-that-be. After casing the mostly deserted late evening Temple, he makes plans to return the next day to make a royal mess of things; to disrupt business as usual. The Way Jesus walks, the Way that Jesus calls us to walk (together!), is a Way lined with palms that leads to confrontation with Empire.Sermon begins at minute marker 5:03Mark 11.1-19ResourcesBibleWorm podcast: Episode 531 – The...