Ann Arbor Community Church Sermon Podcast

Prodigal: The Younger Son - Martha Balmer - a2cc.org. Watch our livestream Sundays @ 11:00am - vimeo.com/annarborcommunitychurch 

Summary: 

Martha Balmer kicks off our three part series sitting in the story of the Prodigal Son, focusing on the experience of the youngest son. Martha brilliantly highlights how the greater the distance one is from God, the more profound the experience of God’s mercy, love, and grace upon return—and consequently the greater one's security in that love, not to mention the greater the love, gratefulness, joy that wells up for God. When entitlement has no place in our hearts, then everything is a gift. Martha's preaching invites us to see this parable with fresh eyes and a soft, humble heart.

Psalms: Psalm 42 - Gasping - Pastor Donnell Wyche - a2cc.org. Watch our livestream Sundays @ 11:00am - vimeo.com/annarborcommunitychurch 

Summary: 

Have you ever been thirsty in a way that water couldn’t fix? Psalm 42 opens with a deer gasping for streams of water and a poet honest enough to admit that their whole self, not just the polished Sunday version, is running dry. In this sermon, Rev. Donnell Wyche explores one of Scripture’s most honest prayers: a lament that moves between despair and hope without pretending either one away. Along the way, we encounter two Hebrew words that deepen our understanding of this psalm. Ar’gah, often translated as “pants,” more accurately means “gasps”: audible, physical, desperate. And nephesh, commonly translated as “soul,” refers to the whole embodied self: your breath, your life, your very being. Psalm 42 reminds us that every part of who we are is welcome before God, including our grief, our confusion, and the questions we would rather keep hidden. When the taunt comes, “Where is your God?”, the psalmist doesn’t answer with certainty or strength. They answer with thirst. In a time when faith is often measured by volume, Psalm 42 offers a quieter, deeper vision: faith that is rooted enough to bring its longing honestly before God. You don’t have to stop being thirsty to come. You just have to come.

Psalms: Psalm 117 - Pastor Hannah Witte - a2cc.org. Watch our livestream Sundays @ 11:00am - vimeo.com/annarborcommunitychurch 

Summary: 

Psalm 117 is the shortest psalm in the Bible, yet it carries truth that could transform the way we live. In a world that trains us to hurry, scroll, and stay distracted, Pastor Hannah explores how slowing down before God opens us to the unfailing love and enduring faithfulness that have always been available to us. Through Scripture, honest stories, and moments of quiet, Pastor Hannah invites us to discover that praise isn't something we manufacture—it becomes the natural response to encountering the God who never stops loving us. What if your wounds and failures weren't places to hide, but places where you could meet God's love most deeply? As we honestly bring our grief, shame, and everyday struggles into God's presence, the walls we've built begin to come down, our identity is rooted in Christ instead of being self-made, and we're renewed to love our neighbors with freedom and compassion. Receiving God's love isn't just for our sake—it's how God forms a people who carry his kingdom into their homes, neighborhoods, schools, detention centers, and cities.

Psalms: Psalm 10 - Jonathan Hurshman - a2cc.org. Watch our livestream Sundays @ 11:00am - vimeo.com/annarborcommunitychurch 

Summary: 

In this series, we are inviting the Psalms to speak a prophetic word to us. This week, after witnessing two more murders at the hands of ICE, we sit with Psalm 10, a very honest psalm of lament that calls on God to move in the face of injustice. Jonathan preaches that Psalm 10 instructs us to pray with honesty, to pray for God's action, and to pray banking on hope in God's character. He reminds us that this Psalm is not juxtaposing the good and evil, but rather the oppressor and the oppressed. Jonathan challenges us to remember that at times we might be the oppressor who needs sidelined. In conclusion, he simply has us pray Psalm 10, letting the Scripture powerfully speak for itself.

Migrant Journeys: Mary, Joseph and Jesus - Pastor Hannah Witte - a2cc.org. Watch our livestream Sundays @ 11:00am - vimeo.com/annarborcommunitychurch 

Summary:

Pastor Hannah concludes our Migrant Journeys series by inviting us to sit with Jesus' story of fleeing to another country due to violence and hatred. Christ was a refugee. Through Matthew 2, we follow Mary, Joseph, and Jesus as they flee Herod's threats of violence, placing their story alongside the stories of migrants today. Together, they reveal a Savior who doesn't remain distant from suffering but enters into it himself. If Jesus identifies with the stranger, how should his people respond? Pastor Hannah casts a vision for lives marked by courageous compassion rather than fear, inviting us to see the image of God in our fellow neighbors and to prayerfully discern our next faithful step toward embodying Christ's love, mercy and justice in our right here, right now life.

