Seattle Mennonite Church Sermons

This sermon - about a semicolon - is a comma.

June 12, 2022 SMC preachers
Seattle Mennonite Church Sermons
This sermon - about a semicolon - is a comma.
Show Notes

We wrap up another Narrative Lectionary year with the lovely close of Paul’s letter to the community at Philippi. These words of encouragement, consolation, and assurance are bedside words: one can just as easily imagine reading them to a beloved child at bedtime, or a beloved elder at the time of death. They are a benediction of sorts, functioning as a semicolon - a pronounced pause - between the two main clauses of waking and sleeping, or living and dying, or worship and work. Listen to Pastor Megan’s comma of a sermon, extolling the semicolons of our shared life.

Sermon begins at minute 3:27.
Philippians 4:4-7


  • Image: semicolon
  • BibleWorm podcast: Episode 345 – Pentecost, Amy Robertson and Robert Williamson, Jr.
  • Semicolon | sem·i·co·lon | noun | a punctuation mark (;) indicating a pause, typically between two main clauses, that is more pronounced than that indicated by a comma. [definition from Oxford Languages]
  • Voices Together [link to purchase through Menno Media] 797 Text: based on Menno Simons, Reply to False Accusations, 1552; stanzas 1, 3, 4 vers. David Augsburger, 1978; adapt. Esther Bergen, 1990; stanza 2 by Mennonite Worship and Song Committee, 2017 © Mennonite World Conference

Permission to podcast the music in this service obtained from One License with license #A-726929. All rights reserved.