WildWords: Sermons from Wildwood Mennonite Church

Randy Klassen, Indigenous Neighbours Coordinator for Mennonite Central Committee SK, joined us this week for Part 1 of our four part “Reflection on Reconciliation” series.

Note: We had some audio glitches this week. If the sound cuts out stay with us and we will return shortly.

Christ is Risen! Now what does that mean for us, exactly? On Easter, our prayers and songs are jubilant, often rejoicing in Jesus' victory over the grave and celebrating the hope of a future beyond death. Yet we live in the meantime, where life is still filled with plenty of loss and fear and struggle and mortality. Can we hold together the darkness of Good Friday and the light of Easter, trusting that our undoing is also part of the remaking of everything?

"Called to Life" a '5-Minute Focus' from Eileen Klaassen⁠

Our sermon time this week was a multi-sensory experience. First, we listened to a clip from the podcast “Ask Science Mike,” as Mike McHargue gave us an introduction and background to visual and experience-based prayer. Then we tried out one of those experiences, with five minutes of a candle prayer.

You can find the full "Ask Science Mike" podcast episode here: https://liminalventura.org/sermons/ask-science-mike-live/

After all that they've seen of God's faithfulness already, how could they possibly complain about a little thirst? How could they let their worries keep them from resting in God's good hands? Or is the human condition always caught in between fear and trust?This Sunday morning worship service wove together Scripture, music and ritual in a contemplative and imaginative setting. It’s hard to recreate this in an at-home experience, but here’s the audio for you to use in whatever way you wish.

"Is this the darkness of the tomb or the darkness of the womb?" Valarie Kaur asks in the face of global, local and personal uncertainty. This echoes the call of Jesus to Nicodemus in John 3: "if you want to see, you must be reborn, remade from top to bottom." What might that mean for us in our own times of darkness?

What does it mean to love God with our whole selves? What do you need to be fully and utterly you? And what if, as a church, we listened to these needs within us and in our world and organized our worship and other practices accordingly?

Dwight Eisler wraps up our series on Social Justice with a focus on the individual. God sitting with our pain and sitting with each other in our pain.

A clip from The Chosen Season 2 Episode 2 has been removed due to copyright.

"What we all want to create is a community of kinship such that God in fact might recognize it." This is the foundation of Justice, as explained by Father Greg Boyle of Homeboy Industries, largest gang intervention program in the world. What does kinship look like? This Sunday we were inspired by Father Greg's video message.

*warning: strong language and difficult content

Do you love mercy? Many of us resonate with the beginning and ending lines of the call of Micah 6:8 "to live justly, to love mercy, to walk humbly with our God." But mercy seems... soft, out of balance, vulnerable. And yet, this is the way of Jesus. Do we dare to follow that vision?