Podcast – Pasadena Mennonite Church

Cara Pfeiffer uses the story of the woman caught in adultery, John 8:1-11, to share the practical peacemaking steps Jesus took in that encounter to deescalate the situation and to protect a vulnerable woman.

Stanley Green described his first pastorate in South Africa, where his parishioners were menial laborers on farms producing ostriches and grapes. Stanley knew that the very religious white owners of the farms beat their workers. They were paid little, forcing them to buy on credit from the farm store half-way through the month. And at 13, children were taken out of school to work the farms. This history created an interest for Stanley regarding the topic of spirituality. The history of the western church created a duality between mind and body, and other-worldliness over earthliness, as well as linear thinking. This has been manifested through sexism, climate change, and wide-spread disease that plagues our society. It is time to bring back what has been forgotten: the body, the physical world, and those labeled as “other” back into our consciousness so that our world can heal and find restoration.

On September 11th, we were honored to hear from Sarah Augustine, a Pueblo (Tewa) descendant and author of "The Land Is Not Empty: Following Jesus in Dismantling the Doctrine of Discovery" (Herald Press, 2021). This is the first week in a series called Anabaptist Academy, and centers around Jesus and Justice. The Doctrine of Discovery is a legal doctrine, a paradime for creating law. It is the current legal doctrine in the United States, defining reality for indigenous peoples, dating back to colonization, mission, and economic development — and last cited in 2005 in a majority opinion written by Ruth Bader Ginsburg. The Doctrine is also based upon Christian doctrine deployed by the church.

Jason T. Smith, gifted in weaving together cultural ideas and theological metaphors, spoke to us on September 4th. Kujenga means “to build” in Swahili. In Kenya, both Swahili and English are official languages. And Leslie Scott, an Englishwoman born in Kenya brought a derivative of the word kujenga to the western world: Jenga. After her family moved to Ghana, she packaged and sold the family game. Jason goes on to talk about a Mythbuster’s Jr episode tasked with whether the whole foundaion of a Jenga tower could be removed while leaving the building standing? He then turns the question back to us as the church, referring to the building up of the body of Christ in 1 Corinthians 3:9-17. He asks, “What is so foundational to what we are as Christians that removing it would cause what we’ve built to collapse?

We enter Luke 10:38-42 with Mary and Martha, and the topic of empathy. Mike Rewers empathizes with a rather unpeaceful Martha and her blindness in the moment. But when we can become aware of our inability to see clearly, we become more able to see the other with loving and accepting eyes, which is how God sees us — and them. We have to bump into others to become aware of ourselves. God lives in the space between us and the other, and calls us into healing.

As the apostles wonder whether Jesus has returned from the dead to restore the kingdom of Israel, Jesus instead speaks of power that will come upon them in the form of the Holy Spirit. This was not a dominion over others, but the power of the Spirit of God. What if this is a power that allows us to bypass the offenses of others, that makes it possible for us to live in peace, to be able to be patient and kind to others, to trust in God despite adversity — the power to able to control our desires — power that can only be given by the Spirit of God. This is a power so simple, so sweet and profound that it can really only come from God. And it invites us to accompany others.

“What a time in the U.S. to be asked to talk about conflict resolution,” says Kathleen Klompien-Wedberg as she begins her sermon relating to our Peaceful Practices Curriculum. She notes that the past few weeks have seen the world in a time of war and aggression on multiple fronts. Yet our passage in Matthew 18:10-22 about trying to reconcile, again and again, the the songs we sing about God’s love and seeing from one another’s point of view, the interactions with the children this morning — call us to be looking at our situation with humility, with creativity, and with discovery. We’re not doing this by ourselves.

Lisa Thornton began our summer sermon series on “Peaceful Practices — A guide to healthy communication in conflict.” Lisa finds curiosity to be an intentionally chosen posture. Curiosity isn’t merely about inviting all opinions to the table and giving them equal value, but about looking at others around the table regardless of their opinion, and holding each person with value. It’s about working to start interactions rooted in empathy rather than judgement. Hearts and minds are changed only because stories of others are revealed, and the Holy Spirit is allowed to work throughout. We practiced this with the story of Jesus healing a woman on the Sabbath who had been bent double for 18 years.

Pentecost Sunday celebrates the coming of the Holy Spirit in a new way following the resurrection and ascension of Jesus. Rob Muthiah reviews how the Spirit of God is present in creation, throughout the Old Testament and in the life and ministry of Jesus. And so, Rob asks, what about today? He goes on to use a metaphor developed by theologian and vicar Sam Wells, of performing a play that is missing an act — which we are assigned to improvise. Improv involves following the preceding acts and knowing the act to come. This is how the church discerns God’s movement today: following scripture, knowing what’s to come, filled with and gifted by the Spirit, and guided by the Holy Spirit's presence.

