Category Archives: Audio

Older audio recordings and the RMC Podcast

Raleigh Mennonite Church logoGreetings! 

We have digital recordings of most sermons from about 2007 to the present, with a few others before that, but only those from 2015 to the present are available on this site.  If you have interest in hearing messages from Raleigh Mennonite Church worship services, or other special recordings, that are not included either in this Older Audio Posts category (Jan. 1, 2015 – Dec. 31, 2017), or in the newer Podcast feed (Jan. 7, 2018 to the present), feel free to contact the website managers via the Contact Us Form. Select “website feedback” from the menu and tell us what you’re interested in. We’ll do our best to see if we can come up with what you’re looking for.

You can listen to the RMC podcast of sermons and other recordings using your favorite podcast player by subscribing to our RSS feed: https://www.raleighmennonite.org/feed/podcast

The RMC podcast is also available directly from these services:

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A Conversation about Jesus’ Death – March 18, 2018

Melissa Florer-Bixler preaching at Raleigh Mennonite Feb. 18, 2018Melissa changed up the format a little this Sunday for her sermon. Speaking from John 19:1-16a about Jesus’ trial and condemnation to death, she provided an introduction then invited the congregation to help answer the age-old question, “Why did Jesus die?”  There have been multiple perspectives or understandings of why Jesus was crucified. We interpret scripture together in community.

In the Gospel of John we see that Jesus dies not for our sins but because of our sins. He refuses to protect himself from the world. Jesus is love, and the world kills him for it.

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The Banality of Evil – March 11, 2018

Melissa Florer-Bixler preaching at Raleigh Mennonite Feb. 18, 2018Before Melissa’s sermon, we listened to Billie Holiday’s rendition of the haunting song “Strange Fruit.”  The sermon was based on John 18:28-40, about Jesus’ trial before Pontius Pilate.

Crucifixions were a common thing during Roman rule. They served not so much as death penalties as they were a form of social control.  Bodies on crosses were strategically placed at crossroads to remind the people of the power of Rome to crush their dreams for freedom. In that way, they were more like the lynchings that took so many black men’s lives in the Jim Crow south than they were modern forms of capital punishment. “Every cross is a lynching tree, and every lynching tree is a cross,” wrote James Cone.  Jesus’ trial was like so many trials of black men during that era: a sham.

Pilate plays a pivotal role in the trial, even though he was just trying to find middle ground, going between the religious officials and Jesus. He was just trying to do his job. Something many of us try to do as we navigate our circumstances.

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The Fire of God’s Love – March 4, 2018

Rachel Taylor speaking at Raleigh Mennonite Jan. 1, 2017Rachel brought the sermon based on John 18:17-27, reflecting on the oft-told story of Peter denying he knew Jesus, his teacher.  Peter was later able to take the experience of his failure, look at it with God’s eyes, and use it to imagine something new.  She links the charcoal fire they were gathered around in this story, with the charcoal fire over the lake where Peter is redeemed by Jesus and told to “feed my sheep.”

This is the liturgical season for us to collectively face what we’re capable of, for us to examine the ways we are and who God is. For us to take an honest look at our failures. A time to gently, carefully and deliberately open up ourselves to God’s loving judgement, to God’s eyes,  so that God can bury all that is within us that keeps us from God.

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Making the Ordinary Extraordinary – Feb. 25, 2018

Melissa Florer-Bixler preaching Feb. 5, 2018John 13:1-17 – Jesus Washes the Disciples’ Feet

The rituals of the Christian life are ordinary things made extraordinary for a moment. Jesus has a knack for this, taking what is ordinary and turning it back for us to look at it again: song, bread, water, wine.

As we anticipate the coming of Holy Week in a few weeks, Melissa invites us into a patient act of love. Consider making space in your life to get into the story that unfolds, to trace it through the week in the people you see around you, to take time off to live it out.

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“Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” – Feb. 18, 2018

Melissa Florer-Bixler preaching at Raleigh Mennonite Feb. 18, 2018John 11:1-44 – The Death of Lazarus

Ash Wednesday, the start of Lent, a time for prayer as we anticipate with sorrow Jesus’ death. This year Ash Wednesday was marked by the death of 17 students and teachers at the High School in Parkland, Fl. The Ash Wednesday cross contains ashes representing death. Melissa reminds us that the same oil is used to mark us as Christians when we are baptized. The scripture recounts Lazarus’ death and resurrection. A resurrection that allows us to believe in a new world where we are safe in God’s light. A world where we no longer fear death.

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The Well Woman & Nicodemus – Feb. 4, 2018

Melissa Florer-Bixler preaching Feb. 5, 2018Melissa contrasted last Sunday’s Gospel of John passage with this week’s from John 4:1-42. Last week Nicodemus came and left in the cover of darkness. It takes him time to process his experiences with Jesus. The Samaritan woman at the well encounters Jesus and soon after boldly proclaims to the people around her, “Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done! He cannot be the Messiah, can he?” We’re shown not a right and wrong way to encounter Jesus, but two human lives, two stories. We’re shown that being in this life of being drawn near to God looks like many things, and that we too will be, and need, many stories like these.

