Words of Welcome

Luke 14:1, 7-14 What would Emily Post say? If the President invites you to a party at the White House, where should you sit? If you arrive early, should you go and save that empty seat up front at his right hand? It sure would be great to sit as close as possible to the center of attention, but maybe it would be better to take a seat farther back in the crowd. Of course, proximity to greatness does suggest greatness! Back in the Soviet era, when Leonid Brezhnev was still running things, Time Magazine would try to figure out who was next in line to succeed him. Since the Soviets weren't too keen on letting out the secret, the analysts at Time would watch where Politburo members stood on Kremlin wall overlooking Red Square during important events, like a May Day review of the troops. The assumption was that the closer you stood to Brezhnev, the closer you were to the top of the list. If you’d moved down a few spaces, well obviously you were on the way out of favor. You know that

Hebrews 12:18-29 I’m a survivor. Yes, I’ve survived several earthquakes, although none of them have been massive. The largest quake we ever experienced was the Northridge Quake in 1994, but it was centered miles away from our apartment in Rancho Cucamonga. That quake started with a jolt and then a rumble. The moment it struck I didn’t know its intensity or its epicenter, but I knew it wasn’t a train going by the complex. So I jumped out of bed, grabbed Brett, and headed for the door jam. The quake didn't last long, just a mater of seconds, but it rattled my nerves, and it was a while before we got back to sleep. We later learned that it was a 6.7 earthquake that, wreaked havoc on the Los Angeles basin. It led to the deaths of 17 people, injured scores more, and took down important freeway overpasses and numerous buildings in the San Fernando Valley. When I got to work at the library in Pasadena, which was much closer to the epicenter, I discovered I had a mess to clean up – inclu

Luke 12:32-40 I was once asked to housesit for family friends, because they had two Dalmatians needing to be tended to. I think I was still in high school at the time, and all I had to do was walk and feed the dogs, and make sure everything was secure. It wasn’t a difficult job by any means, but since these were friends of the family, I needed to make sure everything was in order when they returned. I knew when they were supposed to return, and I was going to clean things up before they arrived. Now, as some of you know I don’t keep the tidiest of offices, so, you can imagine that I might have let things go just a bit. Of course, I intended to clean everything up before they were supposed to return, but I never thought about what might happen if they returned early and without notice. Fortunately we have something the readers of Luke’s gospel didn’t have. We have telephones. And, the phone did ring as I was watching TV, with dishes in the sink and books and papers scattered here and

Colossians 3:1-11 Mark Twain famously said that “Clothes make the man,” and we’re often told to dress for success. In fact there is much truth to this adage, which is why there is a nonprofit called “Dress for Success” that provides appropriate clothing for job seekers. Even in this much more casual era, we seem to understand that clothes stand for something, and by changing our clothes we can change our identity. Although it’s probably not polite to talk about movies that feature a prostitute as the main character, I couldn’t come up with a better example of the way clothes can transform a person’s identity than the Julia Roberts film Pretty Woman. I even searched the internet to see if I could find a “better” example, but nothing spoke so clearly to this issue of the way clothes can change one’s identity than this movie, except perhaps the story of Cinderella. In this film a rich man played by Richard Gere hires a prostitute named Vivian to be there for him, to be his “companion”