Search and filter our sermon archive by preacher, book of the Bible, or date.
Pastor Ben Rudeen Kreider was ordained as a minister in Central District Conference of Mennonite Church USA on Sunday, May 17, 2026. Brian Bolton, pastor of Shalom Mennonite Congregation in Harrisonburg and Ben's mentor during...
For the next few weeks in this Easter season - I am planning to preach from the book of Revelation. Revelation is the last book of the New Testament, the last book in our Bible....
It’s hard to be a human. The growing pains of learning how to live in these bodies, the search for belonging and friendship, the daily need to provide food and shelter and a future for...
In today’s gospel reading from the Book of John, Jesus prays to God to protect his disciples, his dear friends: “I am asking on their behalf; I am not asking on behalf of the world,...
For the next few weeks in this Easter season, I am going to be preaching from the book of Acts, focusing on the impact of Jesus’ resurrection for the community of the church. Our short...
Where we are looking says a lot about what we’re looking for. If we took in all of the available data - all the sounds and sights and smells around us - we would be...
Life begins with love. For God so LOVED. From the beginning of time and light and far-flung spinning galaxies billions of years in the making to the beginning of each you - life begins with...
When Jesus entered the Temple in Jerusalem it was raucous as always - a cacophony of sound - prayers and song, animals bleating, different languages blending into one holy din. Maybe the smell of incense...
We’re all searching for something. When I ride my bike I love to search for random items strewn on the roadside. I’ve found lots of things this way. I’ve found a little pocket knife that’s...
Homemaking. The Christian life is a kind of homemaking. To make a home in this world, to make a life together, the routines and practices, the rituals and habits, where a people learn how to...
Resurrection is supposed to mean a new world. Easter is supposed to mark a new beginning, a new creation, the old passing away as all things are reborn. But here are the disciples, in our...
I spent four hours this week in the car with Willy Wonka, Charlie Bucket, and Grandpa Joe. Leo and Julian listen to books on CD, and I recently burned an audio copy of Roald Dahl’s...
In the story from John’s Gospel, they are preparing for Passover, the annual festival to remember the liberation of God’s people from slavery in Egypt. The focus of the days of commemoration are the sacrifices...
Nehemiah 8:1-8, Deuteronomy 6:4-7 (VT #187), John 1 (VT #235) In Marilynne Robinson’s novel Lila, the main character asks her husband, who happens to be a pastor, a question about preaching. She asks him, “What...
At this point in the story, Jesus has become a big deal. These verses we heard today are at the end of chapter 6, but we should remember how the chapter began—with that scene on...
Why is Jesus so weird? “I am the living bread that came down from heaven” he says. That seems nice. A pleasant metaphor! But he won’t leave it there, he has to go full cannibal....
This week the Bible passage are all about food again, just like last week. The central story this time is the miraculous provision of manna in the desert. God hears the complaints of the people,...
The Bible passage we heard make me hungry. They’re all about food. Psalm 145:15, “We look to you, O God, and you give us food in due season.” In 2 Kings 4 we have a...
It was still dark when Mary Magdalene came to the tomb. If you read the resurrection accounts in Matthew, Mark, or Luke you’ll hear that a group of women came at dawn, or just after...
I am not sure if the sermon below is a sermon at all, sent as it is from my isolation to yours: not preached but written, not heard but read. There is no communal response,...
Jesus doesn’t pray for himself by himself. Instead he prays for his friends in their company. “I am asking on their behalf… protect them from the evil one” (13:9, 15). Jesus is single-hearted, wholly for...
“Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.”...
We hope for a world where he can thrive, where our neighbors and the children of our neighbors experience the fullness of life. We believe in the God of life, in a world held in...
I dream of other worlds, ones like this one, with all of you there, but there’s something different, one difference that changes everything, the collapse of the old and a beginning for the new, like,...
After the crucifixion, the disciples had heard the news from Mary Magdalene—that Jesus was alive. That was last week. In our passage for today, a week has passed, a week after Easter morning. A week...
Early on Easter morning, before dawn, Mary Magdalene visits the tomb. She had seen Jesus crucified the day before. She was at the cross—there for his last breath, there when they pierced his side, there...
In the 1950s, a guy named Bill Bright came up with a roadmap for evangelism called, “The Four Spiritual Laws.” This statement of faith became a foundational document for North American evangelicalism. There are a...
There’s an old story—it’s probably a legend—about an evangelist who travels to Indiana, to farm country, to share the gospel, to convert people to Christianity. He meets a Mennonite at the general store. The evangelist...
“Everything happens for a reason.” That is the title of a book by Kate Bowler, a professor of history at Duke Divinity. Everything Happens for a Reason (and Other Lies I’ve Loved) came out this...
This is a risky conversation, here at Jacob’s well in the land of Samaria: Jesus, a Jew, and this woman, a Samaritan. Jews and Samaritans are kindred peoples, distant relatives, both tracing their lineage to...
