by Ken Sehested
Circle of Mercy Congregation, 13 November 2016
Principal text: Isaiah 65:17-25 • Other lections: Psalm 118; Luke 21:5-19
Commentary
Watching and Waiting in a Half-Spent Night
A sermon prior to covenant Sunday
Ken Sehested
Circle of Mercy, 28 November 2004
Matthew 24:36-44
Background to this sermon. Circle of Mercy Congregation has no indefinite members.
Each year, on the anniversary of our founding, both new and renewing members join
in a covenant reaffirming our vision and mission, on the first Sunday of Advent
(or second, if the first falls on Thanksgiving holiday weekend).
See "Covenant Vows for new and renewing members.")
One summer, during my college days, I worked with a road construction crew in Waco, Texas. It was some of the hardest work I’ve ever done . . . or, maybe not because the work was so hard, but the working conditions were so severe, when you factor in the hot Central Texas heat, frequently working close to hot asphalt paving equipment. And the constant cloud of dust broiling up from bulldozers and scrapers.
Read more ›Listening for whispering hope
Polling the electoral "whitelash"
by Ken Sehested
“The parents have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge.”
—Ezekiel 18:2
“What on earth are you going to write [about the election outcome]?” a friend wrote this week.
Read more ›Isaiah 65 coloring book & “After Tuesday” pastoral prayer
Reaffirming rainbow promises in light of an electoral deluge
This week members of my congregation are adding artistic colors to one or more of the 22 pages of an “Isaiah 65 coloring book.” Adults have been encouraged to decorate one or more page as they watch elections results Tuesday night.
Each of the pages has a phrase pointing to a profoundly different future, taken from Isaiah 65 (plus one from a similar text in Isaiah 11 and from Mary’s hymn of praise in Luke 1) each against a rainbow background, the sign of God’s re-creational covenant in Genesis 9.
This coming Sunday, 14 November, featuring the Isaiah 65 text, will be our first post-election gathering to discern what “After Tuesday” looks like and what it means for the living of these days. Artwork created by members will be displayed in our sanctuary next Sunday.
Read more ›How you can support the Standing Rock action opposing the Dakota Access Pipeline
(See “Signs of the Times: 3 August 2016, No. 95” on the prayerandpolitiks.org site for additional background.)
by Ken Sehested
Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could only do a little.
—Edmund Burke
Confrontation at the Cannonball
The Dakota Access Pipeline controversy
Introduction to a special issue of “Signs of the Times” (4 November 2016, No. 94)
by Ken Sehested
By now, DAPL (Dakota Access Pipeline) has become a familiar acronym to many in the US. The confrontation near Cannon Ball, North Dakota, where the Cannonball River joins the Missouri River, is cleft by a thin barricade.
Read more ›Longing from below
An Advent meditation
by Ken Sehested
Advent is a season of great longing, specifically for those longing “from below.”
The longing is a revolutionary one, however, and frightening to those in charge, who have much to lose if existing hierarchies are breached. Such anxiety is what fueled Herod’s terror against male babies.
Read more ›Enough of this! Toward a theology of nonviolence
Why I don’t often use the language of “pacifism”
by Ken Sehested
Presentation for the colloquia on the theology of nonviolence,
Eastern Mennonite University/Seminary, October 24, 2002
The baptist impulse
Notes toward a renewal of baptist identity
by Ken Sehested
Address to the "Coalition for Baptist Principles" breakfast meeting,
American Baptist Churches USA Biennial, 21-23 June 2013, Overland Park, Kansas
You’re a hardy group, I must say—to get up early on a muggy summer morning, on a Saturday, for an outrageously expensive 7:30 breakfast, to reflect on Baptist identity. To say the least, “Baptist identity” is a contested topic, sometimes a boring topic, and often an embarrassing one.
Read more ›Learning to see
Why communities of conviction are important
by Ken Sehested
“The reason I speak to them in parables is that ‘seeing they do not perceive. . . .”
—Matthew 13:13
President Barack Obama, speaking at the opening ceremony of the African American Museum in Washington, DC, said: “Hopefully, this museum can help us talk to each other, and more importantly listen to each other, and most importantly see each other.”
Read more ›