The 11th Sunday after Pentecost
August 9, 2026
In her sermon last Sunday, Trish gave us the questions Marjory raised at a recent Stewards meeting. Marjory said, “What I’d really like to know is what brought people to Seekers initially, and how has that contributed to their spiritual growth?”
This morning I’ll give you my answers to those questions and, as a bonus, I’ll add a few words about the gospel reading.
What brought me to Seekers initially was this building. The year was 2008; the season was Lent. I had recently started taking yoga classes at Willow Street studio, across the street from here. One day I saw in the lobby a flier for a daylong yoga retreat, to be held at Seekers. I signed up. I already knew a little bit about the church. My family and I were members of the Interfaith Families Project, and for a while Heather Kirk-Davidoff was our pastor. IFFP didn’t meet every Sunday; we met about three Sundays per month. On the Sundays off, Heather would often attend worship at Seekers.
The yoga retreat was my entry into this building. It was a wonderful day, led by an excellent yoga teacher, but just as impressive to me were the beauty and the spirit I found within this space. I took some Seekers fliers home with me, and started exploring Seekers’ website and then the history of the Church of the Saviour.
Maybe that year, or maybe the next, Celebration Circle offered an Easter Vigil, which would last all night, from sundown Saturday until dawn on Easter morning. I came, prayed through the night with Deborah, Glen, Peter, and a few others, then joined groggily in the Easter breakfast before worship.
As I began to attend Sunday worship here, other things impressed me. In those early days, 2008-’10, Muriel Lipp was one of Seekers’ elders, along with Emily Gilbert and Fern Edwards, and elders-in-training like Marjory and Peter. I had read about Muriel in Marjory’s early manuscript of what eventually became the book Stalking the Spirit. I knew that Muriel and her husband, Ed, has lost their son to suicide. Meeting Muriel in person, I found her to be one of the most joy-filled people I’ve ever encountered. I was intrigued. There was a spirit in this community that I wanted to know better.
On Recommitment Sunday in 2010 I made my first commitment to membership in Seekers.
The second part of Marjory’s question is, “How has being a member of Seekers Church contributed to my spiritual growth?” I’ll tell you about three ways. There are more, but I’ll just talk about these three: Discipline, Accountability, and Support.
Discipline
Elizabeth O’Connor, in her 1963 book Call to Commitment, set the discipline bar pretty high. In Chapter 2 she describes the process of education in the School of Christian Living (now called School for Christian Growth) for prospective members in the Church of the Saviour. Keep in mind that these people are first-timers; they haven’t been visiting this church for very long.
She writes (p. 29 in the 2003 edition):
Those who move through the School of Christian Living and feel the call to belong to God and to this particular expression of God’s church, prepare a short paper which includes:
1. A statement telling what Christ means to the applicant in his or her personal experience.
2. A statement on present spiritual disciplines, naming those practiced regularly, and for how long. For example: I am tithing my full income. For three months I have given 12 percent of it.”
There are two more points to be answered in this short paper, but I’ll stop here.
Soon after became a member of Seekers, I wanted to join the Celebration Circle mission group. I didn’t wait for them to send out a call for new members; I didn’t know that was a thing. I just knew that I wanted to be a part of their group and their work.
I’d been a liturgy nerd since my early twenties. In fact, my first job here in DC, the thing that brought me here from the West Coast in 1980, was managing a national convention of 3,000 Catholic church musicians and clergy. Imagine our opening hymn today, Marty Haugen’s “Gather Us In” – imagine singing it in a big-city convention center, in the midst of those 3,000 church musicians, accompanied by a small orchestra of local musicians, with a grand piano and large electronic organ provided by companies exhibiting at this convention. That was my experience.
As soon as I completed two classes in the School for Christian Growth, Celebration Circle accepted me for a trial and discernent period. I remember arriving for my first weekly meeting. The mission group members were sitting around a table in the skylight room, each writing in a journal or notebook. Deborah greeted me and said cheerfully, “We’re all introverts. This is what we do.” I felt right at home.
I’ll share with you a few of my personal spiritual disciplines. Each morning, as soon as I wake up, I pray, “O God, come to my assistance; O Lord, make haste to help me.” I keep repeating that as I pull myself out of bed and onto my feet and, half awake, start my morning routines. After brushing my teeth, I stand in front of a window, even though it’s still dark outside, and pray my version of the Buddhist loving-kindness meditation for myself: May I be protected and safe. May I be comforted and at peace. May my body uphold me with strength. May my life unfold smoothly with ease. I will pray the same, at various times throughout the day, for persons in my life, for groups, for my dog and all non-human souls, for all the plant life in all its forms and ecosystems, and finally for all the earth, all the water, all the fire, and all the air.
