Sermons

I want to again say, thank you so much for allowing me to be part of your service today. Bill Mefford and Marty are dear friends of ours. We got connected first back when we were studying together in the Missiology School at Asbury, going back about 20 years.

Bill and I have just been been pretty much hanging out from a distance ever since then, and so Bill is great.

I mean, as you know, Bill is kind of weird. Bill, I'm not revealing any secrets, am I?

We invited Bill to Denmark some years ago. He also came and spoke at one of our summer camps. And you know, Bill, I mean, this is just an indication of who Bill is. You know he wanted to learn a little Danish, just to be just to come and mix in a little bit. but you know the only phrase that Bill ever learned in Danish was and still is, “I would like to have a manicure.”

Still, I still don't get it, but that's all he knows in Danish.

So anyway. I'm very grateful, Bill.

Thank-you Bill and Eighth Day Faith Community for inviting me to share this morning.
The July 4th national holiday, fanfare and symbolism is meant to evoke feelings of nationalistic pride and power.
I have been pondering upon the alternatives to these notions of pomp and glory. Can there be a day that calls us to a celebration of togetherness, of our diversity of our oneness with creation? Mahatma Gandhi wrote, My idea of nationalism is that my country may become free, that if need be, the whole of the country may die, so that the human race may live. There is no room for race hatred there. Let that be our nationalism.’

May the gift of peace that Jesus offers be with us all this morning!

With God all things are possible! Without God we can do nothing! AMEN!

On behalf of the Dorothy Day Catholic Worker (DDCW) I want to begin by expressing deep gratitude from the bottom of my heart to the Eighth Day Faith Community for your steadfast support of the DDCW this past year and for so many years!

In Mark's Gospel today (6:1-13) we hear Jesus talk about prophets not being accepted. In our time we think of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Saint Archbishop Oscar Romero from Salvador...Prophets I met who experienced what Jesus did: Archbishop Dom Helder Camera from Brazil, Dan and Phil Berrigan and Dorothy Day... We call them and all the Holy Cloud of Witnesses into our presence today—Presente!​

Like the disciples we hear about in the Gospel, Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin, co-founders of the CW movement, accepted Jesus's call to radical discipleship.

I had the great honor of meeting Dorothy Day several times. I'd like to share a quote from her regarding the vision of the Catholic Worker movement.

