Joe Bautista addressed Luke 12:13-21 this week, along with some references to Eccliastes. He began his sermon time by asking our youth about their understanding of climate change. And Joe relates that we have the highest rate of extinction in our age than any period in the history of the planet. So Joe goes to Luke with the question of what the bigger barn might be for us today — in the parable of the farmer that builds a bigger barn because he has too big a harvest for his current one. While the farmer could have shared with others who were suffering, Joe sees the barn as hoarding nature's bounty, overworking the land, or an edifice that severs his relationship with nature.

Frank Scoffield Nellessen continues our summer series from the sermon on the mount in Matthew 7:1-5 where Jesus warns us not to judge others, lest we be judged by God with the same standard — along with the description of the splinter in our neighbors eye vs. the log in our own. Frank begins with several reasons why he came to this passage raw over the past week: a church service at the ICE detention center at Adelanto the previous Sunday, and students who are struggling with parents in danger of deportation. One was sent to Mexico so that he could be there ahead of his parents should they be deported. It was a week that left him wanting to judge others harshly. He says, "All this forced me to ask important questions as I wrestled with the passage.

Lisa Danner talks about forgivess from the Lord's prayer in Matthew 6:9-15. She begins with a story of some children from our church family demonstrating simple forgiveness that they've learned to do readily. Lisa notices that the final verse about forgiveness from God is contingent on our own forgiveness of others — unlike the other needs being expressed in prayer. It seems to be a relational commandment from Jesus.

Eric Schnitger talks about the inherent complexity of of Matthew 5:17-20 in part of the Sermon on the Mount. Initially Jesus seems to be saying that everyone will be part of the kingdom of heaven, but some least and some great. Later, Jesus says that we must be greater than the scribes and the pharisees in order to enter the kingdom of heaven. Eric talks about the difficulty of understanding passages that don't fully make sense to us, as well as issues of purity — being greater than the teachers and experts in the law — all while engaging PMC's children with questions from the text.

On July 23rd, Mark McReynolds, the Eco-Pastor for the Pacific Southwest Mennonite Conference, spoke to us at PMC on creation care. Mark told a story about being an exhibitor at a booth for a 6th grade science camp at a Christian camp. His display told that roughly 90% of big redwoods had been cut down, 5% are protected, and 5% are in some sort of method of preservation. He demonstrated the numbers for PMC by cutting a strip of wood with a circular saw. He wanted us to see the extent of resources that had been destroyed. A young woman stopped by the camp booth, yet thought that God knew the redwoods would be cut down, and that they were for our use — no holds barred. She was okay with that. So why is it that American Christians who profess love of God the Creator do so little to care for what God made and declared very good? Why can we see the same conservation problem and come to radically different viewpoints?

Melissa Hofstetter shared with PMC, on June 16th, thoughts on the passage of Luke 5:17-31, or the "Sermon on the Plain." This is the Luke parallel to the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew. Matthew’s re-telling of the Sermon on the Mount is full of beatitudes — blessing piled upon blessing piled upon blessing. In Luke’s telling of Jesus’ teachings from the flatlands, there are blessings, to be sure. But there are also woes: warnings and convictions. There is a leveling… Justice and salvation require level-ground: a straight path and equal footing. This seems to be a clear theme in Luke. Luke has his eye on the lowly.

For Pentecost Sunday, Tim Reardon asked us, “So what is the Holy Spirit? What place do we give the Spirit? How do we talk about her?” And “What do you imagine is happening on Pentecost?” Was this simply a sign, or is there more going on here? And what does the Spirit do? Tim invites us to consider the movement of the Spirit of creation. He considers four movements in the Acts 2: 1-21 passage: hovering, invading, distributing and worshipping.

On June 2nd, Jason Smith reflected on Acts 16:16-34. Jason, accountant by day, painter by night (his Clark Kent/Superman existence ), wove together the works of artist Dinh Q. Le with the accounts of the healing of a fortune-telling slave woman and Paul and Silas' subsequent imprisonment and release. As Dinh Q. Le weaves Vietnam war cultural images from the U.S. with family images from Southeast Asia during the same era — so there is a thread that runs through the three stories that we read in Acts 16, where Luke has juxtaposed the Biblical narrative of Salvation History with his own generation’s experience of it.

Reflecting on John 5:1-10, Steve Chun spoke to our church community last Sunday about the story of the man healed by Jesus at the pools of Bethesda. This story is different than many in John, in that he doesn't appear to respond as a follower of Jesus, and we don't see a transformation beyond the physical. But what this narrative might do is give us an important and challenging insight into the lives of people with disabilities. Steve invites us as a community to fully affirm the image of God in all of humanity, and live into our call to be peacemakers.

Engaging with the reading of Matthew 5:38-48, Tim Reardon tackled the topic of peace. The Christian peace tradition was Tim's draw to the Mennonite denomination during the build-up to the second Iraq war. This is peace not relegated to our hearts while taking up arms against enemies, nor as an ideal or demand or a work or a law, nor peace a feeling — but peace as a way of being. This peace cannot be grasped or owned, but something sought after, and which by God's grace seeks after us. It is inhabited with and for others. For Tim, this became a non-negotiable in his faith walk.