Seattle Mennonite Church Sermons

In which an Ebenezer appears in this sermon’s starring role. An Ebenezer is a stone erected in remembrance of a person or an experience or a place where something special happened. In 1 Samuel, the Hebrew people set up an Ebenezer to memorialize their experience of God’s presence with them as they were victorious in battle against enemies. And when a preacher reflects on a poet’s reflection on this memorial stone she wonders her wa...

When fearful, powerful rulers order death, may we all reach for the tools handed to us from our courageous, life-bringing foremothers in the faith: Shiphrah and Puah. “Learn them: Shif-rah. Pu-ah. Praise! Let them again be household names!” Their tools are: disobedience and cunning. May we disobey anything and anyONE who fails to honor God, who is LIFE.

Sermon begins at minute marker 

Scripture:  Exodus 1.15-21

Resources:

• Carmen Su...

We are gathered back in for singing and praying, formation and feasting. We kick off our artful fall worship with a Psalm; a very good place to start. And we receive from Psalmist, artist, poet, and preacher a blessing for the place of our gathering which is also the place of God’s dreaming.

Sermon starts at minute marker 2:24

Scripture: Psalm 1:1-3

Resources:

• Sarah Kinsel, “You are like trees planted by streams of water,” Drawing ...

In the Bible? Praise is nearly always political. Certainly in the book of Revelation where crying out “Salvation belongs to our God” is a direct affront to the Emporer of Rome who claims salvation comes soley through him and his “Pax Romana”. And a post script to our series on Revelation and Resistance: Thanks be to God for artists like John of Patmos (and countless others across time and space!) who buoy communities seeking to be ...

Join Megan as she reflects on Revelation and Deren, Carl, Madeleine, Susan, and Melissa as they reflect on Pacific Northwest Mennonite Conference's annual retreat and delegate assembly.

Sermon begins at 2:31

Revelation 5.1–11

Resources

•  PNMC Resolution 2025 
• Image: Sacramentary (of Bishop of Metz), Fol. 5. Ill. MS (fragment)., ca. 850-900. Paris: Lib., Bibliothèque Nationale; lat. 1141., JSTOR, https://jstor.org/stable/communit...

The title Revelation comes from the Greek word apokálypsi, or ‘apocalypse’, which in Greek means literally, the lifting of the veil. Ordinarily, a veil conceals or obscures that which lies beyond it, and when the veil is lifted, one sees clearly. But in this book the reverse is the case. John, the exiled poet of Patmos lifts a veil, and what we see beyond it is exceedingly less clear than what we expected to see…

Sermon begins at mi...

In our first of a six-week series on “Revelation and Resistance,” we step - with some well earned fear and trembling - into the wild, the wondrous, the terrifying, the evocative world of apocalyptic literature. With so much to UN-learn about the book of Revelation, Pastor Megan invites us to begin again. What IS this ancient genre of literature, why and how was it written, and for whom and what purpose? As a revelation of Jesus the...

Jesus left a legacy of stories, and as Luke ends and we reread Acts and the Epistles, we remember his disciples spread his teachings and established the church by telling his and their stories over and over. During worship this Eastertide season, we have the gift of hearing members of the congregation reflect on the practices that flow from our congregational covenant. Those 11 practices, along with the covenant, were affirmed by t...

Jesus left a legacy of stories, and as Luke ends and we reread Acts and the Epistles, we remember his disciples spread his teachings and established the church by telling his and their stories over and over. During worship this Eastertide season, we have the gift of hearing members of the congregation reflect on the practices that flow from our congregational covenant. Those 11 practices, along with the covenant, were affirmed by t...

Jesus left a legacy of stories, and as Luke ends and we reread Acts and the Epistles, we remember his disciples spread his teachings and established the church by telling his and their stories over and over.   During worship this Eastertide season, we have the gift of hearing members of the congregation reflect on the practices that flow from our congregational covenant. Those 11 practices, along with the covenant, were affirmed by...

Jesus left a legacy of stories, and as Luke ends and we reread Acts and the Epistles, we remember his disciples spread his teachings and established the church by telling his and their stories over and over.   During worship this Eastertide season, we have the gift of hearing members of the congregation reflect on the practices that flow from our congregational covenant. Those 11 practices, along with the covenant, were affirmed by...

Jesus left a legacy of stories, and as Luke ends and we reread Acts and the Epistles, we remember his disciples spread his teachings and established the church by telling his and their stories over and over. During worship this Eastertide season, we have the gift of hearing members of the congregation reflect on the practices that flow from our congregational covenant. Those 11 practices, along with the covenant, were affirmed by t...

Palmer Becker is a Mennonite pastor and writer whose three-part distillation of Anabaptist values has become a common refrain in Mennonite circles: 1) Jesus is the center of our faith. 2) Community is the center of our life. 3) Reconciliation is the center of our work. And according to Paul’s letter to the church at Corinth, reconciliation is a gift entrusted to us by God. Guest preacher, Randy Detweiler (from AMBS - Anabaptist Men...

“Why do you seek the living among the dead?” sounds like a chastisement. Until we remember that the only reason that ANYone knows that Jesus’ tomb is empty is because a whole crew of faithful women showed up at the place of death, with the intention of attending to the dead. Indeed, it is only by returning again and again to the tombs of today’s Empires that we can be gathered as resurrection communities who follow Jesus’ call to “...

Not a single palm frond or “Hosanna” in this year’s Palm Sunday reading. Luke’s version of Jesus’ procession toward and into Jerusalem instead records people throwing their coats on the ground. Rather than simply reaching for a fallen branch, instead those participating in Jesus’ political street theatre give something of themselves that costs them a little something; the way Pastor Megan’s spontaneously discarded cardigan resulted...

This Lukan fable has a pretty clear message: Wealth creates an impassable crevasse between humans. Wealth is only one of the many things that can create impassable crevasses between people; so too can race and religion and immigration status, to name a few more. But I have to believe the fable is ultimately meant to inspire us to bridge crevasses before it’s too late. This sermon will take you to the midnight bedroom of Ebenezer Sc...