Sinopsis
Messages presented by Senior Pastor Michael Williams and other speakers during worship at West End UMC in Nashville, TN
Episodios
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Sticks and Stones and Words
14/03/2021 Duración: 26minFollowing our Lenten theme, Re:set, today’s particular focus is Re:store, and the text is the story of the woman caught in adultery and brought to Jesus by scribes and Pharisees to challenge his judgment. Words can build up or tear down. The accusers are using the law as a measuring stick, both to condemn the woman and to trap Jesus, and they cite the law’s given punishment, which is stoning, thus the sticks and stones. When Jesus stoops down and writes with his fingers it pauses the action and gives time for the accusers to reflect before they press him further. The final words of Jesus invite the people gathered to reflect, too, and for everyone to move forward.
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Pause for Prayer - Lent Week 3 - Contemplation
10/03/2021 Duración: 21minJoin Pastor Carol in this Pause for Prayer as we explore John 8:2-11. Enter into the scene with Jesus, the religious leaders, and a woman caught in adultery and allow this text to lead you into contemplation of Christ’s love, mercy, and grace.
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Tears in the Foundation
07/03/2021 Duración: 18minFollowing our Lenten theme, Re:set, today’s particular focus is Re:construct, and the text is the story of Nehemiah and the ceremony of the reading of the Torah to all the people on the occasion of the celebration of the rededication of the Temple after the Babylonian exile. It is a time filled with emotion, and the people weep, likely with deep grief and sorrow mixed with extreme joy and gratitude. It is a powerful moment for us in our own moment as we have experienced the pandemic and have begun to come to terms with some of our history of discrimination and injustice. How does this ancient event inform our grief and sorrow?
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Pause for Prayer - Lenten Meditation 2 - Sacred Imagination
03/03/2021 Duración: 24minYou are invited to pause for prayer with Pastor Carol today. We will engage in a brief practice of Sacred Imagination as we hear from the book of Nehemiah. Enter into the crowd of Israelites as they gathered to hear God’s law read aloud for the first time in decades. Take a moment to pray through this story and experience God’s presence with you today.
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What's in a Name?
28/02/2021 Duración: 18minFollowing our Lenten theme, Re:set, today’s particular focus is Re:name, and the text is the story of God’s changing the names of Abram to Abraham and Sarai to Sarah. With the change of names comes a new relationship with God, and they now have a new purpose. It happens when they are very old, indicating we are never too old to come into a new relationship. Here, too, God gets a new name, El Shaddai. Jesus uses Abba, a term more like “Dad” or “Daddy,” again indicating a special relationship. What names do we use for God? Are we willing to be renamed by God?
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Pause for Prayer - Lenten Meditation - Lectio Divina
24/02/2021 Duración: 26minWe invite you to find some time today to pause for prayer with Pastor Carol. This audio recording is a guided practice of sacred reading (lectio divina) of our scripture text for Sunday. Find a comfortable spot, put in your earbuds or turn up your computer, and let this brief podcast guide you into prayer.
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God of the Rainbow
21/02/2021 Duración: 13minThe reading for today is the post-flood story of God’s covenant with Noah and the earth. Believing that God is love, how do we wrestle with the dark side of this story that describes the destruction of the earth? This vow of God to hang the bow in the clouds might mean that this is a giving up of the bow as a weapon. The flood came with human failures, and perhaps that broke God’s heart, and on this end, God intends that all will be included in God’s declaration for the protection of creation. Perhaps when we see the rainbow we realize that the earth has been cleansed by a storm. It is a sign of hope, of new creation, of renewal.
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Re-Imagining Hope
16/02/2021 Duración: 20minIsaiah 43:19 talks about doing new things. When was the last time we allowed ourselves to do something new? In some ways the difficulties of the past year have forced us to turn to new things. How do we re-imagine ourselves and build on hope, even when we’re at our lowest moments? Verse 18, in a sense, challenges us to let go as a way to move on. Hope can’t stay stagnant in a place where there is no future. The last part of the verse assures that God will create a new path. That is hope.
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Stewards of the Mystery
14/02/2021 Duración: 23minThe early chapters of Mark explore who Jesus is through the eyes of Peter. For Peter this identification culminates in the Transfiguration where he is both awed and not quite understanding of what is happening. Sometimes we, too, lose sight of the mystery that cannot be put into words. The overwhelming experience of mystery can happen in our own church sanctuary. How does God call us to offer our sanctuary for people to share the mystery?
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When Jesus Moved On
07/02/2021 Duración: 22minThe text for the day is from Mark’s account of that very busy first day of Jesus’s ministry with the potential for a second day of healing even more people. But on the morning of the second day, Jesus is missing because he has withdrawn to pray. It’s a pattern in his life, and, if Jesus needs time to abide in God’s love, how much more do we need it? John Wesley, too, talked about acts of piety and acts of mercy. Oddly, even after his time of renewal, when the disciples call him to return to Capernaum, Jesus declines, saying he was called to move on to other places. Sometimes God calls us to move on, too.
