Words of Welcome

1 Kings 17:8-16 Julianna Claasen, in reflecting on today’s text, wrote: Sometimes God’s provision comes in the most unlikely of places and by means of the most unlikely of people. 1 Or, to put it another way, “God works in mysterious ways!” The story of the prophet Elijah’s encounter with the widow of Zarephath is a perfect illustration of this principle. Think about it, God sends the prophet, who is fleeing from the wrath of Queen Jezebel, to a foreign land to find shelter with an impoverished widow and her son. What is more, not only was this widow poor, she wasn’t even a worshiper of Yahweh. Being from Sidon, she would have been a worshiper of Baal, the same god worshiped by Jezebel. And yet, it was this most unlikely woman who provided food and shelter for a stranger, even though her resources were few. But in the midst of her scarcity, God found abundance. There is another story about a widow. Although this story is a bit different, it also features a widow who gives

Hebrews 10:19-25 Imagine for a moment that you’re watching two men talking. You can’t hear what they’re saying – they could be talking about football, politics, the best place to get burgers, and maybe even religion. At first the discussion seems fairly congenial, but then it gets a bit heated, and you see one man put his finger into the chest of the other, and shouts: “Don’t provoke me!” It would seem that this word -- “provoke” – carries a lot of negative baggage. When we hear it, we hear argument, heated discussion, or even a fight. Wars start with provocations, and in Ephesians parents are told not to “provoke [their] children to anger” (Eph. 6:4). Now, I wish the message had been -- children, don’t provoke your fathers to anger, but that’s not what it says. Oh, by the way, if you turn to 1 Corinthians 13, you’ll find Paul saying that love isn’t “irritable,” which is the same word in Greek as provoke. And, who wants to be irritable? So, from what I can tell, it’

1 Peter 4:7-11 Do you ever put yourself in the biblical story by asking whether your life story fits into the sacred story? If so, have you ever seen yourself in the story of Abraham and Sarah? In this important biblical story, God calls a couple to leave their homeland and move to a new place. I sort of resonate with this story, though not to the degree that we see described in Hebrews 11, which says that they set out on this journey, “not knowing where he was going.” At least, we had a house when we got here. They had to live in tents for several generations! But, they dwelt in this new land and “looked forward to the city that has foundations, whose architect is God” (Heb. 11:8-9). This is what faith is all about. It’s about trusting someone with your life and your future, even though you don’t know what that future holds. Harvey Cox calls this a “deep-seated confidence.”1 It’s a quality that comes to us as a gift from God and lets us step outside the box and take ris

Note: This is the sixth and final sermon in my series on our congregational core values. ____________________ Psalm 95:1-7a O come, let us sing to the Lord ; let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation! Let us come into his presence with thanksgiving; let us make a joyful noise to him with songs of praise! For the Lord is a great God, and a great King above all gods. In his hand are the depths of the earth; the heights of the mountains are his also. The sea is his, for he made it, and the dry land, which his hands have formed. O come, let us worship and bow down, let us kneel before the Lord , our Maker! For he is our God, and we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand. It’s All Saints Day, and so today we join with all the saints in heaven and on earth in singing “Holy, Holy, Holy,” to the Lord our God, the Almighty. We do this because, as the prophet Isaiah declares, “the whole earth is full of his glory” (Isa. 6:3). We sin