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.
“What’s the Good News?” by Deborah Sokolove
October 8, 2017
Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost
Scripture: Isaiah 5:1-7, Psalm 80:7-15, Philippians 3:4b-14, Matthew 21:33-46
Hurricane! Wildfire! Earthquake! War! Genocide! Mass murder! Random deportation! Species extinction! And that’s just the last week’s news. Add in the threats to affordable health insurance, protections for the Dreamers, discrimination against transgender persons, and innumerable other threats to basic human decency, and it’s enough to make me want to—well, what? Read scripture?
Today’s reading from Isaiah is what is often called the Song of the Vineyard. Here, God is portrayed as a farmer who has a vineyard, planting the best vines in fertile soil and lovingly caring for them. Somehow, though, instead of the big, juicy grapes that the farmer had every reason to expect, what showed up at the harvest were hard, bitter, wild grapes; or, as some translators suggest, maybe even poisonous berries. The farmer is understandably frustrated, ready to abandon the vineyard to briers and thorns and break down the fences that had proved useless in distinguishing it from the surrounding desert.
“By What Authority?—The Value of Community” by Cynthia Dahlin
October 1, 2017
Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost
Today it is almost Recommitment Sunday. It is a week after we remembered Muriel Lipp for her strength and commitment in building the Church of the Saviour and shaping Seekers as it emerged 40 years ago. It is the time of year each of us considers why we want and need a community of Christians and not a more typical church where you can attend or be absent and no one notices, or where you don’t have to choose to put down your roots and dive deeply, as we do here.
I need Seekers. I searched for a church which struggles over the words and actions we commit to and which also makes room for those who find that some of our words pinch too tight and some promises are too big or too vague. I found Seekers to be a community which thinks hard and also sees the grays and blacks in life, tensions in words, policies and situations, and understands that we all bring backgrounds, past experiences and different paradigms to look at the decisions and policies we make.
A Service in the Style of Taizé for Recommitment 2017
September 24, 2017
Sixteenth Sunday After Pentecost
Several times each year, Seekers Church takes time out from 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. As we joined in spirit with the monks at Taizé, we were nourished by their faithfulness as well as by their music.
“New Heart, New Mind” by John Morris
September 17, 2017
Fifteenth Sunday After Pentecost
“You see it. You feel it. Spanish moss sways gently in the coastal breeze on historic giant oaks. The world famous Avenue of Oaks forms a timeless corridor transporting you back in time to an era gone forever but never forgotten. Come experience history, beauty and grace. Come experience . . . Boone Hall Plantation.”
I’m quoting, not from some antiquated advertisement hailing from Jim-Crow days, but from a current brochure which I was handed in the Charleston, South Carolina, visitor center last month. This brochure also features a black woman dressed in, I guess, authentic-looking slavery-era clothes. The expression on her face – you have to see this. It’s highly ambiguous; they must have looked long and hard to find, or pose, a photo in which this enslaved woman is neither obviously happy nor sad, which allows each viewer to imagine for themselves what she is feeling. I’ll leave it up on the altar and you can have a look. It’s kind of brilliant, as propaganda.
“The Spirituality of Matthew 18:15-20” by Ron Kraybill
September 10, 2017
Fourteenth Sunday After Pentecost
September is for me a nostalgic time of year – a month rich with the promise of harvest yet full of reminders the carnival is nearly over. This summer I somehow got in a September frame of mind early, listening to Youtube recordings of the Australian music group, The Seekers.
Do you remember Judith Durham and the Seekers? I hadn’t heard them or even thought about them for years, decades. But I stumbled across one of their songs on Youtube in July and can’t stop listening.
On our Mennonite farm in Pennsylvania, we didn’t have TV or pop records so it’s not like I heard so much of the Seekers growing up. But we had crystal radios, and transistor radios were eventually tolerated. I knew nothing about the Seekers as a boy, yet they were in the ambience. We heard Island of Dreams in the Prelude, but there were so many more!