Sermons

Part 1 (Jeanne Marcus)

Good morning! I suspect that, seeing Ellie and me up here together, it may have occurred to you that the word we’re bringing could have something to do with September 14. Yes?

And yes, we will indeed talk about the Day of Prayer and Conversation, but we want to highlight that “September 14” is not just the date that we all met out at Wellspring under a brilliant blue sky, with old oak trees joining us by tossing down a super-abundance of celebratory acorns on us whenever we walked abroad.

The Twenty-first Sunday After Pentecost

Okay, this morning we’re going to start with a little activity!

Folks at home, you’re going to want some pen and paper for this, and now would be a good time to do that while we in the sanctuary get ourselves situated… because you MAY get help from people around you, and it would be in your best interest to mix intergenerationally. Kids, you might need some help from some of the older folks, and adults you might need some help from the younger generations. So I’m going to give you a minute to rearrange yourselves a bit. 

The Twentieth Sunday After Pentecost

Every time we get to the last few weeks of the liturgical year, someone asks why we call this season Jubilee. Usually, I just give a short explanation to the person who is asking me. Today, however, I want to say a bit more about jubilee, since starting right now, Seekers is beginning our Golden Jubilee anniversary year.

The word jubilee is derived from a Hebrew word, יובל (yovel), which is used in the Hebrew Scriptures to describe the last year in a cycle of seven times seven years. As you have probably noticed in your own study of scripture, seven is an important number in our deep tradition. In the opening chapters of Genesis, God is depicted as resting from all the work that went into creating the universe. This period of rest is emphasized in Exodus in what has come to be known as the fourth of the Ten Commandments (or Ten Words, which is a better translation):

The Nineteenth Sunday After Pentecost

Text: Luke 18:1-8

Today is Recommitment Sunday, a yearly practice at Seekers to keep our values and commitments conscious and fresh.  As David Lloyd mentioned last week, yearly recommitment is part of our heritage from Church of the Saviour. The date, on the third Sunday of October, honors the first birthday of Church of the Saviour in 1947 and also the official start of Seekers in 1976. 

That means we are now beginning our Jubilee Year, which marks 50 years as a separate church community AS WELL AS being one of seven Church of the Saviour communities. Remember, we are still incorporated as a single Church of the Saviour — held together by our common commitment to Christ, trust in the inward/outward journey together, the C of S Council, and by shared ownership of Dayspring – where many of us experience God in the lively rhythms of the natural world.

Last week, David described how belonging  and commitment are interwoven, each deepening the other over time. He gave us this AI-generated description: “True commitment requires passion, a willingness to sacrifice, and demonstrates loyalty through actions rather than words, especially when faced with challenges.” That can be a high bar. 

The Eighteenth Sunday After Pentecost

I am one of the “old Seekers” who were in the congregation of the Church of the Saviour – the CofS — from which Seekers was formed. Our Seekers tradition of individual reflection during recommitment season, which ends next Sunday, came from the CofS. Along with membership in a mission group, and accountability through regular spiritual reports, annual recommitment is a key practice to maintain the integrity of membership.

I love this insistence on the “integrity of membership” and the annual opportunity to commit to the challenge of Christian beliefs and practices I want to live by. It is with a mixture of joy and fear that I annually commit to meet the challenge following Jesus poses for my life, knowing after my silent hour of reflection that once again I failed to fully meet that challenge faithfully in the past year and knowing that it will be hard to live up to that challenge this next year. As the manager played by Tom Hanks said about baseball in the movie, A League of Their Own, “It’s supposed to be hard. If it wasn’t hard, everyone would do it. The hard… is what makes it great.”