AWE
Julia Hanessian
June 23, 2024
Jesus was awe. Awe-inspiring. Awe-some. Jesus was Inspired.
I like to think of Jesus as non-gendered. Like me. Like you. Like us.
We come here to echo Jesus’s awesomeness. We come to break bread, drink “wine” in honor of the awe Jesus inspired, an event that we recreate because of Jesus’s authenticity.
Knowing and naming his knowing. This leads me to so many questions… but the most important one that has surfaced is: How do we create Big and Little people that are like Jesus?
We don’t have Jesus DNA to replicate so that route isn’t possible… so we have to focus on the social, environmental, psychological and inter-relational factors, as they are communicated through ancient texts, and try to recreate them. Identifying factors within these areas helps us recognize, honor, and grow our inner knowing in a more authentic and powerful way.
God calls us to grow the powerful knowing that Jesus had within ourselves, and in those around us.
We need to have the courage to actualize knowing, like Jesus did.
What are the parameters? The relational and biological systems, that create the inner ecology of deep knowing. Intuition. Creative thought. The components of ego & self that make us able to potentiate our intuition?
How can we create the environment, or ‘container,’ in which Jesus-like psychology will thrive and grow within us? What were Jesus’s different psychological frameworks as a healer, as a martyr, as a friend, that are evidenced in the Bible, and other ancient texts?
These are confounding questions with no easy answer. But I think it is important to do what we can to try and understand.
For me, it is important to approach this question through the intersection of my work as a social worker, specifically through the lens of attachment & connection science and my spiritual work here, and throughout my life.
I want to identify these resonating patterns that facilitate the spiritual/emotional/psychological state of Jesus potential:
I want to create healers.
I want to create empaths.
I want to create change makers.
I want to create artists that challenge the fundamentals of existence, help us redefine our society, how we interact with our earth, animals, each other so that we may survive, we may thrive as a species.
Religion is dying.
The framework of connection and empathy that is taught through Jesus lessons are reaching fewer and fewer.
We have to act to take this Jesus knowledge, and that of other prophets, to a new space, one that names a new prophetic vision.
New visionaries.
I am feeling called to help create an incubator for the study of and creation of visionaries.
We have to do what we can to break down these principles that Jesus brought us, the ones that are the guiding principles of our lives, in ways that people can easily understand, and apply them….
Who knows! Maybe even make them cool!
Because if there is one thing we know, it is that people follow relaxed joy, or in today’s parlance, cool. They follow the cool. The light. The joy. And the way. And in this pursuit of “cool,” they find like-minded souls that are ready and willing to grow goodness.
Essentially, they find God.
We need to work to shift our collective consciousness to a higher level.
And honestly, I think we are being called to be part of that ascension.
An ascension towards clarity. This profound sense of purpose to potentiate small supportive communities that move and act in real ways, in accordance to the real values that are held by the members of the community. I have experienced urgency around this mission over the past year. I felt obligated to respond. I identified spaces where I could create an even larger community of dynamic and powerful like minds.
And so, these thoughts and concepts have led me to our next adventures. Earlier this year I applied to many Master’s and Ph.D. programs. I got in to two: the Master’s of Ministry at Pepperdine University and the Ph.D. program for Social Work at Yeshiva University. I was waitlisted for Yeshiva University, which delays my enrollment a year, which happens to work perfectly, as I can pursue the Master’s of Science in Ministry first, and then go on to New York to attend Yeshiva University.
So. Big Changes.
This August the girls and I are moving to California so that we can make dreams come true. So we can potentiate ourselves to the fullest. Just as Jesus did.
But make no mistake: receiving this call has felt like more than a lot. I have asked myself, and God: Why? Why this change? Why this change so soon?
What I have received through visions and divine clarity is that, for whatever extremely inconvenient reason (and trust me, I feel this), the time is now.
It’s now. I asked for time, trust me. But the Spirit’s response was: NOW.
God’s wisdom – go figure?
But when I take a step back, I realize that truly, I have been slowly building towards this my whole life. To be free enough, as Jesus was, when he reached a certain age – free enough, to truly fly and deeply and authentically challenge the way things are. Shake up complacent hearts. Follow The Way. Jesus’s way.
A couple months ago Ava found an old photo album. She gave it to me, asking if the girl in it was me. It was an album with various pictures of me as a kid up until the age of 11 or so – Isabelle’s age. And tucked into this album was a dream I had written in which I described having a vision of my ideal life. It spoke of how happy and intellectually stimulated I was and there was a strong sense that in my happiness and joy I was living in my purpose.
I want to pause here for a moment because Joy, joy and happiness, are the most profound barometers of whether you are in the right place — doing the right things — with the right people — at the right time.
Joy is why I come to church.
Joy is why I recreate on the water.
Joy is why I write. Sculpt. Paint.
Joy is why I sing.
The Dali Lama talks a lot about the importance of joy to raise the vibration of not only your own mental state, the state of our collect consciousness. He notes that:
Joy and excitement is our compass towards God’s light actualizing through you.
So find joy!!!
Push yourself outside your comfort zone, try new things, make new connections, read new books, take in new music, do it all — until you find joy!
The joy of this place has pushed me far further down my path to actualizing my inner knowing, my purpose, more than anything else.
I thank you for that.
For you.
For being those Jesus beings, that have inspired joy in me, and my children!
For working tirelessly through the highs and lows with tremendous devotion to me, as well as the collective, in the hope that it will produce hearts and minds that will actualize God’s will.
Thank you.
It’s working.

The Freedom Train
Performed June 16, 2024
(Note: written by Marcia Harrington for the 8th Day Faith Community, Washington, DC; the Child is about age 7-11)
Harriet, Announcer, William, Ellen, PegLegJoe, Eli, Mary, Thomas, Frederick, Sojourner (10 adults)
SONG: When Israel was in Egypt’s land, Let my people go
Oppressed so hard they could not stand, Let my people go
Chorus: Go down, Moses, way down in Egypt’s land,
Tell old, Pharoah, Let my people go.
The Lord told Moses what to do, Let my people go
To lead the children of Israel through, Let my people go. Chorus
Oh let us all from bondage flee, Let my people go
And let us all in Christ be free, Let my people go. Chorus
Announcer: “Since the first African American churches were founded in the 1700s, black religious organizations have brought biblical values to bear on the freedom struggle. Black ministers preached against the institution of slavery, and slaves sang spirituals promising deliverance from bondage. African Americans drew on that same faith during the segregation era. And when the people rose up against racial oppression during the Civil Rights Movement, they were emboldened by a belief in a just and a compassionate God. They trusted that God was with them and that [God] would set them free.” (The Beatitudes: From Slavery to Civil Rights)
“What we have begun to learn is the weight of liberty. Freedom is a heavy load, a great and strange burden for the spirit to undertake. It is not easy. It is not a gift given, but a choice made, and the choice may be a hard one. The road goes upward towards the light, but the laden traveler may never reach the end of it.” (LeGuin, The Tombs of Atuan)
Announcer: Child, do you hear the whistle? The train is coming. Are you getting on?

