Audio from Raleigh Mennonite Church: primarily the sermons from Sunday morning worship, but some other surprises show up occasionally as well.
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Jonah 3:1-10 God's desire for a universal salvation is a nearly unbelievable truth. In this third Sunday in Trey's four-part series on Jonah, we find Jonah in Nineveh proclaiming their upcoming demise. The message is rooted in justice; they deserved to experience the wrath of God. But they listened to what Jonah had to say. They lament, they repent and God relents. Too often we don't take the time to lament, but instead move quickly to anger and rage. We need to learn how to grieve again. That can be the foundation of repentance. Sometimes our salvation looks like changed behavior; hearing a w
Jonah 1:17-2:10 Pastor Trey continues his series on the story of Jonah. We pick up with Jonah praying from inside the belly of the fish. When Jonah prays this prayer he prays it from the position of someone experiencing the pits. He's not just conceptualizing this. It's not a philosophical entreaty for Jonah. He is in the deepest pit imaginable to a human. Likely one of the reasons that fear-based religious narratives lose steam is because it's hard to warn somebody about an eternal hell when they're in the middle of experiencing it on earth. How are we supposed to connect with the divine when
Jonah 1:1-17 This Sunday Pastor Trey launches into a new series on the story of Jonah. God's desire for global salvation is a nearly unbelievable truth. We are invited to reflect on the first chapter of Jonah through this lens of expansive salvation. When we look at Jonah, we see that God can work salvation through wayward people and stormy conditions. This salvation is not a get out of hell free card. Rather, it's deliverance from the consequences of a life lived with no compass nor compassion. It's about liberation from a matrix of systemic oppression and destruction; of remission from a sin
1 John 4: 7-16 It is very hard to live in the love Christ called us to when we dislike people or they treat us poorly. Trey Ferguson reminds us in this week's sermon that as Paul said, amongst the enduring virtues of faith, hope, and love - love is the greatest. Love is patient, kind, not rude or arrogant, not seeking its own advantage, never holding grudges, and enduring all things. God's love never fails. Love is the only way to discover who and how God is. Of course, many examples of love we see around us are distorted or warped. The sermon this week is on what love is, this thing that the
Isaiah 40: 28-31 Our world is full of great cause for alarm. AI potentially running amok, climate change, politics, war - take your pick. Hope in the face of these concerns is a precious commodity. However, the context of this week's scripture reminds us that the prophets also lived during troubling times as well. When faced with oppressive powers or oppressive times, we are faced with a choice. Do we assimilate, accommodate, or do we take the most dangerous option - resistance? Without resistance, many may suffer through our lack of action. One of the most powerful tools of resistance is hope
Scripture: Genesis 221:1-14 The story from Genesis is about Abraham taking his son Isaac up to the mountain to be sacrificed. But Abraham being willing to sacrifice his son is craziness! Who has been rendered expendable in our zeal for God? When we're driven by a desire to be faithful to God and go too far, real people pay the price. Typically, the most vulnerable among us: widows, orphans, immigrants, women, and children in general, captives, disabled people, queer people, all sorts of people who are pushed to the edges of our society. And when God sees these people bound to altars that we've
We were excited to have so many guests join us for Pastor Trey's installation service! This morning Trey preached from Romans 6:3-11. Death is the great equalizer. Making sense of death is the impetus behind a great deal of faith systems and cultural narratives around the world and throughout history. Even in the incarnation of Jesus, Jesus receives a death sentence. In entering the story of humanity, Jesus embarks on a journey toward the grave. It's not the sort of journey we get to watch from the sideline. It's a journey we're invited to take with and in Jesus. When we are baptized into Jesu
Matthew 9:35-10:1 On Trey's first official Sunday as RMC's new pastor, he spoke about the radically inclusive, ever-expanding Kingdom of God. Jesus proclaims the good news not to draw people into religion, but to construct new ways of belonging. Today's passage says that when Jesus saw the crowds he had compassion for them. Compassion is not only the awareness of distress or suffering of another but the sharing of that distress. We are compassionate when we feel the distress of others in our own being and move to alleviate it on their behalf. In a world that has become increasingly reliant on
Acts 2:1-13 RMC's soon to be pastor, Trey Ferguson, preached on Pentecost Sunday, reflecting on the arrival of the power of the Holy Spirit that empowered his followers to preach the Gospel to multitudes of people in their own heart languages, no Duolingo required. In the upper room their must have been a deep sense of anticipation, waiting on the arrival of God's invitation to a partnership with God in their work. This mirrors our own anticipation as we await to see the wonders God will show us in partnering RMC with Trey and his wonderful family. How will the Holy Spirit empower this communi
Scripture: Luke 10:25-42 Guest speaker Chris Rice brought the message this Sunday. Every age has its signature affliction, according to Byung-Chul Han. Ours is the age of the burnout society. We're in captivity to our activity. The story of the good Samaritan is about allowing our lives to be interrupted by the stranger by the side of the road. The story of Bethany is about our lives being interrupted by extravagant devotion. Extravagant action cannot be separated from extravagant stillness in this time of anxiety and burnout. We need to get God's love into our bones! The Psalmist did not writ
