Words of Welcome

2 Corinthians 5:16-6:2 Paul declared that “now is the acceptable time; see, now is the Day of Salvation!” That may be true, but what does it mean to be saved or to proclaim Jesus as savior?  This is a question that many struggle with. We sing about it and pray about it, but we’re not sure what salvation really is.  That’s the impression that Mark Love got from his interviews and surveys. We have a strong sense of the presence of God in the world, but we’re not quite sure how that relates to our own lives. He found that there’s a lot of discomfort with traditional understandings of Jesus being our “personal savior,” despite all the salvation imagery present in our hymns and prayers, including the prayers at the Table.  Could it be that we’ve been overly influenced by an atonement theory that many of us find problematic? The idea that Jesus died on a cross as a sacrificial victim to satisfy God’s need for blood as atonement for our sins no longer makes sense. ...

Philippians 4:4-7 I was looking forward to preaching this sermon.  Not only has it been a couple of weeks since last I got the opportunity, but joy a great theme to preach on this close to Christmas.  The service itself is designed to highlight this theme.  We’ve already lit the candle of joy, and all our hymns speak of joy as well.   But, the joy of this Advent and Christmas season has been interrupted by the horrific tragedy that hit our nation on Friday.  I think that most of us are still reeling from the shock of learning that a young man entered an elementary school and killed twenty-six people, twenty of whom were small children, before turning his gun on himself.  We can’t hear a word from God this morning without acknowledging the grief and anger that wraps our nation.    We began worship this morning listening to the voices of our children singing the Friendly Beast song.  They blessed us not only with their songs, but...

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...