Sermons

December 31, 2017

Christmastide

Sing: “Holy spirit come, make my eyes to see, make my ears to hear, make my mouth to speak.
Make my heart to sing and my hands to reach out and touch the world with Your love”.

This is a favorite song in the L’Arche Community and it is sung at the opening of prayer night every other Tuesday evening. Many people who are not directly involved in L’Arche, join us because it is always inspiring. Seekers Church has been a generous supporter of L’Arche for many years and I want to thank the community for that faithful support.

December 24, 2017

Christmas Eve

Tonight we gather here once again for our Seekers Christmas Eve potluck dinner and ceremony of lessons and carols,a tradition of Seekers Church for many years — long enough that our daughters, the Ogle boys, the seat girls, and the Dongo kids have all read various parts of the lessons when they were in our Sunday School.  And now almost all of them are adults!

December 24, 2017

Fourth Sunday of Advent

slide 1: Unknown (Novgorod school), Annunciation, 12th century, tempera on panel Russian

Just a few days ago the winter solstice brought us the shortest day and longest night of the year. This morning, our part of the world has just begun to tilt towards the sun. We have gained one more minute of daylight since the solstice.

slide 2: Simone Martini, The Angel and the Annunciation, 1333, tempera on panel, Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence

Tonight we will celebrate the coming of Christ into the world, 2000 years ago as a helpless infant, and at the end of time when God will dwell among us again. In that new heaven and new earth, we are told, God will wipe away every tear; and death, mourning, crying, and pain will be no more. But right now it is still Advent, the time of waiting.

slide 3: Merode Altarpiece Robert Campin and workshop, 1427, Oil on oak panel Central panel 64 x 63 cm each wing 65 x 27cm

Waiting is hard. This has been a hard year for those of us who care about peace and justice in this here-and-now world. And even though it will be Christmas, when we wake up on Monday morning, nothing in this here-and-now world will have changed. The earth will still be trapping greenhouse gases, the glaciers will still be shrinking, the coastal waters rising. The Dreamers and their families will still be in danger of being deported. The safety net for poor people will continue to be shredded. People in positions of power will still act as though no one else matters. And people’s lives will continue to be shattered by violence, by famine, by drought and storm and earthquake and flood. And yet, the angel says, Do not be afraid.

December 17, 2017

Third Sunday of Advent

Our reading for today from the Gospel of John contains these lines:

This is the testimony given by John when the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, “Who are you?”

Who are you? Has anyone asked you that recently?  And when was the last time you put that question to someone?

In fact, if we pay attention to how our mind works, we will notice that we ask that question of everyone we encounter, whether aloud or silently, to see how they fit into the running narrative in our minds that shapes and makes sense of our reality. What we are really asking is, “What story do you belong to?” And for each person in our lives – whether the stranger, a friend, a lover, a relative, a co-worker – we have constructed an answer to the question of who they are and assigned them an identity and role in a narrative.

The danger is that in our minds the identity of others can easily become fixed and immutable. And that’s when relationships become brittle and can even turn hostile.

December 10, 2017

Second  Sunday of Advent

Patricia Nemore: I’d like to start with a quote from the Boston Declaration of Christian religious leaders, a document endorsed by Seekers Church naming what we think Jesus’s teachings require of us in the 21^st Century:

“We lament national boundaries that make our worries about security a pretext for destroying the lives of others. . .”

This is the time of year when we encounter the story of the family that arrived in town after a long trip too late to find lodging and so spent the night or a lot of nights in a barn, where their baby was born.  And then fled their homeland to a foreign country to keep their tiny child safe from being murdered by a powerful king.

So, then, a great time of year to talk about others fleeing their homelands for safety or a better life, and more specifically, to talk about the situation of those who emigrate to the US without the documents deemed necessary to cross our borders.