Words of Welcome

Matthew 9:35-10:8 Last Sunday we heard Jesus issue the Great Commission: “Go into the world and make disciples, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.” This morning we hear another commission, but it’s more localized. We find ourselves on the far side of the resurrection, and as Jesus travels through Galilee, teaching in the synagogues and proclaiming the good news of God’s realm, he realizes the people of Israel are “like sheep without a shepherd.” Because he has compassion for them, he tells the disciples that while “the harvest is plentiful,” the “laborers are few.” The metaphors are agricultural—shepherding and harvesting—but the point is simple. There is work to be done, which means more laborers, more shepherds, more harvesters, are needed.  Jesus responds to this situation, by asking the disciples to pray that “the Lord of the harvest” would “send out laborers into this harvest.” As the reading continues, we discover that the answer t

Matthew 28:16-20 Today is, according to the church calendar, Trinity Sunday. On the matter of the Trinity, Disciples of Christ are not of one mind. Thomas and Alexander Campbell were Trinitarians, and Barton Stone was not. One of our important second generation Disciple leaders was  Isaac Errett,  who served as pastor of the Jefferson Avenue and Beaubien Street Church in Detroit during the 1860s. He wrote a pamphlet titled Our Position. In that pamphlet he wrote that while Disciples accept the biblical statements about the “trinity of persons in the Godhead, we repudiate alike the philosophical and theological speculations of Trinitarians and Unitarians, and all unauthorized forms of speech on a question which transcends human reason, and on which it becomes us to speak ‘in words which the Holy Spirit teaches’” [ Historical Documents Advocating Christian Union ,  pp. 297-298].  In other words, we’re going to stick with Bible terms! Of course there are some among us, including me,

1 Corinthians 12:3-13 I have a funny story to tell. Somehow, as I was laying out my sermon plans, when I got to Pentecost, I decided to go with the lectionary reading from 1 Corinthians 12. But, for some reason I put down 1 Corinthians 13 instead. Then, when I sat down to do worship planning, I used 1 Corinthians 13 as the guide. I also began contemplating how this message of love fit with Pentecost. It didn’t dawn on me until Tuesday morning that I had the wrong text. When I read through the lectionary selection, I thought it was odd that the lectionary would omit the first two verses. Now, the creators of the lectionary have their reasons for omitting verses of a passage, but what is it about speaking in the tongues of mortals and angels that would be controversial. So, I turned to a lectionary commentary to see why these verses had been omitted. To my surprise, I discovered that I had the wrong text.  Now everything made sense, including the title of the sermon. That’s how we g