Sermons

May 31, 2015, Pentecost

I want to tell you about a book I'm about to read.  I would have told you about a book I was actually reading except that I accidentally sent it to my granddaughter on my Prime account. The book is called The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating. I can almost hear the sound of 8th Day folks thinking, "ewww, snails" or "oh no, it's commitment Sunday and Pentecost!"  But first listen to this blurb from the book reviewer:

"Elisabeth Tova Bailey tells the inspiring and intimate story of her year-long encounter with a Neohelix albolabris—a common forest snail. While an illness keeps her bedridden, Bailey watches as the snail takes up residence on her nightstand. Intrigued by its molluscan anatomy, cryptic defenses, clear decision making ability, hydraulic locomotion, and mysterious courtship activities, Bailey becomes an astute and amused observer. The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating is a remarkable journey of survival and resilience, showing us how a small part of the natural world illuminates our own human existence."

I love this kind of thinking -- an odd fresh way of looking at things you think you already know all about.

May 10, 2014, Mother's Day

Text: Acts 10:44-48
Psalm 98
1John 5:1-6
John 15:9-17

John 15:9-17

As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide in his love. I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete. "This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.
No one has greater love than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you.

I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father. You did not choose me but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask him in my name.
I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another.

INTRODUCTION

This time between Easter and Pentecost seems like “chrysalis time.” When the caterpillar has spun it’s cocoon and is being transformed into a butterfly. It’s a time when things are changing, even if some of them are out of sight. I’m reminded of coming here to the Potter’s House for the dedication and feeling the massive changes that had gone on for a long time, out of sight for many of us, changes that are now just becoming evident out on the street. Yesterday as I joined the Faithonomics conference here, and at the Festival Center I was aware of how much vital, transforming energy is flowing through our faith communities.

May 3, 2015
Test: John 15:1-8

Why are you here?

Why are you here this morning and why are you part of 8th Day?

Our scripture today provides an answer:  you are here because you want to stay connected to the vine.  And what is the vine?  You might think it is the church.  According to our scripture, it is not.  You might think it is the other branches, the fellowship.  According to our scripture, it is not.  It is rather, the source of life as revealed in the life of Jesus.  In short, it is God's love.

I grew up in church; my father was a Baptist minister.  I love the church as an organization.  Where else in our society can you become intimate friends with people who are not like you, where a banker and a mechanic can serve together as deacons or on the leadership team?  I have been known to say that even if there was no doctrine or commitment to the spiritual journey, I would still be a part of the church because it is such a unique, sociologically interesting place.  But, this week, after working a bit with the scripture about the vine, I think that is probably nonsense.  I am not here because of all of you, I am here because this is where I can stay connected to what is most important in my life -- I can be in community with God.

April 26, 2015

Text: John 10:11-18             

Usually when I think about this passage of scripture, I ponder the nature of the good shepherd and his relationship with the sheep.  How comforting it can be to think of my life as safeguarded by a kind and protective shepherd.  But this week my thoughts went to another aspect of the story.  I found myself thinking mostly about the hired hand, who was brought in to oversee the sheep, and the wolf that attacks, scaring off the hired hand.  Who is this hired hand?  While we have every right to expect basic competence from a hired hand, we should never expect a hired hand to love the sheep personally, to see each one’s unique personality and traits.  It takes something deeper than a hired hand kind of relationship to know and love each other like this.  Maybe we are meant to have more than a hired hand relationship with each other.

I suppose we keep hiring stand-ins for the good shepherd because we have such a hard time believing we could be God’s beloved.  We “buy” love, in the form of obligations we place on each other, rather than trust that real love will be freely given.  We want to believe that each of us is the beloved of God, which means then that ALL of us are the beloved of God, no exceptions.  Even you.  Even me.  But what about my young, loud neighbors on each side of Andrew’s House, acting like they still live in a frat house, partying late into the night?  Are they the beloved of God?  Or the wealthy folks saturating the neighborhood who carry an air of privileged expectation?  Yep, the beloved of God.  Whatever our status in life—entrepreneur or CEO of a mass private corporation, firefighter or arsonist, executioner or executed, attacker or attacked .  .  .  ALL of us, God’s beloved.

April 18, 2015

Plant Yourself in God's Garden and then go forth Offering God's Tender Mercies.

I have a vision of a beautiful spiral....at its center is my person....each of us lives in a beautiful spiral....we may not be aware of it....but we do.  Around the center of the person....the planted seed...is God's Garden.  Which is always with us to nourish us and sustain us and allow us to be healthy, vibrant, loving people who can offer the world God's tender mercies....

To stay planted in God's Garden requires of us some awareness and action.  In God's garden there are many gifts.  One of them is the natural world.  We need to craft each day with time and attention outside in nature.  We need to be kissed by the sun, the moon, the wind and the rain.  Our faces need the color of vitality and brightness.  Even during difficult winters......intentional time by a window...observing nature.   God also gave us movement.   Time devoted to movement....God created us to move....long walks...dancing....chair exercise...yoga...sports....  God also gave us the arts....we need to enjoy music, art, theater on a daily basis.  And of course God gave us good loving people to be in the community garden with.

