2020
Temptation Revelations
Speaker: Michelle Burkholder
Today we, once again, mark the first Sunday of Lent – a forty day journey of reflection and repentance that resembles the 40 days Jesus spent in the wilderness preparing for his season of public ministry. Lent is a season and a space of intention and preparation. Where we focus our intention and what we […]
Ordinary Transfiguration
Speaker: Cynthia Lapp
For the past three weeks we have been hearing passages from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount as found in the gospel of Matthew. Today we skip ahead in Matthew’s account of Jesus’ life to another experience that happened on a mountain, the transfiguration. For the writer of Matthew, Jesus is the new Moses. Since Moses […]
On The Border
Speaker: Cynthia Lapp
I have been back from New Mexico and Texas, from the borderlands, for two weeks. Thank you for your prayers and support as I traveled. Your care and concern accompanied me. It was a wonderful trip and yet it is sometimes difficult to know how to talk meaningfully about my experience there. The lectionary passage […]
Jesus Abridged
Speaker: Michelle Burkholder
It’s Super Bowl Sunday! Some of you couldn’t care less about that statement. While others of us have a mild interest in the game that will be taking place this evening. And many in this country are passionate about this annual event of gaming, theatrics, and money, money, money. For better or worse it is […]
“Can’t We All Just …?”
Speaker: Mary Hershberger
Good Morning. This is the 3rd Sunday of Epiphany – when the Three Wise Men deduced that the star moving before them was leading to a baby who was god’s son and a human being. For those of us who are not wise men and for whom single stars don’t march off by themselves, an […]
A Soaring Love
Speaker: Michelle Burkholder
Last weekend I had the opportunity to participate in the annual Laurelville Music and Worship Leaders retreat weekend. People from across the country, and even a few from Canada, gathered together for a weekend of singing, music making, and exploration of worship resources together. This event began 30 some years ago when Hymnal: A Worship […]
The Power and Humility of Baptism
Speaker: Cynthia Lapp
I remember my baptism. I was scared to choose it and scared not to choose it. My questions and doubts about the way things were explained (or unexplained) in church overwhelmed me. But, as the pastor’s kid, I felt I had to see the membership class through to completion along with the others in the […]
Epiphany 20/20
Speaker: Cynthia Lapp
The epiphany season is the hinge point of a new year, when things can come into new focus. It is one more gift of the season; a chance to look back and look forward. Matthew does this: he starts his account of Jesus’ life with a look back at Jesus’ ancestors, from Abraham through to […]