A Discomforting Gospel Sometimes we find comforting saints as companions for the spiritual journey – the people whose stories resonate with ours, who inspire us, and who we think “They’d be fun to meet!” And sometimes we encounter the prophetic saints of the Church, the ones who stand on the fringes of acceptable society. And they can make us uncomfortable.…
Resisting Empires Two saints of the 20th Century, Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Oscar Romero, offer us a challenging perspective – that faithfully following Jesus will often put us in conflict with the powers of the world. We might be tempted to withdraw from the world to keep ourselves safe, but these two servants of Christ show us another way – learning…
How Big is Your Neighborhood? Gospel Lessons from Mr. Rogers and Ms. Rachel The season of Lent is an invitation to introspection – taking an honest look at ourselves and being open to the Spirit’s work to draw us back toward God. But interior spiritual work can become navel-gazing if we don’t have good partners to guide us. And so…
All the Light We Share Transfiguration Sunday celebrates the moment when Christ is transfigured before three of his disciples. In that moment, Jesus the itinerant rabbi is revealed as the divine Christ. As followers in the Jesus Way, we are invited to allow Christ to be revealed in us. What would it look like in our world if we who…
Salt, Light, Justice, Peace Christians don’t get to sit it out, hoping that our worship pleases God while people are harmed, or hungry, or hopeless. Read Isaiah 58:1-12 and Matthew 5:13-20 in preparation for the sermon, “Salt, Light Justice, Peace.” The livestream will be available on February 8 at 10:30 or any time after. The bulletins can be downloaded from…
Dancing Our Prayers We have the honor and privilege of hosting Dancing Our Prayers, from the Yakima Nation. This is a team of Native teens who travel locally, regionally and nationally, sharing their culture, spirituality and way of life. Dancing Our Prayers is part of the Mending Wings Program that also hosts the S.L.A.M. trips that our students have attended the last…
Where God is Leading Where do we think the Spirit is leading us? What do the next 5 years hold for LOUMC? We can’t really know, of course. But we can use our experience and wisdom to see some possibilities, and we can trust that if we seek to follow the Way of Jesus. Join us in worship as we…
We’ll be celebrating God’s gift of music and song – a gift for times of joy, of sorrow, of lament, of uncertainty and even of anger. As we celebrate Chris Rust’s 20 years of serving as our choir director, we’ll bless him as he steps into the next opportunity to share his gift for creating music with the world. Join…
Lessons and Carols for Christmas After the hustle and bustle of Christmas preparations and celebrations, come this Sunday to hear fully the Christmas story and where we are called to find ourselves in that story as we move into a new year. Come to reflect on what it means that the Word Became Flesh as a baby born in manure…
LOUMC Christmas Eve 2025 Bethlehem is crowded. The inn is crowded. The fields are crowded with sheep gathered together for the night. And then: The skies are crowded with an angelic choir. Then the stable is filled with the cries of a newborn. The world is filled with the light of Love. Our lives are filled with the presence of…
“What Do We Know?” Fourth Sunday of Advent On this fourth Sunday of Advent, we hear Matthew’s brief version of the Nativity of Christ – no Bethlehem journey, no shepherds, no angel choirs. In comparison to Luke’s spectacle, it seems almost boring. But Matthew carries a persistent message: God, throughout history, works to sustain God’s people, even in the darkest…
What Do You Hear? John the Baptizer bellows in the wilderness, calling the people to preparation, and challenging the self-righteous to true repentance. As is always the case with prophetic words, how we hear them depends almost entirely on our perspective. Do we hear that we are being called to a liberated way of living, or do we only hear…