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Justice and Freedom on the Sabbath: Healing and Glory Balanced by Suffering

Carol Bullard-Bates

June 3, 2018
Texts:  Mark 2:23 - 3:6
           II Corinthians 4:5-12

In reading the Scriptures focusing on the Sabbath in the last few weeks, what struck me in the Deuteronomy passage was three things: that we are to keep the Sabbath holy, that holiness is equated with rest, and that the Sabbath is related to the people’s freedom from bondage in Egypt.  As we celebrate the Sabbath, we are to

Remember that you were slaves in Egypt, and that the Lord your God brought you out of there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm.  Therefore, the Lord your God has commanded you to observe the Sabbath Day.

God’s people were not only to rest on the Sabbath, but so were their servants, their animals and the aliens in their land.  The Sabbath Day was a social leveler for all people and even for the animals.  The Sabbath Day was seen as a symbol of the freedom God’s people were given when they left their slavery in Egypt.  No longer did they have to work every day for taskmasters.  They were free to rest, to focus on God’s presence in their lives, and to make sure that even their slaves and servants and animals rest too.  I am sure this concept of Sabbath was a radical departure from the rest of the people around them and their cultures.

Pentecost: What’s next?

Kevin Boteler

With a small congregation this Sunday (due to most people being at our annual “play weekend,”) Kevin gives some introduction after each scripture passage that was followed by discussion (which was not taped or contained in the following).

Those of you who have heard me speak before may remember that I have bemoaned challenging lectionary texts.  I suppose that today is an example of life balancing out, as today’s texts are an embarrassment of riches.

Last week, on Pentecost, we heard about the Spirit coming to the followers of Christ as they worshipped together in Jerusalem as the first manifestation of the promised sending of the Holy Spirit to all mankind.  This week’s scriptures help us explore the implications of that event.

First, the Gospel:

Breath

Connie Ridgway

May 20, 2018

Text: from The Message: Ezekiel 37:1-5, 7, 9-10.

God Grabbed me.  God's spirit took me up and sat me down in the middle of an open plain strewn with bones.  The Holy one led me around and among them — a lot of bones!   There were bones all over the plain, dry bones, bleached by the sun.
The Holy One said to me, Son of Man, can these bones live?  I said, Master God, only you know that.
He said to me, Prophesy over these bones: Dry bones listen to the message of the Holy One!
The Holy one told the dry bones: Watch this: I'm bringing the breath of life to you and you'll come to life.
I prophesied just as I'd been commanded.  As I prophesied, there was a sound and oh, rustling!   The bones moved and came together, bone to bone.  But they had no breath in them."The Holy one said, Prophesy to the breath.  Prophesy, son of man.  Tell the breath, The Holy One, the Master says, Come from the four winds.  Come, breath.  Breathe on these slain bodies.  Breathe life!
So I prophesied, just as the Holy One commanded me.  The breath entered them and they came alive!   They stood up on their feet, a huge gathering.

Witness

Katie Archibald-Woodward

April 15, 2018
Texts: Luke 24:36b-48
           Acts 3:12-19

Let me begin with a poem by Kabir:

What Kind of God

What kind of God would God be
if God did not hear the
bangles ring on
an ant’s
wrist

as they move the earth
in their sweet
dance?

Who Jesus Is

Betsy Edmonds

WHO, WHO is this Jesus whom we celebrate today as the Risen Lord, worthy of our trust and devotion?

Who, who is He?  The answer comes echoing down through the Ages from beyond the dawn of time; first, through the prophetic Hebrew Scriptures and then from the recounting and observations of those who knew Jesus best and followed him to the end of His life on earth.

From the book of Genesis, we see God acting creatively.  We notice there the Hebrew word for God, “Elohim,” is singular with a plural meaning: that God is a many faceted, complex being.  So we hear:

“Now let Us conceive a new creation—humanity—made in Our image, fashioned according to Our likeness. And let Us grant them authority over all the earth—the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, the domesticated animals and the small creeping creatures on the earth.”

