Chapel Hill Mennonite Fellowship
Through the power of the Holy Spirit, we hope to follow in the way of Jesus, who gives us the grace to love one another as God loves the world.
Worship is more than preaching. Each worship gathering draws from the wealth of gifts of the community. We have rotations of volunteers who share the responsibilities of preaching, song leading, and service planning. We take turns reading the assigned Scripture readings for the day. The high point of our worship is our time for response and sharing. Since we believe that anyone can offer an interpretation of the Bible, we provide time in our worship for people to offer their own reflections on the Scriptures and the sermon.
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· Isaac Villegas · Numbers 6:24-26, Jeremiah 29:4-11, Isaiah 52:7, Isaiah 52:7 (VT #781), Luke 4:16-19, Matthew 28:16, 18-20
Numbers 6:24-26 (VT #826), Jeremiah 29:4-11 (VT #783), Isaiah 52:7 (VT #781), Luke 4:16-19, 21 (VT #292), Matthew 28:16, 18-20 (VT #451) This is the last sermon in this series on what I’ve learned about the Christian life, through our worship together. We started seven weeks ago with our gathering, then we moved through the… More
· Isaac Villegas · Colossians 3:15-17, 2 Corinthians 5:17-20, Luke 24:13-35
Colossians 3:15-17 (VT #818), 2 Corinthians 5:17-20 (VT #785), Luke 24:13-35 (VT #470) We share. That’s what we do here. That’s what church is about for us. Not just here, during worship on Sundays, but with the rest of our lives, too. We share meals together in our homes. We share stories about our lives.… More
· Isaac Villegas · Nehemiah 8:1-8, Deuteronomy 6:4-7 , John 1
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 do you ever tell people in a sermon except that things that happen mean something? Some man dies somewhere a… More
· Isaac Villegas · Psalm 13, Psalm 46:10, Romans 8:26, Philippians 4:4-7
Psalm 13 (VT #728), Psalm 46:10 (VT #730), Romans 8:26 (VT #729), Philippians 4:4-7 (VT #726) As you probably noticed, all of our Bible passages for today are taken from one page of our hymnal, all on the theme of prayer. I especially like the way they linked the last three scripture passages together, with… More
· Isaac Villegas · Psalm 100, Psalm 47:1, 6-7, Isaiah 42:10-12, Revelation 7:9-12
Psalm 100 (VT #20), Psalm 47:1, 6-7 (VT #108), Isaiah 42:10-11 (VT #106), Revelation 7:9-12 (VT #110) I’m not very good at singing. You probably already knew that. I don’t really know how to read music, and I can’t stick with a part without help from others. So I just try to listen along, sometimes… More
· Isaac Villegas · Matthew 2:1-12
I wake up, I use the bathroom, I drink some coffee, I eat some food, I brush my teeth, I write emails, I drink more coffee, I use the bathroom again, I might go on a run, I eat more food, I go to a meeting, I write more emails, I think about what to… More
· Isaac Villegas · Luke 2:15-21
Last year when I spent a week helping out at the migrant shelter in Tijuana, I met a woman who was very pregnant, within weeks of her due date. She was from Guatemala, from the mountains, she told me in the best Spanish she could put together. She was Mayan, and Spanish was her second… More
· Isaac Villegas · Luke 1:39-55
The incarnation. This season is a celebration of the incarnation, of God who became flesh in Jesus Christ. These stories about the advent of Jesus, the stories about his birth and life and death—all of those stories are glimpses of God, they are announcements of what God’s presence looks like in our world and in… More
· Isaac Villegas · Luke 3:7-18
“What then should we do?” (Luke 3:10). That’s what the crowds say. That’s their response to John the Baptist, when he stands along the banks of the river Jordan, calling the people to repentance. “You brood of vipers!… Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruits worthy of repentance” (3:7). The… More
· Isaac Villegas · Philippians 1:3-11, Luke 3:1-6
I’ve mentioned before that I used to teach classes in prisons, mostly at one in Durham and another in Raleigh, both of them state prisons. But I also would drive up the highway to Butner where I’d teach at a federal prison. I had more freedom there to teach what I wanted. On the last… More
· Isaac Villegas · Job 42