Lisa Danner talks about the challenges of family conflicts for those attempting to live a pacifist lifestyle. Some of our toughest conflicts involve issues where we feel forced to choose between articulating a deeply held value or “maintaining peace” by way of keeping silent. Lisa summarizes a key finding of Dr. Tania Israel’s research on dialogue across political lines and asks the congregation what feels applicable to their own family conflicts.

Rhoda Blough, our representative from Everence, a faith-based financial services group, references Exodus 16, about manna, and the Matthew 14 passage that describes Jesus feeding a crowd of 5,000. Along with these passages, she shares from a money autobiography and the realization that her parents had left a legacy of abundance to her family. From a blue-collar Mennonite family with nine children and a stay-at-home mom, she was unaware that they were poor. She asks, "What is a mindset of abundance or a mindset of scarcity?" and elaborates on a God of abundance who has given us a universe composed of all we need to thrive.

Bert introduces the Jesus of Matthew 4:23-25 as a sort of traveling pentecostal preacher: he’s preaching the gospel, healing people, casting out demons, and he gathers a large international following. Jesus was doing this in synagogues, which to us were religious spaces, but in first century Galilee these were the town governments, centers of self-governance and communal political and religious life. Synagogues were governmental bodies that attended to municipal matters — rather like a town hall. Jesus was going through the towns and villages spreading the good news of the kingdom of heaven — God’s new society. And he told his disciples that they would do the same.

Joshua Grace and friends Dimitri and Rufo painted and presented a mural to PMC, representing the land that we at PMC meet on: the unceded territory of the Hahamong'na tribe of the Tongva people who have lived in and stewarded the land of the Los Angeles basin for thousands of years. Joshua has been working on a parallel project — a lenten daily reader — in collaboration with Randy Woodley of Eloheh, a Cherokee descendent. The reader is an introduction to settler colonialist Christians new to issues of the environmental, political and relational impact of colonialism that indigenous people are still experiencing.

Sue Park-Hur reflects on God's call in 1 Corinthians 12:12-31, and the call to love as a whole in chapter 13. This is a reflection rooted in warmth as it was also an affirmation and celebration of God's call to ordination for Mariann Reardon as the service wrapped around this event for the congregation. This is God's familiar passage to us as an interconnected body. We are united in the person of Jesus, and we have been baptized by one Spirit into one body. And even more, this is a letter of love, concretely defined by acts of will on behalf of others.

On January 9th, Tim Reardon spoke on Luke 3:15-22. Here we meet people out in the desert, who are filled with expectations, hopes… So what were these people expecting? It was a particular vision of the world — the vision of Isaiah 40:3-5 — of mountains being brought down, valleys raised up, and people seeing the salvation of God. This vision was a redefinition of the way the world is; a vision of a world of justice and peace. As we come into this year, what are the things that we are expecting?

Kathleen Klompien-Wedberg talks about the toxic positivity and consumerism of the typical American Christmas, and how it leads us to feel tired and jaded. In this week’s scripture, Luke 3: 7-14, even the unlikely hero, John the Baptist calls us back to what we ought to talk about who is left out of the typical Christmas—the othered, the neurodivergent, the unhoused, those whose path has not been in a typically straight line—and how God is rejoicing and singing over all humankind. Image by Kelly Latimore, kellylatimoreicons.com.

Stories are important because they color the way we view God. In Philippians 1:3-11, Paul is writing from prison to the church in Philippi — a loving letter, full of affection and joy. Hope is important for Paul — both in the way the world is structured and in where it’s going. The creation story in Genesis 1 is believed to be written while the Jewish people were exiled in Babylon. It is written for an exiled and subjugated people — yet contains none of the violence of other creation stories. Our God’s creation is an invitation — a call that includes the participation of creation itself. God takes joy in creation. We are created in God’s image, counterparts with the capacity to love, to be compassionate, to have relationship with God — to help birth God's peace. We too are called to live into God's creation story.

Lisa Danner talks about the season of Advent as a time to create space for waiting. She highlights that people seem to have a propensity to get distracted from things that matter and invites us to analyze what pressures, mindsets, or stressors might be let go in order for us to have experiences of wonder.

Adam enters into the week’s scripture passage of John 18:33-37 in light of Jesus' words to Pilate, "My kingdom is not from this world. If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews." Adam's own understanding has come from his transition from prison guard to anabaptist seminarian and hospital chaplain — a transition that has led him from ideas of perpetuating to breaking cycles of violence.

Mark 13:1-8, is known as the little apocalypse. This is a foreign genre to us, though common at the time of Jesus’ life. Surprisingly, these were originally texts of hope, written to provide another vision of the world for people suffering and oppressed. In apocalypse, worldly power is turned on its head, and God’s justice reigns, assuring the vindication of the oppressed. In Mark, Jesus seems to be speaking in realistic terms about what lies ahead for his friends and disciples, trying to prepare them. He tells them that God will be with them through it all. His warnings here are not a condemnation, but a lament of what is to come. Jesus is reading the signs of the times.