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Disturber of the Peace
31/01/2021 Duración: 26minMuch as a “cold open” draws a viewer in to a TV episode, the beginning of each Gospel is meant to make a statement and draw in the reader. In Mark, Jesus’s first public act of ministry is this shocking scene of a disturbed man confronting Jesus in the synagogue. Already, Mark shows us that Jesus not only heals the sick, but he can vanquish evil. It might have been that the disturbed man was not someone off the street, but someone who worshipped regularly at the synagogue, demonstrating that Jesus can heal the bad and difficult parts of our own lives, the evil that enslaves us.
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Gone Fishing
24/01/2021 Duración: 25minToday’s reading is the Markan account of Jesus calling the first four disciples, all of whom are fishing at the time. Calling these first four disciples began a community of disciples. Recent events have pointed out our divisions and disconnection – a community problem, made moreso by the pandemic. How can we have conversations with each other when we really disagree? Perhaps the church is the place for those conversations. The disciples, too, had disagreements. Jesus calls us to follow him in community that reaches out to each other and to others in love.
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Call the Midwives
17/01/2021 Duración: 23minToday’s reading takes place in the context of the Egyptian pharaoh who doesn’t remember the close relationship between Joseph and a former pharaoh and the contribution of the Hebrew people to the Egyptians. The new pharaoh fears the growth of “those people” and demonizes them, even to the point of genocide. It causes us to look at our own time and into our own hearts and calls us to be held accountable, and to live and share the love we know God to be and offer. The midwives heroically act in civil disobedience, and if we find ourselves in a similar situation, we must answer the midwives’ call.
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Claimed and Driven
10/01/2021 Duración: 18minThis is our annual Remembering our Baptism Sunday. Usually on this Sunday the message is a reflection of baptism wherein God assures of God’s love, but this week we have experienced the shock of the assault on the Capitol building, and it is fresh in our minds. In Mark, the very next verse after the account of Jesus’s baptism says the spirit “drove” Jesus into the wilderness to temptation. It, too, is a shock, but Jesus responds in each case of temptation. Given our own baptism, our response to the world needs to be like his – stepping out into this world with the waters of baptism shaping our relationship and response to others and to the world.
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A Leap of Faith
03/01/2021 Duración: 19minThis is Epiphany Sunday. Rev. Carlos Uroza, pastor at Woodbine UMC and a graduate of Vanderbilt Divinity School, who is preaching today, grew up in one of the many places in the world where Epiphany is a special time, with children waking up early and getting gifts. Grace requires a response, as in the Epiphany story where grace comes in the form of the star in the sky, but those magi then made a long journey in response. We can also be messengers/angels, which can seem like a tall order, but we can respond to grace by making ourselves available so God can be revealed in our lives.
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A Ritual of Release
27/12/2020 Duración: 30minIn today’s scripture, Joseph and Mary have brought Jesus to the temple for an infant ritual, and two significant people, Simeon and Anna, are there to recognize and proclaim the significance of this child. Celebrating the New Year is a ritual of hope, but last New Year’s Day who could have predicted this year? Similarly, the celebration of Simeon and Anna at this ritual for the Savior was full of hope, but who could have predicted how all of that would eventually turn out? We experience intense lows as well as highs in our lives, and through ritual we know that Jesus is with us in both extremes. The end of Simeon’s story is not marked by his death, but by his life alongside that of Jesus. Through the ritual, Simeon and Anna were no longer waiting but welcoming. It reminds us of the gift of community.
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Abiding in the Fields
24/12/2020 Duración: 17minThis is West End’s traditional Christmas Eve service with communion, a special reading of the birth story from Luke, and the lighting of the Christ candle at the end of the service. In a usual year, all of the hustle and bustle of the season comes to a moment of calm in the Christmas Eve service. This year we cannot help but hold the grief of the whole earth in our hearts. None of us could have anticipated what has happened this year, and yet here we all gather around this ancient and familiar story of hope, comfort, and peace, and even joy.
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How Long, O Lord
20/12/2020 Duración: 10minWaiting is hard, and it is always hard to wait for Christmas, but it has been especially hard this year. Our scripture reading, Psalm 13, hits home with this – “How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever?” The tension between grief and “the most wonderful time of the year” can be great. One of the echoes we can hear during such times is from the affirmation of faith we often use where we affirm that “God is with us. We are not alone.”
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A New Song
20/12/2020 Duración: 17minThrough Advent we are looking at Psalms. There’s something about singing that lifts our spirits, and we often experience that with Christmas carols. There’s something about singing that connects us with our hearts, and, for people of faith, singing connects us with God. Psalms are songs that people of God have been singing for thousands of years. Today’s scripture, Psalm 96, is a song of praise to God, inviting not only all people but all of nature to sing. The scripture from Luke read this morning for the lighting of the Advent candle was Mary’s song of praise when she was pregnant with the holy baby. As Methodists, we have a heritage of hymns, including many written by Charles Wesley, including “Hark, the Herald Angels Sing!” And in our age we are living a new hymn.
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Past, Present, and Future Joy!
13/12/2020 Duración: 18minThrough Advent we are looking at Psalms, today at Psalm 126. Much like Charles Dickens’ "A Christmas Carol" that moves Scrooge through visions of the past, present, and future, this psalm reviews the past, present, and future of God’s people. The memory of who we have been can inform our present. As we see others in the present who suffer we can cultivate joy through acts of compassion. Unlike in Scrooge’s story where the future is threatening, the future in the psalm is truly hopeful and can have a lot to say to us about the meaning of Christmas.