Job, Jesus, & Good News

Mike Brown

March 25,2018

Texts: Psalm 31:9-16
     Isaiah 50:4-9a
     Mark 15:1-47
     Philippians 2:5-11

Following Emily’s lead in her teaching last week, I would like to acknowledge our first-nation people in this region, the Anacostia tribe who were members of the Piscataways.  In like manner, I would like to remember the enslaved African people who worked in the fields along this portion of the Potomac River. 

In the Hebrew Scriptures, God says

…consider my servant Job?  There is no one like him in all the earth ….

and in the Christian scriptures, God says about Jesus

….You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.

Both Job and Jesus were well-regarded by God: Job as trusted servant and Jesus as a beloved son.  The stories of these two people have captured the imagination and attention of the people of faith for over two millennia.  Pain, and especially undeserved suffering, occupies many of pages of our Bible.

How Are We Known?

Teaching: Emily Owlsley

March 18, 2018

The lectionary passages for today are about how we are known and how we know God.  How we are forgiven and the fact of being forgiven as part of our identity.  We also have the foretelling of Easter and Jesus’ death allowing for new life.  And the analogy of plants dying and providing seeds that create new life.  Jesus explains that this is how new life happens. 

I’m going to talk through the lectionary passages this morning and then ask you all if you’re willing to share about particular times in your life, or the life of the community, or someone close to you, when something had to be given up, or die, to allow for new life to happen.  So keep that in mind as I go through the scriptures. 

God’s Gift of Snakes in the Wilderness

Meade Hanna

March 11, 2018

Texts:   Numbers 21:4-9
             John 3:14-21

I picked the Old Testament and the New Testament readings because they are inextricably linked.  To understand the good news of the gospel of John, to understand the God who loves the whole world and the kind of sacrifice he gave us, I need to know that that God can walk with me through the wilderness, snakes and all, not taking the sources of death and suffering away but helping me to remember and to turn to my source of life, to the places and people in whom we find God.  To remember that I never walk alone. 

Today I will start with Barclay’s ideas of the gospel of John and end with my ideas about snakes. 

John was Jesus’s disciple and Jesus is known for loving him affectionately, possibly as his younger first cousin.  We see John resting on Jesus’s arm in DaVinci’s Last Supper.  He was Jewish but in 100 AD, a good thirty years after the other three gospels were written, John and his community decide they need to write a very different gospel, one that appealed to the crowd of Greek Gentiles all around them.  Why?  The scholars propose that this gospel was written as a bridging across cultures.  John and his community want the Greeks to know their God, rooted in the Semitic story of the Old Testament.  John wants to show God as loving and choosing them, just like he chose the nation of Israel, to have as his people. 

April Fools

Kevin Boteler

March 4, 2017

Texts:
     Exodus 20:1-17
     John 2:13-22
     I Corinthians 1:18-25

Good morning, Eighth Day.  If I may, I would like to start out with a familiar prayer that is also the last verse of today’s lectionary Psalm text.  If you’ll bow with me:

14 Let the words of my mouth
    and the meditations of my heart
    be pleasing to you,
    Lord, my rock and my redeemer.

I’m not yet sure yet exactly what my Call is at 8th Day, but I do know that a part of my Call (with a capital C) is to say yes when I get a “little c” call asking me to serve in some way.  I have found that saying yes to bringing the teaching without first checking to see what the lectionary is often brings interesting surprises.  So it is with this time, as I read the scriptures and realized two things:

Faith and Transfiguration

Ann Barnet

February 25, 2018

Texts:
     Genesis: 17:1-7
     Psalm 22
     Mark 9:2-9
     Romans 4:13-24

Genesis says: When the world began, God created Adam and Eve in his own image.  And God declared: "Behold, it is very good!"

God took joy in his own reflection in the first humans.  He liked us!   He loved us.  God said his creation is worthy of his love.  A good thought in those moments when we feel unworthy.  Right from the beginning, so goes our Bible story, the mystery and paradox of man is set before us: We are a creation destined to bear the image of the uncreated God.

But those first humans, and humans ever since, have wanted to negate the mystery of the God-image.  Satan told us we could be "as God" and we believed him.  We invented various designer fig-leaves, dressing ourselves up in images of power, immortality, knowledge, wealth, and invulnerability.  We puffed ourselves up with missile launches and ever taller towers.  We store up bit-coin and off­shore treasure that's doomed to end up as ashes.

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