April 12, 2015

I love when I accidentally stumble upon someone talking about God.  It's like a special treat for me.  Standing behind a couple in line at the grocery store, eavesdropping on a conversation in the restaurant booth next to mine, or even catching half of a particularly heated phone call from a passerby—I relish these moments as rare and intimate glimpses into the human condition.  I believe they are because, let’s face it, when we talk about God, we are talking about a lot of different things.  And how we talk about and imagine God says at least as much about us as it does the divine we attempt to articulate.  The author Zora Neale Hurston put it this way: “Gods always behave like the people who make them.”  I would add that how we make the divine behave is often linked directly to the condition of our own hearts as well as the circumstances of our lived experience. 

So what happens when this lived experience is defined by trials and tribulation?  I began reflecting on this while listening to a poignant standup performance by the comedian TigNotaro.  In an August 2012 set entitled Live, Notaro takes her audience through a series of very recent tragic events in her life.  Initially hospitalized for pneumonia—which turned into a life-threatening intestinal bacterial infection—she was released only to face the tragic death of her mother, a break up, and a Stage II breast cancer diagnosis—all within four months.  “You know the Good Lord giveth,” she quipped, “and the Good Lord taketh away.  But sometimes the Good Lord taketh and just keep taken-it-eth.” 

April 5, 2015

Texts: 
Psalm 118:1-24
Acts 10:34-43
John 20:8-18

Dixcy Bosley-Smith, our premier 8^th Day Community publicity agent, recently ran into Anne Jarman, my former wife, and invited her to worship with us this Easter Sunday.  When my son Chapman heard that his mother was coming, he said, “Mom, if you go, don’t do like I use to do, which was to fall asleep the moment Dad stood up to preach and to miraculously wake up the moment he finished.”  Anne, I’m glad you are here.  I know the Potter’s House in particular means a lot to you.  Years ago Anne managed book sales here working alongside Mary Hitchcock, the manager.

I was intrigued on Friday with a column on the front page of the Post style section by Lonnae O’Neal entitled “I’m in church once a year.  What have I missed?”  She noted the steady downward trend in church attendance since the 1960s which Lonnae acknowledged to be the case in her own life.  Recently she decided to go to church to see what she had been missing, if anything.  What she noticed was not just a preacher and a choir but an alive community who had a lot of connection with each other.  In her conclusion she wrote, “And as I stood there, I felt like I’ve missed church and I didn’t want to leave.  It’s something I think I might like to feel more than once a year.”

March 29, 2015
Texts: Mark 11:1-11; John 12:12-16

From the Model Minority to the Mass Movement

One of my favorite things to read over the years has been the Christian Century series “How My Mind Has Changed."  These occasional pieces by well-known theologians, ethicists and faith leaders explore how their thought has transformed over the course of their life experience.  Countering the tendency for intellectual work to be too abstract, they explore how inhabiting the world has led them to re-imagine the way they understand and seek to describe it.  And while I don't count myself among this illustrious group, I want to take some time today to consider how my own mind has changed over the past five or so years. 

In particular, and as we begin Holy Week with the triumphal entry into Jerusalem, I want to reflect on how my understanding of Jesus' mission—and thus what our own might be—has been transformed.  I want us to think together about why it is that so many gathered in celebration of this unlikely king, this un-king, this harbinger of the kin-dom.  And I want us to consider how that infectious energy, one that drew people together from every diverse corner of life, might yet envelop us in the here and now, re-shaping and radically expanding our vision of who we are and what we are called to become as a community of faith.

March 22, 2015

Good Morning!

I am grateful for this opportunity to share with you this morning!  You are my extended family.  I am grateful to Gail Arnall for encouraging me, in no uncertain terms, to share myself with you this morning.  I wish that Gail could have been here.  It is a privilege to try to tell you how God has been working in me, working in my life; how God is changing me!  You know how sometimes we hear a person say, "I'm a work in progress and God's not done with me yet!"?  Well, I'm a work in progress.  And God, God and I – still have a lot of work to do on me.

I am the third person after Fred Taylor and Wendy Dorsey, in a series of Sunday teachings for whom Racial Justice, Reconciliation and Healing have become as vital and necessary to engage in as oxygen is to breathing.  Fred called us to encounter our emotional truth.  Remember?  He shared with us that as a member of the Racial Justice and Healing mission group, he became able to say, "I am a racist and I am more than a racist.  I am a white supremacist and I am more than a white supremacist!"  Fred told us that when he shared his confession, searching the faces of the Black members of the mission group he felt and heard them say, "Welcome.  This is what we must hear to trust you.  Now let's move on together".

March 15, 2015

Good morning 8^th Day.  We are in the season of Lent.  This is a Lenten teaching, based in part on the Gospel passage that was in our lectionary for March 1^st [Mark 8: 31-33], as well as Isaiah 53, which you just heard.  Since our move to the Potters House took place on March 1^st, my teaching got moved to today.  My teaching is not going to be a pleasant, comforting one, so be forewarned.  This is Lent, and the title of my sermon today is “Bearing the Cross.”

In the past few months, I have read two books which have had a profound impact on my thinking.  The first is The Cross and the Lynching Tree by James Cone, who wrote about Black Liberation Theology in the 60’s and 70’s.  The second is Dear White Christians by Jennifer Harvey, whose thesis is that we need to see the struggle against racism through the lens of reparations rather than reconciliation.  More on that concept later.