Words of Welcome

Luke 4:14-21 I’ve always found the story of Elijah passing over the mantle of the Spirit to Elisha to be quite powerful. It’s really the story of one generation passing the torch to the next.  So, when it came time for Elijah to ascend to heaven, he turned to Elisha, and asked him: What can I do for you before I leave?  In response, Elisha boldly asks Elijah for a “double share of your spirit.”  Yes, he wants everything Elijah has, but more.  So then, after Elijah ascends into the heavens, Elisha picks up the same mantle or outer coat that his mentor used to hit  and divide the Jordan, so they could cross over to the other side, and he followed his mentor’s example and hits the water and it divides so he can cross back over to the other side.  When the other prophets see Elisha coming toward them, they recognize the spirit of Elijah resting on Elijah’s former assistant, and affirm his calling to begin a new era of prophetic ministry in Israel (2 Kings 2:1-18). Although th

1 Corinthians 12:1-11 Last week, in our reading from the Gospel of Luke, John the Baptist told the crowd that he baptized with water, but another would come baptizing with the Holy Spirit and Fire.  When Luke moves to Jesus’ baptism, he leaves us with the impression that Jesus, upon the Spirit falls in the form of a dove, is the one who will baptize with the Holy Spirit and Fire. In Luke’s second volume, the Book of Acts, Jesus gathers the disciples together and tells them to wait until the Spirit falls on them, because the Spirit will empower them to proclaim the good news of God’s realm to the ends of the earth.  Then, as story the moves to the day of Pentecost, the Spirit falls on the entire community and they begin to proclaim the good news of Jesus in languages they’d never learned, and as a result God was glorified and the Age of the Spirit had begun. But what does this Age of the Spirit look like and what does it mean for us?   In today’s reading from Paul’s

Luke 3:15-17, 21-22 John went down to the Jordan to preach a message of repentance and baptize everyone who responded to the message.  Despite his odd appearance and the harshness of his message, hundreds came to be baptized.  Some in the crowd wondered whether or not he was the Messiah, but John pointed away from himself to another.  While he baptized with water, the coming one, the one whose way he prepared, would baptize with the Holy Spirit and with Fire. One day, as John was baptizing, Jesus came and got in line.  Unlike elsewhere in the Gospels, John doesn’t try to stop Jesus from being baptized. He doesn’t even seem to recognize him.  He just immerses Jesus in the waters of the Jordan, like everyone else.    However, when Jesus emerges from the water, the heavens open, a dove descends, and a voice calls out from the heavens: “You are my son, whom I dearly love; in you I find happiness.”  At this moment God makes a claim on Jesus’s life.  It’s at this mome

Matthew 2:1-12 One of the first songs most of us learned as children was this old English lullaby: Twinkle, twinkle, little star, How I wonder what you are. Up above the world so high,   Like a diamond in the sky. It’s not a Christmas carol or even an Epiphany hymn, but the third stanza seems to fit today’s service:   Then the traveller in the dark, Thanks you for your tiny spark, He could not see which way to go,   If you did not twinkle so. Light pollution makes it difficult to see the stars in the night, but if you get away from civilization, maybe go up into the mountains, you might get a sense of how the stars looked to the ancient world.  No wonder ancient travelers looked to the stars for guidance.  If you knew the movement of the stars, you’d know where you were and where you were going.  They were the original GPS, and they weren’t nearly as annoying!    According to Matthew, Magi – Zoroastrian priests from Persia -- followed a twinkling s