Migrant Journeys: Hagar - Pastor Hannah Witte - a2cc.org. Watch our livestream Sundays @ 11:00am - vimeo.com/annarborcommunitychurch

Summary:

In week two of our Migrant Journeys series, we sit with Hagar—a woman whose story is marked by displacement, exploitation, and loss. Stripped even of the name her mother gave her, Hagar flees into the wilderness where she encounters El Roi, the God Who Sees. God pulls up a chair, listens to her story, and reminds her that she is more than the labels others have placed on her. Hagar's story invites us to remember that every person is an image bearer with immeasurable worth. What if we became people who see as God sees? This sermon invites us to trust that the God who saw Hagar sees us too—in our grief, our longing, and our wilderness seasons. And as we experience being fully seen and fully loved by God, we may find ourselves transformed into people who pull up a chair, truly care about honoring others' dignity, and help cultivate belonging wherever we go.

Migrant Journeys: Abraham and Sarah - Pastor Donnell T. Wyche - a2cc.org. Watch our livestream Sundays @ 11:00am - vimeo.com/annarborcommunitychurch

Summary:

This sermon reads Genesis 12 as a migration story, following Abraham and Sarah from the inside as displaced people rather than as tidy heroes of faith. It traces their uprooting from the safety of clan and homeland, their flight to Egypt driven by famine, and the cost of their vulnerability there, where a frightened Abram hands Sarai over to Pharaoh to save himself. The turn comes in God's quiet intervention on Sarai's behalf: even when no human being is advocating for the powerless woman in Pharaoh's house, God sees her, and that faithfulness does not depend on Abraham getting it right. Reading through the lens of Karen Gonzalez's The God Who Sees, the message presses the congregation to set down sanitized retellings, recognize God's persistent attention to the foreigner and the unprotected, and let that same gaze reshape how they see migrants and strangers today.

Anchored: Life at the Center - United - Pastor Donnell T. Wyche - a2cc.org. Watch our livestream Sundays @ 11:00am - vimeo.com/annarborcommunitychurch

Summary:

In Anchored: Life at the Center – United (1 Corinthians 12:15-31), Paul confronts a Corinthian church fractured by gift rivalry, social hierarchy, and the same individualism that defines our own age, insisting that we are not merely like the body of Christ but actually are it: divinely placed, mutually dependent, and incomplete on our own. He exposes the absurdity of going solo, a foot disowning the body because it is not a hand, and the lie of self-sufficiency, the eye telling the hand, "I don't need you." Paul reveals the upside-down economy of God's kingdom where the seemingly weaker parts are indispensable and the overlooked are given greater honor. Listing "helping" alongside apostleship and miracles, Paul dismantles the spiritual ranking system and points beyond competing gifts to the "most excellent way," love, where gifts exist to build up the body rather than elevate the self. The invitation, sealed at the communion table, is to surrender our illusion of completeness, embrace honest interdependence, and discover that the life that is truly life is found anchored in Christ and united with one another.