Sermons

May 20, 2018

Pentecost

It’s Pentecost!

So how come you are not all wearing red?

Where are your tongues of fire headbands?

Where are the red balloons?

Why didn’t we have a big potluck breakfast before church?

Ok, you are all looking a bit skeptical.  Are you wondering, what’s the big deal?  We’ve never done anything special for Pentecost here at Seekers.

After all, we’re not some Pentecostalist church, being slain in the spirit and speaking in tongues.

We’re not Roman Catholic or even high church Episcopalians. So why should we make a big deal out of Pentecost?

May 13, 2018

7th Sunday of Easter

I have written two sermons for today. You only have to listen to the second one. The first sermon is aimed at engaging the themes Celebration Circle has lifted up for the Easter Season, such as whether God has laws and whether they change. The first sermon weaves in guidance from all four of the lectionary readings. I will ask Celebration Circle to post my bonus sermon as well.[Find “God’s Law and Human Justice” at the end of “Four Inspiring Stories” — ed]

This sermon also responds to the Easter Season theme. I’m going to tell four here and now resurrection stories, three of them about Christians and one of them that reminds us that Jesus was a Jew.

May 6, 2018

6th Sunday of Easter

Hear again the beginning of our first reading, from the tenth chapter of Acts:

Peter had not finished speaking these words when the Holy Spirit descended upon all who were listening to the message.

When I read that, two questions came to me: First, what were those words that Peter “had not finished speaking,” and, second, who was there listening to his message?

April 29, 2018

5th Sunday of Easter

This is the third in a series of sermons about the spiritual challenges of aging, and the spiritual tools for dealing with those challenges that I’m learning about from people in nursing homes. Currently, I work as a volunteer chaplain at the Hebrew Home nursing facility in Rockville. For the last two years, I’ve been leading a Bible Study class for Christians there.  As I speak about some of the nursing home residents I have known, I am going to fictionalize their names in order to protect their anonymity.

Today, the spiritual challenge I plan to talk about is Fear of Dying. Since I started working as a chaplain at the Hebrew Home, I encounter death frequently.  I can identify by name at least 16 people I have worked with who have passed away.  I have been a companion in dying for about half of them.  Lately, it seems that someone I know dies at least once a month.

According to my training, my role as a chaplain is not to get emotionally involved with those I serve – my job is to focus on their spiritual and emotional needs, not mine.  I do respond emotionally, and I do grieve.  But when I am with them, I try to focus on their experience and feelings, not my own.

April 22, 2018

4th Sunday of Easter — Earth Day

Kolya:  During my years of solidarity with Native American sovereignty and land rights I stood in many prayer circles in which we gave thanks to the Creator with a long litany acknowledging the 2-leggeds, the 4-leggeds, creeping things and a myriad of other forms of Creation, and ending our prayer with “All my relations.” I used to think this understanding of the human relationship to and with all of Creation as a uniquely indigenous world view.   This past Friday I was struck by Wes Granberg-Michaelson’s observation that one of his “ten challenges for reshaping Christianity” is learning to see the world through a different set of lenses” – one in which the world is perceived as sacred.  This was certainly not the view of the colonizers.