At the beginning of the story of Job, at the beginning of the book, Job had it all—wealth, possessions, family, perfect health. Then that life is taken from him. All of it. Oxen and donkeys, sheep and camels, sons and daughters, and he’s afflicted with sores, sores all over his body, and he sits in… More
· Isaac Villegas · Job 38, Psalm 104
After thirty chapters of silence, God finally speaks to Job. God answers with questions. “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?” (38:4) “Where is the way to the dwelling of light?” (38:19) “Have you entered the storehouses of snow, or have you seen the storehouses of hail?” (Job 38:22) “Who has… More
· Nathan Hershberger · Job 23, Psalm 22
What I despise most about myself is my aloofness. I pull back when I should reach out. Afraid of rejection, I hide away from the friendships in which I may be truly known. Stung by some minor offense, I react with a cold shoulder. This scares me most in how I relate to my kids.… More
· Isaac Villegas · Job 1-2
Job has been blessed with the good life. He has it all. He has what’s sounds like to be a lovely family, grown children who like each other enough to spend time together. And he has enough resources for everyone’s wellbeing—enough sheep and camels and oxen and donkeys. He has been blessed with wealth. He’s… More
· Isaac Villegas · Numbers 11
Here’s how I like to tell my story of church wandering, of moving from one kind of church to another—the way I’ve switched Christian traditions several times during my forty years. As a kid, my family was Roman Catholic. We were part of a lovely parish in Los Angeles. I have hazy memories of church… More
· Isaac Villegas · James 3-4
“Who is wise and understanding among you?” James asks in our reading for today. “Show by your good life that your works are done with gentleness born of wisdom” (James 3:13). A good life. That’s what we want for ourselves and for others. A life at peace with ourselves and our neighbors, near and far.… More
· Isaac Villegas · Mark 7:24-37, Proverbs 22, James 2
We misrecognize. We get people wrong. We interpret the lives of others according to the ideas in our heads. We make evaluations based on our inventions of types of people. We make decisions on what a person is like according to our preconceptions, which are based on piecemeal experiences. We put one person in the… More
· Isaac Villegas · John 6:56-69
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 the hillside, where crowds of people from the nearby villages gathered to see him, to hear him speak. After a… More
· Nathan Hershberger · John 6:51-58, Proverbs 9:1-6
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. “Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.”… More
· Isaac Villegas · John 6:24-35
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, their growling stomachs, and sends bread. The Psalmist turns the memory into a prayer, a song, a hymn for the… More
· Isaac Villegas · Psalm 145:10-18, 2 Kings 4:42-44, John 6:1-14
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 very short story about people having enough to eat during a famine: they share barely loaves and freshly harvested grain.… More
· Isaac Villegas · Jeremiah 23:1-6, Psalm 23, Mark 6:30-34
“Woe to the shepherds who destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture! says the LORD” (Jeremiah 23:1) Jeremiah prophesies God’s condemnation of leaders who forsake their people, shepherds who neglect the flock. The leaders have consolidated their authority with terror, and have driven away the people with abusive power. They manipulate the needs of… More
· Isaac Villegas · Ephesians 1:3-14
“This is the pledge of our inheritance toward redemption as God’s own people” (Ephesians 1:14). I remember those summers as a kid when the public library would have their reading challenge. If you read ten books, twenty books, I can’t remember the number, you’d get a voucher for a personal pan pizza from Pizza Hut.… More
· Isaac Villegas · 2 Corinthians 12:2-10
“I am content with weaknesses… for whenever I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Cor 12:10). I have a lot of weaknesses. Spiritual, emotional, physical, relational. A very long list. And I’m sure I’ve got more of them than I know of, others that I haven’t noticed. The weakness on my mind this week… More