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The Call to Come On Down!

Wendy Dorsey
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November 3, 2019

Good Morning 8th Day Friends!   I was asked by the Servants Group to do one of this Fall’s first Sunday teachings on “CALL” for this month.  As you recall, David Hilfiker gave the first one last month.  I will share some of my personal experiences with call, but I also think we need to think of call in the context of community and even a corporate “community call.” In the C of S, call has been received in general by individuals who then call a group together to work out and fulfill that call.  We also speak often of “my call” or “her call” to a specific vocation or ministry.  However, both in the Bible and historically in Church of the Saviour, communities are called to act together.

In the story of Exodus, for instance, the Hebrew people were called by God, and led by Moses as a community, to leave the land of Pharaoh and go into the desert and eventual freedom.  When Gordon led the way into the “New Land” of the Church of the Savior in 1975-76, communities were encouraged to form around a corporate community call.  For instance, Seekers was formed around the call of FLOC and I believe that 8th Day was focused strongly on the Polycultural Institute, and later became involved with the Sanctuary movement.  These calls were specific responses to a critical time in both the Hebrew nation and our nation’s history.  I believe we have such a critical time now in our country, and that it would be well for us to think about what our corporate call is for 8th Day.  Perhaps we are to rally around the call to Bridges to Democracy which was issued recently.  Perhaps we need to consider that as a community we address the ultimate existential crisis of climate change or combat racism which seems to be especially visible and vitriolic in our country now.  I have some specific thoughts about this which I will share later.

Pray Without Ceasing

Meade Hanna

October 27, 2019

What does a life of prayer without ceasing look like?

The hymn we just sang was originally a poem called ‘Pray Without Ceasing.’  It was written by Joseph Scriven who was born in Ireland in 1820 to wealthy parents.  At 25 he was to be married but his fiancé drowned the night before their wedding.  Comforted and allured by the theology, he joined the Brethren church and as a result, had conflicts with his parents who were probably Catholic, maybe Anglican.   Subsequently he emigrated to Canada.  At the age of 35, he learned of his mother dying back in Ireland and wrote the poem ‘Pray without Ceasing’ for his mother and sent it to her in Ireland.  At the age of 40, he fell in love again and was due to be married until his fiancé died unexpectedly of pneumonia.  At the age of 66, depressed and being watched around the clock by friends, he snuck out of his room at night and they found his drowned body on the edge of the lake nearby. 

Charles Converse, born 1834 in Massachusetts, wrote the music for the poem which became the hymn "What a Friend We Have in Jesus.'

The Widow says, “Take and Eat”

Crisely Melechio-Zambrano

October 20, 2019

Responsorial Psalm: Ps 121:1-2, 3-4, 5-6, 7-8

Response: Our help is from the Lord, who made heaven and earth.

I lift up my eyes toward the mountains;
whence shall help come to me?
My help is from the LORD,
who made heaven and earth.
Response: Our help is from the Lord, who made heaven and earth.

May he not suffer your foot to slip;
may he slumber not who guards you:
indeed he neither slumbers nor sleeps,
the guardian of Israel.
Response: Our help is from the Lord, who made heaven and earth.

The Nature of Call

David Hilfiker

Texts:
     Isaiah: 6:6-9
     Luke: 5:1-11
     I Corinthians 12:4-11

The Servants group is scheduling about one teaching a month to examine our Eighth Day core beliefs and spirituality and also to share a bit about our personal spiritual journeys.

So I want us to speak this morning about the nature of “call,” one of the basic building blocks of our faith and practice.  I originally thought that this would be easy to write since I’ve felt called to a couple of personally meaningful vocations in the last forty years.  But it turns out I know less than I thought I did, so this will be a group teaching.  I’m going to talk a little about my calls and then we’ll hear from some of you about yours.

As we read from Corinthians, each of us is called, and within community each call is, in the eyes of God, of equal value.  A significant part of our faith journey is discerning that call.  Let me share a couple of mine:

Accompanying the Oppressed to Form a Just World

Carol Bullard-Bates
Helen Walker
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Psalm 146 makes it clear that God is behind and rejoices in every action we take to uphold the cause of the oppressed.  God watches over the alien in our communities.  That was Jesus’ way of life, to be with the oppressed and develop their leadership power in sharing the good news that they were God’s people, no matter how outcast they were in their society.  That gave them the vision of what God’s Kingdom was, so they could stand up against oppression and work for justice.

Listen to Carol's teachng:

Jesus was born into the oppressive Roman Empire that had colonized Israel.  Even the Jewish religious leaders were more focused on the details they had added to the law that effectively left out the poor, than what God wanted of them.  Jesus was immersed in the words of the prophets who had to keep reminding Israel that God wanted them to take care of people who were poor and the aliens rather than focus on self-serving sacrifices that had nothing to do with God’s justice.  We too, as followers of Jesus, can be so brain-washed in our oppressive empire of the United States and its militarism and consumerism and racism, that we forget that God upholds the cause of the oppressed, and wants us to act to end the oppression with leadership from the oppressed, not for them.  It has been so painful to see our President increase the oppression of our aliens and our poor people and so make the chasm between rich people and poor people even greater.

The Blessing and Cost of Discipleship

Fred Taylor
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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.

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

Connnie Ridgway
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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. 

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.”

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