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Loving Conflict
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…
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#BuffaloHonest
Tim Reardon talks about Buffalo, NY as home, lamenting that it’s now used as shorthand for horrific, racist white violence following the shooting on May 14 at a Tops Friendly Markets store. And he goes on to describe the peace of Christ, in contrast to what the world has to offer.
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A Legacy of Abundance
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…
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Art & Accounting
Jason Timothy Smith describes himself as an accountant by day, and artist by night. He talks about a book called “Suma de Arithmetica,” about Fra Luca Pacioli, an Italian Mathematician known as the “father of accounting,” who was also math teacher to Leonardo da Vinci. Pacioli also wrote “The Divine Proportion” about the Golden Ratio,…
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Testifying at City Council as Discipleship
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…
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Creation Speaks
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…
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Reflection on Responding to God’s Call
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…
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The Image of Jesus
Rob Muthiah talks about icons: images intended to draw those who dwell upon them into deeper meanings, windows to the divine. They’re intended to disorient us — to invite us to encounter the reality of God differently. Conversely, given the racist realities of our culture, we have to reckon with a different image: the image…
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Great Expectations
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…
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God is Singing Over You…Yes You!
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…
Pasadena Mennonite Church 