Sermons

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The Blessing and Cost of Discipleship

Fred Taylor

September 15, 2019
Text: Luke 15

I want to begin by thanking you for your prayers in my battle with cancer and for the Spirit’s guidance to finish my book.  I am happy to still be here and to be working on the last chapter of my book.  Please keep those prayers coming. 

A few weeks ago, the 8th Day Leadership Team asked me to lead off a series of once-a-month teachings about discerning our future as a church.  Given the powerful history we inherit as a child of the Church of the Saviour, what now?  What can we say about how God in Christ is working with us as a community now and what clues are given to us for how God is calling us into the future? 

When I accepted this assignment my first instinct was to tell some of the inspiring stories from Church of the Saviour’s past.  There is a lot to tell, but upon further reflection it occurred to me it would be better to start with “now” and a place or places where we perceive the Holy Spirit at work in our midst.  So this is what I am going to do.

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Different Roads to a Spiritual Awakening, Leading All to One Road

Connnie Ridgway

Aug 25, 2019

The lectionary Scriptures today in Isaiah, read from The Message, talk about manifesting God consciousness through caring for the least of us in the community, through housing, feeding, and treating people well.  I love what it says in verses 10 & 11:

10: If you are generous with the hungry and start giving yourselves to the down and out, Your lives will begin to glow in the darkness, your shadowed lives will be bathed in sunlight.

NRSV:

your light shall rise in the darkness and your gloom be like the noonday. 

11: I will always show you where to go.

Messsage:

I'll give you a full life in the emptiest of places—firm muscles, strong bones.  You'll be like a well-watered garden, a gurgling spring that never runs dry. 

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Journeying in the Great Cloud of Witnesses

Jeanne Marcus

August 11, 2019

Good morning, 8th Day. 

Let us pray: 

Gracious One, you lovingly, continuously invite us to radiant, courageous, creative, compassionate lives in you.  May we turn our faces toward you in trusting faith, the “yes” of our lives unfurling and blossoming in the bright sun of your love.  Amen.

Today’s New Testament portion, from chapter 11 of the Letter to the Hebrews, is one I keep coming back to.  It provides me key coordinates on my spiritual map, locating me in God’s space and time, in the larger scheme of things.  It reminds me, as well, of the kind of journey I want to be on. 

It focuses on God’s call to Abraham, already 75 and his wife Sarah, age 65 and childless.  Abraham heeds God’s call to leave his homeland with Sarah, but is given no clue about where they will be going.  But he is given two promises: 

  • the first is that Abraham will find a new homeland. 

  • The second is laid out beautifully in today’s passage from Genesis, which links to the passage from Hebrews : “Look up to the heavens, and count the stars, if you are able.  This is how numerous your descendants will be.”

Hevel

Alfonso Sasieta

August 4, 2019

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Texts:
     Ecclesiastes 1:2-12
     Colossians 3:1-4
     Luke 12: 13-21

 Good morning everyone,

I invite you to pray with me before we begin:

God of love, we greet you.  It is good to be here with you.

This morning we ask for the grace of  sensing your Anchoring presence within us.

Though limited in our capacities,  though limited in our knowledge, though limited in our smallness, we know that we know  the basics of your good news. 

Grant us courage to live from that foundation.  Let us begin, again, today.  Amen.

Meaningless,
meaningless,
everything is meaningless.

Growing up in a very churched environment meant that by the time I was a high-schooler, there were very few scripture passages that struck me as weird and unfamiliar.  This opening poem, indeed the opening line, in Ecclesiastes was an exception.  Everything is meaningless?  I had a hard time understanding how a line like that could make it into the bible.

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Failure and the Sacred, Radical Community

Jonathan Nisly

July 21, 2019

Texts:
     Amos 8:1-12
     Psalm 52
     Luke 10:38-42

“Martha, Martha.  You are worried and upset about many things, but few things are needed—or, indeed, only one.”

Good morning, 8th Day.  I’m happy to be here with you, and I’m excited to dive into the mix of scriptures that the lectionary offers us this morning.  I’m also excited to be here because of 8th Day’s flexibility; as you may have noticed, these aren’t the scriptures on our online calendar.  I originally read through the Common Lectionary, which has alternate Old Testament and Psalm readings for this morning.  But the readings from Amos and Psalm 52 had already intrigued me too much to go back, and I thought you all wouldn’t mind too much.

Looking Forward to the Fruits of the Spirit

Kevin Boteler

Texts:
     1 Kings 19:19-21
     Luke 9:51-62
     Galatians 5:1,13-25

I think that the last three verses of today's Epistle is one of the great passages in the Bible.  I love the listing of the wonderful fruits of the Spirit; I would love to just luxuriate in them for a while and call it a sermon.  But as I look at today's combination of lectionary passages, I don't think we can fully appreciate the Epistle without first looking at the Gospel passage and thinking about its implications for Paul's letter to the Galatians.

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