Migrant Journeys: The Syrophoenician Woman - Pastor Donnell T. Wyche - a2cc.org. Watch our livestream Sundays @ 11:00am - vimeo.com/annarborcommunitychurch 

Summary:

This sermon continues the Migrant Journeys series by examining Jesus’ encounter with the Syrophoenician woman in Mark 7:24–30 and Matthew 15:21–28. Unlike the previous stories in the series, the movement is reversed: Jesus is the one who crosses into Gentile territory, becoming the stranger, while the woman is at home in her own land. Yet despite being on her own soil, she must cross ethnic, religious, political, and gender barriers simply to stand before Jesus and plead for the life of her daughter. The sermon should invite the congregation to see the story through her eyes rather than through the perspective of the disciples. The sermon should resist the temptation to soften or explain away Jesus’ difficult words. Instead, it should linger in the tension of the passage, recognizing the painful reality of exclusion and dehumanization that immigrants, refugees, and marginalized people have experienced throughout history. The Syrophoenician woman refuses to accept the boundaries placed around her dignity. With remarkable courage and wisdom, she answers Jesus’ metaphor with one of her own, and Jesus receives her words, praises her faith, heals her daughter, and demonstrates that the kingdom of God is breaking beyond the boundaries people had assumed were permanent. The sermon should conclude by turning the question toward the church today. Rather than asking only what this woman teaches us about faith, it should ask where we still draw lines that Christ has already erased. Connecting Isaiah’s vision of God’s house for all peoples, Paul’s declaration that Christ has broken down the dividing wall of hostility, and Jesus’ teaching that welcoming the stranger is welcoming Christ himself, the sermon should call the congregation to repentance, hospitality, and courageous love. The final invitation should leave listeners reflecting on a single question: Where have I been drawing a line that Jesus is asking me to let go of, and whose dignity is waiting on the other side of it?

Migrant Journeys: Naomi and Ruth - Pastor Hannah Witte - a2cc.org. Watch our livestream Sundays @ 11:00am - vimeo.com/annarborcommunitychurch 

Summary: 

What does loyal love look like when life falls apart? In this sermon from the book of Ruth, Pastor Hannah invites us to walk alongside Naomi, Ruth, and Boaz as they navigate famine, migration, loss, and uncertainty. In the midst of a violent and broken world, they choose hesed—God's loyal, faithful love—again and again, discovering that small acts of courageous love can become the very places where God brings redemption. Their story ultimately points us to Jesus, God's hesed in the flesh, who entered our broken world, refused self-protection, and gave himself for us. As we receive Christ's faithful love, we're invited to become people who embody that same love in our ordinary lives, trusting that God uses everyday faithfulness to prepare us for moments that lead to redemption.

Migrant Journeys: Joseph - Pastor Donnell T. Wyche - a2cc.org. Watch our livestream Sundays @ 11:00am - vimeo.com/annarborcommunitychurch 

Summary:

Migrant Journeys: Hagar - Pastor Hannah Witte - a2cc.org. Watch our livestream Sundays @ 11:00am - vimeo.com/annarborcommunitychurch 

Summary:

In week two of our Migrant Journeys series, we sit with Hagar—a woman whose story is marked by displacement, exploitation, and loss. Stripped even of the name her mother gave her, Hagar flees into the wilderness where she encounters El Roi, the God Who Sees. God pulls up a chair, listens to her story, and reminds her that she is more than the labels others have placed on her. Hagar's story invites us to remember that every person is an image bearer with immeasurable worth. What if we became people who see as God sees? This sermon invites us to trust that the God who saw Hagar sees us too—in our grief, our longing, and our wilderness seasons. And as we experience being fully seen and fully loved by God, we may find ourselves transformed into people who pull up a chair, truly care about honoring others' dignity, and help cultivate belonging wherever we go.

Migrant Journeys: Abraham and Sarah - Pastor Donnell T. Wyche - a2cc.org. Watch our livestream Sundays @ 11:00am - vimeo.com/annarborcommunitychurch 

Summary:

This sermon reads Genesis 12 as a migration story, following Abraham and Sarah from the inside as displaced people rather than as tidy heroes of faith. It traces their uprooting from the safety of clan and homeland, their flight to Egypt driven by famine, and the cost of their vulnerability there, where a frightened Abram hands Sarai over to Pharaoh to save himself. The turn comes in God’s quiet intervention on Sarai’s behalf: even when no human being is advocating for the powerless woman in Pharaoh’s house, God sees her, and that faithfulness does not depend on Abraham getting it right. Reading through the lens of Karen Gonzalez’s The God Who Sees, the message presses the congregation to set down sanitized retellings, recognize God’s persistent attention to the foreigner and the unprotected, and let that same gaze reshape how they see migrants and strangers today.