Then, between two and four hours later, I brew coffee and, before I drink the coffee, read the Morning Prayer in Always We Begin Again: The Benedictine Way of Living, by John McQuiston II. The prayer begins:
Grace to us and peace.
We are given this day,
and awareness of its colors and sounds.
We receive these and other gifts
too numerous to name
and infinitely rare.
For these gifts,
we are thankful.
Accountability
It’s harder to define than discipline, or maybe it’s just harder to see. The spiritual report in a mission group is a discipline, but it’s also one of the ways we hold each other accountable. This is one of the strengths of the mission groups. One or two members answers the call to receive regular spiritual reports from the others. I go through seasons when my reports are rather few and far apart. But I always write a report, sooner or later, because I know that Peter will read it and pray over it, and he’ll be listening for the Holy Spirit’s guidance. Almost always his written response to me contains something that I need to hear, some insight that opens my heart to the Spirit.
To me, accountability in Seekers means that we share an understanding, each in our own way, that each one of us is called to something, that our callings will change, as we change, and that we can affirm one another’s call, publicly or silently, without feeling pressure to adopt that particular call for ourselves. Maybe that’s what is meant by “authority at the point of call,” a phrase we use that I’ve never really understood.
The body has many members, even in this relatively small church. We are all members of the Body of Christ on Earth.
Support
The support we give to each other can be spiritual or practical, and in the end those are really one and the same. When my alcoholic and mentally ill older brother landed on my doorstep in the summer of 2012, and I had no clue what to do with him, it was the recovering alcoholics in Seekers who stepped up. David was wreaking havoc in my home, causing chaos and uproar between my husband and me, until one alcoholic in recovery took him by the scruff of the neck (figuratively) and said, “You can’t behave that way and stay in her house.” David then shaped up fairly well for the short time he remained with me.
Another said to me, “Go to Al-Anon meetings.” I did, and I’m still going to those meetings, because the spiritual tools and support I find in the twelve-step program are essential to my own recovery from alcoholic family patterns.
And a third walked me through the process of getting David into a 30-day residential detox program, after which he was accepted at a Catholic-run homeless shelter for men, where he had a guaranteed bed and a place to leave his belongings, access to outpatient addiction services, and a case manager at the shelter, who worked persistently with me for months to get Social Security Disability benefits for David, which then enabled him to get permanent housing with Cornerstone Montgomery.
Scripture
And now, to the gospel we read today, Matthew 14:22-33. I have no thoughts of my own to offer you because, when I read a story like this one, even now I still get pulled into the vortex of the literal, one-dimensional interpretation I learned as a child. Instead, I will offer you a few insights from the Spirituality column in the National Catholic Reporter. By luck, today our Protestant lectionary and the Catholic lectionary have exactly the same gospel reading.
Just before the events of today’s reading, Jesus has completed his outward journey for the day, feeding the crowd with his disciples’ paltry offering of bread and fish. Then Jesus has time to enjoy his inward journey of private prayer – until, moments later, he’s called out again to save his disciples from perishing in a boat on the stormy sea. When the disciples panic at the sight of him walking toward them upon the water, Jesus reassures them: “Do not be afraid; I AM (it is I).”
Peter tests Jesus and himself, saying in effect, “I want to do what you do.” Mary M. McGlone, the writer of this reflection,* says, “Peter started out perfectly. He asked Jesus to work through him so he could do what Jesus did. Then, as often happens in the face of resistance, threat or contradictions, Peter focused on the danger and succumbed to fright. Then, Jesus reached out and pulled him up.
Peter’s problem was that while he wanted to do what Jesus did, he began to think he had to do it alone. He misunderstood Jesus’ power. Jesus had just come from time in prayer that grounded him in his mission and God’s power. Peter had only half an understanding of how to do what Jesus was doing, and that sank him.”
It’s the journey inward and the journey outward. For me, the original genius of the Church of the Saviour, passed on to us for 50 years now, is that we can’t make it, as serious Christians, or as people serious about justice and peace, with only half an understanding, with only the inward or the outward journey.
And for this I say, thank you, from my heart. Thank you Seekers Church, and thank you, each one of you, for being here and for being for me the Body of Christ on Earth.
Amen.
*National Catholic Reporter, Aug. 9, 2026 https://www.ncronline.org/spirituality/august-9-2026-nineteenth-sunday-ordinary-time?utm_source=NCR+List&utm_campaign=9b765b7793-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2026_08_07_04_33&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_6981ecb02e-9b765b7793-230341585