Posted in Uncategorized on Mar 29th, 2009 No Comments »
Human beings fail. Human beings disappoint each other. They hurt each other. They even kill each other. “So what do we do with failure?” asked Pastor Phil Kniss (Park View Mennonite Church, Harrisonburg, VA) on this Fifth Sunday in Lent. We usually point out the failings of others, and attempt to cover up our own failings. It might be instructive to think about what God does with the failure of others. God shows amazing forgiveness, forebearance, keeps giving chances. That is the “grammar of the gospel.”
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Posted in Uncategorized on Mar 22nd, 2009 No Comments »
In a sermon for the fourth Sunday in Lent, Assoc. Pastor Ross Erb noted that just as God did not remove the serpents from in the midst of the Israelites when they cried out in Numbers 21:4-9, we are also faced with despair in our lives. But Christ, who was raised up on the cross like Moses raised up the image of the serpent on a pole, is our source of healing and hope. In the midst of the darkness, we orient our hearts and spirits to Christ. Stories are used to give examples of how God has provided hope and healing in the midst of despair.
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Posted in Uncategorized on Mar 15th, 2009 No Comments »
The 10 Commandments, also known as the Decalogue (10 Words), need to be viewed in the context of the story of God working to free his people from slavery in Egypt. Using Exodus 20:1-17 and John 2:13-22, Pastor Phil Kniss says that the Decalogue is set in the midst of a love story, and encourages the congregation to view them as words which set us free to live in the midst of God’s love, a gift to humankind.
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Posted in Uncategorized on Mar 8th, 2009 No Comments »
Using Abraham as the enduring example of faith in God and his promises, Barbara Moyer Lehman, associate pastor, asked her congregants how they are telling their stories of faith, especially to their children. “Who are your people, what are your roots,” she asked. “Will the next generation know our stories of faith, of God giving life out of death, fruitfulness out of barrenness?” She related how she recently purchased “Grandmother’s Books” for her own granddaughters and told how she plans to record her own story of faith, the difficult times, the times of doubt and how she turned to God for direction and comfort.
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Posted in Uncategorized on Mar 4th, 2009 No Comments »
The most famous story of the ancient biblical texts, the flood story, tells us not just about a God of judgment and wrath, but about a God of love, insisted Phil Kniss, pastor of Park View Mennonite Church, Harrisonburg, VA. He described a God who can “repent and change his mind.” This story shows the human angle of the divine will, he said, giving us assurance of God’s most essential characteristic, his core nature, as that of love. “God must really care about who we are and about how we live with each other. He is not a cold, remote and uncaring deity who gets into random battles with other gods and hardly notices when humans suffer.”
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