Wildwords: Sermons From Wildwood Mennonite Church

"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?

Justice happens in community. From the ancient conquest of the land of Canaan to modern criminology, the evidence is clear that both causes and effects of crime and punishment are always shared. As themicahmission.org puts it, "crime control lies primarily in community." Got your superhero costume ready??

Punishment alone does not often address the root causes of harm or change behaviours. The goal of restoration is not balancing the scale (it was likely never balanced in the first place) or undoing the harm, but of taking responsibility, repairing damaged relationships and honoring the humanity of victims and offenders alike. We were pleased to have Dave Feick, Executive Director at Micah Mission, share with us this week.

Justice is complicated. Humans have a variety of reactions when things go wrong--some less healthy than others. Revenge offers a shortcut to restoration: balance is achieved by subtraction, taking something away from another to compensate for what has been taken from me. But another way to reclaim balance is addition: acknowledging, feeling and understanding what has been lost and allowing hurt to be transformed into growth. How can we deal with shame, seek/offer support and walk the winding paths towards healing? Note: We had some audio issues this week. You can find the written version of the sermon on our website: www.wildwoodmennonite.org.

How can something be so ordinary but also so special? The Christmas season is different from the rest of the year... but the same kind of difference as it was last year, and the year before that... Going all the way back to the nativity of Jesus, the story of God-With-Us has always been about ordinary people and ordinary lives being revealed as sacred--the mundane packaging for the very presence of God. Whatever your Christmas is filled with this season, whether ordinary or strange or difficult, may our eyes and hearts be open to see and live the simple and spectacular restoration work of God among us.

Restoration takes vision, planning, creativity, development: the hard work of getting from here to there. You look ahead, you anticipate what’s coming, and you get ready for it. But how do you prepare when you have no idea what’s coming? Brace yourself...and click onward!

Restoration is near! Great! That sounds like just what we need--but what does it even mean?!? The prophet's vision at the start of the book of Isaiah weaves together images of the glory days of the past together with an idealistic imagination of the future. Exciting, inspirational stuff--but then nothing happened. Likewise, we often long for Order or Reorder, but find ourselves caught in Disorder for far longer than we had hoped. This is the stuff of Advent; welcome to the journey.

On Eternity Sunday each year, we pause to reflect on our losses from the past year and from a lifetime of human frailty. "Comfort, comfort my people" is the offering from God through the voice of the prophet Isaiah. What does that comfort look like and how do we receive it? Join us for a view of God in the rocking chair.

"Non-duality is the highest level of consciousness. Divine union, not private perfection, is the goal of all healthy religion" (Richard Rohr et al). Non-duality is a bit of a puzzle for some of us, not exactly words a ton of Mennonites use to describe our spirituality. What do we make of this final tenet in the Alternative Orthodoxy series, and what does it mean to make divine union the goal of our faith?

This Peace Sunday Heather Peters, Peacebuilding Coordinator with MCC Saskatchewan, challenged us with these important questions: How do we humanize our enemies? How do we help others find peace when we’ve been victimized ourselves? How do we open ourselves to the wonder of forgiveness? All these questions bring us back to the question of the central theme: how do we ensure peace is more than a wish?

"The path of descent is the path of transformation. Darkness, failure, relapse, death and woundedness are our primary teachers, rather than ideas or doctrines." This sixth tenet of the Alternative Orthodoxy really has to be experienced over a lifetime more than taught on a Sunday morning. But we won't let that stop us from sharing a bunch of words and thoughts in search of wisdom. Care to join us on the way down? Note: Due to technical difficulties there is missing audio at 13:20. The missing text is:    "Somehow the not-knowing is a gift on the path of descent. Not being able to resolve the tension is part of what shapes us, allows us to soften around it. Another voice I want to introduce you to is that of Valarie Kaur and her book See No Stranger. Kaur is an American lawyer, documentary maker, and community leader..."

What's hiding in your shadow? The fifth tenet of the Alternative Orthodoxy (Richard Rohr and the Center for Action and Contemplation) says "The 'separate self' is the major problem, not the 'shadow self' which only takes deeper forms of disguise." You read that right, our shadows--darkness, weakness, sin--are not actually the insidious problems we perceive them to be, but more of a symptom of a deeper disconnect from reality. How do we let our shadows reconnect us with our humanity and our spirituality?

"Everything belongs. No one needs to be punished, scapegoated, or excluded." Yeah, right. That just doesn't seem possible. There's just too much guilt and blame to go around; surely someone needs to be held accountable for this mess! And yet, there's a difference between accountability and punishment, between making things better and making someone pay. How do we walk those lines and move together towards healing and hope?

Our Thanksgiving service this year featured multiple elements of poetry, personal stories, prayers, and more--one of those "you had to be there" kind of things. We curated a few of the highlights for this post, though, so click on to enjoy!

Because people and their suffering are near to the heart of God, the church needs to be on the leading edge of showing care and compassion for those struggling with their own mental health, or that of family members or friends - and that might include all of us at one time or another. So that the burden of poor mental health is not carried alone, how do we, individually and as a church, support and care for one another?

"For those who see deeply there is only one reality. By reason of the Incarnation, there is no truthful distinction between sacred and profane." ~ Richard Rohr, Another Name for Everything Podcast, "Frame". In this post(?)pandemic reality, many churches are joining the long history of religious institutions with beautiful, mostly empty buildings. The good news is that God doesn't (only) live in the sacred spaces we build for ourselves--all space is sacred space! But what does that mean for the altars we have found and continue to appreciate?