Sermons

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Here's a Pop Quiz:

True / False: Jesus is the man with all the answers ( F)
Jesus asked 137 / 240 / 307 questions in his life ( 307)
Of the 183 question asked of Jesus, he answered 13 / 3 / 34 questions in his life.  (3)

Jesus was the Great Interrogator....The One who asks questions What was he modeling for us..  ?

UNKNOWING
STRUGGLE
WONDERING
THINKING IT THROUGH
PROCESS ( He would love 8th Day!)
Maybe Jesus was modeling WHAT A LIFE OF FAITH SHOULD LOOK LIKE
We would not be sitting in this very room with each other had a young pastor, Gordon Cosby, faced with much soul searching in the fox holes of World War II, not asked these insightful questions ..
DID THE GOD STORY OF SCRIPTURE HAVE MEANING IN THE FACE OF HUMAN DESPAIR?
COULD THE DIVINE-HUMAN ENCOUNTER BE TRUSTED?
DID THE SUFFERING JESUS OFFER FUNDAMENTAL HOPE?

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October 15, 2017
Texts:
     Matthew 22:1-14
     Psalm 23
“If religion is supposed to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable, argues Amy-Jill Levine, then we should think of [this] parable as doing the latter. If we read the parables and find ourselves unsurprised and unchallenged, we haven’t read them honestly or well. Jesus was no teller of cozy bedtime stores; his parables are meant to disturb us—to wake us up, shake us out of our complacency, and compel us to ask hard questions about ourselves and about God.” – Debie Thomas, Living the Word, The Christian Century, September 27, 2017

If the musicians here this morning were to lead us in singing, “I’ve got peace like a river,” we likely would do so happily. And the river we most likely would be picturing would be quiet and beautiful, gently rolling along in its banks where it belongs, flowing happily to the sea. We probably would not be imagining a renegade river, rising higher and higher, crashing against the banks until they give way and the deepening water engulfs our houses and threatens our lives. I wonder how many people running for dry land during the recent floods were singing, “We’ve got peace like a river” as they ran? That’s not the sort of peace we prefer.

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October 1, 2017

My teaching today is the fourth in a series of teachings given by members of the Eighth Day Servant Leaders Mission Group in preparation for our annual Camp Meeting, which this year is a forty-plus year reunion.  Maria, Emily and David Hilfiker over the past weeks have spoken to: 1) 8th Day’s theology; 2) the importance of belonging and relationship; 3) 8th Day’s history and structures.  The 8th Day Family Reunion next weekend will surely be one where there will be much storytelling, personal and communal.  So, I want to talk about story.

The concept of “story” in our Church of the Saviour tradition is important.  Years ago I asked Mary Cosby why writing/telling one’s spiritual autobiography was a requirement for membership in the Church of the Saviour.  I’m sure she tried to address my question, but I don’t remember getting a focused answer.  Mary and her sister Elizabeth were stunning storytellers, and for years Mary taught the New Testament classes in the School of Christian and Elizabeth taught Old Testament.  They were masterful and creative story tellers of these scriptures.  They taught with the assurance that knowing our foundational story as Christians was critical to understanding our faith history and life in community and to the building of a seriously committed community of faith.  These biblical stories are our stories, too.  The characters in the stories are mirrors of identity for us.  And, so, I thought, that reflecting on and telling our personal and communal spiritual stories, would contribute to understanding how each of us belongs to the larger faith story.

September 17, 2017

How to boil a frog!

This is how you boil a frog: you don’t put him in cold water because he will jump out.  You don’t put him in hot water because he will leap out quickly!  However, if you put him in lukewarm water, feel-good water, just a few degrees above his body temperature, he will be comfortable and relax.  Then every 3 minutes, you raise the temperature up 2 degrees.  In about 30 minutes, He Will Be Cooked!!!  Now, what is the point of the story?  Being unaware of small changes, we get comfortable.  Being unaware of small changes, we get comfortable with sin.  We don’t commit murder, steal, or disrespect our parents, so we think we are doing just great.  However, Jesus said in Matt.  5:20 that our righteousness must exceed that of the Pharisees which means we have to go deeper, looking at the root of the sin.  Starting with the first commandment of loving God with all our heart, then we must love our brothers and sisters, whom we can see, as ourselves, which validates our love for God.[1]  We must also be in His will and led by the Spirit of God.  Being connected by the cross on both ends, vertical (between you and God) and horizontal (between you and others) is walking in the Spirit.  Not being connected is Sin.  Not loving, not forgiving, not reconciling is SIN!

Today I am going to speak about the 3 basic foundations of our faith but look at them from a different perspective or interpretation as they apply to God, Self, and Community. 

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September 3, 2017

Good morning friends and thank you for the opportunity to speak today.  This teaching is a part of a sermon series about the identity of Eighth Day.  Different members of the Servant Leaders Mission Group—Maria, Kate, Marcia, Kent, David, and I—are giving these teachings.  Two weeks ago Maria started us off with Eighth Day’s theology, and today I’ll be speaking about belonging and relationship in community. 

I’ll start with an overview of the main points of this teaching.  The first is that our initial place of belonging is to God.  This is true for all people, animals, beings, and all of the earth: it all belongs to God and God belongs to all of it, all of us.  I am defining God with openness here—I call it God, others, Allah, The Great Spirit, the Cosmos, Yahweh….  This belonging to God is deep and inseparable.  Second, Jesus came to offer all people a way to claim and act on this belonging through commitment and relationship with God and others.  And third, God’s work in the world becomes real in these relationships of shared belonging.