Seekers recognizes that any member of the community may be called upon by God to give us the Word, and thus we have an open pulpit with a different preacher each week. Sermons preached at Seekers, as well as sermons preached by Seekers at other churches or events, are posted here, beginning with the most recent.
Click here for an archive of our sermons.
Feel free to use what is helpful from these sermons. We only ask that when substantial portions are abstracted or used in a written work, please credit Seekers Church and the author, and cite the URL.
“A Service in the Style of Taize for Easter 2024”
April 21, 2024
Fourth Sunday of Easter
From time to time Seekers Church apuses its regular preaching schedule for a service of chant, prayer and reflection modeled on the worship of the Taizé Community in France. This Sunday was one such time. Repeating the chants together until they die away into the silence provides rest for our world-weary spirits as well as an opportunity for individual reflection on our faith journeys. Wee joined in spirit with the monks at Taizé, we were nourished by their faithfulness as well as by their music. Our chants were accompanied and supporte by Glen Yakushiji at the piano.
“How Our Good News Became Bad News for the Jews” by Deborah Sokolove
April 14, 2024
Third Sunday of Easter
Last Sunday, the Gospel reading was the familiar one from John 20, in which Thomas said that he could not believe that Jesus was risen unless he saw the mark of the nails in his hands with his own eyes, put his own finger in the mark of the nails, and placed his own hand in the wound on Jesus’s side. This week, as we have just heard, Luke 24:36b-48 also records a scene in which Jesus invites the disciples to look at and touch his hands and feet, saying “Touch me and see; for a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.” And then, as if to prove that he is real and not a ghost, he asks for some fish and eats it, reminding the disciples that everything written about him “in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms had to be fulfilled.”
“Sermon of Teresa L. Ramsey” by Teresa Ramsey
April 7, 2024
Second Sunday of Easter
Good morning, Seekers Family. I did not expect that I would be giving a sermon here again, yet here I am. Further proof that I do not see the future this is. The topic that I want to speak about and the scriptures I want to use are both Easter related, so when this date was open and just one week after Easter, I signed up. I am thinking that someone listening today needs to hear this message. In any event, I want to share it.
Resurrecting Faith is our current theme. My theme is a subset of that, how do we awaken spiritually and how can we establish conscious contact with God? My own spiritual awakening took place as a direct result of practicing a 12-step program. By the time I “hit bottom,” I was spiritually bankrupt. I had tried to fill the hole in my soul with alcohol and drugs. I did not understand that only God could fill it. Others try to fill their holes with a variety of mind-altering things also, like gambling, sex, shopping, watching tv, overwork, and so on. None of these things work. Only through utter defeat and surrender, an acceptance of my personal powerlessness, was I able to take my first steps toward liberation.
“Resurrecting Faith” by Elizabeth Gelfeld
March 31, 2024
Easter Sunday
Text: Mark 16:1-8
When Paul Holmes came up here to preach a few weeks ago, he commented that Erica’s sermon of the previous Sunday was a tough act to follow. Then, during the time of reflections after his sermon, Erica said that she wouldn’t want to have to follow Paul, either. And Dave, who was set to preach the next week, said he was a bit nervous about following both of them.
Throughout the six weeks of Lent, members of Seekers’ Racial and Ethnic Justice Ministry Team have brought to us the word in a series of sermons that went beyond anything I’ve heard before in their probing of topics around White privilege and White supremacy, their relentless questioning of our assumptions and habits, and their unblinking courage in confession. Besides the sermons, we also prayed with the ministry team’s liturgy and prayers, and we watched and puzzled over and debated the evocative, changing scenes they set on the altar each week.
“Palm Sunday” by Marjory Bankson
March 24, 2024
Text: Mark 11:1-11
I’ve always been bothered by the hoopla and Hosannas of Palm Sunday. It didn’t seem like the appropriate response to Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem, but I assumed that was because we knew the rest of the story and they did not. And yet… His followers knew what the Romans did to any signs of rebellion, and they knew the Temple authorities reported to Rome. Any rebellion would be brutally crushed. If Mark was an accurate account of Jesus’ final week, waving palms and shouting for joy seemed oddly out of place.