Posted in Uncategorized on Feb 24th, 2008 No Comments »
Focusing on two different but similar Biblical stories in the third Sunday of Lent, Phil Kniss, senior pastor at Park View Mennonite Church, Harrisonburg, VA, pointed out the two approaches the demanding Israelites took in their need for water in the Moses-in-the-desert Exodus story and the one Jesus took when showing his vulnerability to the Samaritan woman at the well in the gospel of John story. The Old Testament narrative points out how accusatory, demanding and threatening were Moses’ people while Jesus, in his need for water, built a relationship and expressed a real need to the woman of Samaria.
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Posted in Uncategorized on Feb 17th, 2008 No Comments »
In the second Sunday of Lent, Barbara Moyer Lehman, associate pastor at Park View Mennonite Church, Harrisonburg, VA, explored the reasons why people are called by God to “leave it all.” Basing her remarks on the Old Testament story of Abram and Sarai being called by God to leave the comfort of their home and native land to go to a “place I will show you,” she cited the hope that lay within that call. “I will make of you a blessing to all the families of the world,” she pointed out, calling her listeners to the same kind of risk-taking that brings hope and trust to the “empty spaces” of their lives. In following God’s call explicitly, this ancient couple became the “Biblical models of faith.”
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Posted in Uncategorized on Feb 10th, 2008 No Comments »
In the first Sunday of Lent, Phil Kniss, lead pastor of the Park View Mennonite Church, Harrisonburg, VA., told the congregation that “we do Lent, not for the rituals, but out of spiritual necessity.” It is a time when we take a certain posture toward God, a posture of emptiness before God so that we can experience God’s grace. Drawing from the story of Adam and Eve in the garden, he said we are still living “east of Eden,” still living in a world of work, disease and environmental deterioration. And while we are tempted, like Jesus to “skip the wilderness temptations,” we need to return to our dependence on God, to wake up from the stupor of our self-oriented culture, repent of our sins and turn toward God, the source of all life.
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Posted in Uncategorized on Feb 3rd, 2008 No Comments »
Sermon by pastor Phil Kniss. On the occasion of taking in 17 new members, Phil talks about the household of faith to which the Apostle Paul refers in Ephesians. Using the metaphor of the house, he spoke of the church fellowship as a warm, welcoming, nurturing place and said, as Paul did, that this church should be an open house, a place for all races and nationalities who confess Jesus Christ. This “house,” he said is not the “place” that God dwells; He lives among his people. But this facility, this place of meeting, is rather a gift from God, a resource that needs to be managed.
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