Words of Welcome

Genesis 32:22-31 When I was a kid, my mother decided I needed to learn how to defend myself and so she signed me up for wrestling camp.  Although I’d rather have been at basketball camp, for the next six Saturdays I learned to wrestle.  Since I never became a very proficient wrestler, I got knocked out in the first round of the tournament that ended the camp.  Much to my relief!   There’s another kind of wrestling besides the one I learned at camp.  They call it professional wrestling, and in professional wrestling, which I used to watch on Saturday afternoons, neither desire nor proficiency is the key to success.  That’s because the outcome is determined by a script.    When it comes to wrestling Jacob wasn’t a professional!  No, he was a competitive wrestler, who when challenged would fight to win.  He’d been that way since he shared his mother’s womb with his twin brother.  His parents named him Jacob because he grabbed Esau’s heel and tried to pass him in the bi

Romans 8:26-39 On a hot and humid evening this past week, as we watched the Tigers play the Oakland A’s, John Balogh asked me whether I would be preaching a baseball-themed sermon?  Being a lifelong baseball fan,  I couldn’t let a request like that get away, and so I began thinking about how baseball might fit with this morning’s sermon theme.       In Romans 8 Paul poses a question:  “If God is for us, then who can be against us?”   Now, if you’re a Tiger’s fan, could you see God’s hand at work during the game Tuesday evening?  Because they won big, surely God must be on the side of the Tigers!   Of course, not everyone saw things this way, because two members of our group wore caps of the then first place Cleveland Indians.   And while I donned a Tiger’s hat and rooted them on as they played the hapless Oakland A’s, just few weeks earlier I wore a San Francisco Giants cap to the Giants-Tigers game and rooted for my boyhood team.   So, on that night I was one of the few in

Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30 John the Baptist was a spoil sport who wouldn’t dance when the band played and didn’t wail with the mourners at funerals, and so they decided he had to be demon-possessed.  Then, along comes Jesus, who hangs out with the wrong crowd – sinners and tax-collectors – so he must be a drunkard and a glutton.  As they say, you can’t win for losing!   Now, John wasn’t really demon-possessed – though he did dress in camel skins and eat a diet of locusts.  But, just because you’re an eccentric, that doesn’t mean you’re demon-possessed.   As for Jesus, I doubt if he really was a drunk or a glutton – though he did make wine from water (though that’s a different Gospel)  and of course he did go to lots of dinner parties, but he did hang out with the wrong sort of people, and as they say – you can know the character of a person by the company they keep.  But that’s conventional wisdom, and divine wisdom is often different from conventional wisdom.   As Jesus says “