Scripture: Acts 16:14-40 Susan shared the story of Paul and Silas being jailed in Philippi. They were charged, beaten and imprisoned after the owners of a fortune telling demon-possessed slave girl lost their revenue from her when Paul cast out her demon in name of Jesus Christ. When you mess with people's source of money, you're asking for trouble! Even when in prison, however, Paul and his companions continued to pray and sing praises. They knew that God was still at work, even in difficult circumstances. It's a spiritual practice that we can learn from. But it takes practice and regular exe
Acts 2: 42-47 Susan Scott preached on the Acts 2: 42-47 as a natural extension of the Gospel of Luke. Jesus performed many miracles in Luke, and now his followers through the power of Holy Spirit are doing the same, if a little less perfectly. The testimony of their ministry begs questions of our own walk as Christians. How much forgiveness and love should I offer to difficult people? How much money should I give away? How much risk should I take to help the disenfranchised? Am I doing all of this well enough? Instead of framing this situation as an imposition that we should try to navigate in
Luke 24: 13-35 RMC's Hans Linnartz preached this week from the Gospel of Luke. Luke tells of the mysterious appearance of Jesus walking with his followers Cleopas and Mary, his wife, just outside of Jerusalem, fleeing the city following Jesus' crucifixion. Editor's note - below are the slides mentioned in the sermon in the order they are referenced. Much like the other post crucifixion appearances of Jesus, Cleopas and Mary, fully in grief over his death, do not initially recognize Jesus among them for some unspecified reason. However, at the end of their journey, Jesus corrected and guided th
John 20: 1-18 Trey Ferguson preached on Holy Humor Sunday at RMC via Zoom. Editor's note- at the beginning of the sermon Trey played a CLIP - please click on the link to the left to watch- from a David Blaine street magic performance where he gets a person to pick a card and reinsert it into the deck. David throws all of the cards against a window and the person's card appears stuck to the BACK of the glass while the other cards fall to the ground. The audio of this illusion was deleted from the recording for copyright concerns and due to the visual nature of the trick not translating well to
John 20: 1-18 Happy Easter to all! Susan Scott preaches on the resurrection, of course, this Easter. God works a lot like springtime, making things that appear dead become suddenly renewed. With that in mind, what is Jesus when he comes back from the dead? He is embodied with scars, yet Mary mistakes him for a gardener until he speaks. Later he walks through a locked door later. Jesus's followers first had a hard time accepting that he was supposed to die at all since they expected him to usher in an end to Roman occupation, and thus had a hard time comprehending what his resurrection portende
Scripture: John 12:12-27, 19:16b-22 Ben Rudeen Kreider, pastor at Chapel Hill Mennonite Fellowship, provided the message on this Palm Sunday. From the ubiquitous Buc-ee's billboards to the variety of incredibly creative signs seen at yesterday's No Kings rallies, signs are everywhere. A good sign grabs your attention in a short phrase with what a movement is about. Palm branches waved while Jesus rides in on a donkey colt--both are symbols, or signs with meaning. Pilate had a sign for the world to see hung above Jesus when he was nailed to the cross: "King of the Jews." These words were meant
Scripture: John 19:1-16b On this fifth Sunday of Lent, we continue the story of Jesus before Pontius Pilate. Through lots of questioning Jesus is mum. When Pilate gets quite frustrated and asks if Jesus is not aware that he has the power to release Jesus or to have him crucified, Jesus answers, "You have no power over me unless it has been given to you from above." Pilate can find no wrong in him, but the Jewish leaders and the people insist he must be crucified. What made Jesus dangerous was his lack of fear. But Pilate is afraid for his role. When the Jewish leaders say they have no king but
Scripture: John 18:28-40 There are so many points of reference for our lives today in this story of Jesus before Pilate that Susan spoke about on this fourth Sunday of Lent. Pilate was a politician, not a statesman, not a leader, but a politician. To Pilate, truth was something to manipulate. The dissonance between Pilate and Jesus is stark. As relatable as Pilate is--we read about the likes of him in the newspaper everyday--so we understand his world, his priorities. But it's this other king, Jesus, who claims our allegiance, whose kingdom is not of this world. Jesus has gone before us and st
Scripture: John 18:12-27 Seth brought the message on this third Sunday of Lent. We find Peter, the beloved disciple of Jesus, at probably one of the worst times of his life, denying he knew Jesus when he swore he wouldn't. But this story isn't so much about Peter as it is about us. We all, like Peter, have moments when we lose sight of our bravery, our integrity, our boldness, our loyalty. We all have deeds we look back on with shame; things that we hope we'll never have to answer for or even admit out loud. We're admonished not to be consumed by the shame of our imperfection. Instead, to lean
Scripture: John 13:1-17 At the start of her sermon on this day after the US and Israel rained bombs on Iran, Susan admonished us to keep up the coordinated, persistent, non-violent pressure on the administration, and to keep up the prayer. The way of Jesus is the way of love, and today's text is all about love. In it we read about Jesus washing his disciples' feet. This was completely unheard of for someone in authority--for their teacher--to be stooping to the point of washing the feet of someone "below" him in the caste system. The master takes on the role of a subordinate and pours out his