June 2, 2024
In Corinthians 14:4 Paul says, “The language of ecstasy is good for the speaker himself, but it is prophecy that builds up a Christian community.”
I have been reading a book of Gordon’s sermons called By Grace Transformed and being newly inspired by them. One of them is titled “Called to Be Prophets.” In this sermon, Gordon says, “… each of us, as part of our belonging to Jesus Christ, is to render the service of prophetic speech.” He says we can’t shirk this duty and leave it to those who come by the gift naturally – maybe like our friend David Hilfiker. He said that isn’t fair. (p.109)
He goes on to say that sometimes prophecy is to bring a word of hope, as when Isaiah says, “The Lord God has given me the tongue of a teacher and skill to console the weary with a word in the morning.” (Is. 50:4)

May 19, 2024
Text: John 15:26-27; 16:4b-15

In 1956, Frantz Fanon – a black psychiatrist – resigned from his position at the French hospital which was located in Algeria. During his time, Algeria was a colony of France and an important one too. However, his tenure at the hospital coincided with Algeria's fight for decolonization and independence from France. In his role as a psychiatrist, he tended to French soldiers who had committed awful atrocities and to Algerian and Muslim victims of torture. Algeria was engaged in a bloody fight of resistance against colonization, a fight for their autonomy and their dignity, and Fanon could not bear being complicit in France’s brutal occupation through his role at the hospital.

Frantz Fanon was neither Algerian, nor Arab, nor Muslim. He was born and raised in another French colony, Martinique. Much of his childhood and youth was spent on that island, but he undertook his doctoral studies and early practice as a psychiatrist in France. As a black Caribbean man in French society, he quickly learned how white people in French society viewed black people. He also learned how black people had no choice but to navigate that gaze in order to survive. He wrote about this dynamic and about the psychological effects of colonization on the colonized. He eventually worked as a psychiatrist in a French hospital in Algeria as he tended to wounded after wounded – victims and perpetrators, those who were innocent and those who were guilty.

However, his conscience could not allow him to continue working in that context. He courageously resigned from the hospital, and he became an active member of the National Liberation Front – the party fighting for Algeria’s independence. Thereafter, he wrote prolifically about decolonization, he oversaw publications, and he traveled extensively as an ambassador for the National Liberation Front to other African nations. His books, especially my favorite, The Wretched of the Earth, have been essential reading across the African diaspora and the broader global south among those working for liberation from colonial power. Though Fanon was neither Algerian, Arab, nor Muslim, he was in solidarity with their suffering, their resistance, and their dreams. And It’s the meaning of solidarity that I ask us to consider this Pentecost Sunday.

April 21, 2024
Tomorrow is the 54th Earth Day celebration, created in 1970, which ushered in the modern environmental movement. Before the Covid-19 pandemic, thousands of people would descend on the day upon Washington DC to call for changes that can save our planet. Today, we are living in a world which has drastically changed during my lifetime.
2023 was the warmest year on record, surpassing 2016, which was the previous record holder. Last year, temperatures rose 1.18° Celsius/2.12° Fahrenheit. The ten warmest years have all occurred in the past decade 2014 – 2023. I have seen the effects in the Arctic with my own eyes and my greater call, beyond what I contribute at Eighth Day, is to educate people about the warming Arctic I have experienced in ten trips since 2010. I will share with you some photos taken on my most recent trip during this teaching.
I read The Washington Post daily, and in the past week they have had articles about the H5N1 Avian flu and widespread coral bleaching, which has occurred in oceans around the globe. The “bird flu” has spread from wild bird populations to domestic birds. But more recently, H5N1 has spread from birds to mammals such as seals, bears, foxes, otters, sea lions in Peru and farmed minks in Spain. Millions of animals had to be destroyed. As humans continue to pollute and abuse the only planet we have, these types of events will continue to occur. According to the Journal of the American Medical Association, H5N1 could “spillover” to humans. So far, only a couple of cases have happened to people who work closely with animals.

Marja Hilfiker
My Finnish family experienced a silent spring around 1960.
I spent my childhood summers on a small farm in southern Finland, where we three children had a chance to keep house for ourselves, eat peas and carrots and new potatoes from the garden and berries from the woods, check the nets for fish and walk to a cow farm to buy milk. All spring we looked forward to the summer of freedom and closeness to nature.
Our favorite birds were the barn swallows that had made three sturdy clay nests under the eaves of the barn. Every spring the swallows came, darting around, briefly sprucing up their nests, and in a couple of weeks there was the chirping of the baby birds that the parents were busily feeding. They kept peeking out of the nest until it was time to test their wings.
Then one year around 1960, the swallows came as harbingers of summer as usual and settled in their nests. But, mysteriously, that year there was no chirping of the baby birds, no swallows darting about, only a perplexing silence. What had happened? Father took down one of the swallow nests and told us that the eggs inside were broken. Why? We couldn’t even really talk about it. I just remember the sadness of that silence. Several months later, Father came to us with the answer. “It’s the DDT that we have used in the garden. What happened is that the swallows ate the mosquitos that were carrying DDT, and it made the eggshells so thin that the eggs broke before hatching.