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Born of Water & Spirit – Jan. 28, 2018

Melissa Florer-Bixler preaching at RMC on Jan. 21, 2018Today’s message came out of John 3:1-21. Nicodemus wasn’t quite ready to trust Jesus yet, approaching him at night.  He asks what he must do to enter the kingdom. Jesus’ initial responses are rather nebulous. Then we hear what is maybe the best known verse in the Bible. Melissa helps unpack it all.

In John’s gospel, we see bringing about the kingdom happens here and now, not in some eternal future.

In the Bible, belief is not a matter of checking off a box in your mind. Belief in God is a matter of trust.

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Radical Communion – Jan. 21, 2018

Melissa preaching on Oct. 29, 2017Melissa brought the sermon today, based on John 2:13-25. Jesus coming onto the scene means a radical departure from every common expectation about worship and economics and the places where they meet.  We’re reminded by this passage in John, as well as by many of the old testament prophets like Zechariah and Nehemiah, that we have a long history of getting comfortable with bad practices as worshipers of God.

This Sunday was Worldwide Communion Sunday. Our Anabaptist sister churches worldwide have offered us astounding examples of radical welcome that shake us outside the boundaries of respectability and law abiding. They remind us of a stark alternative to the rampant nationalist and xenophobic ideologies that have gripped so many here in the U.S.  These churches have shown us what it means to follow after the one who flips over tables. They show us that following Jesus will not allow us to fly under the radar, to stay respectable, to play along by the rules any more.

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Happy Hour with Jesus – Jan. 14, 2017

Hans Linnartz preaching at RMC Jan. 14, 2018Hans brought the message from John 2:1-11, the story of Jesus turning water into wine at the wedding at Cana. Jesus performed this miracle and “revealed his glory” to the disciples and the others at the party who heard about what he had done. Kind of a strange first act to show the glory of God.

“Glory” is the humanly-accessible way that God’s awesomeness, God’s light, God’s joy is revealed. These “random acts” are what make up the Gospels, showing ordinary life being lived, but with Jesus.

We are called to invite Jesus to be our guest, to go where God leads us, and to show God’s glory.

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Lives Transformed – Jan. 7, 2018

Kyle Kentopp preaching at RMC on Jan. 7, 2018We had the privilege of having Kyle Kentopp provide the sermon this Sunday. Kyle is a Master of Divinity candidate at Yale Divinity School where he is training to become a minister in the United Church of Christ. Kyle understands his experience as a transgender individual as being inseparably intertwined with his faith journey as a Christian and focuses his academic and ministerial work on transgender rights and education.

Kyle’s message was based on John 1:35-51, the calling of Jesus’ first disciples.  Christ saw them, recognized them, and made space for who they were and the gifts that each of them brought to his ministry. Jesus didn’t expect them to be a perfect carbon copy of himself. They were transformed, so that their inherently placed gifts and talents could be used for the participation in the movement of God on earth. Simon being renamed to Peter captures that transformation best.

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What Did You Go Out to See? – Dec. 31, 2017

Zinith preaching at RMC on Dec. 31, 2017Zinith Barbee brought the sermon on this New Year’s Eve Sunday. The scripture was from John 1:19-34.

“When I read the New Testament, the best I can do is insert myself into its stories. Where Jesus holds audience, I look for the guy in the crowd that is just like me.”

“What does it mean to follow Jesus as Anabaptists in the 21st century? To me this question felt as weighty as Menno Simons asking what it meant to follow Jesus as an Anabaptist in the 16th century.”

Where do you insert yourself into the New Testament story? What did you go out to see?

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The Word Became Flesh – Dec. 24, 2017

At this Christmas Eve service Will read from John 1:1-18 before Issac Villegas read Melissa’s sermon since Melissa had lost her voice.

God invites us to hear the cry of an infant. We are welcomed, never forced to see the whole of God’s love hangs on the cry of a baby born into poverty. A love that reaches for every nameless child kidnapped by the Bocha Haran, every Muslim killed at prayer by a bomb, every kid in this country whose parents have been deported. In the crackling heat of creation, when the forces of God’s creative wind and energy and power are pressed down into the life of a child, we are invited to see the world and to love it.

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Mary’s Soul Cries Out – Dec. 17, 2017

Melissa preaching Dec. 17, 2017 with many Marys on the table in front of her.The third Sunday of Advent is known as Gaudete Sunday, or Joy Sunday.

We focused our attention on Mary, the mother of Jesus, through the  depictions of Mary displayed on the front table from many of our nativity scenes. Melissa opened her message, based on Luke 1:26-38, 46-56, by talking about her visit to Duke Chapel to see the life-sized paper doll depictions of Mary on display. They included the Virgin of Guadalupe, Our Lady of Lourdes, the Byzantine Theotokos, and Madonna and Child of Soweto.

She also showed the cartoon by Everett Paterson called José y Maria, a modern-day down-and-out couple outside of a gas station convenience store searching for a place to stay.

Mary, the first priest, born into poverty, a patriarchal culture that considered women property, the female body a dirty curse. A young woman pressed in on every side. And an angel says that she is favored. Looked upon as one with worth, a life that has been noted, that, though it matters to no one else, matters to God.

When our belief grows thin due to the vagaries of the world, remember that Mary was there, at the beginning and at the end. “She is always here, bearing witness to all of it–to the grace and the terror, to the injustice and the hope.”

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